[fghsqwads]

> What makes this default even more egregious is that the stone-age-era IT system of the state’s Employment and Development Department (EDD) opened the floodgates to bad actors, permitting more than $30 billion in fraudulent unemployment claims during the pandemic. Those receiving fraudulent payments include incarcerated felons, a person impersonating a one-year-old, and a person impersonating Senator Dianne Feinstein. A single residential address received checks for around 60 separate individuals filing from that address.

I don't know how true this all is, but I find it doubly infuriating given that I lived in CA at the time and tried filing for benefits on the basis that my employer was cutting everyone's hours and pay temporarily in response to the pandemic (and in addition to layoffs). Technically, I was eligible for these benefits that I paid in to, but the application system would continually have errors in addition to being fairly difficult to parse if you've never tried using it before.

I also find it insane that the state government would constantly brag about their budget surplus and offer various benefits like the recent gas rebate. They do this while defaulting on billions of dollars in debt. I'm sure there was some justifications for how they can do this, but it all seems quite scummy to me, model behavior of completely shitty governance. Imagine every other city in densely populated areas utterly failing to fix the most basic issues while focusing on doing things like removing gendered language from their laws or, better yet, passing illegal laws like bans on gas stoves that inevitably get overturned by a higher court.