Desperately seeking snitches
Posted by Trent England - March 09, 2010She's from Olympia, and she wants to help you turn in your neighbors. "State agencies have combined forces," says Governor Christine Gregoire, "to make it easier than ever ... to 'check with the state before it's too late.'" It's called suspectfraud.com, but what it's really about is snitching on friends, neighbors, and family who might be operating a business or parking a motorhome without the state's permission.
And what good timing. A multitude of small businesses are idle due to the recession. With no income coming in, many of these businesses--especially those with expensive bonding and insurance requirements--will be unable to renew their state licenses (list of 437 license categories).Gregoire understands that an out-of-work laborer who can't afford the thousands of dollars it costs to renew his state license might still try to engage in useful work to feed his family. That, of course, is fraud. It's our job to report it using suspectfraud.com.
If all goes according to plan, the government will collect more fines and push more people out of work and on to state programs--a win-win.
There's no word yet on whether citizens can use suspectfraud.com to report other kinds of shady business, like phony public hearings or Ponzi-style budgeting.
Thoughts? Add Comment -
JT said on Mar 09 2010 at 4:18pm
Everybody should report Olympia and Gregoire through that site. They're the real frauds.
Piper Scott said on Mar 09 2010 at 7:08pm
I tried turning you in, but they said they don't pay rewards under $1.00
I'll continue shopping you around to other states until I get a taker worth my while.
John Chittick said on Mar 10 2010 at 10:35am
Perhaps, it's the reason they are pushing for the all-day kindergartens, so they can uniform the "kinders" in Green and Brown and train the little buggers to turn everyone in. I think that's been done before somewhere......
Bernice Overland said on Mar 10 2010 at 1:59pm
Thanks for these good blogs keeping us alert. Let's have more of them.