SATURDAY, AUGUST 1 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A21
T
he Trump administration’s standard operating
procedure for running the covid-19 disaster
relief effort must be: “Put the money on the
stump and run like crazy.” It’s hard to draw other
conclusions following the release of the Small Business
Administration inspector general’s report on potential
fraud in the government’s emergency loan and grant
program.
Let’s put it this way. If something akin to this
purportedly fraud-riddled program had materialized on
President Barack Obama’s watch, Republicans in Con-
gress would be calling it a high crime and misdemeanor.
Yes, it’s just that bad.
Inspector General Hannibal “Mike” Ware kicked off
his investigation after getting complaints regarding
more than 5,000 instances of suspected fraud from
financial institutions receiving SBA economic injury
loan deposits. After a preliminary review, the IG found
“strong indicators of widespread potential fraud.”
With more than $200 billion left in the SBA’s lending
kitty, Ware decided to blow the whistle and publicly call
for the SBA to take action immediately “to reduce fraud
risk and prevent further losses.”
Taxpayers ought to thank goodness for the govern-
ment’s watchdogs. The loans were approved and dis-
bursed by the SBA under authority provided in the
emergency Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Secu-
rity Act (Cares Act), passed by Congress and signed into
law by President Trump in March. The substantial
money freed up was intended to serve as a lifeline for
small- business owners and their workers across the
country reeling in an economy getting pummeled by the
coronavirus pandemic.
Among the IG’s initial investigative findings:
l $250 million in SBA economic injury loans and
advance grants were given to potentially ineligible
recipients.
l $45.6 million in economic injury loans that were
approved for nearly 300 businesses were potentially
duplicate.
The duplicate payment problem was a real mess. Of
the 275 duplicates, according to the report, one business
was approved four times and got four loans and six
businesses were approved for three loans. The other
268 businesses were approved for two.
Ware’s watchdogs, digging into the banks’ complaints,
discovered all kinds of suspicious activities. They found
accounts had been established using stolen identities,
and that some account holders tried to transfer funds to
investment accounts.
The investigations also found that some economic
injury loans made to agricultural businesses were being
deposited in accounts of unrelated third parties in states
different from the business locations.
And they learned of suspected fraud. For instance, the
report noted that “a London-based international money-
transfer business claims to have identified $1.9 million
in pending SBA deposits being made to accounts to be
transferred internationally.”
Investigators also learned that a federal credit union
reported — to its credit — to the Justice Department’s
criminal division that “it has received $15 million in SBA
deposits in recent weeks. The credit union audited 60 of
the transactions and determined that 59 appeared to be
fraudulent.”
Alarming to you, taxpayer? Alarming to the IG, as well.
Would it be fair to say the SBA lending program is
under the management of Kiddie Klubhouse preschool-
ers? Or in the hands of bighearted but reckless bureau-
crats? Both are probably unfair. But performance-wise,
either may be close.
SBA Administrator Jovita Carranza probably would
take strong issue with my characterizations. She would
likely contend, as does Trump whenever he is apprised of
his administration’s performance, that the SBA is doing
a great job.
In her July 23 response to the IG’s July 15 draft
“Management Alert,” which was titled “Serious Prob-
lems and Deficiencies in Internal Controls Over Eco-
nomic Injury Disaster Loan Program Pertaining to the
Response to COVID-19,” Carranza maintained that her
agency has a “robust set of internal controls” for the
lending program for which the IG failed to account.
She cited her deployment of “sophisticated technolo-
gy” designed to deal with the kind of complaints filed by
financial institutions.
Carranza stated her strong commitment to safeguard-
ing taxpayer funds to mitigate risks of waste, fraud and
abuse. And she asked to meet with the IG about the
specific concerns presented in the filed complaints
“before the Draft Management Alert is finalized.”
And well they should.
It is astonishing that Carranza’s response described
financial complaints as “unexpected.” How can an
agency engaged with financial institutions be unaware
of so many complaints of suspected fraud with these
economic injury loan deposits?
Nearly 3,800 instances of suspected fraud complaints
came from only six financial institutions.
What is going on here? Is the Trump administration,
besieged by a recession and visions of an Election Day
disaster, hoping to flood the country with SBA cash by
putting money on the stump and running like hell?
Ah, banish, but don’t bury, the thought.
[email protected]COLBERT I. KINGFollow the money
from the SBA
emergency loans
I
n the Australian bush southwest of Sydney, a
wedge-tailed eagle is gliding over the paddocks.
He’s on the hunt for prey. Watch a “wedgie” long
enough and you’ll see it suddenly swoop, dive-
bombing toward the ground, before lifting aloft a
rabbit, wallaby or small kangaroo.
There’s no sign of that today. Today, he circles,
looping over hillsides filled with blackened trees.
There’s no prey to find.
We’re on Tallygang Mountain Road, in an area called
Wombeyan Caves. The bush fires swept through this
part of Australia in early January, during a fire season
that consumed about 50,000 square miles of bush,
mainly in the country’s eastern states.
The fires were traumatic. At least 33 people died,
including three American firefighters — heroes who’d
come to lend a hand.
Only one thought gave succor. The Australian
environment has evolved to recover after fire. Indeed,
some plants require fire for their seeds to germinate.
Within a few months, we can usually look forward to a
blaze of regrowth.
It hasn’t worked out that way. Not everywhere. Not
this time.
Eight months on, the terrain around Wombeyan
Caves is still a denuded landscape. A carpet of luminous
grass covers the open paddocks — the farmers call it
“green pick” — but the trees stand blackened and weary.
They creak in the wind and, occasionally, collapse in a
roar of splintering timber.
Before the fires, this ridgetop was full of wildlife.
Echidnas would shimmy into the leaf litter as you
walked past. Crimson rosellas, bold-looking parrots,
would flash through the air, leaving a hallucinatory
stripe of red against the gray-green wall of the
eucalyptus forest. At dawn and dusk, mobs of kangaroos
would bounce regally across the paddocks.
On my most recent trip, a fortnight ago, I saw none of
this. There was one wombat, trundling across the road,
caught in the headlights of my car. There was the
distant laugh of a single kookaburra. Then, that circling
wedgie.
A month after the fire, in early February, I took a
photo of a young kangaroo — a joey — sheltering in a
rare patch of grass, beside a building saved by
firefighters. I left water and food — lumps of sweet
potato — hoping they’d pull him through.
Now, pausing where I’d last seen him, I found a pile of
what I assume are his tiny bones.
According to research released this week, it was one
of nearly 3 billion animals that died or were displaced in
the fires.
The tally includes “143 million mammals, 180 million
birds, 51 million frogs and a staggering 2.5 billion
reptiles” — some killed by flames and heat, others by
starvation and dehydration.
The research, commissioned by the World Wide Fund
for Nature, proves the fires were “one of the worst
wildlife disasters in modern history,” according to the
organization’s Australian chief executive, Dermot
O’Gorman.
Why have these fires been so different from those of
the past? Scientists say climate change has made the
difference. The fire season now begins in August, three
months earlier than during the 1950s. The fires are of
such scale, they join together in mega-blazes such as the
Gospers Mountain Fire on Sydney’s northern doorstep
— impossible for even fleet-footed animals to escape.
And they burn landscapes that are not adapted to
fire, such as the damp rainforests of northern New
South Wales.
Richard Kingsford, a professor and ecologist from
the University of New South Wales, is championing a
citizen science project tracking the recovery — or lack of
it — in various landscapes.
Early indications, he told me, are that the usual
“bounce back” is not occurring, at least not everywhere.
During a normal fire season, there will be patches of
unburnt bushland to which animals can retreat. This
season’s fires were too hot and too big to allow such
refuge.
“There were a whole lot of birds, particularly in those
southern fires, who had nowhere to go,” Kingsford said,
“so they flew out to sea and then ran out of puff. And so
they drowned. There were bush birds washing up on the
coastline.”
Australia’s politicians, particularly those in denial
about climate change, love to quote a patriotic poem
that celebrates Australia as a land of “droughts and
flooding rains.” The problem, according to Kingsford, is
that we assume those cycles of drought and flood, of
destruction and rebirth, will always be with us.
“But really,” he said, “there’s nothing that says these
cycles will always occur.”
Australia remains on a trajectory that will see the
country falling short of its Paris emission-reduction
commitments. This is despite the devastation of wild-
life; despite the continuing human impact of the fires;
and despite the firming conviction that Australia is one
of the countries most vulnerable to climate change.
Meanwhile, up at Wombeyan, a wedge-tailed eagle
circles, hoping for a meal.Richard Glover presents the “Drive” show on ABC Radio
Sydney and is a Post Global Opinions contributing columnist.RICHARD GLOVERSeven months after
the fires, Australia
is still devastated
T
he suburbs have been much with President
Trump. He shared an article on his Twitter
feed warning that Joe Biden was trying to
destroy the suburbs. He addressed himself to
“Suburban Housewives of America.” And he tweeted
— in his usual deafening, racist whistle-tone, in
which he is now reaching Mariah Carey-like levels of
proficiency — about rolling back fair housing policies
to benefit those living the “Suburban Lifestyle
Dream.”
But what, exactly, is the Suburban Lifestyle
Dream?
You are mowing the lawn. You must mow the lawn.
It is imperative that you mow the lawn.
“Get in,” a voice says. “We are going to have fun, and
to have fun, we must get in the car.”
You look around you. It is true. There is nothing
fun, only houses that look like houses that look like
houses that look like nothing in particular. Every
house is a copy. Was there ever one that was real?
You worry you will not recognize your copy when
you return, so you chalk a purple X on your door. By
the time you finish marking it, a letter of complaintfrom the Homeowners Association about it is in your
mailbox. There is another letter complaining about
the height of your mailbox and the height of your
lawn.
You must mow the lawn. (You just mowed the
lawn.)
There are two children in your house. You don’t
know whose they are or how they got there. There is a
dog, too, but only half the time. On average, you are
content.
“Get in the car,” the voice says. “To have fun, we
must get into the car.”
A man is walking out of the house on the other side
of the cul-de-sac to retrieve his newspaper. A man is
walking out of the next house to retrieve his newspa-
per. A man is walking out of the next house to retrieve
his newspaper. Soon it will be the man in the house
directly next to yours. The men turn toward you and
begin to wave, in unison.
A child is riding toward you on a bicycle. Another
child is riding toward you on a bicycle. They are
riding toward you down streets that have the same
name but different names. Maple Road. Maple Trace.Maple Drive. Maple Crescent.
You get into the car. You listen to a podcast. You
listen to another podcast and another podcast and
another podcast until the voices blur together. Is
there only one podcast?
You arrive at the Applebee’s. You arrive at the Ruby
Tuesday. You arrive at the Olive Garden. When you are
here, you are briefly family. But you are not here long.
You arrive at the Barnes & Noble. You arrive at the
Costco. You arrive at the Walmart. There is not an end
to the Walmart. Is this even the same floor you
entered on? It must be, but you cannot see the exit. All
you see is enormous cages full of rubber balls.
This is fun. You are having fun now.
You arrive at the mall. The first level of the mall is
fine. There are stores with sweaters and stores with
perfumes and stores with electronics. You descend
one level in the mall and all the stores are dimmer.
There is a store that is having a sale of crystals. There
is another store that is having a sale of dolls. There is
another store that sells something sticky. You de-
scend another level. There is a sign saying They Will
Be Right Back. There is a pretzel, but it is far too big.“Hello?” you say. The mall is empty but there is no
echo. It is as though something has eaten the sound.
You find the escalator but it only goes down, and you
do not want to descend again.
You are in the parking garage. It is full of cars like
your car. You hit the button on your key and all of the
cars begin honking in unison.
The first car you try opens up. Can that be right?
Your head is starting to ache. You smell casserole.
You drive around a roundabout. You drive around
another roundabout. The traffic circles are supposed
to be calming. They are not working.
When you return to the houses, all the doors have
purple X’s and letters of complaint. You do not
remember which number was yours. You call out to
your family, but all of the families answer in unison.
Where is yours? Is it still at the Olive Garden?
You try to wake up. But you are living the Suburban
Lifestyle Dream.
You get the lawn mower. You get the newspaper.
You wave, down the street, at a new arrival with wild
and frightened eyes.
Twitter: @petridishesALEXANDRA PETRIYou try to wake up. But you are living the Suburban Lifestyle Dream.
DRAWING BOARDB Y MARGULIESB Y JOE HELLERB Y MARGULIESB Y DANA SUMMERS