Opinion and Commentary By Donna Westfall – March 2, 2025

Do you know who Stacey Abrams is? She’s 51 years old and is an American politician, lawyer, voting rights activist, author, and perennial candidate who served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 2007 to 2017. She ran for Governor in 2018 and lost. She’s a Democrat and in the news because of Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) awarded $2 Billion to a firm/non-profit she’s connected to. It appears the Biden administration was funneling billions of dollars out to all sorts of organizations.

Where did this information come from or get verified? Actually from two sources.

1.) Lee Zeldin, Administrator of the EPA, and

2.) Brent Efron, EPA advisor.

It doesn’t stop at $2 Billion, but let’s just delve into this for the moment. Just think about this. In late 2023, a brand new non-profit called Power Forward Communities (PFC) reported $100 in revenue the first 3 months it was in business….one hundred dollars! But in April 2024, it received a $2 billion…. let me repeat… $2 BILLION grant. How is this possible?

Maybe former Rep Abrams learned a thing or two while serving in Congress. Things like the chronic lack of oversight of taxpayer money.

Just think about this. What do you think we could find if someone like Elon Musk and his geniuses did a deep dive into our City and County finances? Would they be able to determine if anyone was getting kick-backs”? Just for a second, let’s say questions and an audit were performed about the upgrade and expansion on the Wastewater Treatment Project (WWTP)? After all, while I sat on the Crescent City, City Council, I asked our former Public Works Director during a routine council meeting if he was getting kickbacks. He did not answer. Meanwhile, my fellow council members censured me, and had me removed from all committees. It was tantamount to having a piece of duct tape over my mouth whenever the subject of the WWTP came up.

As a reminder those council members were Kelly Schellong (now married going by Feola), Kathryn Murray, Charles Slert and Dennis Burns. NOTE: Slert and Burn left our area some years ago.

What if all sorts of waste, fraud and abuse was detected? Could any of that money be recovered or restitution paid? Would people have to be convicted and spend time in prison?

Getting back to Elon Musk, between him and President Trump it seems they are moving at warp speed. It’s hard to keep all the numbers straight between the wasteful spending of the Democrats, the recuperation of monies, and the suspected fraud. But one thing is for sure, the dollars are mounting up into significant sums, billions of dollars.

Why is it so hard to have employees of the federal government fill out an email and let Musk know what they’ve been working on for the last week? What if they’re working another job while collecting a paycheck from us the taxpayers?

Frankly it’s about time this clean-up has been done. Every time I pay my property taxes I attach a letter to Barbara Lopez, our Del Norte County Tax Collector letting her know that I’m paying out of protest for one primary reason: our public education stinks.

If someone could figure out how to improve our public education system so our children are learning instead of being indoctrinated that would make me happy and I would gladly pay property taxes to support that. Otherwise we’re just foisting ignorant, undereducated young people without the skills to make our country better into a workplace where perhaps the only thing they’re good for is being on an assembly line or on the welfare line. Not that there’s anything wrong with an assembly line, but what if they actually yearned for the best education they could obtain and looked forward to going to school?

Boy, oh boy, wouldn’t that be something?

Finally, check out DOGE.GOV. The numbers are mounting up. The idea that taxes will be cut, money recovered, expenses and inflation reduced makes me giddy. The only thing that would make me happier is if some of those responsible ended up in prison with their personal fortunes reduced due to having to pay restitution.