It is a challenge for most people to pay the bills, buy a house, put the kids through college,
or generally make ends meet. People expect to see a certain amount of money deducted from
their paychecks for a pension plan, health insurance, or 401(k). (You will probably never see
that Social Security money again.) But
it really hurts to see huge sums of money taken out of a check to pay federal income tax, especially
when you know that a lot of that money will be wasted on some of the nonsense shown below.
Additionally, some of your money will be given to people who are too lazy to work.
In 2002, the federal government spent $522 billion on low-income assistance
programs.* That's
half a trillion dollars per year. But the issues of poverty and perpetual dependency in America are
discussed on another page.
Updated 9/17/2006:
All the material about Amtrak has been moved
to this page.
Related subjects discussed on separate pages:
Pork products in the stimulus bill
Taxpayers' money spent on sports stadiums
Cash for Clunkers
PBS and National Public Radio
The Socialized Medicine Page
Wasteful Wartime Spending
Wasteful Spending in Public Education
Pork Barrel Projects, the biggest of which
is NASA.
The Endless and Ineffective War on Poverty
The government is parasitic. It has no money of its own.
How to Cut the Budget:
[Scroll down] These numbers tell us that when you talk about cutting excessive government spending, you had
better be talking about the big four: Pensions (including Social Security and government employee pensions),
Health Care, Education, and Welfare. The government has utterly failed at these major programs.
That's because of two inescapable facts of government: It always promises more than it can deliver, and
it is always more interested in rewarding its supporters than in actually delivering a product.
Stimulus
Dollars Are Taking You for A Ride — On Greyhound Buses. The State of Missouri will
use $945,210 of federal taxpayer monies to reimburse Greyhound Bus Lines for the addition of two new buses to
the company's fleet. In other words, Greyhound is getting a federal subsidy and the Show-Me State is
acting as a laundromat of sorts.
The Editor says...
That's $472,605 for each bus. They must be really nice buses.
I got a letter
from the census today. There in my mail was an envelope clearly marked to show it came from the
US Bureau of the Census and that said Bureau had duly paid a first-class postal rate to send it to me. ... Presumably,
tens or hundreds of millions copies of this useless missive is being sent out at taxpayer expense —
which must be enormous — for printing, translation, typesetting in foreign languages and non-Latin
scripts, postage, addressing, presorting, and mailing.
Anger
arises over mailing cost of census. Last week, "Dear Resident" letters arrived in post boxes and
through mail slots nationwide. "About one week from now, you will receive a 2010 Census form in the mail,"
the letters read. "Please fill it out and mail it in promptly."
L.A. County
supervisors spend millions on pet projects. As Los Angeles County supervisors prepare to carve
deeply into everything from public safety to social services, they also are spending millions in taxpayer
dollars to burnish their public images, pay for chauffeurs, hold parties for friends and lobbyists and support
pet projects. Each supervisor receives $3.4 million a year to spend as he or she sees fit, without
any public vote or scrutiny.
Pocket money for
politicians: [Scroll down] It's hardly surprising that irresponsible government stewardship
of public resources trickles down from Washington to the local level. Lawand Johnson, director of Louisiana's
St. John the Baptist Housing Authority — which is funded through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development — racked up more than $2,000 in personal expenses on a government credit card. "I thought
it was my card," Ms. Johnson explained, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
Tiny Tims: Timothy
Geithner isn't the only government worker with a tax problem. According to data from the IRS
and the Office of Personnel Management, nearly 100,000 current federal employees are behind on their taxes.
Not all of them are big offenders, but they are delinquent to the tune of nearly $1 billion —
an average of about $10,000 each. If retirees collecting federal pensions and military personnel are
included, the number is about 267,000, and they owe a total of about $3 billion.
Waste, fraud and
abuse: President Barack Obama has suddenly decided his unpopular, extraordinarily expensive,
colossal healthcare reform bill is all about waste, fraud and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid. Interestingly,
this is only important to him as a final Hail Mary pass on his signature policy item, rather than a legitimate
priority on its own.
US diplomats add a moat to their expenses
at $1bn London embassy. The United States has unveiled plans for its new $1 billion
high-security embassy in London — the most expensive it has ever built. The proposals were met with
relief from both the present embassy's Mayfair neighbours and the residents and developers of the Battersea
wasteland where the vast crystalline cube, surrounded by a moat, will be built.
Activist
'Green' Lawyers Billing U.S. Millions in Fraudulent Attorney Fees. Without any oversight,
accounting, or transparency, environmental activist groups have surreptitiously received at least $37 million
from the federal government for questionable "attorney fees." The lawsuits they received compensation for
had nothing to do with environmental protection or improvement. The activist groups have generated huge
revenue streams via the obscure Equal Access to Justice Act.
USA Today: Average federal employee makes $38,000+ more than private
sector worker. [Scroll down] Throw in benefits, and the average federal worker makes
$38,000+ more than the average private sector worker — the very same one who's ultimately paying
his salary.
For feds, more get
6-figure salaries. The number of federal workers earning six-figure salaries has exploded during
the recession, according to a USA TODAY analysis of federal salary data. Federal employees making salaries
of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession's first 18 months —
and that's before overtime pay and bonuses are counted.
Govt. workers feel
no economic pain. The recession and the ongoing jobless recovery devastated much of the
private-sector work force last year, sending unemployment soaring, but government workers emerged essentially
unscathed, according to data released Wednesday by the Labor Department.
No Taxation with
Misrepresentation? [Scroll down] Adding to this feeling that taxpayers are so many chumps
comes the recent story that salaries and wages of federal employees are higher than those for the same positions
in the private sector in eight out of ten occupations. Even more galling is the information that federal
employee fringe benefits are more than four times more generous. In fact, of the twenty-five highest median
income counties in the United States in 2009, eight of them are in the Greater Washington, D.C. metropolitan
area.
Liquidating the Empire.
Author Lawrence Vance has inventoried America's warfare state. We spend more on defense than the next
10 nations combined. Our Navy exceeds in firepower the next 13 navies combined. We have
100,000 troops in Iraq, 100,000 in Afghanistan or headed there, 28,000 in Korea, over 35,000 in Japan and
50,000 in Germany. By the Department of Defense's "Base Structure Report," there are 716 U.S. bases in
38 countries. ... Estimated combined budgets for the Pentagon, two wars, foreign aid to allies,
16 intelligence agencies, scores of thousands of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, and our new
castle-embassies: $1 trillion a year.
The Editor says...
I'm a big supporter of reasonable defense spending. National defense is one of the few things
authorized by the Constitution, whereas spending money on welfare, education and pensions is not.
Just the same, I recognize that there are dozens of unnecessary military bases around the world, wasteful
pet projects like the V22 Osprey, and hardly
any reason to keep soldiers in Korea and Japan and Germany, when they would serve a better purpose in places
like Laredo and San Diego.
Food-stamp
fraud: Detroit-area stores swipe millions from aid program. Fraud in the government
program that helps the poor has added up to nearly $100 million since 2007, according to the U.S.
Agriculture Department. It's a fraction of the more than $40 billion spent to feed people each
year, but the crime has become a brazen way for some small stores to literally swipe cash from the U.S.
Treasury, especially in the Detroit area.
New
pay, personnel system dumped as a 'disaster'. After spending $1 billion and 12 years of
effort, Defense officials have pulled the plug on a hapless plan to bring the four military branches under a
single, modern payroll and personnel records system. "This program has been a disaster," Adm. Mike
Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this month. He
said he applauded the decision to kill what proponents said would be the largest, fully-integrated human
resource system in the world.
Are
US Taxpayers Bailing Out Greece? Last week we were reminded that ours is not the only country suffering from
severe economic turmoil. The Greek government is the latest to come close to default on their massive public debt.
Greece has insufficient funds in their treasury to make even the minimum payments that are now coming due.
Obama's federal
government can weatherize your home for only $57,362 each. Who could forget the $5 billion in
Obama administration stimulus money that was going to rapidly create nearly 90,000 green jobs across the country
in these tough economic times...? Well, a new report due out this morning will show the $5-billion program
is so riddled with drafts that so far it's weatherized only about 9,000 homes.
Homeland Security
Reports Losing Guns. The nation's Homeland Security officers lost nearly 200 guns in bowling alleys,
public restrooms, unlocked cars and other unsecure areas, with some ending up in the hands of felons. The
problem, outlined in a new federal report, has prompted disciplinary actions and extra training.
Millions in Stimulus
Spending Being Doled Out for Questionable Jobs. Federal agencies are spending stimulus money at
the rate of $196 million an hour. And they will do so every hour for the next eight months until a
September 30, 2010, deadline. ... [For such things as] $233,000 to the University of California at San
Diego to study why Africans vote. Jobs created: 12, but seven of those are Africans in Africa.
[And] In Nevada, $2 million in stimulus money built a new fire station, but because of budget cuts, the
county can't afford to hire firefighters to work there.
A
Homework Assignment for Juan Williams: the DOE was DOA. Juan Williams is the titular
liberal on Fox News and he tries very hard to maintain the impression that the news panels are fair and
balanced. To do that he routinely parrots the Democrat mantra du jour on all issues and [on] a
recent Fox News Special Report he defended President Obama's call for new energy policies and cited the need
for the government to explore alternative means to reduce our dependency on foreign oil. I'm a decade
older than Williams so maybe he doesn't recall the Carter administration as well as I do but the Department of
Energy was established for that very same purpose and it has produced absolutely nothing towards that aim in
over 32 years.
Editor's note:
To accomplish virtually nothing, the Department of Energy spent $29 billion in
2009, or about $248 for every U.S. household.
[Source]
Our King of Big Government Suggests We Need
Another New Agency. What is the matter with that man in our White House? Will he ever stop
trying to spend every nickel and dime that Americans have, including our savings that we worked hard for to
ease our retirement years? He acts like a poor kid that suddenly comes into some money and it is burning
a hole in his pocket to get spent.
NOAA's Ministry Of Propaganda.
Despite failures at Copenhagen, the fraud of the IPCC and the farce of Climate-gate, the administration wants
an agency to monitor climate change. Why must we fund one-stop shopping for climate charlatans?
New
federal office for global warming. Amid the growing fight over the accuracy of climate data,
President Obama is seeking to have the federal government put its imprimatur on the science by calling for
the creation of a new federal office to study and report on global warming.
Much more
about the global warming hoax is presented on an extensive
series of pages.
Climategate:
Obama's National Climate Disservice. There's good news for those who like to watch paint dry and
grass grow. Now you can log on to www.climate.gov and watch the climate change.
Does
not compute. The Indian Health Service has been given $85 million in stimulus funds for new
information technology equipment. ... Since 2004, the IHS has lost $19 million worth of computers and
IT equipment, much of it probably stolen. The problem remains unaddressed.
Why
Government Agencies Take on a Life of Their Own: As soon as a proposed budget cut looms, as if on
cue governments start threatening to shut down the police force, fire department, and schools. Since almost
nobody wants to do without cops, firemen, or teachers, this is a highly effective tactic most of the time —
although oddly enough, governments always seem to find a way to hold on to the Special Executive Assistants For
Airport Graft, to say nothing of the odd Georgia Road and Tollway Authority.
The Runaway Subsidy
Train. There is no need to subsidize intercity travel. Flyers pay for virtually all of the
costs of running the airline system, including airports and air traffic control. Gasoline taxes and
highway tolls built and maintain intercity roadways, and they also support mass transit with $10 billion
in subsidies annually. Intercity buses require no taxpayer funds. Only rail requires heavy subsidies.
More
about the shortcomings of mass transit.
The
Super-Sized Census Boondoggle. [Pepsi] has been in the Super Bowl ad business for more than two
decades. But this year, Pepsi determined it was economically unwise to pay $3 million for a
30-second spot. So, who's foolish enough to pay for Super Bowl gold-plated airtime? You and me and
Washington, D.C. The U.S. Census Bureau will squander $2.5 million on a half-minute Super Bowl ad
starring D-list celebrity Ed Begley Jr., plus two pre-game blurbs and 12-second "vignettes" featuring Super
Bowl anchor James Brown.
Update:
Census Super Bowl ad flops.
The U.S. Census Bureau's "Snapshot of America" Super Bowl 44 ad has met with harsh criticism from television writers,
media pundits and the Kellogg School of Management, which gave the Census ad an "F" grade — the lowest
of any commercial that ran during Sunday's game. Television critics charge that the Census ad, which
cost $2.5 million and was directed by independent filmmaker Christopher Guest, was dry, uninformative,
and culturally obscure.
The Lies about Green Jobs.
The Department of Energy was established in 1977 to lessen dependence on the import of foreign oil.
With 16,000 employees and an annual budget of $24 billion, the United States has imported more oil
with every passing year while denying U.S. oil companies access to vast national reserves in ANWR and off
our continental shelf. It is an abysmal failure.
Heroin for
dummies. The city [of New York] spent $32,000 on 70,000 fliers that tell you how to shoot
heroin, complete with detailed tips on prepping the dope and injecting it into your arm. The Health
Department handout has outraged New York's top drug prosecutors and abuse experts.
No Explanation
For This Insanity. [Scroll down] Our federal government may be too far gone, but the
insanity is also present in our nanny-run city, which has just spent $32,000 on thousands of fliers
instructing us how to shoot heroin properly, with detailed tips on prepping the dope. This is our
glorious Health Department, which clamps down on poor homeowners for insipid violations of archaic laws.
I was under the impression that shooting dope was illegal. What's next? Tips on the proper way to
hold up a bank or mug an old lady?
A Trail of Broken Promises to
Nowhere. North Carolina's North Shore Road, a controversial 26 mile road through the most remote
part of Great Smoky Mountain National Park, was finally killed a couple of years ago. But like so many things
involving federal spending, the story didn't end there. The federal government is now set to pay $52 million
dollars to Swain County, North Carolina because that road is never going to be finished.
Taxpayers'
bucks spent on trysts, golf, skiing. At the State Department, for instance, nearly 80 percent
of the more than $300,000 in airfare reviewed at one little-known office in fiscal 2007 and 2008 went to pay for
business-class airline tickets, and many of those purchases violated federal travel policy. One senior
manager at the National Science Foundation took or extended taxpayer-funded trips totaling more than $10,000 to
facilitate liaisons with women in Paris, Tokyo and Vancouver.
U.S. Ignored U.N. Aid Agency's
Fraud and Mismanagement. Between 2004 and 2008, the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID) showered more than $330 million on an obscure United Nations agency known
as UNOPS — United Nations Office for Project Services — to carry out development
aid projects in Afghanistan. What happened next wasn't pretty.
Party
Time at the FAA; Critics Question $5 Million Gathering. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
spent five million dollars this month to bring 3,600 managers to a conference in Atlanta that FAA whistleblowers
and critics say was little more than an excuse to throw a three-week-long Christmas party.
FAA throws $5 million taxpayer-funded drunken bash.
The video of the bacchanalia on the taxpayer dime must be seen to be believed — federal employees
drunkenly dancing in stairwells and joking to the camera crew about almost getting arrested at federally-funded
parties and paying for hookers.
FAA union lawyers questioning journalists who report on drunken FAA
party. Federal employees are caught on camera wasting millions of tax dollars in just about
the most superfluous and embarassing way possible, and all of a sudden a law firm that represents one of the
relevant federal employee unions starts making testy calls to journalists who dare to publicly report about
what's going on.
Spare Us
Another "Stimulus". Consider: the federal government funds at least 340 programs
that are supposed to create jobs. There are also 130 programs supposedly serving the disabled,
and 130 programs supposedly serving at-risk youth. Why? Because it's always easier to
add new programs than to end ineffective existing ones. That's a harsh — and
expensive — reality, one that seems to escape President Obama, who promises, in effect,
to save money by spending money.
Taxpayers' money goes to people who didn't even ask for it.
The
Case of the Mysteriously Appearing(!) Stimulus Money. According to Recovery.gov, the official
federal clearinghouse for all the Hope and Change databases you can choke down, the Ohio Legal Rights
Service was given a $300,000 grant using Stimulus money. The national Social Security Administration
says that the OLRS did not receive any money from the Stimulus. The Ohio Legal Rights Service has absolutely
no idea what the heck the feds are talking about, and have no idea where the money came from.
No Substitute For Fossil Fuels.
Earlier this year, Congress approved a scheme to pour $80 billion — on top of the tens of billions
already spent — into renewables. A government report released last week indicates the money
will be wasted. Renewable energy is the shiny gem that everyone wants but no one can have.
Report finds 'imprudent
spending' at Postal Service. The U.S. Postal Service spent more than $792,000 "without
justification" on meals and events in one five-month period even as it reported losing $3.8 billion
this year, the agency's inspector general says in a report. Employees spent $792,022 on meals and
external events "without justification for food purchases, purchased alcohol without officer approval and
exceeded the dollar limit for meals," the report says.
Big
Brother, can you spare a dime? [Scroll down slowly] The year when President Kennedy was
elected, the total spending of the federal government was about $97 billion. By the time he was
assassinated three years later, that was up to $111 billion. By the time his successor and vice
president, Lyndon Johnson, left office in 1969, federal spending had increased to $184 billion.
But that was chicken feed. Federal spending today is at an amazing $4,000 billion, a forty-fold
increase in just 50 years.
Federal Employees at
the Trough. Last week, USA Today reported that nearly one in five federal government
employees now earn over $100,000. The paper also reported the average federal salary rose to $71,260,
almost $31,000 more than the comparative average private-sector wage. Within the Department of Defense,
over 10,000 employees (as of June 2009) now earn at least $150,000 per year, a 5½-fold increase in the
number of employees eclipsing this salary threshold from just eighteen months ago.
What Suckers We Are.
Do you work for a private company instead of the government? Sucker! The real money is made working
for Uncle Sam. The average pay for federal government workers is now $71,206, compared with $40,331 for
those in the private sector. In fact, nearly one out of five federal workers pulls down more than $100,000.
That's up over 33% during what the administration says is the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
Rolling
in dough. The percentage of federal civil servants making more than $100,000 a year jumped from
14 percent to 19 percent during the first year and a half of the recession, according to USA Today.
At the beginning of the downturn, the Transportation Department had one person making $170,000 or more a year;
now it has 1,690 making more than that.
Our $2 Trillion
Bridge to Nowhere. If you want to know why Americans are so fearful of a government takeover of
the health-care system, take a look at the results of a new Gallup poll on government waste released
Sept. 15. One question posed was: "Of every tax dollar that goes to Washington, D.C., how
many cents of each dollar would you say is wasted?" Gallup found that the mean response was
50 cents. With Uncle Sam spending just shy of $4 trillion this year, that means the public
believes that $2 trillion is wasted.
The Plan to Silence
Dissent. More than 150 bureaucrats at the Federal Communications Commission are in the
final stages of planning how to deliver broadband Internet to the estimated 3-6 million people who do
not have access. ... The FCC is contemplating the notion that some or all of the electromagnetic spectrum
occupied by radio and TV broadcasters is the perfect real estate to launch a national wireless broadband
service. The price tag is $350 billion. That is as much as nearly $120,000 per person
to be connected.
Change We Can Believe In.
[Let's] Outlaw the naming of federal projects after any living politicians. Don't laugh. Without their
names on highway stretches, bridges, and "centers", most of these projects would not be built. ... What is
the logic behind the notion that we immortalize a senator or congresswoman who uses someone else's money
to build a bridge, or lobbies for an earmark for his district, or, at best, simply does his job?
The Rant of Glenn. The U.S. Post Service was
established in 1775. You have had 234 years to get it right and it is broke. Social Security
was established in 1935. You have had 74 years to get it right and it is broke. Fannie Mae
was established in 1938. You have had 71 years to get it right and it is broke. War on
Poverty started in 1964. You have had 45 years to get it right; $1 trillion of our money
is confiscated each year and transferred to "the poor" and they only want more.
Contrite
Obama allocates $3 billion to Indian tribes. The president, seeking to pay off on promises
made on the campaign trail, had gathered leaders of 387 federally recognized American Indian tribes, and
among them was Hartford "Sonny" Black Eagle Jr. The 75-year-old Crow tribe leader and his wife of
57 years adopted Mr. Obama in May 2008, when the Democratic presidential candidate was busy locking
down the Western states that would soon help him win the nomination.
The Editor says...
This is nothing more or less than the President using taxpayer money to pay back political debts.
The Indians are already getting handouts.
List of 562 Indian tribes recognized
and eligible for funding and services from the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Republican
Deficit Hypocrisy. The human capacity for self-delusion never ceases to amaze me, so it shouldn't surprise me
that so many Republicans seem to genuinely believe that they are the party of fiscal responsibility. Perhaps at one
time they were, but those days are long gone. This fact became blindingly obvious to me six years ago this month when
a Republican president and a Republican Congress enacted the Medicare drug benefit, which former U.S. Comptroller General
David Walker has called "the most fiscally irresponsible piece of legislation since the 1960s."
Energy-savings
project leaves Army in the cold. Under a federal program to transform government facilities into models
of energy efficiency, Honeywell International Inc. came calling on Army commanders here [at Ft. Richardson] with
a deal to replace the base's decades-old steam power plant. ... Army officials say they are stuck with a system
that consumes more energy than before. Over the 25-year life of the project, the Army could lose more
than $100 million, according to internal Army documents. "There were no savings at all," said
Army auditor Nayer Mahmoud, former chief of internal review at Ft. Richardson.
Annual Medicare Fraud:
$60 Billion; Annual Profits of Top Ten Insurance Companies: $8 billion. As
60 Minutes reported last week, Medicare fraud is rampant and has now replaced the cocaine (ahem) business
as the major criminal activity in South Florida. Both 60 Minutes and the Washington Post report
that Medicare fraud now costs American taxpayers roughly $60 billion a year.
Michelle:
$373 million in stimulus money for better vending machine food. First Lady Michelle Obama visited the
headquarters of the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington Tuesday [10/13/2009]. She devoted much of
her talk to "the growing threat of obesity, particularly childhood obesity" in the United States, and she touted HHS's
recently-announced plan to spend $373 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on plans to, among
other things, improve the healthfulness of foods in vending machines.
Exclusive
Book Excerpt: "Speech-Less: Tales of a White House Survivor". [Scroll down] I don't think
the press room folks wanted to undermine us. They were just unmotivated and had grown comfortable with doing
nothing. A larger than expected number of them had advanced to a civil service level that allowed them to earn more
than $100,000 a year for work that in most offices would be done by interns. They would outlast the Bush
Administration. They couldn't be fired.
Four-year-olds got homeowner tax credit, U.S. says.
Children as young as 4 years old received first-time homebuyer tax credits as the U.S. failed to
adequately screen filings, a Treasury inspector general told lawmakers today [10/22/2009]. "Some
key controls were missing to prevent an individual from erroneously or fraudulently claiming the credit
and receiving an erroneous refund of up to $8,000," Treasury's J. Russell George told the House
Ways and Means Committee's oversight panel.
FEMA
says it can't show return on $29 billion in spending. Federal Emergency Management Agency
deputy administrator Timothy Manning told a congressional panel today [10/27/2009] that his organization
had spent $5 million during the last 18 months reviewing how it spent $29 billion since
2002, but still doesn't know what it got for the money.
Piracy on Treasure Island.
Politicians with ties to land developers are trying to force the Navy to hand over one of the most valuable pieces of
property in the country for free. The House version of the 2010 Defense authorization bill scheduled for conference
today contains language that would speed the transfer of Naval Station Treasure Island to the city of San Francisco at no
cost. ... A Pelosi spokesman stressed that she did not author the provision, but her involvement is unmistakable.
Gore-Backed Car Firm Gets
Large U.S. Loan. A tiny car company backed by former Vice President Al Gore has just gotten a
$529 million U.S. government loan to help build a hybrid sports car in Finland that will sell for about $89,000.
The Editor asks...
Why loan the taxpayers' money to a company that will build cars (or anything else) in Finland?
Update:
Spreading
the Taxpayers' Green. The Wall Street Journal's subsequent story adds some notable detail — in
particular, this justification from Fisker as to why taxpayers should be subsidizing $88,000 battery-powered
sports sedans: "Mr. Fisker says all new technology starts out being expensive. He pointed to
flat-screen televisions that once started at $25,000 but are now affordable to the mass market." Yes,
but flat-screen makers didn't get federal loans from a $25 billion taxpayer slush fund. They
actually had to prove their products had a consumer market.
Crooked cop still gets his
pension — from prison. He's one of the most crooked cops in Chicago history. William
Hanhardt helped run a ring of mobbed-up jewel thieves — while he was chief of detectives of the Chicago
Police Department. ... Chicago taxpayers are still on the hook for his now-$68,088 annual pension.
Tax Dollars Being Washed Out to Sea.
Since 1997 Congress has averaged around $100 million a year on beach replenishment projects, but the tons of sand that
are dumped in front of luxury hotels and multi-million dollar real estate literally get washed away. ... From New England to
Florida, North Carolina to California, coastal communities lobby Congress for money to buff up their beaches, even though
many of these coastal states have set aside state funds for these projects.
Getting
away with murder is the norm in Detroit. [Detroit Police Chief Warren] Evans said that during
his brief tenure as police chief, he has discovered:
• An evidence property room in chaos.
• A crime lab shut down due to incompetence.
• Computers in squad cars that don't work.
• A new $2.5 million camera system in patrol cars that does not function.
The department cannot recoup the loss on the cameras because it never purchased a warranty,
police have said. The system known as Compstat, a crime data and computer mapping system
used by most major cities to identify crime hot spots, was discarded.
Inmates
collected nearly $30,000 in unemployment checks while in the slammer. A new state audit found
nearly a dozen prisoners got more than just three hots and a cot — they also got state unemployment
checks. The 11 prisoners amazingly collected $29,399 in unemployment insurance benefits, state
Controller Thomas DiNapoli said in an audit released Tuesday [8/11/2009].
House provides $200 million
for gov't VIP jets. The House is ordering up three Gulfstream jets to fly Pentagon and other top
government officials — including members of Congress — around the globe in conditions far
cushier than coach class.
House Orders Up Three Elite Jets. Last
year, lawmakers excoriated the CEOs of the Big Three automakers for traveling to Washington, D.C., by private
jet to attend a hearing about a possible bailout of their companies. But apparently Congress is not
philosophically averse to private air travel: At the end of July, the House approved nearly $200 million
for the Air Force to buy three elite Gulfstream jets for ferrying top government officials and Members of Congress.
Opposition Emerges to House's Jet Spree.
Bipartisan opposition is emerging in the Senate to a plan by House lawmakers to spend $550 million for additional
passenger jets for senior government officials. The resistance to buying eight Gulfstream and Boeing planes comes as
members of both chambers of Congress embark on the busiest month of the year for official overseas travel.
The Next Fannie
Mae: Much to their dismay, Americans learned last year that they "owned" Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Well, meet their cousin, Ginnie Mae or the Government National Mortgage Association, which will soon join them as a
trillion-dollar packager of subprime mortgages. Taxpayers own Ginnie too.
Abolish
the DHS. Many of the contracts that DHS considers a success have funded a growing federal
assault on privacy. The fishing village of Dillingham, AK (pop. 2,400), is too small for a streetlight,
but thanks to a homeland security grant, it now has 80 surveillance cameras. The town of Ridgely, MD
(pop. 1,400), got a grant for cameras as well. "It was difficult to be able to find something to use the
money for," said Ridgely's police chief, but "if you don't ask, you aren't going to get a thing."
Charity and the
good ol' Constitution. "Where do you find in the Constitution any authority to give away the public
money in charity?" It might be a question out of today's headlines, but it isn't. ... That question was
asked not of President Obama nor of Sen. Max Baucus or Rep. Nancy Pelosi, but of the less well-known Tennessee
congressman, David Crockett.
Dozens arrested in Medicare fraud busts
across US. Federal authorities arrested 32 people, including doctors, in a major Medicare fraud bust
Wednesday [7/29/2009] in New York, Louisiana, Boston and Houston, targeting scams such as "arthritis kits" —
expensive braces that many patients never used.
Pinching Pennies in a Spending Spree.
Bureaucrats have no incentive to save money. Indeed, since bureaucratic prestige is measured in the size of one's
budget, they have every incentive not to save money. That probably accounts for why the Forest Service was buying
white vehicles and painting them green, instead of ... buying green vehicles to start with.
2.8 Million
porkulus dollars down the toilet. At least 2.8 million dollars of porkulus money will be
flushed down the drain — literally. In remote areas of one of the nation's least populous
states, New Mexico, the Obama administration has decided to spend almost three million of your tax dollars
"repairing and replacing aging toilets in three of the state's national forests," some toilets "as old as
20 years." ... Doing the math, that would equate to something like $125,000-$150,000 per restroom.
The
$750,000 Government-Employee Pampering Scandal. How quickly can 700 government employees spend
three-quarters of a million taxpayer dollars at a resort hotel? Last week the Social Security
Administration flew approximately 700 of its managers from across the U.S. and Guam to Phoenix, Arizona's
posh Arizona Biltmore Hotel and Resort, for "organizational training." The event, which included musical
entertainment and dancing, skits, catered food, cocktails, and a "casino night" featuring "door prizes," cost
us lowly taxpayers approximately $750,000.
Social
Security spends $700,000 on Phoenix conference. A Social Security Administration motivational
management conference held at a high-end Valley resort last week cost $700,000, the SSA told the ABC15
Investigators. Costs for the conference at the Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa included airfare,
hotel entertainment, dancers, motivational speakers, and food, an administration official said. A
spokesperson outside the SSA's Phoenix office declined to comment.
Gov junketeers
keep luxury hotel busy. It may be hard times for the private sector, and President Obama may
have told businesses to cut back on those trips to Vegas, but for federal bureaucrats, let the good times
roll, baby! ... Maybe some day the American public will realize that they have been had, and a new ruling
oligarchy has seized power and is feathering its nest.
Nigerian indicted in $42 million health
care fraud. A Nigeria native who lives in Houston was indicted Friday [7/24/2009] on charges he
sought $42 million in false Medicare and Medicaid claims by paying folks $100 each to sign blank health
care forms he would later submit for reimbursement. Umawa Oke Imo, 54, a permanent resident alien in the
United States and native of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, was indicted this week but first charged and detained
in June.
And Now For Something Completely Crazy.
The news is coming so thick and fast these days that it's hard to keep up. The Supreme Court, socialized medicine,
cap and trade, record deficits, foreign policy fecklessness — it's easy to lose track of smaller issues with
all that is going on. Still, H.R. 1018 shouldn't be allowed to pass unnoticed. H.R. 1018 is the
"Restore Our American Mustangs Act." It can fairly be described as a welfare program for horses.
Where Big Government
ROAMs. Like all acronymically cute legislation, its name bears little relation to what it
actually does: It's not about "restoring" mustangs. The federal Bureau of Land Management
aims for a manageable population of 27,000 wild mustangs. Currently, there are 36,000, and the
population doubles every four or five years. To prevent things from getting even more out of hand, the
BLM keeps another 30,000 mustangs in holding pens — or, if you prefer, managed care facilities.
That is to say, under federal management, one in two "wild" horses lives in government housing.
Stimu-loss for
words. The feds have spent millions in stimulus cash on "silly" projects, including left-leaning
puppet shows, a martini bar, and a study of Viking civic life, according to a devastating new report.
Obama Stimulus Spending Includes
Rental Cars, Outhouses, and 'Sediment Removal'. Among the many things that have been built with
stimulus money so far are:
- $971,711.42 to "replace pond liners" at the Garrison Dam National Fish Hatchery in Cole Harbor, N.D.
- $193,077 for a "double-vault toilet building" at the Hoyer Campground in Spokane, Wash.
- $487,944 for "toilet buildings and vaults" in the Pike and San Isabel National Forests
- $254,000 for "pre-fabricated restroom facilities" in Atlanta, Ga.
- $17,110 in hotel bills at a Marriott Hotel in Arlington, Va., for the Employment Standards
Administration's annual "Prevailing Wage Conference."
Typewrite or
Wrong. The city [of New York] is plunking down nearly $1 million on typewriters for its
keystroke cops. That's right — typewriters. Despite the adoption of high-tech equipment
that can read license plates from the air and detect radiological events before they happen, manual and
electric typewriters continue to be used throughout the NYPD — and they won't be phased out
anytime soon, officials told The [New York] Post.
First Lady Requires More Than Twenty Attendants.
No, Michele Obama does not get paid to serve as the First Lady and she doesn't perform any official duties. But this
hasn't deterred her from hiring an unprecedented number of staffers to cater to her every whim and to satisfy her every
request in the midst of the Great Recession.
What Michelle Obama's Staffers
Earn: Congress ordered the annual disclosure, and since 1995 the White House has been required to report to
Congress details of most of the West Wing payroll. The president makes $400,000, and there is a big gap between
that and the highest paid staffer — $172,200. The salaries for staffers in the Office of First Lady
are also on the newest list.
Your Tax Dollars at
Work: Supporting Michelle Obama in the Manner. The figures are in. As required by Congress since
1995, salaries paid to staffers employed in the West Wing of the White House must be publicly reported. Most
of you won't be pleased to learn that your tax dollars are paying $1,448,500 annually to provide the First Lady,
Michelle Obama, with the staff she feels she needs to execute her duties as FLOTUS.
The Editor states the obvious...
The First Lady doesn't have any official duties. She could sit around and do nothing for
four years if she were so inclined.
L.A. County rings
up $1.5 million for unused phones. Los Angeles County government has more than 8,000 phones that never ring.
The annual cost to taxpayers? At least $1.5 million and climbing. Officials worry that some lines may have
never served a county purpose. ... Auditors, who are only halfway through their search, say the number of abandoned phone
lines may top 16,000, totaling $3 million a year in phone bills.
Dr.
Coburn Releases Stimulus Oversight Report. Ten examples of wasteful stimulus projects in the report include:
[#7] $1.15 million for installation of a new guard rail for the non-existent Optima Lake in Oklahoma.
[#8] Nearly $10 million to renovate an abandoned train station that hasn't been used in 30 years.
[#9] 10,000 dead people get stimulus checks, but the Social Security Administration blames a tough deadline.
Selective Sacrifice. The average
salary of a federal worker in 2007 was $77,143. This was more than 60 percent higher than the average in the
private sector, which stood at $48,035. When the benefits are added, the total compensation of an average federal
worker comes to an eye-popping $116,450. This is more than twice the private sector average.
Tax dollars wasted
on construction of stimulus signs. Gov. Jennifer Granholm and her staff see little, if any, harm
in spending tax dollars to construct and display metal road signs informing motorists that federal stimulus
funds are being spent on road improvements throughout Michigan. Two Macomb County state House
representatives, however, are leading a Republican charge against the signs.
700 NYC teachers are paid to do
nothing. Hundreds of New York City public school teachers accused of offenses ranging from
insubordination to sexual misconduct are being paid their full salaries to sit around all day playing
Scrabble, surfing the Internet or just staring at the wall, if that's what they want to do. Because
their union contract makes it extremely difficult to fire them, the teachers have been banished by the
school system to its "rubber rooms" — off-campus office space where they wait months, even
years, for their disciplinary hearings.
76%
Say Government Likely To Waste Stimulus Money. Seventy-six percent (76%) of Americans say it is
at least somewhat likely that a large amount of money in the $787-billion economic stimulus plan will be
wasted due to inadequate government oversight. Nearly half (46%) say it is very likely, according to a
new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Only 18% say it is not likely that taxpayer money
will be wasted.
State Department Says China to
Get U.S. Aid under New Climate Deal. U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern said that
there was "no question" that China would receive both financial and technological assistance from the United
States as part of upcoming climate change talks to be conducted in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Stimulus
program fraught with waste, report says. A report due to be released today by a Republican
senator contends the Obama administration's stimulus program is fraught with waste and incompetence —
evidenced by a turtle crossing in northern Florida that will cost more than $3 million and a snafu in
which thousands of Social Security checks went out to people who had died.
Son of Stimulus.
A second stimulus? As risible as it sounds, Pres. Barack Obama entertains the idea. When asked at a
press conference Tuesday [6/23/2009] if another stimulus bill might be necessary, Obama replied, "Not yet." How
about not ever? People seem to forget that the $787 billion stimulus package enacted last February
was the second stimulus — the Bush administration enacted a $168 billion stimulus bill in
February of 2008. ... Above all, it is important to remember that Obama's stimulus was not designed to
maximize job creation. The administration's primary goal was to give frustrated Democrats an
all-purpose vehicle for pent-up spending desires that the Bush administration had repressed. Obama
removed the lid and out came $87 billion in additional funds for Medicaid, $15 billion for
Pell Grant scholarships, $3 billion for public-housing improvements, and $2 billion for
renewable-energy research.
Giving Failure a Pass.
The Los Angeles Unified School District, the largest in California, spends $10 million a year to "house,"
with full pay and benefits, about 160 teachers deemed unsuitable for the classroom, according to "Failure
Gets a Pass," a recent series in the Los Angeles Times. "If I had my way, I would fire [all of
them], and they would not get another d----- penny," LAUSD superintendent Ramon C. Cortines told the
Times. "They're milking the system."
Taxpayer
Cash for Environmental Clunkers. The "clunkers" program would direct dealers to scrap or shred
traded-in vehicles with fuel economy of 18 miles per gallon or less. The buyer, in turn, would get
an incentive towards the price of a new vehicle with fuel economy of 22 miles per gallon or better.
Environmental groups, the auto industry and unions support the plan, which also has its critics. "Taxpayers
should not see their hard-earned money used to buy their neighbor a new car," explained Representative Tom
Price, a Georgia Republican. Yet, the clunker concept is just one of many programs for which taxpayers
will foot the bill.
Critics say
'cash for clunkers' bill is a lemon. Congress is about to approve a new federal program to pay car
owners up to $4,500 for trading in gas-guzzling automobiles for more fuel-efficient cars, to the applause of the
struggling auto industry. ... Critics contend that the "cash for clunkers" bill, which has auto industry backing,
was designed more to boost auto sales than to reduce global warming.
Congress
OKs 'cash for clunkers'. Last-minute intervention from the White House on Thursday [6/18/2009]
swayed a crucial Democratic senator to rescue a $1 billion "cash for clunkers" plan to boost battered
auto sales. Sixty senators — the bare minimum needed — voted to reject an attempt
to strip the program from a wartime spending bill.
E-Verify works, so, of
course, let's not use it. With billions of your federal tax dollars gushing forth from Washington —
as part of President Barack Obama's stimulus bill to put Americans back to work — wouldn't it be nice if someone
invented a special magic faucet? A magic faucet to compel those federal contractors doing all the hiring with all that
federal money to make certain the jobs go to people who are legally entitled to work in the United States. Is that
kind of magic too much for a beleaguered taxpayer to expect? Actually, the faucet has already been invented.
It's called E-Verify. And it works.
Who Pays For Your Vacation?
We've written several times about Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison's hajj to Mecca... A spokesman for
Ellison, the first Muslim Congressman, first claimed that he paid for the pilgrimage himself. Later it was
reported that the Muslim American Society paid for the trip, which MAS spokesman Mahdi Bray heatedly denied,
describing the report as a "myth" and "urban legend" that couldn't possibly be true because "that would be a
breach of congressional ethics." Bray's denial, however, quietly became inoperative.
US govt hydrogen highway
runs out of road. The original hydrogen plan was announced by then President Bush in 2003 and,
to date, the US government has spent around $500m (£328m/€367m) on the project. There's not
much to show for it other than some Honda FCX Claritys and Chevrolet Equinoxes running around California, and
70-odd hydrogen filling stations nationwide. Not so much a case of hydrogen tech being put on the back
burner but rather being wrapped in cling film and shoved to the rear of the freezer.
DOE to slash fuel cell vehicle research.
The Department of Energy's proposed budget boosts research on energy efficiency and renewable energy sources
but makes cuts in hydrogen fuel cell vehicles because the technology is many years from being practical.
The DOE published details of its $26.4 billion fiscal 2010 budget request on Thursday [5/7/2009], and Energy
Secretary Steven Chu held a news briefing to cover the highlights.
The Editor says...
The Department of Energy is a complete waste of money. The most obviously practical and affordable
sources of energy for U.S. consumers are petroleum, natural gas, coal, and nuclear energy.
The Obama administration is opposed to all of them. Therefore the only apparent purpose of
the Department of Energy is to come up with expensive, unreliable alternatives.
NYC Turns Luxury Units Into Shelters For
Homeless. There's controversy swirling around how much New York City is paying to rent luxury
condos for homeless families. ... By all accounts it's the nicest homeless shelter in the city and some
non-homeless neighbors are feeling pretty inhospitable. "The apartments are beautiful. They're
living better than a lot of people around here and they don't have to pay for it," neighbor Maria Brown
said. When the building went up the idea was to sell the units, some of them for more than $300,000.
But now, even though apartments sit empty, you can't even rent them.
Con games and stimulus cash. Remember
how all those billions in "stimulus" money allocated in Washington last year were reserved for "shovel-ready"
projects, creating new construction jobs and additionally re-building our infrastructure — roads,
piers, bridges, stuff like that? ... As it turns out, most of that money is going where government always puts
most of its money — into fat paychecks for social service bureaucrats. ... Two-thirds of recovery
money that flows directly to states will go toward health care. Not hiring new doctors or nurses, mind
you. Just paying medical bills for poor people — and the salaries of those who handle this
redistribution of your hard-earned cash.
Renovating Parking
Garages Will Cost Taxpayers $156,322 Per Congressman. As it is considering
legislation that would cap carbon emissions and significanyly increase energy prices of U.S. consumers in the
name of controlling global warming, the U.S. House of Representatives is also considering spending
$68 million to renovate two parking garages that are used exclusively by members of Congress and their
staff. Given that there are only 435 members of the House, the renovation of these exclusive
garages would cost $156,322 per congressman.
Presidential
Fundraising Trips Leave Taxpayers With Hefty Tab. President Obama has the star power to raise millions of
dollars for the candidates and organizations he graces with his stump speech. But when the president hit the road
Tuesday for a two-day fundraising tour to pack the party coffers, he also was racking up a $265,000 partisan bill for
just one leg of the trip, according to a watchdog group — part of which taxpayers, regardless of party
affiliation, will have to pay.
Lawmakers Bill Taxpayers
For TVs, Cameras, Lexus. Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings spent $24,730 in taxpayer money last year to lease a
2008 luxury Lexus hybrid sedan. Ohio Rep. Michael Turner expensed a $1,435 digital camera. Eni Faleomavaega, the
House delegate from American Samoa, bought two 46-inch Sony TVs. The expenditures were legal, properly accounted for
and drawn from allowances the U.S. government grants to lawmakers.
Tunnel's cost may fool us
all. [Scroll down] A professor at Oxford University in England has done a compelling series of studies
trying to get at why big public-works projects such as bridges, tunnels and light-rail systems almost always turn out to
be far more costly than estimated. "It cannot be explained by error," sums up one of his papers, matter-of-factly.
"It is best explained by strategic misrepresentation — that is, lying."
Surprise! Some
TARP recipients are cooking the books. First, isn't it an odd attitude for a an overseer to "hope"
that he doesn't find a single bank who's been cheating? One would hope that someone in charge of looking
over the shoulder of the banks would pray for the opportunity to catch one of them trying to steal tax payer
monies. Beyond that, isn't it swell that our tax dollars may be used by banks to back fraudulent mortgages?
I'd Like My Money
Back. Please refund the taxes collected fraudulently for services never provided.
Taxpayers are tired of
fraud. Thousands of people gathered in cities and towns across the nation this past week to hold "tea parties"
and protest high taxes. But millions more Americas are not as upset about the amount of taxes they pay as the way
their money is spent. Another prime example came recently with a report from the Government Accountability Office
showing that millions of public dollars are going to fraudulent companies under the guise of helping "small businesses" to
serve "needy communities."
Dead Woman Gets Federal Stimulus Check.
Millions of Americans on Social Security are receiving $250 checks as part of the president's stimulus
plan — including an Anne Arundel woman who died more than 40 years ago. The woman's son,
83-year-old James Hagner, said he got the surprise when he checked his mailbox late last week.
Dead People
Get Stimulus Checks. This week, thousands of people are getting stimulus checks in the mail.
The problem is that a lot of them are dead. A Long Island woman was shocked when she checked the mail and
received a letter from the U.S. Treasury — but it wasn't for her. Antoniette Santopadre of
Valley Stream was expecting a $250 stimulus check. But when her son finally opened it, they saw that
the check was made out to her father, Romolo Romonini, who died in Italy 34 years ago.
Stimulus
Checks On Their Way — to Dead People. Millions of people are getting a Social
Security check in the mail this week. But there's a slight problem: Thousands of them are dead.
Part of the $787 billion stimulus package Congress passed included a $250 payment to Social Security
recipients who aren't working.
Miami-Dade doctor pleads
guilty — again — to Medicare fraud. A Miami-Dade physician pleaded
guilty Thursday to participating in a Medicare racket with four other doctors accused of prescribing
$19.5 million in obsolete infusion drugs for HIV patients who generally didn't need or receive the
therapy.
Murtha's Earmarks
Keep Airport Aloft. The John Murtha airport sits on a windy mountain two hours east of Pittsburgh,
a 650-acre expanse of smooth tarmac, spacious buildings, a helicopter hangar and a National Guard training center.
Inside the terminal on a recent weekday, four passengers lined up to board a flight, outnumbered by seven security
staff members and supervisors, all suited up in gloves and uniforms to screen six pieces of luggage.
Murtha
Airport Got Military Upgrades. At the behest of Rep. John P. Murtha (D), chairman of the
House defense appropriations subcommittee, the Pentagon has spent about $30 million equipping the
little-used airport named for him so it can handle behemoth military aircraft and store combat equipment
for rapid deployment to foreign battlefields. Most of the improvements, funded through appropriations
approved by Murtha's panel, have not been used for their intended purpose. The projects delighted
National Guard and reserve units based in Murtha's Pennsylvania district that have seen budget cuts, but
critics charge that the expenditures have been a waste of taxpayer dollars.
John Murtha's
Airport for No One. You might wonder how the region ever had the air traffic demand to justify
such a facility. It didn't. But it is located in the district of one of Congress's most
unapologetic earmarkers: Democrat John Murtha. In 20 years, Mr. Murtha has successfully
doled out more than $150 million of federal payments to what is now being called the airport for
no one.
More
about Congressman Murtha.
State
Paid for Dental Cleanings for Toothless People. Auditors say the state Medicaid program may
have overpaid $2.9 million for services like teeth cleaning for toothless patients. Comptroller
Thomas DiNapoli says auditors found the state health department's Medicaid claims processing system lacks
necessary controls.
Why secretly funded DEA surveillance planes
aren't flying. The first sign of trouble with the Drug Enforcement Administration's new
surveillance planes surfaced almost immediately. On the way from the manufacturer to the agency's
aviation headquarters, one of them veered off a runway during a fuel stop. The malfunction last spring
was only the beginning. ... The story behind why the DEA sought out the three planes, only to become the
second federal agency to give them up, illustrates the pitfalls of "black," or classified, budgeting in which
Congress approves tens of billions of dollars for intelligence agencies outside the public's view.
Where Stimulus Is Not Necessary:
President Bill Clinton announced in 1996 that the era of Big Government was over. Yet 13 years later, more
Americans are at work in the public sector than in manufacturing and construction combined.
Obama offers
extra $1.4B for lunar missions. Efforts to return to the moon are supported by the Obama White House,
and NASA will receive $1.4 billion extra next fiscal year for a variety of lunar missions, a preview of the
new administration's first federal budget showed Thursday. The White House released a bare outline for the
$3.55 trillion federal spending plan that includes a recommendation of $18.7 billion for NASA.
Coburn Highlights Billions of Wasteful Spending. President
Obama campaigned on the fact that we ought to live within our means; that every program ought to be reviewed;
that those that are not effective, those that have waste, those that have high fraud rates, those that are low
priority ought to be eliminated. There is not one penny of effort placed in this bill that will get rid
of less important Federal programs today. We know there is at least $300 billion a year that is
inefficiently, erroneously, and fraudulently spent by the Federal Government. We ask our children and
our grandchildren to choke down $1.1 trillion more of debt when we have not done anything — not
one thing — to lessen the waste, fraud, and abuse, the inefficiency, and to make choices on what is
more important.
Las Vegas City Hall — A Terrible Waste
of Money. Oscar Goodman's Taj Mahal city hall proposal is idiotic. Our present city hall was
expanded less than ten years ago, and the LV Metro Police plan to vacate tens of thousands of square feet of space
in the existing building in the near future.
California School Spends $10G a Year to Teach
AP Spanish to Kids Who Speak Spanish. A middle school in Southern California is spending $10,000
a year to teach Advanced Placement Spanish to 35 of its 650 students — and all but one of them are
already fluent in Spanish. Thirty-four of the kids in the AP class are from Mexico or are the children
of Mexican immigrants. They all grew up speaking Spanish at home.
Unseen Enemy. Besides
sending more troops to Afghanistan, President Obama plans to send billions more in aid to Pakistan, despite
evidence that our money is used to kill troops in Afghanistan.
Handout sure to stimulate a lot of scams. This
so-called economic stimulus act is going to spur more crime than anything Congress has passed since
the Volstead Act. ... Take the weatherization plan. ... Low-income homeowners will soon be getting
grants of up to $5,000 to weatherize their homes and thus reduce our dependence on foreign oil, wink
wink, nudge, nudge. Soon "contractors" will be setting up shop in the inner cities, recruiting marks, doing the
paperwork that allows them to apply for a grant. The first $500 will go to the program supervisor, to get him to
sign off on a patently fraudulent project. Then the homeowner will get $1,000 cash, to keep his mouth shut when
nothing is actually done. And finally, another $500 cash will be duked to the inspector who signs off on the,
ahem, work. Profit per job: $3,000. You don't think this will happen? It already does —
every time there's a disaster.
State employee: I get $93,803 for
no work. As he tells it, Randall Hinton is paid $93,803 a year to do nothing. He spends
much of his workday at the State Insurance Fund donning headphones, listening to rock 'n' roll, blues or
classical tunes and his superiors are cool with that. His work agenda involves placing his feet up on
his desk, staring out his office window and counting cars on the New York State Thruway.
Oklahoma,
Utah lead in cell-only households. Step aside high-tech California and uber-hip New York. If
you're looking for the states that lead the nation in ditching landline telephones for wireless, you're looking
for Oklahoma and Utah. At least 26 percent of households are now cell-only in Oklahoma and Utah,
the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated in a report released Wednesday [3/11/2009].
The Editor says...
That's all very interesting, but what does that have to do with disease control and prevention?
Obama speaks the
truth. Our President has a habit of saying what he means when he doesn't mean to say what he
means. ... This week, while telling us about his plan to limit earmarks in Congressional bills, he once again
did it by telling us his true feeling about public-versus-private entities. ... Mr. Obama's Stimulus Bill hands
the Detroit school system $355 million with no strings attached even though recent audits have shown millions
of dollars missing. No, Mr. Obama was defining his basic philosophy from his inner core — business
is bad; government is good.
The cost of supporting a president: Taxpayers are
supporting our former presidents to the tune of more than $2.9 million. Their yearly salary pension is
$191,000. Aside from that, each gets a staff; that staff costs you, the taxpayer, $96,000 per president.
Among the amenities we pay for is rent for their office space — President Clinton's rent in Harlem is
$516,000 a year, while the first President Bush spends $69,000 a year on "equipment" and President Jimmy Carter
spends $83,000 a year on "other services". The spending doesn't stop there.
Dollars for Hate.
Dollar bills don't put out a fire, not even the $4.5 billion that nations pledged for the West Bank and
Gaza in 2009. If financial aid could cure what is ailing those two spots, the Palestinians would replace
the Norwegians in the Global Peace Index as the most peaceful people in the world. In fact, the
Palestinians are the top per-capita aid recipients in the history of the planet.
Is Bernard Madoff
Running the Federal Government? [Bernard] Madoff is only accused of a $50 billion heist.
That's peanuts compared to what the politicians have done to us. On Monday, December 15, in a story
that went unnoticed, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that the federal government has failed
another financial audit. It was the 12th year in a row that the federal government has been unable to
accurately report on its fiscal condition. Frankly, nobody knows precisely where the money is going.
America's dystopian future?
Federal spending (in inflation-adjusted 2007 dollars) has gone from $600 billion in 1965 to $3 trillion
today. The Heritage Foundation put it in a convenient graph: It's pretty much a straight line across four
decades, up, up, up. Doesn't make any difference who controls Congress, who's in the White House. The
government just grows and grows, remorselessly.
Obama-Pelosi Stimulus May
Fail to Reignite Economy. President-elect Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi may throw as much
as half a trillion dollars worth of stimulus at the economy — and have little or no growth to show for it. The
forces arrayed against recovery, including the credit contraction and cutbacks by consumers, are so powerful that they
may overwhelm the record sums of spending and tax cuts being discussed in Washington. The only consolation,
economists say, is that without the stimulus, things would be even worse.
How Your Government Wastes Your
Money: Investigators randomly sampled 300 Department of Agriculture (USDA) employee credit
cards. They found that, over six months, 15 percent of them charged a total $5.8 million in
personal expenses that included Ozzy Osbourne concert tickets, tattoos, lingerie, bartender school
tuition, car payments and cash advances.
TVA employees
charge $75M on expense cards. Televisions, X-Boxes, alcohol, Internet software and tuition.
Inspector General auditors say those are just some of the questionable purchases made by Tennessee Valley
Authority employees on their government charge cards.
Let's 'Restructure' Washington While
We're at It. [Scroll down] The federal government employs about 2.5 million
civilians (including the Post Office), about 10 times the number directly employed in the U.S.
by Detroit. The bloat is legendary. In his study on "thickening government," NYU Prof. Paul Light
found that some government agencies have 32 layers of management, compared to five layers in most
well-run companies. Civil-service rules make hiring an ordeal and firing practically impossible.
Parties of Corruption.
Which party is more corrupt? Maybe you've seen lists. The National Taxpayer's Union has a pretty good
list. The NTU's gripe, though, is not which party is more corrupt, but that Congressmen who are convicted
felons continue to collect their very generous congressional pensions.
Here is the NTU's report — somewhat lengthy but worth a scan, at least.
Congressional Perks: How the Trappings of
Office Trap Taxpayers. Since the founding of the Republic, Americans have had a healthy skepticism
of the concentration of power. The Framers of the Constitution established a system they hoped would prevent
not only the disproportionate accumulation of influence in one branch of government, but also the
disproportionate accumulation of privilege. Today, Members of the United States Congress enjoy
a vast web of perquisites that benefit them personally as well as professionally.
You might
ask, Which party has a "culture of corruption?"
7
hospitals in NY accused of $50M Medicaid fraud. Four hospitals in New York state paid kickbacks
to get more patients into their drug treatment programs, which billed Medicaid for services that weren't
standard or necessary and lacked state certification, lawsuits allege.
Sizing Up Civil
Service: Washington, D.C., is considered "recession proof" because so many civil servants
can't be fired except in extraordinary circumstances. But in the years ahead, our country is going
to face just such circumstances. The looming entitlement crisis will have to be paid for, as will
the hundreds of billions of dollars the government is currently borrowing to bail out everyone from investment
banks to automakers. These days other businesses are slashing jobs. Why shouldn't the government be
able to do so when it finds itself overstaffed and over budget?
Science Foundation's Funding Eyed Amid Porn
Claims. The ranking GOP member of the Senate Finance Committee wants Congress to reconsider new funding to
the National Science Foundation amid allegations that top staffers spent long stretches of their day surfing the Internet
for pornography.
Terrorists' Restless Leg Syndrome. After
being captured fighting with Taliban forces against Americans in 2001, Abdullah Massoud was sent to Guantanamo,
where the one-legged terrorist was fitted with a special prosthetic leg, at a cost of $50,000-$75,000 to the U.S.
taxpayer. Under the Americans With Disabilities Act, Massoud would now be able to park his car bomb in a
handicapped parking space! ... Upon his release in March 2004, Massoud hippity-hopped back to Afghanistan
and quickly resumed his war against the U.S.
The
Loophole Factory: [Scroll down] Oh, and while they were at it, the Senators voted 88-8 to add
$6 billion in tax deductions for renewable energy producers. (If you wonder what this has to do
with the mortgage "crisis," you just arrived off the turnip truck.) This industry is already teed up to
get nearly $10 billion in tax breaks in the energy bill, including subsidies for wind and solar power
producers, hybrid vehicles and biodiesel. Much of this social engineering comes from the same people
on Capitol Hill who insist that taxes don't change industry or personal behavior.
New Jersey, Oregon Residents Pay
Dearly for Solar Street Signs and Lights. Citizens in New Jersey and Oregon are paying a steep
price for solar-powered street signs and street lights as city and state officials divert scarce taxpayer
dollars to the expensive "green" luxuries. Paterson, New Jersey has announced plans to install
solar-powered street signs at 25 intersections. The signs will cost as much as $30,000 per intersection.
We have enough federal programs.
[Scroll down] Another example is the U.S. Department of Energy. It was created in the Carter
administration to make the nation less dependent on foreign oil. We have doubled our dependence since
that time, and the nation actually produces less oil than it did 30 years ago. This is called
failure. It now costs taxpayers $30 billion a year to keep this failure going. Let's get
rid of it.
Head Start costs $7.1 billion per year.
Government
Says Head Start Made Millions in Improper Payments. A House Appropriations subcommittee has
proposed $7.1 billion in funding for the Head Start program for Fiscal Year 2009, even though the program
has made over $400 million in improper payments since 2005, according to government audits. ... Head
Start's improper payments seem minor compared to the Medicaid program, which made improper payments of
$12.9 billion in FY 2007, the GAO said.
Time to face failure
of Head Start. Washington has spent hundreds of billions on Head Start as a Great Society program designed to
ensure that at-risk kids from poor and minority communities start school on an equal footing with those from other
neighborhoods. For years, nobody questioned Head Start's efficacy, but in 1997 a Clinton administration advisory
panel recommended that funding be approved for the Head Start Impact Study. ... The study found that Head Start "has no
demonstrable impact on [students'] academic, socio-emotional, or health status at the end of first grade."
'Center-right' America
lurches further left. [Scroll down] Even in America, federal spending (in
inflation-adjusted 2007 dollars) has gone from $600 billion in 1965 to $3 trillion today. The
Heritage Foundation put it in a convenient graph: It's pretty much a straight line across four decades,
up, up, up. Doesn't make any difference who controls Congress, who's in the White House. The
government just grows and grows, remorselessly.
Report: IRS Issued $1B in Fraudulent Refunds
in 2007. The government sent out more than $1 billion in fraudulent refunds last year and
offered this explanation Thursday [10/30/2008] for the bad checks in the mail: The Internal Revenue
Service has too few resources to pursue every tax fraud case.
D.C. Housing Authority Paid More
Than $300K for Vacant Units. The District of Columbia Housing Authority (DCHA) paid $322,389 in
housing assistance payments for units where no one was living, according to a July 30, 2008 audit by the
Philadelphia Regional Office of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). According to
the audit, the DCHA did not "adequately implement controls" to prevent its Moving to Work (MTW) program "from
making assistance payments on vacant units."
Treasury Office
Faults IRS Computer Security. Two new IRS computer systems that will eventually cost taxpayers
almost $2 billion are being put into service despite known security and privacy vulnerabilities, a
Treasury watchdog said in a report coming out Thursday [10/16/2008]. The office of the Treasury Inspector General
for Tax Administration said Internal Revenue Service officials failed to ensure that identified weaknesses
had been addressed before putting the new systems into use.
Federal Transit Benefits Program. After
investigating just 3 days of sales, GAO confirmed that at least 20 federal employees were fraudulently
selling their Metrocheks on eBay. Most of the employees GAO interviewed admitted to falsifying their
transit benefit applications and fraudulently selling their benefits. One GS-14 Department of the
Treasury employee drove to work, parked for free in agency-provided parking, and was still able to collect
$105 per month in Metrocheks — most of which he sold on eBay.
An Obamanomics Preview. If
we may borrow a phrase, this is the triumph of hope over experience. The one thing Washington hasn't
failed to do in recent years is spend, yet the economy doesn't seem to have improved on the event. Brian
Riedl, a budget expert at the Heritage Foundation, has calculated that in 2008 Congress enacted $332 billion
of "emergency" supplemental spending bills, only half of which was for the Iraq war. Do you feel stimulated?
States throw out
costly electronic voting machines. The demise of touch-screen voting has produced a graveyard
of expensive corpses: Warehouses stacked with thousands of carefully wrapped voting machines that have
been shelved because of doubts about vanishing votes and vulnerability to hackers. What to do with this
high-tech junkyard is a multimillion-dollar question. One manufacturer offered $1 apiece to take back
its ATM-like machines.
More information about touch-screen
voting can be found on
this page.
FBI Says the
Military Had Bogus Computer Gear. Over the two-year operation, 36 search warrants have been executed,
resulting in the discovery of 3,500 counterfeit Cisco network components with an estimated retail value of more than
$3.5 million, the F.B.I. said in a statement. The F.B.I. is still not certain whether the ring's actions
were for profit or part of a state-sponsored intelligence effort.
FBI, ATF
Battle for Control Of Cases. In the five years since the FBI and ATF were merged under the Justice Department
to coordinate the fight against terrorism, the rival law enforcement agencies have fought each other for control, wasting
time and money and causing duplication of effort, according to law enforcement sources and internal documents. Their
new boss, the attorney general, ordered them to merge their national bomb databases, but the FBI has refused. The
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has long trained bomb-sniffing dogs; the FBI started a competing
program.
Stealth Destroyer Largely Defenseless,
Admiral Says. Two weeks ago, the Navy canceled plans to build the rest of its hulking stealth
destroyers. At first, it looked like the DDG-1000s' $5-billion-a-copy price tag was to blame. Now,
it appears the real reason has slipped out: The Navy's most advanced warship is all but defenseless
against one of its best-known threats.
Taxpayers Oppose the "Billion-Dollar Fish Fry" Project.
Special interests are pushing S. 27 as a way to "settle" their two-decade-old lawsuit against the federal government (specifically,
the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation) to restore the salmon population to the historical outlines of San Joaquin River. Even
though the targeted segment of riverbed has been dry for 75 years (thanks in part to a dam California voters approved in
1933), these same activists are prepared to spend considerable taxpayer resources in an attempt to bring back a minimum of
500 salmon to the area.
Alabama County Is On
the Brink of Bankruptcy. Alabama's largest county appears headed for the biggest municipal bankruptcy
in U.S. history, a $3.2 billion mess created by the nation's credit crunch and a colossal, corruption-riddled
sewer project.
The
$4 Billion Senator. The federal takeover of IndyMac Bank over the weekend could cost the Federal
Deposit Insurance Corp. between $4 billion and $8 billion. But Senator Chuck Schumer, who
helped to precipitate the collapse by publicizing a letter to the bank's regulator last month, has no
remorse. He was, he says, just doing his job in telling regulators that the bank "could face a
collapse," a prophecy that quickly proved to be self-fulfilling.
VA employees rack up $2.6 billion in credit card
charges. Veterans Affairs employees last year racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in government
credit-card bills at casino and luxury hotels, movie theaters and high-end retailers such as Sharper Image and Franklin
Covey — and government auditors are investigating, citing past spending abuses. … On at least six occasions,
employees based at VA headquarters made credit card charges at Las Vegas casino hotels totaling $26,198.
Yet
Another Federal Project Out of Fiscal Control. The total cost for [The Capitol Visitors Center] originally
was to be about $265 million. It already is up to $554 million and counting. The new grand opening
was supposed to be September 2008 but now the Government Accountability Office is reporting it may be done in November
with a final cost of $621 million. … There also is the largely overlooked question of whether the CVC should
have been built in the first place.
Congress
Unveils Stunning New Capitol Visitor Center -- Late and Over Budget. Congress now has a
$621 million welcome mat in the form of a new, grand visitor center that makes its public debut
December 2. The visitor center, the largest addition ever to the 215-year-old U.S. Capitol, is
meant to inform, involve, and inspire, officials said Monday at a media preview. It didn't take long
for a reporter to fire back: "How inspired will taxpayers be when you inform them of the cost?"
GPO profits
go to bonuses and trips. When the government's main printing agency booked $100 million in
unexpected profit it went on a spending spree: large bonuses to top managers, trips to Paris and
Las Vegas, and an official photo of the boss that cost $10,000. The bonuses, some nearly as high as
$13,000, and travel are raising questions among congressional investigators and Government Printing Office
officials about whether the agency is misusing its newfound wealth and whether it received the proper
authority for some of the larger compensation payments from the Office of Budget and Management.
Census to scrap handheld computers for
2010 count. The Census Bureau will tell a House panel today that it will drop plans to use
handheld computers to help count Americans for the 2010 census, contributing to the increase in cost for
the decennial census by as much as $3 billion, according to testimony the Commerce Department secretary
plans to give this afternoon [4/3/2008].
Billion-dollar IT failure at Census Bureau:
The US Census Bureau faces cost overruns up to $2 billion on an IT initiative replacing paper-based data collection
methods with specialized handheld devices for the upcoming 2010 census. The Bureau has not implemented longstanding
Government Accountability Office (GAO) recommendations and may therefore be forced to scrap the program.
Census Returns to Paper
Count. Technology problems will force the government to count all of the nation's 300 million
residents the old-fashioned way in the 2010 census — with paper and pencil. … Commerce
Secretary Carlos Gutierrez told a House subcommittee Thursday [4/3/2008] that the government will scrap plans
to use handheld computers to collect information from the millions of Americans who don't return census forms
mailed out by the government. The decision is part of a package of changes that will add as much as
$3 billion to the cost of the constitutionally mandated count, pushing the overall cost to more than
$14 billion. [That's $46.67 per capita.]
Remarks about the Census scrapping handheld
computers for 2010 count: What would be the likelihood that the handheld computers could be
re-used for the 2020 Census? Would the vendor still support the more than 10-year-old hardware at that
time? How many [of us] are still using 10+ year old computers? [The Census is] spending
gigantic wads of money on something that will be obsolete before it can be used even a second time.
The Editor says...
Excuse me for pointing out the obvious, but shouldn't a whole bunch of people lose their pencil-pushing
government jobs over this fiasco?
1.5 billion dollars down the drain.
The
Device NASA Is Leaving Behind: The instrument, which would detect and measure
cosmic rays in a new way, took 500 physicists from around the world 12 years to
build. But with room on the 10 remaining shuttle missions to the space station in
short supply, many fear that it will remain forever warehoused on Earth, becoming the most
sophisticated and costly white elephant of the space era.
Cities pay huge salaries despite
fiscal crises. A city nurse earned $350,000. A fire department battalion chief pulled in more than
twice as much as the mayor. And a municipal park ranger took home $188,000 in overtime on top of his $71,000 salary.
Such generous payouts were criticized for hastening the fiscal downfall of the city of Vallejo, which narrowly averted bankruptcy
this month.
Seattle to Remove Automated
Toilets. After spending $5 million on its five automated public toilets, Seattle is calling it
quits. In the end, the restrooms, installed in early 2004, had become so filthy, so overrun with drug abusers
and prostitutes, that although use was free of charge, even some of the city's most destitute people refused to
step inside them.
Seattle ditches
hi-tech toilets. City officials have finally gotten rid of five hi-tech, self-cleaning
toilets that cost Seattle $5 m[illion] — but sold online for just $12,549. The city
installed the modernistic stand-alone toilets four years ago, hoping they would provide tourists
and the homeless a place to do their business while downtown. But they became better known
for drug use and prostitution than for relief.
Taxpayers fund Bill Clinton spending.
The Clintons have made a $100-million fortune since leaving the White House, but a Politico analysis found that
hasn't kept Bill Clinton from taking full advantage of the publicly funded perks offered to ex-presidents.
In fact, his presidential retirement benefits cost taxpayers almost as much as those of the other two living
ex-presidents combined.
Homeland Security Scrapping, Replacing Sub-Par
Virtual Fence Along Arizona-Mexico Border. The government will replace its highly touted "virtual
fence" on the Arizona-Mexico border with new towers, radars, cameras and computer software, scrapping the
brand-new $20 million system because it doesn't work sufficiently, officials said.
Bailout
Bullies: Entitlement Culture Gone Mad. Last week, a mob of screeching protesters invaded
the Bear Stearns headquarters in Manhattan demanding more aid for homeowners. As you know, I oppose
federal bailouts of every make and model — and that includes both the Bear Stearns deal and the
bipartisan stimulus-palooza in Washington.
Bear with
Me: The mother of all government bailouts. In order to avert or postpone the possible
economic consequences of Bear's demise, the Federal Reserve Bank is conducting an unusual bailout -- so
unusual that a new Congressional report, quietly released last Thursday, says it is unlike anything the
government has done in the last 70 years. Yet few members of Congress have even questioned the
decision since the Fed's opaque processes produced it last month.
Bacon
Saving: The Government Shouldn't Be In The Bailout Business. The government shouldn't have
save the airlines after 9/11. The government shouldn't save the S-n-L's back in the day. The
government shouldn't save the banks and greedy homeowners now. The government shouldn't bail out
Detroit and the car companies, either.
Congress
Brushes Off $20 Billion as 'Table Scraps'. Before leaving town for Christmas
[2007], Congress went on another budget-busting spending spree and charged all the goodies to
the taxpayers. And the bill actually is a lot higher — $20 billion
more — than lawmakers would have you believe.
$19 Billion in Gimmicks.
Much has been made of the omnibus bill fitting within the President's $933 billion discretionary spending
cap. However, the bill contains at least $13.2 billion in additional gimmicks. Adding to the
$6.4 billion in "emergency" spending added to the Defense appropriations bill signed a month ago, the
total overage comes to $19.6 billion. The new $13.2 billion breaks down as follows:
• $2.0 billion in advanced appropriations in the Labor-HHS-Education bill;
• $3.7 billion in "emergency" veterans health funding in the Milcon/VA bill;
• $2.9 billion for "emergency" border security in the Homeland Security bill;
• $2.4 billion for various "emergency" provisions in the State/Foreign Ops bill;
• $1.0 billion for "emergency" drought relief (despite record farm incomes), wildfires, and others in the agriculture bill;
• $100 million in unprecedented "emergency" security spending for the GOP and Democratic national conventions, in the Commerce-Justice-Science bill; and
• $1.1 billion in other "emergencies"
The Editor says...
Please note: The word emergency is not in the Constitution. It carries no weight
as a justification for this (or any other) kind of spending.
The
Public Trough Is Bigger Than Ever. Government is so big today that more than half the population
gets a major part of its income from the state. One out of five Americans works for some level of
government or for a firm that depends on taxpayer financing. One in five also draws Social Security or a
federal pension. … Nine million are on food stamps, 2 million received housing subsidies, and
5 million go to school on the federal taxpayer.
Audit
says Dallas Housing Authority subsidized deceased clients. The Dallas Housing Authority has
spent nearly $20 million on questionable rental assistance payments, including money for 45 people
who had died, according to a new federal audit of the agency. Most of the questionable spending involved
ineligible clients, clients not reported to the federal government, and duplicate payments to landlords, according
to a draft report on an audit by the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Office of Inspector General.
U.S. pledges extra $320 million for
bird flu fight. The United States pledged an additional $320 million to the global fight
against bird flu and warned on Saturday [10/25/2008] against complacency in combating the virus, which could
mutate and cause a deadly pandemic.
The Editor says...
We're spending $320 million to solve a problem in some other country — which is bad
enough — but it isn't even a real problem. The "bird flu" is just one of
many environmental false alarms.
Army Spends Billions on Helicopters With Crucial
Flaw: They Overheat. The Army is spending $2.6 billion on hundreds of
European-designed helicopters for homeland security and disaster relief that turn out to have a
crucial flaw: They aren't safe to fly on hot days, according to an internal report obtained by The
Associated Press. While the Army scrambles to fix the problem — adding millions to the taxpayer
cost — at least one high-ranking lawmaker is calling for the whole deal to be scrapped.
Pentagon Paid
$998,798 to Ship Two 19-Cent Washers. A small South Carolina parts supplier collected about
$20.5 million over six years from the Pentagon for fraudulent shipping costs, including $998,798 for
sending two 19-cent washers to an Army base in Texas, U.S. officials said. The company also billed
and was paid $455,009 to ship three machine screws costing $1.31 each to Marines in Habbaniyah, Iraq, and
$293,451 to ship an 89-cent split washer to Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Pentagon
records show.
U.S. is out $51M for flying 64,000 illegals to Mexico.
The U.S. government has spent more than $51 million over the past four summers flying nearly 64,000 illegal
immigrants home to Mexico City. The flights are intended to break the smuggling cycle and reduce the desert
death count. But evidence shows the binational Interior Repatriation Program has not made any substantial
difference in border smuggling or desert deaths. And the principal beneficiary is a Mexican airline
contracted to operate the twice-daily flights out of Tucson, critics say.
The Editor says...
It seems to me that $796.87 is a very high price for a one-way ticket to Mexico City, especially
at the group rate you could get by purchasing 64,000 tickets. All that aside, the
deported individuals will come back to the U.S. as soon as they can, so perhaps Mexico City is
too convenient. Here's my suggestion: Fly the deportees to the most remote corner
of Mexico. Or better yet, Guatemala or Panama. Or Venezuela. Or Argentina.
It's no mystery why
taxpayers are so fed up. Last week it was the 40-something state trooper retirees with their
pensions of $100,000-plus. Then it was the ex-principal of King Philip Regional High and his
healthcare-for-life-deal, which Massachusetts taxpayers are still funding, though Michael Levine now works in
Rhode Island. … Yesterday [9/26/2007] we also learned that drowning-in-debt Randolph, so broke it
canceled most school buses, bought out the contract of a superintendent — for $580,000.
DWP bid to hire lactation
specialist draws howls. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power came under fire Thursday [2/14/2008]
for paying specialists to show new and expectant mothers at the utility how to properly breast-feed their
children. The plan to issue another DWP-funded "lactation services" contract drew howls from taxpayer
advocate Walter Moore, who pointed out that the utility's five-member board voted just last week for a package
of new water and electrical rate hikes. "You couldn't make this up," he said. "This is such a
rip-off. You've got to wonder if somebody's cousin runs the lactation business."
Cops Await Raises While City Spends on Fish.
Two huge fish tanks that cost $750,000 were unveiled February 19 at the Staten Island ferry terminal
by Mayor Bloomberg, who joked, "I really don't think people have a reason to carp about this." Why
am I not laughing at this colossal waste of taxpayer money that will cost nearly $100,000 a year to
upkeep?
Mayor's climate aide
gets $160,000 a year. In his quest to make San Francisco the greenest city in the nation, Mayor
Gavin Newsom recently created a $160,000-a-year job for a senior aide and gave him the ambitious-sounding
title of director of climate protection initiatives. … San Francisco has at least two dozen other city employees
already working directly on climate issues at a cost to taxpayers of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
$27M Woodpecker Habitat
Plan Unveiled. Federal wildlife officials say spending more than $27 million to research
the suspected habitat of the ivory-billed woodpecker is worth the cost, despite conflicting views on whether
the elusive bird even exists. … The agency this week released a 185-page draft plan aimed at preventing
the extinction of the bird.
Read more about
the Ivory-billed Woodpecker.
Theme Park Subsidies Take Taxpayers for a
Ride. Axiom Entertainment of Rochester, Michigan is eyeing 1,800 acres of state-owned land near
Grayling, in north-central Michigan, for a $160 million theme park. Axiom is also reportedly seeking
$25 million in infrastructure improvements from the state. The site, in Crawford County, currently
lacks sewer and water service and would likely require improved highway access as well.
The $400 Million Helicopter: After
9/11, the White House sought to build a new fleet of "Marine Ones" that would be able to withstand the rigors of a terrorism
age, including missile jammers, sophisticated communications equipment, and even protection from a nuclear blast. … The
cost of the 28 helicopter fleet was originally contracted out for $6.1 billion. But today the Washington Post reports
that the cost has jumped to $11.2 billion — or approximately $400 million per helicopter. That's more expensive
than the Boeing 747 jet that serves as Air Force One!
A D.C.
case for RICO. The recently exposed embezzlement of some $20 million from the coffers
of the District of Columbia represents another humiliation for a city whose public corruption is
legendary. Starting in 2004, two long-term employees of the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue
(OTR), Harriette Walters and Diane Gustus, allegedly issued millions of dollars worth of phony
tax refunds to front businesses owned by friends and relatives. Those two employees
clearly did not act alone.
D.C.
Official Accused in $20M Scheme. The courthouse files look like the Christmas
list of a high-society fashion maven with a purse fetish: mink coats, jewelry, Faberge
eggs, a Mercedes Benz and more than 100 handbags and wallets with designer names like Chanel,
Hermes and Louis Vuitton. Those are among the items the FBI found at the Washington
home of Harriette Walters, who until recently was an $81,000-a-year city tax official.
To
Live and Take in D.C.: Incredibly, one woman alone is said to have masterminded a scheme in
which she and others allegedly stole at least $20 million from the city — and the city
never noticed. … Those accused are all bureaucrats and their alleged accessories — prominently,
a mid-level manager in the Office of Tax and Revenue. All they did was allegedly issue tax refunds to
dummy corporations and then cash the checks themselves. They are accused of having done this for
years. A [Washington] Post analysis said the total could be up to $44 million.
Report Shows Millions Wasted on Government
Travel. Federal employees wasted at least $146 million over a one-year period on business-
and first-class airline tickets, in some cases simply because they felt entitled to the perk, congressional
investigators say. … The review of travel spending by more than a dozen agencies from July 1, 2005,
to June 30, 2006, found 67 percent of premium-class travel by executives or their employees, worth
at least $146 million, was unauthorized or otherwise unjustified.
Local Budgets Reel Under Arsenic Mandates.
The citizens of Middlefield, Ohio are being hammered by a staggering cost of $7,400 per household after water
testing showed the community is very slightly above new, stringent federal standards regarding arsenic in
water. … With arsenic measuring 12 parts per billion in community water supplies — just two parts per
billion over the new federal standards — Middlefield's 1,000 households must foot the bill for a
new $7.4 million water treatment plant.
The Budget Graph shows the relative size
of various government departments (in dollars) as well as some of their largest projects.
Eligibility
in New Jersey for 'poor' program includes families of four making $72,000. President George W.
Bush dismissed an agreement reached yesterday [9/21/2007] by congressional leaders to expand the government's
children's health insurance program and said he will veto the measure. "Members of Congress are risking
health coverage for poor children purely to make a political point," Bush said in his weekly radio address.
Lockheed Martin wins NASA moon
contract. NASA on Thursday [8/31/2006] gave a multibillion-dollar contract to build a manned
lunar spaceship to Lockheed Martin Corp., the aerospace leader that usually builds unmanned rockets. The
nation's space agency plans to use the Orion crew exploration vehicle to replace the space shuttle fleet,
take astronauts to the moon and perhaps to Mars. Unlike Apollo and earlier spacecraft perched atop
rockets, it will be reusable. NASA estimated the cost at $7.5 billion through 2019 for likely
eight separate spaceships.
The Editor says...
My general opposition to manned space flight is
expressed here
and here. We have already been to the moon,
and there's nothing there but rocks and lifeless dirt. There is no reason to spend billions of dollars
on additional moon missions or on manned missions to Mars, just to prove that it can be done. This
is pork barrel politics at its worst.
Fed-Sponsored Program Allows Immigrants Without
Social Security Numbers to Wire Money Home Cheap. A federal program designed to help legal
immigrant Mexican workers wire their earnings back to families in Mexico also is providing a "fast, safe, and
low-cost way" for illegal workers without Social Security cards to funnel money out of the U.S.
California
bill would give newborns $500. Happy birthday, baby, here's $500, courtesy of California
taxpayers. The state's Legislature is considering a plan for taxpayers to provide a tax-free, long-term
investment account to every baby born in California, regardless of his or her parents' financial or
immigration status.
Highest bidder chosen to rebuild I-35W
bridge. A team with the highest price tag and the longest build time has been chosen to build
the Interstate 35W Bridge. Minnesota transportation officials tapped a joint team from Colorado and
Seattle to build a replacement for the collapsed Interstate 35W bridge, a rich contract that could be worth
millions more if the bridge is finished ahead of schedule.
Farm Subsidies: More Obsolete Than
Your Grandpa's Tractor. Robert Samuelson discusses the history of federal farm
subsidies, and the massive money pit they have become. In the 37 years since 1970,
the federal government has spent $578 billion on farm subsidies. Samuelson says
that, even though incredible amounts are spent on farming, its not doing much good.
Millions
In Subsidies For Profitable Corn? Even dried-out corn is money in the bank for a
farmer who sells it to an ethanol plant. But what really has critics angry is that corn
farmers are also still getting automatic subsidy payments from the federal government.
Many get tens of thousands of dollars every year whether they need it or not. The total
cost to taxpayers is $2 billion a year.
Ethanol: The Other Energy
Scandal. If only taxpayers could get some of their money back from a far bigger corporate energy
fraud that continues unabated in Washington.
Did
someone mention Ethanol?
Subprime
bailouts would get costly. Want to pick up the check for every homeowner who got saddled with a
risky mortgage? It's a big one — on the order of $120 billion. Lawmakers and consumer
groups in recent weeks have been calling for assistance for those at risk of defaulting on their mortgage.
Is
The Era Of Small Government Over? In January 1996, Democratic President Bill Clinton
declared the era of big government over. Eleven years later, government is larger than it
ever has been: The federal budget for 2007 is $2.8 trillion, the highest in history; one
in six Americans relies on government assistance; we spend $586.5 billion on Social Security,
$372.3 billion on Medicare, $268.5 billion on health care, and $93 billion on
education, training, employment and social services.
Ex-presidents'
big payday: For fiscal year 2007, [Former President] Clinton will receive approximately
$1.16 million from the US Treasury -- his telephone stipend alone will come to $77,000. All
former presidents are also entitled to free, round-the-clock Secret Service protection for themselves
and their families. The cost of providing security for previous "first families" is estimated at
$20 million a year.
Americans
Pay Millions To Clean Mexican Sewage. [Scroll down] The project was controversial from
the start because a group of politically-connected executives created a company in 1996 solely to
get the lucrative no-bid government contract to treat the waste.
The
White Elephant Fleet. Even as the Air Force is struggling to find money for new fighters, bombers,
tankers and cargo planes, it estimates it will spend close to $1.6 billion over the next five years just
to maintain aircraft it wants to jettison. It can't get rid of them — and free up money
for new aircraft — because often the older aircraft have been given special protections by Congress.
Funding
Continues for an Illness Scientists Dismiss. Fifteen years after the end of the 1991 war with
Iraq, a Texas researcher is in line to get as much as $75 million in federal funding to press his studies
of "Gulf War syndrome," even though most other scientists long ago discounted his theories.
"Booty
Call": The CDC and Your Tax Dollars. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is asking for
more of your money but using it for purposes anathema to the majority of the American people. … CDC
is sponsoring events that foment the spreading of disease rather than those that prevent
disease. It is a blatant conflict of interest to fund a beauty pageant that promotes transgender
behavior which — despite tremendous political pressure by the transgender lobby — is still
considered a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association.
A new
entitlement for illegals: Never say Ken Boehm didn't warn you. … As absurd as this story
line surely must seem to rational people, Mr. Boehm worries that someday taxpayers actually could be
forced to pay for lawyers representing illegal aliens in the U.S. who want amnesty and citizenship. Boehm
is co-founder and chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, a Virginia nonpartisan foundation promoting
ethics in public life. He also is not delusional.
Did someone mention the
high cost of Illegal immigration?
Paying to be coerced.
Would you be outraged if you knew your taxpayer dollars were being used to lobby for more government subsidies
and higher taxes? Well you should be, because that is exactly what is happening. Over the years
there have been many cases of government agencies lobbying Congress for more funds and/or higher taxes.
Have you
driven a Freedom CAR lately? After approximately one billion dollars of government
funding, there is no car, no hope of one and only continued bureaucratic double talk. The
program was good for the politicians, especially for the titular head of the program, Vice
President Al Gore. Gore and his buddies could proudly point to how much they
were doing to make the world a better place. … Taxpayers are the one group that is
clearly worse off.
Singing CAIR's
Tune, On Your Dime. On a weekend when the Bush administration achieved a new CAIR-friendly low,
a prominent Democrat, following the lead of other prominent Democrats, distanced herself very publicly from
the unsavory Council on American-Islamic Relations. The Transportation Security Administration is the
executive agency created after 9/11 to protect American travelers. Yet, Americans viewing its website
this weekend could not have felt very protected.
How do you kill
a government agency? Monorail officials are feeling their way in the dark as they try to find
how to kill the government agency that once planned a monorail line through West Seattle. Apparently
there are no instruction books explaining the procedure for terminating the Seattle Monorail Project.
Usually the work done by a doomed agency is merely transferred to another department. But after voters
killed the project last fall, no monorails are being planned.
World
Trade Towers: a Socialist Fiasco. We can count on government planners to produce the most
inefficient projects conceivable by the human mind. Manhattan's Freedom Tower, intended to rise on the
site of 9/11 destruction, is an egregious example. … New York City, the nation's most socialistically
ingrained municipality, in the nation's premier socialist state, has a long history of public works
boondoggles, of which the Freedom Tower is just the latest.
Fed dollars proposed for La Raza.
Tens of millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars soon could be flowing into the National Council of La Raza, an
organization that advocates for civil rights for Hispanics and has connections to groups that advocate the
separation of several southwestern states from the rest of the nation.
$2 Trillion on Foreign Aid. "After
fifty years and more than $2 trillion in aid, the West has strikingly little to show for its efforts in
alleviating poverty." This was the blurb advertising an April 25 event at the American Enterprise
Institute entitled, "Why Foreign Aid Has Failed-And How to Fix It." However, the Los Angeles Times on
April 13 ran an editorial accusing the U.S. of being stingy in dispersing foreign aid. For the
Times, $2 trillion still isn't enough.
Foreign aid to
Africa: British Prime Minister Tony Blair, along with other G-8 leaders, have called for the
doubling of foreign aid to African nations by 2010. The idea that foreign aid is a route out of poverty
and political instability is not only bankrupted but a cruel and evil hoax as well. Nearly every
sub-Saharan African nation is poorer now than when they became independent during the '60s and '70s.
Poverty That Defies
Aid: The link between foreign aid and economic development seems quite tenuous. Foreign
aid to Africa has also enabled government officials to embezzle large amounts of money and misspend much on
loss-making projects. In total, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo estimated, "Corrupt African leaders
have stolen at least $140 billion from their people in the [four] decades since independence." Large
debt is all most Africans have been left.
Capitalism Is the Cure for
Africa's Problems. The current plan of George Bush and Tony Blair to send billions more in aid
to Africa is futile. History demonstrates that brutal dictatorships and savage tribes engaged in
internecine warfare are not transformed by handouts. After all, billions of dollars have already been
poured into Africa. What Africa needs is freedom, not welfare.
"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is Costing the Government
Plenty. How much does it cost to throw homosexuals out of the military? Don't
ask, don't tell. Actually, the policy that carries that name is proving costly to the
government … nearly twice as much as a Congressional panel estimated last year.
The great wage
gap. As the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported this month, federal civil servants receive
far, far more in wages and benefits than workers in the private sector. Indeed, twice as much.
Average compensation for federal civilian workers last year came to $106,579 — which Chris Edwards
of the Cato Institute notes is "exactly twice the average compensation paid in the U.S. private sector."
Does
government stupidity know any bounds? After the 9/11 attacks, Congress passed a compassionate
piece of legislation called the Supplemental Terrorist Relief Act. It was to give low-interest loans to
small businesses disrupted by the attacks, allowing them to rebuild. … But, as usual, the government passed
your money out everywhere. Terrorist Relief Act loans went to Dunkin' Donuts shops in
Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Vermont, and Ohio.
B-2 Stealth Bomber Crashes in Guam;
Pilots Eject Safely. A B-2 stealth bomber plunged to the ground shortly after taking
off from an air base in Guam on Saturday [2/23/2008], the first time one crashed, but both pilots
ejected safely, Air Force officials said. … Each B-2 bomber costs about $1.2 billion to
build.
Update:
Sensor moisture to blame for
1st B-2 bomber crash. The Air Force says the first crash of a B-2 stealth bomber was caused by
moisture in sensors. The military said Thursday [6/5/2008] that the moisture created bad readings on the
February flight. The flight control computer forced the aircraft to pitch up on takeoff.
Upgrade drags Stealth Bomber IT systems into
the 90s. US aerospace heavyweight Northrop Grumman has revealed some details of a planned upgrade to the
computing system of the famous B-2 Stealth Bomber, one of the most expensive and unusual aircraft in the world.
According to reports, the well-known but seldom seen ghost bomber will be finally moving up to Pentium processors and
code written in C. The B-2 will also get a new disk drive.
Congress
Contemplates Giving Cash to Foreigners. Why are Republicans in Congress trying to help Barack
Obama? Republicans allowed a bill that carries his name, among nine others, to pass the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee by voice vote last week — without any hearings. That means there was no
roll-call vote so no member can be held accountable. The same bill passed the House by voice vote last
year. … Obama's costly, dangerous and altogether bad bill (S. 2433), which could come up in the
Senate any day, is called the Global Poverty Act. It would commit U.S. taxpayers to spend 0.7 percent
of our Gross Domestic Product on foreign handouts, which is at least $30 billion over and above the
exorbitant and wasted sums we already give away overseas.
Hurricane Katrina is one of the greatest examples of government waste and reckless spending.
The Big
Easy's Billion Dollar Boondoggle. How much money has Uncle Sam spent on New Orleans and the Gulf
region since Hurricane Katrina ripped the place apart? ... The grand total is $127 billion (including tax
relief). ... Perhaps all this money should've been directly deposited in the bank accounts of the 300,000
people living in New Orleans. All divvied up, that $127 billion would come to $425,000 per person!
Tancredo:
High time to shut off 'runaway' Katrina spending. Republican presidential candidate Rep. Tom
Tancredo says it's time to stop "runaway government spending" on post-Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts.
"Enough is enough," the Colorado congressman said in a statement today, aiming to head off requests for more
money to help New Orleans recover from the hurricane that ravaged the city and much of the Gulf coast two
years ago this week.
FEMA's
folly: Of the $6.3 billion that FEMA handed out, as much as $1.4 billion —
nearly a quarter of the total — went to crooks and con artists. According to the Government
Accountability Office, FEMA paid millions of dollars to prison inmates, to people who listed cemeteries or
post office boxes as their damaged homes, and for property that its own inspectors reported was
nonexistent. Some people collected thousands of dollars in rent assistance even though they were staying
in hotels paid for by FEMA.
Katrina Aid Used for Luxury
Condos. With large swaths of the Gulf Coast still in ruins from Hurricane Katrina, rich
federal tax breaks designed to spur rebuilding are flowing hundreds of miles inland to investors who are
buying up luxury condos near the University of Alabama's football stadium.
The Tragedy of New
Orleans. The post-Katrina spend-fest in Louisiana will be remembered as one of the greatest
taxpayer wastes in U.S. history. First came the FEMA $2,000 debit-cards fiasco intended to pay for
necessities that were used for things like flat-panel TVs and tattoos. Then came the purchase
of thousands of mobile homes that cost as much as $400,000 per family housed; the $200 million
for renting the Carnival Cruise Ship; millions more in payments that went for season football
tickets, luxury vacation resorts, even divorce lawyers. Federal flood insurance policies surely
will encourage many to rebuild in the same flood plains and at the same height as before.
NBC
15 confronts Speaker Nancy Pelosi on FEMA spending. When NBC 15 News first met Gwenester
Malone a month ago, she was receiving three catered meals a day, while housekeepers made sure her hotel
room stayed clean. None of it was costing her a dime. "Since the storm, I haven't had any
energy or pep to go get a job," Malone said, "but when push comes to shove, I will." That shove
may not come until March 2009.
Millions of Katrina
aid wasted, review finds. FEMA paid $438 a night for New York hotel rooms.
Much more about waste and fraud connected to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina can be found
here.
The National
Endowment for the Arts gave $10,000 to support conservation and restoration of the
Beer Can House, a work by self-taught artist John Milkovisch. The Houston landmark, consisting
of a house and grounds decorated with methodically trimmed cans, will be used as an artist-in-residence
project space.
[There's another great euphemism. "Self-taught artist" is another way of saying,
"A crazy man in our neighborhood has a huge pile of beer cans in his front yard." By all
means, let's be sure there's money available if it needs "restoration".]
A sweet deal for 'official'
felons. James A. Traficant Jr., the former Democratic congressman convicted of racketeering
and taking bribes, is wiling away prison time painting colorful pictures but also able to collect a
congressional pension of nearly $40,000 a year. He is one of about 20 former senators and congressmen
with felony rap sheets who can receive the taxpayer-financed benefit.
Poverty That Defies
Aid. Between 1960 and 2005, foreign aid worth more than $450 billion, inflation adjusted,
poured into Africa. Result? Between 1975 and 2000, African gross domestic product per capita
declined at an average annual 0.59 percent rate. … Foreign aid to Africa has also enabled
government officials to embezzle large amounts of money and misspend much on loss-making projects.
Exposing
the myth of Third World aid: Perhaps the most important question of our time is why the
West's efforts to help the world's poorest people have been so disappointing and even counterproductive. In
the past 50 years, we have spent $2.3 trillion on foreign aid, to disturbingly little effect. An
important new book suggests this has had a lot to do with the arrogance of the "big push" approach favored by
many development economists and organizations such as the World Bank and the United Nations.
Waste, Fraud and UN Headquarters: The
UN is embarking on a multi-billion construction project and the timing could not be better for those who like to
waste taxpayer dollars. … The project is the renovation of the United Nations headquarters in New York City
and the building is a metaphor for the UN itself. It is outdated, falling apart, and no longer useful.
It has never had a major renovation, is full of asbestos, and is energy inefficient. And while it won't
pass a fire inspection, it is one of the only buildings in New York where smokers are still allowed to
light up.
NASA Employs a Performance Artist
with a $20,000 Taxpayer-Funded Stipend. For two years, NASA paid Laurie Anderson as the
agency's "artist in residence." The performing artist was commissioned to perform a theatrical
story-telling piece in theaters across the nation, as part of a NASA outreach effort. The artist
in residence position was not specifically authorized by Congress. … Her job Description:
Create and tour a theatrical piece, educating theater-goers about NASA; and "…to produce a film
on the moons of the solar system" for the 2005 World Expo.
The Food Stamp Program: Waste,
Fraud and Abuse. In 2003, the food stamp program spent $1.1 billion in "overpayments"
to program beneficiaries. This is money that is not refunded to the government and is counted
as a "program loss" on the budget books.
Give Us the Spending
Database. The idea of a transparency website — replete with search engines that
include subcontractors — was born in May 2005 at a hearing on U.S. efforts to combat
malaria. Officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) squirmed as [Senator Tom]
Coburn revealed that 93% of the agency's 2004 funding to eradicate malaria had been spent on administrative
and advice-giving services. In addition, not enough of these funds were spent overseas; too much was
absorbed by high-paid U.S. consultants.
Homeless
Alcoholics Receive a Permanent Place to Live, and Drink. Rodney Littlebear was a homeless drunk
who for 15 years ran up the public tab with trips to jail, homeless shelters and emergency rooms. He
now has a brand-new, government-financed apartment where he can drink as much as he wants. It is part of
a first-in-the-nation experiment to ease the torment of drug and alcohol addiction while saving taxpayers'
money.
$1-Billion
Affordable Housing Bond Measure May Go to Voters in L.A.. A $1-billion bond measure that would
help provide housing for thousands of low-income residents and enable others to become first-time homeowners
is likely to appear on the Los Angeles ballot in November.
More material about Poverty and Dependency in America.
Five days in Rio
on Newark's credit card. In the final week of his 20-year tenure as mayor of Newark, Sharpe
James took a five-day trip to Rio de Janeiro, staying in a luxury hotel and dining
at some of the city's finest restaurants.
Empty monuments to
human ego. Sitting in the middle of what used to be pasture in Fairmont, West Virginia,
stands a brand-new office building that you helped pay for. Knowing that you would insist on the
best, its builders made sure to get all the options: a swimming pool, sauna, and spa. The
price: $103 million. Oh yes, it's nearly empty and likely to stay that way for some
time. If you don't recall ordering a state-of-the-art office building in a cow pasture, you're not
alone. Nobody does. But that's how the congressional process known as "earmarking" works.
Corporate
gravy train is railroading rest of the country. Two-thirds of farm subsidies go to
the top 10 percent of subsidy recipients. That means tens of millions of dollars for big
agribusinesses and millions more for such "gentlemen farmers" as basketball star Scottie Pippen,
newscaster Sam Donaldson and television mogul Ted Turner. At least 12 Fortune 500 companies
also have pocketed farm subsidies in recent years, including John Hancock and Caterpillar. In
addition, federal money funds critical programs such as barn restoration and paying farmers not to
grow certain crops.
Federally Funded Flying Fish:
Congress appropriated $10 million in FY03 for the Alaska Fisheries Marketing Board (AFMB), a non-profit
organization, which since its inception has received $30 million in federal funding. Out of its
federal funds, the AFMB gave Alaska Airlines a $500,000 grant to paint a Boeing 737 to look like
a Chinook salmon.
Senate GOP fails to get
fiscally fit. The wheels came off the Republican cart on Capitol Hill last week with
abandonment of any pretense of loyalty to George W. Bush. But while upbraiding the
president, Republican members of Congress were adrift on a sea of unrestrained government
spending.
[One reason they show no restraint is that the President won't veto anything.]
Homeland
Goes Hollywood. In October 2004, the Department of Homeland Security hired former actress
Bobbie Faye Furgeson, as DHS' Hollywood Liaison. In March 2004, DHS posted the opening for a
"liaison to the entertainment industry," stating the salary could top $136,000, plus benefits.
Milk Matters and Bo Vine the
Spokescow. Milk Matters is a campaign coordinated by NIH's Institute of Child
Health and Human Development, which features "Bo Vine the Spokescow" who encourages children
to drink milk. The campaign website, which costs approximately $175,000 per year to operate,
contains games and activities, and offers free coloring books to children.
Energy Hog: The
Department of Energy spent approximately $325,000 to operate the "Energy Hog" Webgame for Kids. The
website contains games designed to teach children ages eight to 13 about energy efficiency.
Medicaid: Waste, Fraud and
Abuse. A 2001 GAO report on Medicaid stated, "The magnitude of improper payments throughout
Medicaid is unknown. … An even more difficult portion of improper payments to identify are those
attributable to intentional fraud. … There are no reliable estimates of the extent of improper
payments throughout the Medicaid program."
Legal Services Corporation Abuses
Paid for with Taxpayer Dollars. Legal Services Corporation (LSC) proponents contend the
federally funded program creates a level legal playing ground for those in need, however, LSC has
consistently used its federal resources to legally assault the very individuals whose taxpayer
dollars fund the program. Most recently, LSC has resorted to suing hard working Americans
who are legally hiring seasonal immigrants for temporary help. Critics charge the corporation
brings vague, and usually unfounded, charges against farmers who can not afford an attorney and
typically are forced to settle out of court.
Examples of Government
Waste: The federal government cannot account for $24.5 billion spent
in 2003. A White House review of just a sample of the federal budget identified $90 billion
spent on programs deemed that were either ineffective, marginally adequate, or operating under a
flawed purpose or design.
Welcome
to Spend City. It was the political equivalent of going on a shopping spree the same day you
get a credit-line increase on your over-the-limit card. In the morning, the senators increased the
federal debt limit by $800 billion, to $9 trillion — that's with a T. In
the afternoon came the Vote-a-Rama, a carnival in which the lawmakers took turns pitching scores of amendments
to the 2007 budget measure, most calling for more money for favorite programs.
Nine Trillion with
a "T". Most of us middle class slobs slugging it out in the trenches have a hard time
comprehending $9 million or $9 billion, let alone $9 trillion, but $9 trillion is
the amount the U.S. Senate just raised your debt ceiling and mine to: Thirty grand apiece for
every man, woman and child in the U.S.
Illinois County Will Borrow $200M. For
the first time in a decade, America's second largest county — Cook County, Illinois — has been forced
to authorize a multimillion-dollar line of credit to pay current bills. It's a reflection of what's
happening across America as state and local governments slide deeper in debt despite growing revenues.
Spending
obscenities: Not so long ago, in a country that now seems far, far away, Ronald
Reagan told the nation: "we don't have deficits because people are taxed too little. We
have deficits because big government spends too much." … Last week, a Republican Senate voted to
raise the debt ceiling to nearly $9 trillion. Senators quickly passed a record
$2.8 trillion budget. What would Reagan say now?
Taxpayer$ pony
up for pols' Tennessee trek. At least ten [Massachusetts] Bay State lawmakers are hobnobbing
with fellow pols, lobbyists and CEOs in Nashville this week at a conference that includes tours of Dollywood,
Graceland and the Jack Daniels Distillery — all courtesy of state taxpayers, the [Boston] Herald has learned.
Spiffy new jail is too
expensive to open. A $59 million jail featuring art and flat screen TVs in Portland, Ore., has
been sitting unused for more than a year as the city can't afford to open it. … The county spent more
than $600,000 on art for the jail, including a sculpture out front by the circular driveway. There
are 30-foot vaulted ceilings and private showers.
The
government junkets you fund. $1,401,104,263. That's how much of our hard-earned
money has gone to subsidize the spring break-style trips and conferences of the federal government
over the last five years. Spending on bureaucracy boondoggles has increased some 70 percent
in that time period.
Number, Cost of Government Workers Growing
Fast, Study Says. The nation's 16 million state and local government workers form a large,
growing, and well-compensated class in society. State and local workers earned $36 per hour in wages
and benefits in 2005, on average, compared to $24 per hour for U.S. private-sector workers, according to
the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Employer Costs for Employee Compensation Summary, published
December 9, 2005.
U.S. gives Mexico millions for
security. The U.S. government has sent more than $376 million to Mexico in the past decade
for that country's military and police to help stop alien and drug smugglers, guard against terrorists
and protect America's southern border, including $50 million due this year.
Statement
on the So-Called "Deficit Reduction Act". For all the passionate debate
this bill has generated, its effect on the federal government and taxpayers are
relatively minor. HR 4241 does not even reduce federal expenditures! That's
right — if HR 4241 passes, the federal budget, including entitlement programs, will
continue to grow.
Congress Adds $3 Trillion to Debt. The
U.S. Senate is preparing to vote to raise the federal debt ceiling this month [March 2006]. According
to Treasury, the total debt held by the public combined with intra-governmental holdings, or securities
held by government accounts, stood at $8.27 trillion as of the end of February. The federal
debt has increased $3 trillion since 2002.
Spending
Inquiry for Top Official on Broadcasting. Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, the head of the federal
agency that oversees most government broadcasts to foreign countries, including the Voice of America
and Radio Free Europe, is the subject of an inquiry into accusations of misuse of federal money and the use
of phantom or unqualified employees, officials involved in that examination said on Friday [11/04/2005].
The Missing $25
Billion: Buried in the Department of the Treasury's 2003 Financial
Report of the United States Government is a short section titled "Unreconciled
Transactions Affecting the Change in Net Position," which explains that these
unreconciled transactions totaled $24.5 billion in 2003. The unreconciled
transactions are funds for which auditors cannot account: The government knows
that $25 billion was spent by someone, somewhere, on something, but
auditors do not know who spent it, where it was spent, or
on what it was spent.
These are
dangerous times for our wallets. Tim Chapman, who has his ear to the Hill,
predicts that the government will end up spending $100 billion in response to [Hurricane]
Katrina. That's the equivalent of 5 percent of the annual federal budget. If
you sent 5 percent of your annual budget to a charity for Katrina relief, would you do
it without checking up on the charity and finding out exactly how they would spend the money?
Getting a bit
carried away? Keep in mind that $100 billion is one-eighteenth of the federal
government's whole operating budget this year. It is what we have been spending each
year on the entire Iraqi war effort. It is roughly twice as much as America spends
each year to operate all its colleges and universities. It is more than the total
passenger revenue of all the major airlines in the United States. This year. It
is a staggeringly huge amount of money.
U.S.
paid $32M for Iraqi base that wasn't built. The U.S. military paid a Florida
company nearly $32 million to build barracks and offices for Iraqi army units even
though nothing was ever built, Pentagon investigators reported.
Unbridled Pork: In 1982, President
Ronald Reagan established a panel of 161 senior business executives and more than 2,000 private sector
volunteers to undertake a comprehensive review of the federal government. The report of the
President's Private Sector Survey on Cost Control — better known as the Grace
Commission — made nearly 2,500 recommendations that would save taxpayers $424.4 billion
during a three-year period by eliminating waste, mismanagement and inefficiency in Washington.
Dammable
pork: I'm embarrassed to admit I once built a house on a beach in
Westhampton, N.Y., because government insurance guaranteed I couldn't lose. When
a storm washed my house away, government paid me for my loss. It would have
covered me again and again had I rebuilt. (I sold the land.) Government
insurance is truly an insane policy.
Taxpayer Group Blasts
Boeing/Lockheed Launch Vehicle Plan. The pending Boeing/Lockheed "United Launch Alliance" to
provide the Air Force with expendable rockets would unfairly strand taxpayers with a
half-billion-dollar-a-year subsidy.
Time To Pull the Plug on
Federally Subsidized Electricity. There is plenty of federal spending on energy that does
not deliver benefits worth the cost to taxpayers, and there are even a few provisions that contribute to
our energy problems. Many federal energy programs could be cut back or eliminated without any
real loss. Among the costliest and least justifiable of such endeavors are the numerous
federal subsidies for electric power.
Getting rid of
reckless spending. We are less than one generation away from Congress being unable to pay
for anything other than Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and interest on the federal
debt — leaving not so much as a penny for defense or homeland security.
Feeding the kitty
for Katrina. Congress … must get serious about regulatory costs and stop passing
a never-ending stream of dubious and often counterproductive regulatory requirements. Nearly
every adult in America who has had an encounter with almost any level of government knows wasteful
spending is colossal, despite politicians' eternal whining they haven't enough money. As long
as governments can take an ever-increasing portion of the economic pie, this will never change.
And now a few words about Puerto Rico:
Pay to the Order of Puerto
Rico: The Cost of Dependence to the American Taxpayer. American
families pay $22 billion per year to maintain this dependent colony.
Background information:
The United States seized Puerto Rico in the Spanish-American War. Puerto Ricans are
U.S. citizens but cannot vote for U.S. president, have no voting representation in Congress and pay no
federal taxes.*
Cash-Strapped Gov't Days From Shutdown in
Puerto Rico. Nearly 1,600 schools shuttered. Some 205,000 public workers unpaid. Most
government offices closed. The U.S. Caribbean territory is staggering under a nearly $740 million
budget shortfall and heading toward a grim scenario Monday [4/24/2006], when it will run out of cash to pay
salaries and provide public services if local lawmakers don't approve a bailout plan.
Puerto
Rico Imposes Partial Shutdown. Schools closed. Building permits were on hold.
Renewing a driver's license was impossible. Many basic functions of Puerto Rico's government were
unavailable Monday [5/1/2006] as the U.S. commonwealth ran out of money and imposed a partial
public-sector shutdown.
Rigging
the route to a 51st state. It sometimes seems like Congress thinks Puerto Rico is a Never-Never
Land: No matter how many times the island's people vote to keep their identity as a separate nation affiliated
with the United States, it's never enough. Since 1967, Puerto Ricans have voted three times against becoming a
US state and in favor of maintaining their status as an independent commonwealth in association with America.
The last time was 11 years ago.
Pandering to the
pandas: One might expect the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
to focus exclusively on advancing the health and development of humans. But since 2001, NICHD, a
subdivision of the National Institutes of Health, has provided $1,178,450 to a "Fisheries
and Wildlife" professor for research focusing at least in part on "giant panda
habitats" in China.
Head Start
Needs to Clean House. Some of the most alarming cases included: the
indictment of both a Maryland Head Start director on charges that she stole $335,777 and
a South Dakota woman for embezzling $185,000 from a Head Start service provider; and a
New Mexico program suspected of defrauding the program of $526,000. The
latter program received a $2 million federal grant while the fraud case
was still pending.
What
the Feds Say the Tax Lady Spent at Neiman's: $1.4 million. Too many of us still
struggle with the idea that a person, even a thief, could have "spent over $1.4 million at Neiman Marcus,
the retailer," in seven years' time. Which is what the affidavit alleges that Harriette Walters, who
worked for the D.C. government for 25 years (the last few as a manager in the city's Office of Tax and
Revenue), did. Prosecutors said Wednesday [11/7/2007] that Walters and her colleague Diane Gustus had
been, for years, quietly helping themselves to $20 million from the city pile in the form of bogus
refund checks.
Kill
This Test. Enacted in 1965, Head Start funds public and private groups that run
local centers which provide what the Head Start Bureau calls "comprehensive child development
services" for preschoolers from poor families. In 1966, Head Start enrolled 733,000 children
and spent $198.9 million. By 2005, enrollment had increased modestly to 906,993, but
spending had rocketed to $6.8 billion.
Taxpayers Asked to Subsidize Renewable
Boondoggle. U.S. Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and Rep. Tim Matheson (D-CO) have proposed legislation
requiring federal taxpayers to subsidize $300 million in renewable energy equipment purchases in six
western states. The bill aims to induce schools in the affected states to purchase expensive renewable
energy equipment by making federal taxpayers pick up the tab. The proposed legislation, the Renewable
Schools Energy Act of 2006, would subsidize renewable energy equipment in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana,
Nevada, and Utah. Currently, schools in those states usually choose to purchase electricity from conventional
power sources, which is significantly less expensive than electricity generated from renewable sources.
Proposed Massachusetts Wind Farm Generates Intense
Criticism. If energy-savvy private investors like [William] Koch are questioning Cape Wind's
financing, why does the developer think he can succeed? The answer lies with federal and state governments
eager to subsidize alternative energy projects. A study released in May by the Beacon Hill Institute at
Suffolk University finds Cape Wind's wind farm would confer above-average profits on its developer thanks to
hundreds of millions of dollars in public subsidies.
Windmill generators are one of
those supposedly good ideas that
may not be good at all.
D.C. government employees reward
themselves. The D.C. government employees tasked with providing care to the city's poor
have taken home nearly half of the more than $1 million in bonus money awarded by the District
during the first half of fiscal 2005. Nearly 400 employees in the D.C. Department of Human
Services (DHS) received approximately $479,000 in extra money in their paychecks from Oct. 1, 2004,
to March 31, 2005, according to D.C. Office of Personnel records.
Federal Aid to the States Ripe for
Cuts. The federal grant structure is massive and complex … Grants range from
the giant Medicaid to hundreds of obscure programs, such as $10 million for Nursing
Workforce Diversity, $59 million for Boating Safety Financial Assistance, and a program
that hands out grants of $25,000 to local governments for "raising awareness" about
environmental issues.
Federal Government Should
Increase Firing Rate. The Bush administration is seeking the "freedom to manage,"
including greater ability to fire poorly performing workers. Budget Director Mitch Daniels
argues that federal managers "cannot hire whom they wish or fire whom they should." Recent
incidents of dangerously sloppy performance in the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the
State Department, the FBI, and other agencies make it clear that far too much poor performance is
currently tolerated.
"Sunsetting" to Reform and Abolish
Federal Agencies: Government agencies are the only organizations in society
that can have immortality without good performance. Government employees are the only
workers with near guarantees of lifetime jobs regardless of performance. In the private
sector, poor performers are routinely weeded out and resources shifted to more productive activities.
Downsizing the Federal
Government: The $2.3 trillion federal government has simply become too
big for Congress to oversee. The good news is that Americans do not need such
a big government. Most federal programs are unconstitutional, unnecessary, actively damaging,
or properly the responsibility of state governments or the private sector. This study analyzes
programs that could be cut to create annual budget savings of $300 billion.
Ron Paul Fights Overseas
Pork Spending. "Congress hardly should be sending $735 million to Colombia
when we have a $600 billion single-year deficit here at home," Paul stated. "Our
meddling in Colombia not only is unconstitutional, it's absolutely useless.
It's Not Just the
Spending. Before leaving town earlier this month, Congress approved
nearly $300 billion in increased spending. But spending, supported through
taxes, is not the only way the federal government diverts resources from the private
sector to accomplish its goals. The other is through regulation and, in recent
years, that too has increased at an impressive rate.
Dying to be
politically correct. Each year, the U.S. government spends $200 million to help
prevent malaria in the rest of the world, primarily in Africa and Asia. That's mighty nice
of us. But none of the money goes for the inside residential spraying of DDT that allowed
Americans to get a handle on the spread of the disease. This summer President Bush announced
a new five-year $1.2 billion effort to prevent malaria abroad. But, again, no
money for DDT.
Much more information about DDT can be
found here.
Yoga and
your tax dollars: You might think it was a pretty good indicator the federal
government was spending too much money on medical research when it started paying advocates
of "alternative" medicine to study the impact of yoga on "generalized anxiety." But
then you are not Sen. Arlen Specter, the liberal Republican from Pennsylvania, who chairs
the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee that oversees funding for the National Institutes
of Health, the federal agency that funds medical research.
Forest
Service "misplaced" $215 million. The U.S. Forest Service … "misplaced"
about $215 million intended for wildfire management because of an accounting error, a
watchdog group contends. The agency says the money is being recovered.
$15 Billion Missing
From Education Department. The report, "Government at the Brink," issued
in June [2001] by the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, says that the Education
Department reported in its financial statements that it had $7.5 billion in the
bank when it actually owed that money to the U.S. Treasury. This means that the
department's books are off by $15 billion, about a third of what it spends
annually. But this isn't just a case of bad accounting. Education department
whistleblower John Gard suspects that "senior management officials" in the department
had been "setting up the Agency to rip it off" and that millions of dollars or more have been
embezzled. Gard says there was no security over the system to prevent embezzlement and no
audit trail to find out where the money was going.
IRS workers' online
time not all work-related. A sampling of Internal Revenue Service employees
found that they used about half their online time at work to visit sex sites, gamble, trade
stocks, participate in chat rooms and do other non-work-related activity, the Treasury
Department's inspector general said.
$1 billion wasted on
study of efficient cars. American taxpayers have forked out more than $1 billion
over the last nine years helping the Big Three automakers develop cars efficient enough to
travel 80 miles on a single gallon of gas.
Editor's Note:
Ask yourself this question: What would an 80 mpg car look like? It would probably
make a Yugo look like a limousine by comparison. Even the smallest motorcycle on the road
today doesn't get that kind of mileage. There is a finite amount of energy available
from the combustion of one gallon of gasoline, even with pure oxygen fed into the air intake
of an automobile engine. Eighty mpg is an unreachable goal.
Fannie
Mae's bailout tab: Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored mortgage
association, has been battling a mounting scandal since last year. It has
accounting errors of about $11 billion. [That's Enron × 19.] This
is news — $30 billion worth of news — but only
print reporters are out there covering it regularly. TV news is out to lunch.
Feds Say $20 Billion Paid
Out Erroneously. The federal government doled out nearly $20 billion in
health, housing, food and other benefits to people and companies that were not entitled to
them, the White House said [May 31, 2002] in a report calling for tighter controls on
spending while the nation is at war. In many cases, fraudulent medical bills were
paid. In other instances, food stamps were improperly claimed, Social Security payments
were sent to people long dead and welfare checks were cashed by prisoners, officials said.
Bureaucracy and Obesity: The
Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has recently taken some
hits for how it spends around $7 billion of federal taxpayer money, lacks a clearly defined
mission. In fact, it has too many missions and is still looking for more.
Up In
Smoke: ONDCP's Wasted Efforts In the War on Drugs. Established in 1988
to oversee all aspects of America's war on drugs and to coordinate U.S. domestic and
international anti-drug efforts, the White House Office of National Drug Control
Policy (ONDCP) has morphed into a federal wasteland, throwing taxpayer money toward
numerous high-priced drug control programs that have failed to show results. ... Instead
of curbing America's drug problem, ONDCP has wasted $4.2 billion since fiscal 1997 on media
advertising, fighting state legislation, and deficient anti-drug trafficking programs.
Pricetag for Rebuilding Illinois Expressway
Doubles. In Illinois' own mini-version of Boston's Big Dig, the costs to rebuild Chicago's Dan
Ryan Expressway have nearly doubled from original estimates, to about $1 billion. Most taxpayers
and state lawmakers were unaware of the soaring costs, run up in the first four years of the five-year project,
until an enterprising transportation writer for the Chicago Tribune, Jon Hilkevitch, revealed them in a
September 17 article.
Did
someone mention the The Big Dig?
Highways to
Porkville. A lot of those billboards posted at public construction sites
that say "Your Tax Dollars At Work" need to be replaced with signs that read "Wasting
Your Money." This is the sad but inescapable conclusion after thumbing through the
2,000-plus pages of the $286 billion transportation bill that President Bush signed
[recently] — legislation that Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona correctly
called "a monstrosity" stuffed with outrageous, waste-ridden pork barrel projects that often
have nothing to do with roads.
None of your
business. If the 18.4-cent per gallon federal gas tax is any indication, the feds still have a
firm grip on highway funding. That explains why the 2004 highway bill was chock full of wasteful
spending. In Alaska, some $200 million was allocated for two bridges; one would link a small town
with an island a mile offshore that has fifty total residents; another would run from Anchorage to a
small port that has one regular tenant. I live in California and so am already saddled with all
sorts of taxes and fees. The last thing in the world that I want to do is see my taxes used to pay
for a Bridge to Nowhere.
Orange bicycles:
Some cities turn abandoned bicycles into "community bicycles" available to anyone for temporary use in downtown
areas. Community bicycles are all painted one loud color to help users distinguish them from private bikes.
Safety-orange was the color sprayed on by bureaucrats in Tampa, Florida. It was a short-lived program. The
orange bicycles went unused until they were stolen and, it is hoped, repainted. Local officials are inspired by
programs like "community bicycles," even though they never ride the bikes, nor use government buses, nor government
schools.
Taxpayers
are footing bill for union work. In the wake of a controversy over a police union
official who received a city salary while working full time for the officers union, a survey of
city government, Muni and BART unions reveals a handful of other officials with similar arrangements,
including a San Francisco sheriff's union chief who earned $60,000 a year but worked as little as
one shift a month.
Attention: Deficit
Disorder. So what should President Bush do to deal with a potential economic problem
and prevent a clever Democrat from outflanking him to the right on the deficit? By all means,
veto the monstrous transportation bill that is now worming its way through Congress. It would
be the President's first veto in four and a half years of office, and it would send a powerful
message that the days of uncontrolled spending are over. [He should also] revisit the
Medicare prescription drug benefit, which has turned into a boondoggle even before it has
become fully operational. This entitlement program alone will add $700 billion to
federal deficits over the next decade.
Disaster
aid boondoggle Hurricane Frances made landfall more than 100 miles north
of Miami-Dade County [in 2004]. But that didn't stop thousands of residents
there from getting nearly $28 million in federal disaster aid. Top winds reached only
47 mph in Miami-Dade County during the Labor Day weekend storm, so damages were limited
to some fallen power lines and uprooted trees, according to FEMA and other
disaster-relief officials. Yet residents used their relief checks to buy more
than 5,000 televisions allegedly destroyed by Frances, as well as 1,440 air
conditioners, 1,360 twin beds, 1,311 washers and dryers, and 831 dining sets.
Time to
dispose of radical feminist pork. It's a mystery why Republicans continue to
put a billion dollars a year of taxpayers' money into the hands of radical feminists who use
it to preach their anti-marriage and anti-male ideology, promote divorce, corrupt the
family court system, and engage in liberal political advocacy.
How radical La Raza gets federal
subsidies: It's bad enough the White House lent its prestige to The Race's annual
conference. But did you know the Bush administration has forked over millions of federal
tax dollars directly to The Race?
Keeping Taxpayer Dollars Grounded
in Reality: Sikorsky's Comanche helicopter had it all: dazzling graphics, wide
political support, great promises. There was just one problem: The helicopter literally
never took off. After 21 years and 8 billion taxpayer dollars, Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld mercifully killed the program last February.
Is the U.S. in Slow Motion to
Socialism? Just the increase in the budget this year is equal to what it cost for NASA to
put a man on the moon. Republicans in Congress have become so enamored with big government that they now
celebrate a budget with a $100-billion increase as a sign of progress.
The government helping out in the
bedroom. Government health insurance now includes trying to improve people's sex lives. I'm
all for improving folks' sex lives, but with our tax money?
Ten
Environmental Organizations that are subsidized by Federal Tax Dollars: The
total subsidy for the ten organizations, some of who are key players targeting the
destruction of Agriculture in the Klamath Basin received $17,411,643 from the United
States Government for biodiversity and save the fish programs.
Useless Conventions. Why should
taxpayers be expected to pay for private political conventions? There is nothing sacred or noble about
political parties, nor do they serve any altruistic purpose. Political parties per se have
no basis in the Constitution, yet they hold tremendous power over our lives. Today's modern two-party
political process has narrowed voter choices and emasculated political courage. The parties enjoy a
virtual stranglehold on national politics, thanks to outrageously restrictive ballot access laws and campaign
finance rules that reward status-quo incumbency. They also receive millions in federal matching funds.
Why Municipal Wi-Fi Is a False Hope:
Government spending of taxpayer dollars in questionable ways is nothing new. But today, a growing number
of U.S. cities have discovered a new method for using money they probably don't have on a project that probably
won't work.
The Cost of Municipal Wi-Fi is High.
A new report says that about half of the initiatives today to create city or county-backed wireless networks will
not even break even, even if they charge end users as much as $25 per month in subscription fees.
Building Unwanted Schools in Illinois.
While taxpayers in Florida's Miami-Dade School District aren't getting the new schools they want and need, taxpayers
in Jersey County, Illinois, are getting new schools they don't want and don't need, despite rejecting —
by a 71–to–29 percent vote — a 1999 school district referendum to build two new schools.
School enrollment in Jersey County has been falling for the past eight years.
New FBI software not usable. A new
FBI computer system called Virtual Case File, designed to help agents share information to ward off terrorist
attacks, may have to be discarded because it doesn't work as designed.
Update:
FBI
Pushed Ahead With Troubled Software. Some FBI officials began raising doubts about the
bureau's attempts to create a computerized case management system as early as 2003, two years before
the $170 million project was abandoned altogether, according to a confidential report to the
House Appropriations Committee. … The bureau went ahead with a $17 million testing program
last December, even though it was clear by then that the software would have to be scrapped,
according to the review.
CBO Forecast
Shows Runaway Spending — — Not Tax Cuts — Causing
Deficits. This surge of new tax revenues for the federal Treasury is having a
limited effect on lowering the federal deficit because spending
continues to grow at a relatively rapid pace.
Why Can't Congress
Stop Spending? Everybody complains about pork, but members of Congress
keep spending because voters do not throw them out of office for doing so. The
rotten system in Congress will change only when the American people change their beliefs
about the proper role of government in our society. Too many members of Congress
believe they can solve all economic problems, cure all social ills, and bring about
worldwide peace and prosperity simply by creating new federal programs. We must
reject unlimited government and reassert the constitutional rule of law if we hope to
halt the spending orgy.
Homosexual Group Fought
Against the Marriage-Amendment, Gets $80,000 Federal Earmark. Tucked deep
inside the mammoth $388.4-billion spending bill that Congress approved last month
is an $80,000 earmark for the San Diego Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community
Center. The money was allocated for counseling services, but the agency's active
political support for gay causes and adamant opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment
are raising questions about the earmark's appropriateness.
Tax
Dollars for Terrorists: Recent reports have revealed that during the
last term of the Clinton administration, U.S. taxpayers inadvertently helped fund
some of the world's largest terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda. In
October 2004, an FBI team procured documents of the Islamic American Relief Agency, a
group suspected of having ties to terrorists. The FBI team found evidence that
at the same time the group was receiving millions of dollars from the U.S. Agency
for International Development, its overseas partners were channeling
a large chunk of funds directly to Osama bin Laden.
Does foreign aid do
more harm than good? A new study concludes that aid has failed to achieve
its goals in the past 50 years. Worse, in many cases aid has been counterproductive.
Most
state money allocated for King-Chavez museum unaccounted for. More than 80 percent
of a $221,200 grant allocated to build a museum honoring civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and
labor organizer Cesar Chavez is unaccounted for, said state Controller Steve Westly. Westly began
his investigation after it was reported that one group received $500,000 for a community
center in San Francisco that was never built.
Teed
off: Federal funds for golf. Where in the Constitution does Congress
find the authority to fund golf? Should the federal government force unwilling and
sometimes financially strapped taxpayers to support charitable organizations they would not
support if allowed a free choice?
Signature
Disappointment: Last week, Republican delegates objected to a draft platform
that bragged about education spending increases worthy of LBJ. A reference to the Great
Society's architect was dropped in favor of boasting about the Bush administration's being
responsible for the biggest boost in federal education spending in 40 years. Although
the 50 percent increase in federal spending over the past three years is far more than
Democrats ever dreamed of committing to Jimmy Carter's Education Department, they complain
that the expensive reform is under-funded.
Read this:
Clinton
gave 500,000 bureaucrats your charge card. A General Accounting
Office report released this month [June 2004] reveals that bureaucrats in the
Veterans Health Administration have been using cards issued by Citibank to
charge movie and baseball tickets, children's clothing, country club outings,
expensive meals and even cases of beer to the taxpayers.
How Large Is the Federal Government's
Debt? If we confine our horizon to the next 75 years, as government
actuaries have traditionally done, the unfunded liability is about $18 trillion in
today's dollars — more than six times as much as the federal government's
outstanding bonds. If we focus only on people who are already participating in the
system (either as beneficiaries or as taxpayers), the government's net debt is more
than $24 trillion — more than twice our current gross domestic product.
David vs.
Goliath: We Must Slay the NEA. Conduct a quick search on the Internet
and you will find dozens of articles arguing against continued funding of the National
Endowment [for] the Arts.
The Editor apologizes to the readers for the
family-unfriendly nature of this article.
College
Displaying Crucifix in Rectum Got Millions in Tax Dollars. Federal taxpayers are subsidizing a
college in New York whose art school is currently displaying works that include a drawing of a man with a
crucifix coming out of his rectum, a drawing of a man with a rosary coming out of his rectum, and rosaries
decorated with penises. … Some of the money has come in the form of grants from the National Endowment
for the Arts.
"Hi"
Culture at an Even Higher Price: A new magazine has been created by the
State Department, at a cost of 4.2 million dollars, in its continuing effort to
force the Middle East region into feelings of goodwill towards all things American.
Update:
"Real men moisturize". So
begins an article on "Sharp Dressed Men" that appeared in a State Department funded magazine aimed at youth in the Arab
world. … You cannot enhance understanding between one people and another by presenting a false version of one side.
Revolution
in America: "I am not an American. There is nothing about me that is
American. I don't want to be an American, and I have just as much right to be here as
any of you." Thus spoke one individual identified as a "Latino activist" during a session
of the "National Conversation on American Pluralism and Identity," a $4 million project
funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Compromising
Quality: The High Cost of Government Drug Purchasing. Recently
revised estimates of the projected cost of the new Medicare prescription drug benefit
have re-ignited congressional debate about the merits and design of the recently enacted
Medicare legislation. One particular argument that has received renewed attention,
both in and out of Congress, is the contention that the new drug benefit will be unnecessarily
costly because the legislation does not allow the government to use the "enormous market
clout" of 41 million Medicare beneficiaries to drive down the cost of drugs.
$9 Trillion Didn't End Poverty — What to
Do? Nine Trillion dollars has been spent fighting the "war on poverty". Yet, as the Census
Bureau just reported, poverty in America is up. So what do the candidates propose we do? Isn't it
time that one of the candidates admit we cannot spend our way out of poverty?
How to Get Federal Spending Under
Control: Spending cannot be restrained without reforming entitlements, which comprise two-thirds
of all federal spending and threaten the country's long-term finances. These programs are projected to
grow by 6 percent annually for the next decade — a rate that would make it nearly impossible
to balance the budget by 2014. Lawmakers seeking to rein in spending should put all entitlement
spending on the table, including the 2003 Medicare drug bill and the 2002 farm bill.
Army Ads
and NASCAR: Racing Away with Your Money. When NASCAR fans pack
the 20 racetracks to attend the 36 races that comprise the 2003 Winston Cup
schedule, the tickets, parking, and t-shirts will not be the greatest costs
assumed by those in attendance. Before the green flag ever falls at a single event,
these, and all other American taxpayers will have already paid over $16 million for
the "Army of One" sponsorship on a Winston Cup stock car.
"PTO
Palace": A Bad Case of Government's Edifice Complex. The proposed
$1.3 billion Patent and Trademark Office headquarters building will set new records for
extravagance. "Interior build-out costs" — the price we pay for making the empty
new building into a useable office — could, on a square foot basis, be more than double
the standard rate for the rest of the federal government. It's not hard to see why,
given the project's lavish granite, hardwood and marble surfacing materials. Other
amenities include exercise facilities and trails, an in-house restaurant, expensive décor
such as fountains and sculptures, and, true to form, open-air amphitheaters that
would make Nero jealous.
The Bad, the Ugly, the
NEA. The National Endowment for the Arts was launched in 1965 supposedly to enhance appreciation
of the arts, but a revealing indication of the trend in the opposite direction occurred in January 1968 when it
was discovered that a painting had hung upside down for days in the White House itself. Even when
suspicions arose, it took another week of debate before its topsy-turvy status could be confirmed.
Taxpayers
Forced to Fund Anti-Bush "Environmentalists". Even though most environmental
groups are determined to oust President Bush from office this November, those groups are
benefiting from an unprecedented level of federal assistance, according to a
Washington, D.C., research group.
Five Good Reasons to Close Down The Department
of Commerce. The Department's unacceptable strategic plan and a succession of negative GAO and IG
reports all clearly indicate that Congress will simply waste more taxpayer money by continuing to fund
this agency.
Homeland
Security Funding Part I: Money is Not Flowing to the Places in Danger. Most
of the homeland security money Congress has appropriated since Sept. 11, 2001, has failed
to reach the local governments that need it most, while much of the funding has
gone to places that face only a minimal threat from terrorism.
On the other hand...
Mosques awarded Homeland Security grants.
While the European Union investigates mosques for ties to Islamic terrorism, the U.S. government is giving mosques
security grants that are designed to protect churches, synagogues and other nonprofit groups from Islamic terror.
No
Member of Congress Voted for a Net Reduction in Federal Spending ...for the
third year running. When it came to controlling deficit spending last year,
words were abundant but deeds were in short supply on Capitol Hill.
A Lesson in
Waste: Where Does All the Federal Education Money Go? According
to the Department of Education, its official mission is "to ensure equal access to
education and to promote educational excellence throughout the Nation," a mission broad
enough to encompass almost anything.
Editor's Note:
The chart below is an excerpt from this report. These are just the top seven
agencies spending our money on "education".
2002 Federal Education Spending in the Top Seven Departments
Department of Education $46,324,352,000
Department of Health and Human Services $22,858,490,000
Department of Agriculture $11,896,064,000
Department of Labor $6,364,200,000
Department of Defense $4,749,222,000
Department of Energy $3,625,124,000
National Science Foundation $3,230,812,000
Corporate Welfare: Many
corporate welfare recipients are among the biggest companies in America, including the Big 3 automakers,
Boeing, Archer Daniels Midland, and now-bankrupt Enron. Most of the massive handouts to agricultural
producers go to large farming businesses. Once companies are successful in securing a stream of taxpayer
goodies, they defend their stake year after year with the help of their state's congressional delegation.
FCC is on the Verge of
Giving Away Billions. The plan would circumvent FCC policy and federal law that requires new
spectrum to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Last week, Verizon Wireless stated that it would
start its bid at $5 billion if an auction for the 1.9 GHz spectrum was held.
Welfare Turns Into a Suite Deal:
The Bush administration and the Republican-led House have taken steps toward providing an unprecedented taxpayer-funded
handout to private companies. The energy bill, which passed the House and will be taken up again by the
Senate in January, contains nearly $30 billion in such benefits, including $11.3 billion in subsidies
for oil and gas companies that just had one of their most profitable years on record.
Bush's $5 trillion problem: Rising
deficit troubles GOP. Even before President Bush's next budget hits Capitol Hill, lawmakers even
in his own party are mounting barricades against what many see as a spending binge that's settling into
a habit.
New
Jersey's "Sex, Etc."— Your tax dollars at work. "Sex, Etc." gives us Jerseyans something to
be ashamed of besides the governor. The cyber-version is available to anyone with a computer, while the
monthly print version is found in many local schools and libraries. It's hard to write about this X-rated
publication, whose purpose seems to be to persuade "teens" — or anyone else who reads it, regardless of
age — to practice sex unrestrained by morality.
GOP Senate rivals back away from
Bush: "Any government that makes its children pay the bills for what it wants to consume today
is almost on its face immoral," Sen. Steve Rauschenberger said. "It's one thing to experience short-term
deficits in a time when you have both a recession and a war, but the Congress and the president both need to
face up to financial discipline."
City pays out half a million to ask our
opinions. How long is too long to wait in line at the recycling center? What do you think
of Winterfest? How long has it been since you replaced the flapper in your toilet? During the past
18 months, the cash-strapped city of Seattle has spent more than a half-million dollars asking citizens
those questions and others.
Blimp is Right. The
bureaucrats probably didn't realize what they were doing when they shelled out $600,000 this year to send a
Medicare blimp touring around the country. I don't mean just the money. The blimp money is just
part of the $30 million that Medicare spends annually to let Medicare recipients know they're
on Medicare.
The Cost of Safety:
The Washington Post took a look at where our "homeland security" spending over the last two years has gone. Our
tax dollars have bought:- A boat for a volunteer fire department in Virginia ($350,000)
- A computerized car-towing system for Washington, D.C. ($300,000)
- Eight large-screen plasma televisions for an emergency operations
center in suburban Maryland ($160,000)
The
embarrassing GOP: This Republican Congress, in addition to increasing
spending on entitlements and expanding big government - like the Democrats
they once criticized - also dished out $95 billion in tax breaks and
pork-barrel projects.
How Washington Increased Spending by Nearly $800 Billion in just four years.
[Summary]
[Entire report]
"Most outrageous" ways feds spend
money: The Libertarian Party releases Washington's Top 10 expenditures. For example,
spending $3.6 million for "team-building" exercises for the Postal Service. At a series of employee
retreats, hundreds of Postal workers played children's games, sang 'We Are Family,' wrote Christmas carols, etc.
President Bush's $15 Billion Package to Fight AIDS in
Africa: Pardon my lack of enthusiasm. It was only last year that this same president passed a
gluttonous $246 billion farm subsidies bill, legislation that's loaded with political patronage, and that will
wreak far more devastation on the African continent than this AIDS legislation could ever hope to make better.
The Long Trail of Sibel Edmonds at the FBI: Sibel Edmonds, a
Turkish-American, was hired by the FBI soon after Sept. 11 and given top-secret security clearance to translate
some of the reams of documents seized by FBI agents who have been rounding up suspected terrorists across the United
States and abroad. Edmonds says that to her amazement, from the day she started the job, she was told repeatedly
by one of her supervisors that there was no urgency - that she should take longer to translate documents so that
the department would appear overworked and understaffed. That way, it would receive a larger budget
for the next year.
Foreigners hit jackpot at
UN: Perks make life lush for overseas workers.
Capital Offense: The
annual Cherry Festival in Traverse City, Michigan, costs 202,000 federal tax dollars even though numerous
corporate sponsors are also funding it.
Privatize the Space Program: The space
shuttle was built and maintained to please clashing constituencies, not to do a clearly defined job for which
there was an economic and technical need.
Challenger,
Columbia … what next? When NASA's environmental concerns resulted in the
tragic deaths of the Columbia crew, it wasn't the first time a space shuttle crew was
lost because of misguided regulations and fads.
Americans
reject public transportation, choose autos. The tens of billions of
dollars invested in transit in recent years have done little but leave surface transportation
funding highly unbalanced. Though we travel nearly 100 times as much by auto as
by transit, we spend less than four times as much on highways as on transit.
Welfare - Broadening
the Reform: Since President Lyndon Johnson launched the War on
Poverty more than 30 years ago, the United States has "invested"
some $7.95 trillion
in programs that provide cash, food, housing, and medical and social services to poor
and low-income Americans. But while the nation was pouring this flood of resources
into the War on Poverty most social problems got worse, not better. A deluge of
illegitimacy, crime, drug abuse, and welfare dependency besieged American communities.
[Part 1]
[Part 2]
Flying high on the public's
dime: Some public officials prefer to bypass freeway congestion by flying in government owned helicopters.
Why Buying
Government Bonds is a Bad Investment for Yourself, and Our Future: The
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spends 80% of its budget
on administrative overhead, while private charities are prosecuted for fraud if
more than 20-30% of donations goes for staff. In California, there are an average
of 132 administrators for every 100 teachers in the public schools, while there
are only 18 per 100 teachers in the parochial schools. Average cost per high-school
student: $5200 public vs. $2200 private.
Get DSHS off the phone. Does one
government agency really need to operate over 400 different hotlines at a cost to taxpayers of more
than $350,000 each year?
Reinventing government II:
Most people on the outside of government, looking in, will say that when they have to contact a government agency —
from the IRS to the local DMV — they would prefer to visit the dentist. On a recent visit to a Cabinet-level
department I found the halls filled with people who did not appear to be working. Partially overheard
conversations were about break time, vacations, sick leave and other benefits.
Senate
spa gets "expensive" facelift: Lawmakers are tight-lipped about this
exclusive luxury facility, so the cost of the renovations is anyone's guess.
NYC
Attack Relief Program Rife With Fraud. A $100 million federal program
to reimburse New Yorkers for air conditioners, filters, vacuums and other air-purifying
tools after the World Trade Center collapse is rife with fraud and misuse, government
officials say.
Washington's $782 Billion
Spending Spree: Politicians who want to spend even more money are
telling taxpayers that it's time to sacrifice. To which taxpayers should
reply: "You first."
Why
are we paying for Planned Parenthood? Planned Parenthood has received in the last two
years — that they've reported — over $500 million in taxpayer money. America
needs to wake up to this disturbing fact! On one hand, Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion
provider in America, is funded in large part by our hard-earned tax dollars. This money is allocated
from Congress. Then Planned Parenthood turns around and sues Congress for passing a law
banning partial-birth abortion.
Prisoner Lawsuits Take Bite Out of Taxpayer
Funds: With nothing but time on their hands and little to lose, prison inmates with access to
taxpayer-funded law libraries and free legal advice are clogging up the court system.
Fugitive Felons
Allowed to Collect Social Security Checks for Others: Thousands of fugitive felons, from kidnappers
to drug abusers, are being allowed by the government to cash Social Security checks and spend money for minors and
disabled Americans who can't manage their own accounts, federal records show.
National Science Foundation squanders another
$105,000 of your money studying mastodon tusks! Of what use is this knowledge to your typical
American taxpayer?
Report: Federal Agencies Wasted $19 Billion
Last Year: A half-dozen of the largest federal agencies squandered $19 billion through
erroneous payments last year, and the total amount wasted is probably far greater, congressional auditors
said Friday [9/6/2002].
The Economic Assault of the Welfare State on
the Traditional American Family: An unmarried mother, with or without a job, receives far higher
total income entitlement than if married to a lower income husband. AFDC, food stamps, Medicaid, housing,
utilities, and WIC subsidies allow comfort without work. Most of these benefits remain in whole or in
part, even if she goes to work, along with the added entitlements of earned income tax credit, plus
transportation and child care subsidies.
Kiss
your money goodbye: Never believe the Democrats when they say
that the country cannot "afford" a tax cut.
Mouse-less
FBI: As the United States moves closer to a paperless society in which we
communicate electronically with the other side of the world in seconds and where "snail mail"
describes the U.S. Postal Service's glacial speed, one assumes the government's top
agencies would be equipped with the latest available computer technology. Not only is
this far from true, the government cannot even keep track of the computers it does have.
FBI computer system turns into unproductive
money pit: The FBI spent millions of dollars on its massive computer systems without adequate
assurance they could meet intended goals, were being developed on schedule or were within established budgets,
the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General said yesterday [12/19/2002].
Happy 25th Birthday,
Department of Energy. Time to Retire! The DOE has grown to a bloated $21 billion
budget per year, with multiple missions and questionable priorities. Its SynFuels program spent half a
billion dollars on alternative fuel research before being abandoned.
America's Biggest
Crooks: Her Politicians. The Enron case made headlines because fraud and deception of such
magnitude is fairly unusual in the corporate world. Washington fraud and deception of a much greater
magnitude doesn't make the headlines because fraud and deception in government is standard practice.
That's what's so disgusting when politicians posture and demand that something be done to ensure honest
corporate accounting practices.
Mass
Transit Mess: The "Feds," it seems, possess a kind of magical power — call
it an inverted Midas touch — that ends up destroying nearly everything it comes
into contact with. They can't even give money away without attaching conditions
that assure failure. The federal government's role in "assisting" public transit
has been variously described as inconsistent and ill-conceived, self-defeating,
ineffective, a total failure.
Garbage In, Regulation Out: When
it comes to cooking books, the feds are gourmets.
Your wasted highway tax dollars at work:
Just south of Gainesville, Florida, along Highway 441 crossing Paynes Prairie, is a $3.6 million dollar
project to protect frogs! On both sides of the road they are building a 5 foot high frog wall with
a frog-lip on the top designed to keep frogs from becoming road kill.
The Outrage Goes Camping! The United States
Forest Service has been using road "maintenance" funds not to "maintain" or build roads, but to destroy them.
Your Taxes Fund South American Bailout:
You may have seen minor media coverage last week focusing on the economic problems in South America, particularly Uruguay
and Brazil. The U.S. Treasury, acting through the Exchange Stabilization Fund and without congressional approval, gave
Uruguay $1.5 billion to ease the impact of a bank shutdown.
NOW got federal tax dollars: Feminist
group received anti-tobacco money during Clinton years.
The Case against OSHA:
While safe workplaces and healthy workers are important, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration
(OSHA) has not contributed to the furtherance of either. Businesses have spent over $100 billion
attempting to meet OSHA mandates since the agency was created in 1970, but the number of serious accidents
(those involving losing one or more day's work), has stayed at 4 per 100 workers during the
past quarter century. In other words, OSHA has been of little benefit to workers' safety.
Cronyism 101: The Perks
of Being "Disadvantaged". The "Disadvantaged Business Enterprise" program, run by the U.S.
Department of Transportation and adopted by states and cities across the country, is one of the most
atrociously corrupt government endeavors in existence. Opportunists of all colors have used the
racial set-aside law to win billions of dollars worth of federal contracts for themselves and their
friends under the guise of being "victims."
Senate Kills Multibillion-Dollar
Workplace Rules: The Senate late Tuesday (3/6/01) killed multibillion-dollar "worker protection"
rules imposed in the final days of the Clinton administration.
The Environmental Propaganda
Agency: Seven years after the U.S. Congress ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to conduct
a cost-benefit analysis of the Clean Air Act, the EPA submitted a report greatly exaggerating its
achievements. The agency's 1999 follow-up study on air pollution continues to place bureaucratic
imperatives above the search for truth.
OSHA's Ergonomics Rule: A
Costly Unfunded Mandate for the States: The broadest and most costly workplace regulation ever
published will now cost even more than OSHA had originally estimated; worse, this estimate of the total cost
is at the low end when compared with forecasts prepared by other agencies and the private sector.
The Costs Of NAFTA Are Driving
Home: State politicians and federal judges are going the limit to protect us all from the
horrendous highway hazards of talking on cell phones and not wearing seat belts. How about manifesting an
equal enthusiasm to protect us against an invasion of 4.5 million large trucks that have not passed U.S.
safety inspections?
Clinton Gets Harlem Office for
$354,000 per year. For ten years. At your expense.
Update:
Harlem to Clinton: you're
ruining us. Bill Clinton's decision to site his office in the largely black Manhattan
neighbourhood of Harlem, as a gesture of solidarity with African-Americans, appears to have backfired.
Dozens of angry blacks demonstrated last week outside the building that houses the former president's staff,
claiming that his move had led to the gentrification of the area and increased the price of homes beyond
their reach.
Clinton
Creates More Monuments: Showing no intention of remaining an idle lame duck,
President Clinton acted unilaterally, placing another 1 million acres off
limits to the public.
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