Federal & Military Personnel Owe $3.4 Billion In Unpaid Taxes

From postal workers to congressional staffers, federal workers failed to pay billions in taxes in 2010. According to records released by the Internal Revenue Service, active and retired federal employees and military personnel combined owed $3,420,168,684 in unpaid taxes for 2010, an increase of more than 3 percent over the previous year.

As has been the case in past years, the agency with employees who owe the most in unpaid taxes is the U.S. Postal Service, where 25,640 employees owe nearly $270 million. Employees in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives owe more the $10 million. Active duty military owe more than $100 million.

$78,000 Per Bus Shelter

The city of Grants Pass, Oregon, will spend $388,000 in federal money, $77,600 apiece, for five bus shelters along its small, four-route bus system.

“Around here, that’s enough to build a three bedroom house,” commented Grants Pass Councilman Dan de Young, “What we should do is build a house at each station, and if you miss your last bus, you can stay there overnight."

Federal restrictions were one of the reasons for the sharp cost increase. According to the specialist, “Those involved with the project at the time [local and federal authorities] underestimated the complexities of a seemingly simple project.”  For example, due to federal rules, the city found it was not eligible to directly administer federal highway funds which prevented it from doing in-house design work, bidding, purchasing, and construction. This restriction added costs for private consulting fees.

$35.6 Million Streetcar

St. Louis is receiving more than $35 million in federal funds for “an old-fashioned style-trolley system” that will run on a 2.2-mile line from the Missouri History Museum to the University City Library. The federal funds for the project include a $25 million Federal Transit Administration Urban Circulator grant, a $3.5 million New Markets Tax Credit, and $7.1 million in other federal transportation grants. The federal amount will pay more than half of the project’s $44 million construction cost.

Some residents say the trolley is a poor use of federal money and others question its financial viability. Others note the library and museum to be connected by the trolley already have nearby MetroLink light-rail stops and bus service. “It’s duplicating public transit,” said Tom Sullivan, who lives in University City and opposes the project. “I can’t see what type of benefit that would bring.”

The project’s supporters are “vague about what happens if the trolleys don’t make enough money” to cover the administration budget, but have suggested “the difference could be made up by increasing revenues from the sales tax.”

$697,177 Musical

The Civilians, a New York City-based theatre company, received $697,177 from the National Science Foundation to create a musical about climate change and biodiversity. The musical opened this year at the Kansas City Repertory Theater.

Unfortunately, taxpayer dollars did not go very far in advancing any sort of scientific dialogue. One reviewer, who was eager to see the play, quickly dismissed the musical as a waste of money.

Facts About America's "Poor"

For two decades, census officials have announced in most years that more than 35 million Americans were poor. Last year’s number was 43.5 million. But there is a wide chasm between the public’s concept of poverty and “poverty” as it is defined by the Census Bureau.

The public generally thinks of poverty as substantial material hardship such as homelessness, or malnutrition and chronic hunger. In reality, the vast majority of those identified as poor by the annual census report did not experience significant material deprivation.

Here are some surprising facts about Americans defined as “poor” by the Census Bureau, all taken from various government reports:

• Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
• Fully 92 percent of poor households have a microwave; two-thirds have at least one DVD player and 70 percent have a VCR.
• Nearly 75 percent have a car or truck; 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks.
• Four out of five poor adults assert they were never hungry at any time in the prior year due to lack of money for food.
• Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite television.
• Half have a personal computer; one in seven have two or more computers.
• More than half of poor families with children have a video game system such as Xbox or PlayStation.
• Just under half — 43 percent — have Internet access.
• A third have a widescreen plasma or LCD TV.
• One in every four has a digital video recorder such as TiVo. 

Another Bridge To Nowhere

More than ten percent of the bridges in Dayton, Ohio, are deficient as 13 cars drive over one of Dayton’s 184 deficient bridges every second. Yet, mere miles away from the city, the federal government is spending $520,000 to restore an unused bridge that is not even connected to a road or trail.

Fixing Stevenson Road Covered Bridge in Greene County, Ohio, will cost $650,000. The National Historic Covered Bridge Preservation (NHCBP) program is providing $520,000 and the county is paying $130,000.

Controversy surrounds accepting the federal money “because the bridge is not on a road, is in a fairly remote area, doesn’t carry vehicles anymore, and isn’t tied to any park, tourist attraction or walk/bike trail.”  On one side of the bridge, “No Trespassing signs warn people away.” 

“I don’t know why they would do that, because nobody uses it,” said Dorothy Pitzer, who has lived uphill from the bridge for 40 years. “It sits over there by itself."

Emergency Broadcast System

Here are some excerpts from a John Stossel article:

"The Emergency Broadcast System, mandatory for all TV and radio stations and cell phone services, costs hundreds of millions (they won't give us the exact number but "modernizing" it for cell phones alone cost $106 million). Yet the emergency warning has never been activated nationwide. Two times it was tested and both were failures. On 9/11, it wasn't even activated!

Did this put Americans in extra danger? No, because fortunately, we still have a private sector. After the World Trade Center was hit, a thousand radio and TV stations broadcast information about the attack with speed and thoroughness that federal bureaucrats could never match.

Did the Feds then sheepishly apologize, and announce that there was no longer a need for an expensive government warning system, given our myriad of radio and TV stations, not to mention Facebook, Twitter, and other miracles of the Internet? No, of course not! The bureaucracy never shrinks."

$1.3 Million For Snack Food Manufacturer

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Commerce are spending over $1.3 million to help the world’s largest snack food maker build a Greek yogurt factory in New York.

Last year, PepsiCo Inc. earned net revenues of $66 billion. Looking to expand their earnings, the corporation is now teaming up with the German company Theo Müller Group to sell “premium yogurt products in the U.S.

Considering the company’s billions of dollars in annual profits and the plentiful demand for the Greek yogurt nationally, Pepsico clearly does not need handouts from the government to subsidize its private business.

$516,000 Video Game

Whatever feelings high school prom may elicit, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has provided taxpayers with a chance to relive the occasion. In 2012, the agency supported the creation of “Prom Week,” a video game simulating all the social interactions of the event. The project used part of a $516,000 grant from NSF.

$1.5 Billion For Free Phones

“It’s easy to get your free government cell phone service and a free mobile phone,” declares a website that offers phones on behalf of six wireless providers. “Fill out the form… You should receive your phone in just a few days. You’ll never receive a bill and your minutes will replenish every month.”

Thanks to Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), some Americans are entitled to free or reduced-price cell phone service, and the program is ballooning out of control. What began as an effort in the 1930s to ensure all Americans had access to telecommunications service has morphed into a massive entitlement.

Funding comes through the “universal service charge” tacked on to the phone bills of most Americans. As more people sign up for the subsidized phones, the charge increases, and for some cell phone users amounts to over $10 per year. Americans are now paying $1.5 billion annually for the subsidized cell phone program, called Lifeline. Just in the last year, enrollment grew 43 percent to 16.5 million participants.

With providers incentivized to maximize the number of phones they hand out, significant fraud and abuse have plagued the program in recent years. One of the most prominent flaws in the program has been the high number of people with more than one free cellphone. An audit of 3.6 million Lifeline subscribers discovered 269,000 duplicates — seven percent of the subscribers signed up for service with more than one carrier. In other instances, households had multiple people each with free phones. Some customers may have both subsidized landline service and cell phone service.

NYC Tenured Teachers

In a defiant raspberry to the city Department of Education (DOE) — and taxpayers — disgraced teacher Alan Rosenfeld, 66, won’t retire. Deemed a danger to kids, the typing teacher with a $10 million real estate portfolio has not been allowed in a classroom for more than a decade, but still collects $100,049 a year in city salary — plus health benefits, a growing pension nest egg, vacation and sick pay.

Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Cuomo can call for better teacher evaluations until they’re blue-faced, but Rosenfeld and six peers with similar gigs costing about $650,000 a year in total salaries are untouchable. Under a system shackled by protections for tenured teachers, they cannot be fired, the DOE says.

Accused in 2001 of making lewd comments and ogling eighth-grade girls’ butts at IS 347 in Queens, Rosenfeld was slapped with a week off without pay after the DOE failed to produce enough witnesses at a hearing. But instead of returning Rosenfeld to the classroom, the DOE kept him in one of its notorious “rubber rooms,” where teachers in misconduct cases sat idle or napped. As The Post reported, Rosenfeld kept busy managing his many investment properties and working on his law practice. He’s a licensed attorney and real-estate broker.

Since the DOE closed the teacher holding pens in June 2010, those facing disciplinary charges were scattered to offices and given tasks such as answering phones, filing and photocopying.

But Rosenfeld and six others whose cases have long been closed are “permanently reassigned.” Rosenfeld reports to the Division of School Facilities, which maintains DOE buildings, in a warehouse in Long Island City.

Asked what work he does, Rosenfeld laughingly told his friend, “Oh, I Xeroxed something the other day.”

Rosenfeld could have retired four years ago at 62, but his pension grows by $1,700 for each year he stays — even without teaching. If he quit today, his annual pension would total an estimated $85,400.

Unused Grant Accounts

The government pays as much as $2 million annually in monthly service fees to maintain about 28,000 phantom grant accounts that are empty and have expired. Each of these accounts have a zero-dollar balance and their authority to operate has expired under law, yet because they have not been closed out, the federal government pays about $173,000 per month to maintain them.

The agency that maintains an expired or fully spent grant simply needs to submit a code to close out the account. To help users, system reports indicate accounts waiting to be closed with a special symbol. Until the accounts are closed, they continue to accumulate monthly service fees.

Bailed Out Tourist Boat Sinking Private Business

Over $9 million in federal money was earmarked to a failing for-profit ferry verging on bankruptcy, which very few people benefited from and a small town in Alaska did not want. To make matters worse, this project is threatening the economic health of once vibrant local tour and ferry operator businesses.

Operating about one hundred miles south of Anchorage, the federally funded ferry duplicates and threatens services offered by existing private businesses and the state’s own ferry service. The ferry, Kachemak Voyager - which is managed by the Seldovia VillageTribe - runs between Seldovia and Homer, towns 16 miles apart from one another across the bay.

Since 2010, the $3.3 million Kachemak Voyager has frustrated Seldovia’s two other private tour and ferry operators who had run successful businesses for years. The companies are unable to compete with the ferry’s millions in taxpayer support, which lowers Voyager’s ticket prices. “The tribe was supposed to build a ferry for moving people, cars and freight. Instead they took that money and bought a tour boat,” said Tim Cashman, owner of Alaska Coastal Marine Services, one of Seldovia’s two private tour operators. “It has taken a 30-40 percent bite out of my business - our losses are in the hundreds of thousands. The federal government has actually borrowed money from my children to put me out of business.”