Government Bans Front-Yard Vegetable Garden

May the government prohibit you from peacefully and productively using your own property to feed your family?
 
For 17 years, Hermine Ricketts and her husband Tom Carroll used their front yard to grow food for their own personal consumption. And for 17 years, nobody had a problem with it . . . until now. In May 2013, Miami Shores Village, Fla. amended its ordinance to make clear that front-yard vegetable gardens were prohibited. Only vegetables are explicitly banned—trees, fruit and garden gnomes are just fine.

A few days later, the Village’s code enforcement department served Hermine and Tom with a notice informing them they were in violation of the front-yard vegetable ban. The department threatened them with fines of $50 per day if they did not destroy their beautiful garden. Unable to bear the cost of such hefty fines, Hermine and Tom had no option but to surrender to the government’s demands and uproot the garden.

The battle, however, is far from over. Hermine and Tom are part of a nationwide movement of small-scale food producers and consumers who are tired of the government dictating what foods they can grow, sell, and eat. On November 19, 2013, they joined with the Institute for Justice to challenge Miami Shores’ senseless front-yard vegetable garden ban. Their case aims to vindicate the right of all Americans to peacefully use their own property to support their own families.

Internet Sales Tax Legislation

If you oppose Internet Sales Tax Legislation, sign/send eBay letter at www.ebaymainstreet.com/action-center.

Medicare Fraud

In 2006 Medicare announced that only 7 percent of its payments were a result of fraud. Two years later, The New York Times reported that it was actually 31.5 percent. Do you think a privately run insurance company would take three years to notice that one-third of its payouts had been obtained by fraud? But with federal programs, there’s a powerful incentive not to look for fraud. That would merely vindicate critics of big government!

In 2012 Medicare investigators noticed that more than a billion dollars in home health care payments for 2008 had gone to one single county in Florida – more than all such payments made to the rest of the entire country. Do you think it would take five years for a private insurer to figure out it had been scammed out of $1 billion by a few health care professionals in one county? Wherever there’s a government program, there’s a gigantic opportunity for criminals.

In a recent press release the Department of Justice listed the following criminal convictions for Medicare and Medicaid fraud against the taxpayer in just a four-day period ending Nov. 7:

– Nov. 7, 2013:
Mehran Javidan, owner of Acure, a home health care company in Oak Park, Mich., was paid more than $2.2 million from Medicare based on fraudulent physical therapy files he submitted between December 2008 and November 2010.

– Nov. 7, 2013:
Javed Rehman, Tausif Rahman and Muhammad Ahmad – no relation to the Tsarneav brothers – fraudulently obtained Medicare beneficiary information to bill Medicare for home health services, swindling approximately $13.8 million from Medicare.

– Nov. 7, 2013:
Eliza Lozano Lumbreras, San Juanita Gallegos Lozano, Manuel Anthony Puig and Romelia Puig used their operation of the Mission Clinic and La Hacienda Family Clinic to submit false claims to Medicare and Medicaid, stealing approximately half a million dollars from the taxpayers between 2001 and 2006.

– Nov. 6, 2013:
Karen Kallen-Zury, Daisy Miller and Christian Coloma were convicted for receiving approximately $40 million from Medicare for patients not eligible for psychiatric treatment because they were not severely mentally ill.

– Nov. 6, 2013:
Jose Rojo, Antonio Macli, Jorge Macli and Sandra Huarte in Miami paid patient recruiters to refer ineligible Medicare beneficiaries to their clinic for services that were never provided. They were paid more than $11 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare.

– Nov. 4, 2013:
Godwin Umotong, Leslie Omagbemi, Munda Massaquoi, Comfort Gates, Ovsanna Agopian and Boghos Babadjanian were convicted of fraudulently billing Medicare of millions of dollars for office visits and diagnostic tests that were never performed, more than $1.3 million of which Medicare paid.

– Nov. 4, 2013:
William Dale Sidener was convicted of submitting fraudulent bills to Medicare and receiving $4,677.00 in payments for services not performed.

Given this abuse of Medicare/Medicaid, can you imagine what will happen with ObamaCare.

Government Programs

Government Ineptitude

The Washington Post reports that the federal employee retirement system paid more than $400 million in benefits over the past few years to deceased retirees. On the same page, we learn that despite the U.S. government’s $7 billion investment in combating heroin cultivation in Afghanistan, the trade is booming. Last week, the Brookings Institution published a study suggesting that Cash for Clunkers was a failure, costing taxpayers $1.4 million for each of the 3,676 jobs created.

Millions in Medicare to Deceased, Illegal Immigrants

The federal government has paid tens of millions of dollars in Medicare benefits to dead people and illegal immigrants, according to a pair of reports from federal watchdogs released on Thursday. The Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services paid out $23 million to beneficiaries after their deaths in 2011, according to one report from HHS’ inspector general.

Another report tallied more than $28 million in payments from 2009 to 2011 to individuals who were in the country illegally. In all, CMS paid Medicare benefits to 4,139 illegal immigrants and 17,403 deceased people, according to the two reports. The two IG reports were the latest in the office’s ongoing investigation into the issue. Reports released in January found CMS had paid $125 million to illegal immigrants and prison inmates.

National Park Service's Wasteful Spending

"Taxpayers shell out $52,000  a year to maintain the home of Black History Month founder Carter Woodson. Yet the tiny, dilapidated row house in northwest Washington D.C., with a "No Trespassing" sign and iron bars blocking the front door and windows hasn’t seen a visitor in the seven years since the National Park Service bought it  for $2.1 million and designated it a National Historic Site." Click here to read Fox News report.

Disaster Plan For Magician's Rabbit

Marty Hahne, a children's magician in Ozark, MO, has a small white rabbit, which he pulls out of a hat in his show. According to the USDA, that makes him an "exhibitor" of animals, and it means he must have a license. Recently, the government added a new condition to his license: Hahne must write a disaster plan for his rabbit. Click here to read The Washington Post article.

"For Hahne, the saga has provided a lesson in one of Washington’s bad old habits — the tendency to pile new rules on top of old ones, with officials using good intentions and vague laws to expand the reach of the federal bureaucracy."

$9.7 Billion Loss on General Motors Bailout

The U.S. government has booked a loss of $9.7 billion on the nearly $50 billion bailout of U.S. automaker General Motors, according to a quarterly report to Congress on Tuesday. In 2009, the U.S. Treasury extended $49.5 billion in loans to GM in exchange for $2.1 billion in preferred stock and a 60.8 percent equity stake.

Treasury has since whittled down its stake in GM through a series of stock sales. Those sales have all taken place below the price Treasury needed to break even on its GM investment, resulting in the loss, according to Tuesday's report from the Special Inspector General overseeing the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.

IRS Wastes Billions

The Internal Revenue Service paid up to $13.6 billion in bogus claims for the Earned Income Tax Credit last year and as much as $132.6 billion over the past decade, according to an internal audit that already has some members of Congress questioning how the agency will be able to administer Obamacare.

IRS problems with the tax credit are not new. In fact, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration said it warned officials about the problems in 2011 — but two years later, the agency still has not solved the situation and remains in violation of one of President Obama’s executive orders. Indeed, the IRS has not established annual targets for reducing the payments, which is required by law, nor is the agency complying with requirements that it report to auditors each quarter on any EITC payments.

The large error rate left some lawmakers questioning whether the agency will be able to administer the tens of billions of dollars in health care tax credits that are part of the Affordable Care Act. “That the IRS can’t figure out how to rein in the improper Earned Income Tax Credit payments does not bode well for the $1.1 trillion in ObamaCare subsidies,” said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee.

He said if the error rate in Obamacare subsidies is as big as it is in the EITC, that could mean $250 billion would be wasted in health care payments. The size of the erroneous payments was staggering to lawmakers. At more than $13 billion a year, the bogus tax claims are more than the entire budget of the Environmental Protection Agency or the Interior or Labor departments.

“The waste outlined in this report — more than $13 billion a year — equals or exceeds the annual budgets of some federal agencies,” said Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican and Congress‘ chief waste-watcher. “Before we ask taxpayers to send even more of their own money to Washington, we must do more to prevent these egregious examples of waste.”

U.S. Debt Tops $17 Trillion

U.S. debt jumped a record $328 billion on Thursday, the first day the federal government was able to borrow money under the deal President Obama and Congress sealed this week. The debt now equals $17.075 trillion, according to figures the Treasury Department posted online on Friday.

Senate's Elevator Operators Cost $1.2 Million

Even after Senate said the jobs in the senators-only elevators were nonessential in 2011, the jobs still exist. Over the last five years the cost of those jobs has reached $1.2 million. The longest serving operator has seen a salary increase every year of those five years, earning over $210,000.

$634 Million For Obamacare Sites

Digital Trends has an informative article on the cost of building the website Healthcare.gov which has been plagued with problems. As with most government programs, the cost has soared from an initial estimate of $93.7 million to $634 million. And in as much as it does not work as advertised, many more dollars will be spent trying to fix it.

"Given the complicated nature of federal contracts, it’s difficult to make a direct comparison between the cost to develop Healthcare.gov and the amount of money spent building private online businesses. But for the sake of putting the monstrous amount of money into perspective, here are a few figures to chew on: Facebook, which received its first investment in June 2004, operated for a full six years before surpassing the $600 million mark in June 2010. Twitter, created in 2006, managed to get by with only $360.17 million in total funding until a $400 million boost in 2011. Instagram ginned up just $57.5 million in funding before Facebook bought it for (a staggering) $1 billion last year. And LinkedIn and Spotify, meanwhile, have only raised, respectively, $200 million and $288 million."

Update (10/11/13): Canadian officials fired IT firm behind troubled Obamacare website.

$5 Million in Crystal as Government Shuts Down

On the eve of the government shutdown, the State Department went on a spending spree, awarding a contract worth up to $5 million for fancy crystal stem and barware for its embassies around the world. A five-year contract was awarded to a man named Simon Pearce for $5 million dollars to create more than 12,000 high-end custom crystals and barware for US embassies.

At the end of the fiscal year, federal departments and agencies rush to finish off their allotted funds. They all operate under a policy known in Washington as “use it or lose it”. When a federal entity does not use part of its budget, it loses it forever. So, they waste away instead of being forced to slim down. That’s what happened in the 2012 fiscal year when government contracts ballooned from $45 billion prior to the last week of September to a whopping $100 billion in the final days of the fiscal year.

Social Security Administration Disability Fraud

A two-year investigation by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has found widespread fraud in the Social Security Administration's Disability Program. The fraud is so rampant, and disability cases have so proliferated in recent years, that the Social Security's Disability Trust Fund may run out of money in only 18 months, says Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., whose office undertook the investigation.

The alleged  fraud highlights an endemic problem in Social Security disability benefit awards. The Coburn report says a random examination of 300 case files by Congressional staff found more than a quarter of  the case files “failed to properly address insufficient, contradictory, or incomplete evidence,” suggesting a high rate of fraud or abuse. Disability payments have skyrocketed across the U.S. in recent years. At the end of August 2013, more than 14 million Americans were receiving disability benefits.

Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.

HealthCare.gov Official Facebook Page

You can follow people's comments on Obamacare at www.facebook.com/Healthcare.gov. In my opinion, the following comment sums up the problem(s) we can expect with the government running our healthcare system:

"How is it that Facebook, which is a non-essential social networking web site, can reliably handle BILLIONS of electronic interactions per second, but the Healthcare.gov site, which is literally the very heart of the Obamacare program wasn't ready for the obvious millions of visitors that you had to know it would be receiving?"

Civil Forfeiture

For over 30 years, Terry Dehko has successfully run a grocery store in Fraser, Michigan, with his daughter Sandy. On January 22, 2013, Terry and Sandy woke up to find that all of the money in the store’s bank account had been cleaned out (more than $35,000) without warning or explanation. Later, they learned that the federal government had seized the account using a process known as civil forfeiture.

Civil forfeiture is the governmental power to take property suspected of being involved in crime. Unlike criminal forfeiture, in which the ill-gotten gains of criminal activity may be seized after an individual is convicted of a crime, prosecutors can use civil forfeiture to take property without having to convict or even charge a person with any crime. The property taken by the government is then used to pad the budgets of the very agencies that seize it.

In this case, the government claimed that Terry and Sandy violated federal banking laws by making frequent deposits of their store’s cash receipts in amounts less than $10,000. Banks are required to report larger deposits to the IRS. But it’s not illegal merely to deposit lesser amounts when one has a legitimate business purpose for doing so like Terry and Sandy did. Had the government simply bothered to ask, it would have learned that they were not trying to avoid those banking regulations. But it didn’t ask and, eight months later, the family is still waiting for hearing before a judge, which the Constitution requires in order to protect innocent people from wrongful takings like this one.

Unfortunately, when federal agencies seize cash, federal civil forfeiture laws, as currently written, provide no prompt way to get a court to review the seizure. The perverse incentives and lack of due process at the heart of civil forfeiture put innocent people like Terry and Sandy at risk. Click here to view video.

Congressional Perks

The median wealth of a House member is $765,010. For a senator it’s $2.38 million. Yet, incredibly, they still enjoy all of this:

• $174,000 salary
• Free company car
• Free gas
• Free parking (even at airports)
• Free flights almost anywhere in the world
• Per diem travel allowance... up to $3,000 a trip
• A month’s paid vacation
• 3-day work-weeks
• Free membership to a top-flight gym
• Pension plan and 401K plan
• Full retirement benefits (including up to 44% of their six figure salaries) at age 62
• Free top of the line health insurance with 10 plans to choose from
• Fully covered – even with pre-existing condition

Pelosi: "there are no more cuts to make"

In response to a question by Candy Crowly on CNN's "State of the Union" regarding the government cutting spending, Nancy Pelosi, the Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives, said “the cupboard is bare, there’s no more cuts to make”.

When you read about the amount of waste and fraud in government listed in this blog or Senator Tom Coburn's website or Citizens Against Government Waste, you realize what a ridiculous statement that was. This is the same politician who said "we have to pass it (Obamacare) in order to understand what's in it". In my opinion, this goes a long way in explaining why we have a dysfunctional congress and runaway national debt.

IRS: $67 Million Missing From Obamacare Fund

Excerpts from Americans for Tax Reform:

• The IRS is unable to account for $67 million spent from a slush fund established for Obamacare implementation, according to a Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration report released today. 
• The “Health Insurance Reform Implementation Fund” (HIRIF) was tucked into Obamacare in order to give the IRS money to enforce the tax provisions of the healthcare law. The fund, totaling some $1 billion of taxpayer money, was used to roll out enforcement mechanisms for the approximately 50 tax provisions of Obamacare. 
• Travel abuse: The report states, “Specifically, we identified 38 IRS employees in two judgmentally selected business units whose travel was charged to the HIRIF in FY 2012, but no portion of their salary and related benefits was charged to the HIRIF.” In short, the IRS was not making sure that employee travel reimbursements had anything to do with the purpose of the fund. This is not the first time that IRS employee travel has created a scandal for the agency.
• 1,272 IRS Obamacare enforcement agents: The report estimates that total slush fund spending cost taxpayers the equivalent of 1,272 new full time IRS agents.
• The IRS requested an additional 859 IRS Obamacare enforcement agents for Fiscal Year 2013: According to the report, “The IRS informed us that it requested $360 million and 859 FTEs for FY 2013 to continue implementation of the ACA.

Congress: "Do as we say, not as we do"

Members of Congress have always considered themselves above the people they represent. They give themselves automatic pay raises, travel the world on political junkets, use their positions to enrich themselves at taxpayers expense, have their own insurance and health/retirement plans in lieu of Social Security, plus many more perks.

One of their most egregious acts is exempting themselves and their staff from certain provisions of Obamacare. The Affordable Care Act requires the 11,000 people who work on Capitol Hill to purchase their health insurance on its exchanges but many of them earn too much to qualify for subsidies. That's a financial hit worth about $5,000 for individuals and $11,000 for families. So in early August, President Obama's personnel team came to the rescue with a let-the-good-times-roll regulation that entitles Members and aides to their current premium contributions on the basis of zero legal authority. Once again, Congress looks out for itself, not its constituents.

Record Taxation

The federal government raked in a record $2.472 trillion in tax revenues through the first eleven months of fiscal 2013 which ran from Oct. 1, 2012 through the end of August according to the Monthly Treasury Statement for August. That is up about $285 billion from the $2.187 trillion the government took in through August of fiscal 2012.

Despite these record tax revenues, the federal government still accumulated a $755 billion deficit in the first eleven months of fiscal 2013. Total federal spending through the first eleven months of the fiscal year was $3.228 trillion.

List of Government Waste: $788,595,076,947

The Fiscal Times put together the following list which summarizes a lot of the waste that has been posted to this blog. When a new report identifies wasteful spending, someone always tends to say, “it’s a mere $600 million or it’s only $1 billion—a rounding error” compared to the $3.8 trillion that makes up the Federal budget. However, as Senator Everett Dirksen once said “a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money”.

Agency	Project	Amount	Time Spent
Department of Agriculture	Smuttynose brewery - 3 brew tanks	750,970	1 Year
Department of Agriculture	Improper payments to farm producers	16,000,000	1 Year
Department of Agriculture	Improper loans	208,000,000	1 Year
Department of Agriculture	Alabama Watermelon Queen Tour	25,000	1 Year
Department of Defense	Soccer Field in Guantanamo	750,000	1 Year
Department of Education	Student Aid Scams	1,400,000,000	1 Year
Department of Energy	Initiative for Proliferation Prevention (A Cold War Program)	15,000,000	1 Year
Department Of Justice	Conferences	58,000,000	1 Year
Department of Labor	Dropouts from Underperforming Job Programs	118,000,000	1 Year
Department of Labor	Overpayments	148,000,000	1 Year
Department of Labor	Consumer Fraud	14,000,000,000	1 Year
Department of Transportation	Contract Mismanagement	157,000,000	1 Year
Economic Dev. Agency	Fake Cyber Threat Purge	3,000,000	1 Year
FAA	Oklahoma Empty Airport	450,000	1 Year
Federal Grant	Book Vending Machine	35,000	1 Year
Federal Institute of Museum and Library Services	Star Wars Event	365	1 Year
General Accounting Office	Overlapping Programs	95,000,000,000	1 Year
General Accounting Office	Bank Fees for Empty Accounts	890,000	1 Year
Health and Human Services	Medicare Fraud and Abuse	115,300,000,000	1 Year
Health and Human Services	Medicare Drug Cost Alignment	3,140,000,000	1 Year
House of Representatives	Snacks	30,000	3 Months
Housing and Urban Dev.	Pet Toothpaste & Shampoo	505,000	1 Year
Inspector General Handbook	Multiple, Across Agencies	67,000,000,000	1 Year
Internal Revenue Service	Employee Fraud	250,000	1 Year
Internal Revenue Service	Employee Fraud	30,000	1 Year
Internal Revenue Service	Blackberry/AirCard	4,800,000	5 Years
Internal Revenue Service	Refund Errors	829,000,000	1 Year
Internal Revenue Service	Meetings	50,000,000	1 Year
Internal Revenue Service	Video Production	60,000	1 Year
Internal Revenue Service	Agency Retreat	4,000,000	1 Year
Internal Revenue Service	Bonuses	70,000,000	1 Year
Internal Revenue Service	Improper Software Contract	500,000,000	1 Year
Internal Revenue Service	Annual Tax Gap (~ $500 billion) $3 collected for every $1 in additional enforcement	300,000,000,000	1 Year
Internal Revenue Service	Improper Use of Credit Cards	2,500	1 Year
National Science Foundation	Robo Squirrel	325,000	1 Year
National Endowment for the Arts	Circus Classes	20,000	1 Year
Pentagon	Rebuilding Iraq	60,000,000,000	10 Years
Pentagon	Abrams Tanks	436,000,000	1 Year
Pentagon	64,000sqft Building that the Military Knew would not be occupied	34,000,000	Unknown
Pentagon	Roll-up beef jerky development	639,884	1 Year
Pentagon/Afghanistan	Afghanistan tax bill	1,000,000,000	1 Year
Pentagon/Afghanistan	USAID Power Project	53,000,000	Unknown
Pentagon/Afghanistan	Training Police and Security - Considered Ineffective	50,000,000	Ongoing
Pentagon/Afghanistan	Construction used as chicken coop	26,000,000	Unknown
Pentagon/Afghanistan	Contract money ending up in Taliban hands	360,000,000	Ongoing
Pentagon/Afghanistan	USAID	100,000,000,000	Ongoing
Pentagon/Afghanistan	Equipment Left Behind	7,000,000,000	1 Year
State Department	Facebook "Likes"	630,000	2 Years
Tom Coburn Waste Book	Minus the 12 Items Above	18,855,248,781	1 Year
U.S. Forest Service	Smokey the Bear Balloons	49,447	1 Year
U.S. Park Police	Missing hundreds of Military-style weapons	?	?
USAID	Moroccan Pottery Classes	27,000,000	1 Year
Vice President Biden	One Night in Paris	585,000	1 Night
TOTAL: 788,595,076,947

Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937

The Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937 enables the Agriculture Department to seize of a portion of every California raisin farmer’s annual crop, in certain years as much as 47 percent, without a right to compensation, and in some years with no compensation at all. The seized raisins are stored in California warehouses for months or years and then sold to handlers who distribute and sell them on the world market.

Marvin Horne has been breaking the law for 11 solid years. He now owes the U.S. government at least $650,000 in unpaid fines. And 1.2 million pounds of unpaid raisins, roughly equal to his entire harvest for four years. In response to a USDA administrative enforcement proceeding against him, Mr. Horne and members of his family filed a lawsuit to claim that government seizure of farmers’ raisins without compensation is unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment.

In June, the Supreme Court heard Mr. Horne’s case and sent it back to a federal appeals court to review the constitutionality of the raisin seizures; previously the lower court had ruled that it didn’t have jurisdiction. In that hearing, Supreme Court justices showed both amusement and concern. “Your raisins or your life,” joked Justice Antonin Scalia about the penalties Mr. Horne faces. Justice Elena Kagan questioned whether it may be “just the world’s most outdated law,” and Justice Stephen Breyer said, “I can’t believe Congress wanted the taxpayers to pay for a program that’s going to mean they have to pay higher prices.”

I am reminded of Ronald Reagan's quote: "The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program".

Illinois grant-fraud: $16M embezzled

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that the U.S. attorney’s office in Springfield has been busy the past few years investigating a variety of fraud schemes involving state grants. Thirteen people have been charged so far, six who have pleaded guilty.

One is the daughter of the controversial pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Another was chief of staff to Eric E. Whitaker when Whitaker was Illinois’ public health chief. There is even a former police chief. All of these individuals were supposed to be helping the poor but were, in fact, enriching themselves at the taxpayers' expense.

Energy Department loses $42M on clean-energy loan

The Energy Department conceded Friday that the federal government will lose $42 million on a loan to a shuttered Michigan van manufacturer — part of the same program that provided a $529 million loan to an electric car maker that also has gone under. Vehicle Production Group (VPG), which made vans for the disabled, ceased operations in February and laid off 100 workers, two years after receiving a $50 million federal loan under the same clean-energy program that provided a $529 million loan to electric car maker Fisker Automotive Inc.

The losses come after federal government’s failed risk on solar panel maker Solyndra, which went under in 2011 despite receiving more than $500 million from the Energy Department. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, chairman of a House Oversight subcommittee on economic growth and regulation, called the loan program “one of the most disastrously mismanaged and corrupt programs in U.S. history”.

Merit Systems Protection Board: $44 Million/Year

The Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) is a 211-employee agency within the Executive Branch. The MSPB has 6 regional offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. It spends $3.9 million to rent office space.

The MSPB was created by the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. Defenders of the MSPB argue that there needs to be an independent, third-party adjudicatory system for federal employee appeals. However, the judicial system already serves that function and a special institution that just handles allegations by federal employees is not necessary. The burdens of pursuing legal action through the courts will deter frivolous and unnecessary claims and encourage more mediations and settlements, thereby lowering administrative costs to taxpayers. Since the Federal Courts disagreed with the MSPB less than 10 percent of the time in FY 2010, it would seem there is no need for the MSPB.

Hollywood Liaison Offices: $34 Million

Several agencies in our government have offices and programs whose sole purpose is to help movie directors and Hollywood producers make their movies and television shows. They often do this to make sure the production portrays the federal government and its bureaucrats in a good light. There are at least 14 employees that have a combined salary of $1.2 million.

The Centers for Disease Control‘s (CDC) Entertainment Education Program collaborates with Hollywood to raise awareness and encourages people to live healthier lives. The CDC has worked with shows such as Grey‘s Anatomy and Army Wives. In other words, the CDC spends $1.9 million to ensure that when a made up character in a fictitious TV show talks about a health topic, he or she talks about it accurately. Surely, we can find better ways to spend $34.4 million.

Fort Hood Shooter Paid $278,000 While Awaiting Trial

The Department of Defense confirms that accused Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Hasan has now been paid more than $278,000 since the Nov. 5, 2009 shooting that left 13 dead and 32 injured. The Army said under the Military Code of Justice, Hasan’s salary cannot be suspended unless he is proven guilty. If Hasan had been a civilian defense department employee, the Army could have suspended his pay after just seven days.

Meanwhile, more than three years later soldiers wounded in the mass shooting are fighting to receive the same pay and medical benefits given to those wounded in combat. The Army has not classified the wounds of the Ft. Hood victims as “combat related” and declines to label the shooting a “terrorist attack”. The Army has categorized the shooting as a case of “workplace violence”.

EPA Adviser - $900,000 Pay Fraud

The Washington Post has reported that a high-level staffer at the Environmental Protection Agency was paid $900,000 for work he never performed for the agency. Click here to view the complete article.

Spendopedia

Spendopedia is a Wikipedia-like resource for questionable spending by the United States federal government to which anyone can submit content. It is a project of the Public Notice Research and Education Fund (PNREF), whose mission is to educate and bring awareness to the state and federal economic policies that impact our daily lives. Click here to see their list of government waste.

$34 Million For Unused Building In Afghanistan

The Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction sent a letter to the Secretary of Defense and the U.S. Army indicating that $34 million was spent on command headquarters in Helmand that was never occupied and should have been stopped. Here are some excerpts:

• "I was told by senior U.S. military officials that the recently completed Regional CommandSouthwest (RC-SW) Command and Control Facility, a 64,000 square feet building and related infrastructure with a contract award value of $34 million that was meant to serve as a command headquarters in Helmand to support the surge, will not be occupied. Based on documents provided to SIGAR, it appears that military commanders in Afghanistan determined as early as May 2010 that there was no need for the facility, yet the military still moved ahead with the construction project and continued to purchase equipment and make various improvements to the building in early 2013. Based on these preliminary findings, I am deeply troubled that the military may have spent taxpayer funds on a construction project that should have been stopped."
• "In addition, I was told that U.S. military officials expect that the building will be either demolished or turned over to the Afghan government as our military presence in Afghanistan declines and Camp Leatherneck is reduced in size. Both alternatives for how to resolve this issue are troubling—destroying a never-occupied and never-used building or turning over what may be a “white elephant” to the Afghan government that it may not have the capacity to sustain. Determining all of the facts on how we reached this $34 million dilemma and what can be done to prevent it from happening again is the reason for sending this management alert letter to you."

Click here to see an extensive list of other examples of government waste in Afghanistan.

Rest Easy, Fellow Citizens: The Feds Are On The Case

Here's an excerpt from an article by humorist Dave Barry regarding absurd government actions:

On May 11, two employees of DeBest Inc., a plumbing company, were working at a construction site in Garden City, Idaho, when they heard a backhoe operator yell for help. They ran over, and found that the wall of a trench - which was NOT dug by DeBest - had collapsed on a worker, pinning him under dirt and covering his head.

"We could hear muffled screams," said one of the DeBest employees.

So the men jumped into the trench and dug the victim out, quite possibly saving his life.

What do you think OSHA did about this? Do you think it gave the rescuers a medal? If so, I can see why you are a mere lowlife taxpayer, as opposed to an OSHA executive. What OSHA did - remember, I am not making this up - was FINE DEBEST INC. $7,875. Yes. OSHA said that the two men should not have gone into the trench without (1) putting on approved hard hats, and (2) taking steps to insure that other trench walls did not collapse, and water did not seep in. Of course this might have resulted in some discomfort for the suffocating victim ("Hang in there! We should have the OSHA trench-seepage-prevention guidelines here within hours!"). But that is the price you pay for occupational health and safety.

Unfortunately, after DeBest Inc. complained to Idaho Sen. Dirk Kempthorne, OSHA backed off on the fines. Nevertheless, this incident should serve as a warning to would-be rescuers out there to comply with ALL federal regulations, including those that are not yet in existence, before attempting to rescue people. ESPECIALLY if these people are in, say, a burning OSHA office."

$600,000 Homes For Border Agents

The Department of Homeland Security spent an average of more than $600,000 each to build 21 homes in Ajo, Arizona where most similar-size homes sold last year for less than $100,000. The project cost a total of $13 million, with much of the spending going for appliances, solar panels and paved streets, according to Customs and Border Protection.

"I’d like to know some more details, but, boy, on its face, it looks like a lot of wasted money,” Senator Jeff Flake said. “On its face, how you can justify spending that much money on new housing is beyond me.”

$42.4 Million to Ineligible College

The Department of Education sent $42.4 million to Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College, despite the fact that the school is ineligible to receive any federal funding. Click here for the Department of Education Inspector General's Final Audit Report.

TN Pork Report Unearths Half-a-Billion Dollars in Government Waste

The Beacon Center of Tennessee today released its eighth annual Tennessee Pork Report, exposing more than $511 million squandered by state and local governments over the past year. The annual report published by the Beacon Center, the state’s leading free market think tank and taxpayer watchdog, is the only one of its kind in Tennessee.

Examples of wasteful spending outlined in the 2013 Pork Report include:

• A corporate welfare deal gone sour, costing taxpayers $95 million after Hemlock Semiconductor closed its plant and laid off hundreds of workers;
• $73 million in improper unemployment benefits, including cash paid to existing state workers and the deceased, of which only $15.3 million has been recouped;
• Wasteful film incentives to Hollywood elites totaling $13.5 million;
• $800,000 to update a study to determine what to do with the vacant State Prison;
• A campaign to urge Tennesseans to eat more beef at a cost of $235,000; and
• An outrageous spending spree by a Rockwood city official, who spent $32,000 on an arsenal of guns, ammunition, cameras, clothes, and testosterone booster.

“Taxpayers will be angered to find out how their state and local officials are spending their hard-earned money,” said Beacon CEO Justin Owen. “Whether it’s Solyndra-like corporate welfare disasters, lavish parties by government agencies, or rampant theft by public officials, this year’s report has it all when it comes to government waste, fraud, and abuse.”

Obamacare Exchange Contractor Target of Major Fraud Investigation

Last week, The New York Times reported that the Obama Administration over the Independence Day holiday quietly awarded “a contract worth as much as $1.2 billion” to Serco, a British company, to help develop the federal insurance exchange. Now comes word from London that Serco is one of two companies under investigation by British authorities for over-billing government contracts.

This billion-dollar contract represents a glaring contradiction in terms—a company under investigation for inaccurate, and potentially fraudulent, bills in Britain being asked to verify the accuracy of Americans’ applications for federal exchange subsidies. Particularly given that the Administration also announced it will rely on the “honor system” for individuals to self-report income to the exchanges next year, this development raises even more concerns about the potential for rampant fraud in Obamacare programs.

The Government Accountability Office found that the administration had spent $394 million on contracts to establish federal insurance exchanges. More than three-fourths of the money went to 10 companies. They include CGI Federal, a subsidiary of a Canadian company, the CGI Group ($88 million); Quality Software Services Inc. ($55 million); and Booz Allen Hamilton ($38 million).

$200,000 for a tattoo removal program

The Tattoo Removal Violence Prevention Outreach Program offers former gang members or anti-socialists the opportunity to have a gang related tattoo removed. While this program’s goals are certainly laudable, tattoo removal should not be the responsibility of the federal government, which is currently under serious financial strain.

The Providence Holy Cross Foundation administers the program and according to its IRS Form 990 it has substantial financial resources. The Foundation reported annual revenue of $2,902,874, cash on hand of $123,987, savings and temporary cash investments of $98,449, and total net assets of over $4 million. This does not exactly paint a picture of a foundation in dire financial need.

According to the foundation’s website, they charge approximately $875-$1,400 to remove a tattoo, ($175/session with it taking 5-8 treatments for complete removal). Based on this information, the $200,000 earmark would only be able to treat 142 patients.

201 IRS employees work full-time on union business

In a response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from Americans for Limited Government, the Internal Revenue Service revealed this month that 201 of its employees work full-time on union activities. Some boast six-figure salaries, with the highest paid employee on the list earning $138,092.

The IRS is not the only federal agency where many employees spend all their work hours on union business. The Office of Personnel Management revealed that in 2011 — the most recent report available — bargaining employees at all federal agencies spent a total of 3,395,187 hours performing representational work, at a cost of approximately $155 million.

$15 Billion Hole in the Ground

An empty hole in the ground dug at a cost of $15 billion is the very definition of government waste. Yucca Mountain is a nuclear-waste repository built in a desolate area of the Nevada desert that has never been used because of the “not in my backyard” attitude of Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate leader. Nuclear-power plants in the United States have generated about 70,000 tons of radioactive waste, and it has to go somewhere.

The president zeroed out Yucca Mountain funding in 2011 for political rather than technical or safety reasons, according to the Government Accountability Office. Since then, the House has kept the project alive by funding a continuing review of the suitability of Yucca to warehouse spent nuclear fuel from the nation’s 104 nuclear-power plants, currently in storage on the plants’ grounds. A 335-81 vote last month preserved $25 million for the review.