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Dear Chairman Gowdy – America is Counting on Your Backbone!

May 13, 2014/in Featured, National Security, News, Policy, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Joan Swirsky

To: The Chairman Trey Gowdy and the Select Committee on Benghazi

Your investigation is a huge relief to millions of Americans like me who have wondered and agonized over the past almost-two years about the actual events that happened before, during and after the September 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi, Libya, that resulted in the horrific murders of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, information officer Sean Smith, and embassy security personnel and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.

Another State Department employee, diplomatic security agent David Ubben, was gravely injured while under attack with Woods and Doherty, but like other survivors he has been forbidden by the Obama Administration from speaking publicly about his ordeal.

However, as reported by Catherine Herridge of Fox News, when the late Florida Congressman Bill Young met Ubben at Walter Reed Medical Center last summer, he said that Ubben “emphasized the fact” that the attack on the Benghazi compound “was a very very military type of operation…they had knowledge of almost everything in the compound…they knew where the gasoline was, they knew where the generators were, they knew where the safe room was, they knew more than they should have about that compound.”

Will the Select Committee include the testimony of Ubben and the other muzzled victims and will it explore who sabotaged the Americans by revealing to the terrorists “more than they should have known about the compound”?

Of course, neither your Select Committee nor my letter to you would have seen the light of day if the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch had not been successful in their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, which revealed “the smoking gun” e-mail in which Benjamin J. Rhodes, then-White House Deputy Strategic Communications Adviser laid out several goals for U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to meet on the five Sunday-morning TV shows she was scheduled to appear on, chief of which was: “To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.”

According to Dick Morris, former advisor to President Bill Clinton, a full day and a half before Rhodes sent his email advising Susan Rice to blame the Benghazi attacks on the video, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used the identical language in a statement of her own.

This suggests, Morris says, “at the very least, a close coordination between and White House and Hillary Clinton to deceive the American people about the true nature of the attack in Benghazi. And it may also be evidence that Hillary Clinton engineered that decision immediately following the attacks. Was the cover-up Hillary’s idea?”

In addition, Morris is emphatic in saying that the CIA talking points were in no way related to the White House talking points, which seem to have been made up out of whole cloth.

Will the Select Committee vigorously investigate the allegation that this 19-month cover-up was instigated by Hillary Clinton? Alternatively, will you get to the bottom of who exactly created the fiction of the video?

On the Sunday morning talk shows, on September 16, 2012, Susan Rice obediently told the nation that the murderous Benghazi attack was the result of a demonstration in Cairo (that had spread to Benghazi) protesting an obscure anti-Muslim video, and not a highly organized terrorist offensive that was launched with the full knowledge – and possible collaboration? – of the White House in order to burnish Barack Obama’s reputation as a strong leader and thereby maximize his chances for reelection in the run-up to the 2012 presidential race. Those talking points were repeated for weeks on end by Barack Obama, Jay Carney, Hillary Clinton, and a media – save for a few exceptions – acting more like a protection racket than journalists

Among the top administration personnel who received the Rhodes memo were White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, then-White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, and then-White House Senior Advisor and political strategist David Plouffe, all of whom – and others – launched a massive disinformation campaign that persisted until Rhodes’ incriminating e-mail surfaced last month and Speaker John Boehner backed a vote for a Select Committee, with subpoena power, to untangle almost two years worth of White House web-weaving.

Interestingly, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has been asking the State Department for Rhodes’ and other relevant e-mails since last August, but they were purposefully withheld.

Will the Select Committee address the criminal action involved in withholding evidence from a congressional committee and if such action is found will the consequences be commensurate with the crime?

According to blogger Jeff Dunetz, a State Department e-mail that was released by Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz on May 1, 2014, proves the State Department was certain on the day of the Benghazi attack that it was conducted by al Qaeda affiliate Ansar Al-Sharia. The e-mail was entitled “Libya update from Beth Jones” and was sent the very day of the attack, September 11, 2012.

Jones, who was then Assistant Secretary of State to Hillary Clinton, wrote in her e-mail: “the extremist group Ansar Al-Sharia has taken credit for the attack in Benghazi…”

Jones’ e-mail was copied to Deputy Secretary William Burns; Under Secretary for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman; Jake Sullivan, then-Deputy Chief of Staff (now national security advisor to VP Joe Biden); Under Secretary of State Patrick Kennedy; Cheryl Mills, then-Secretary Clinton’s Chief of Staff, and Victoria Nuland, then-State Dept. spokesperson (now Asst. Secretary of State).

The idea that the above CC list received Jones’ stunning report but that it somehow eluded Hillary Clinton, her boss, who proceeded to meet the grieving families, look in their eyes, and repeat the preposterous falsehood that the attack was the result of a video insulting to Muslims, simply begs credibility.

Will the Select Committee interview all of the above people to reinforce the fact that State knew immediately that it was Ansar Al-Sharia who attacked our citizens and that anyone who said otherwise committed perjury?

The kidnapping plan was ostensibly formulated and financed by then-President of Egypt Mohamed Morsi who, for three months prior to the attack, had been loudly demanding the release of the “Blind Sheik” Omar Abdel-Rahman, now serving a life sentence in North Carolina for his role as the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. In fact, Morsi assured hundreds of thousands of his supporters in Cairo that he would exact Rahman’s release, a promise he repeated just one week before the Benghazi assault.

A month earlier, in August 2012, Morsi’s de facto boss, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the leader of al Qaeda, issued a Fatwa that was published worldwide and demanded that Muslims attack American citizens, interests, and military installations anywhere and everywhere for the purpose of freeing Rahman.

The objective of Morsi’s plan was to grab Ambassador Stevens, make sure that he was unharmed, and then exchange him for the blind sheik. The result, of course, would be that Morsi would get his sheik and Obama would look hold an elaborate Rose Garden ceremony in which he’d be seen as “heroic” for “saving” our ambassador – just weeks before the 2012 election!

Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Valerie Jarrett and Huma Abedin all have a close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Were they too abetting Morsi by doing Al-Zawahiri’s bidding? It appears that Al-Zawahiri was calling the shots and our White House was obeying his directives! It is not a stretch to imagine that Morsi set up the faux attack on our Cairo embassy to distract the media while his kidnapping plot was unfolding in Benghazi.

All this explains why Stevens’ repeated requests for additional security – on July 9, 2012; on August 16, 2012, when a classified cable, reported on by Fox News, warned Sec. Clinton and other State Department employees of an emergency meeting in Benghazi as a result of rapidly deteriorating security; and when Stevens screamed and pleaded for help while being dragged through the compound’s courtyard – were turned down by Sec. Clinton. Simply, the Benghazi facility had to be unprotected for the kidnappers to carry out their mission.

Does this not also explain why on the most provocative day of the year – September 11^th – and in one of the most dangerous hotspots on earth, there was not only a complete lack of security in the Benghazi compound but why no rapid-response teams were sent immediately after the powers-that-be in the White House were notified of the attack?

And is it not now crystal clear why it took the FBI a full three weeks to visit the burned-out facility, conveniently giving Morsi’s operatives on the ground in Benghazi the opportunity to clean out and destroy any incriminating evidence?

Will the Select Committee demand all videotapes and transcripts of the night of the Benghazi attack, including of Drones, and conduct an in-depth examination of the ongoing relationship between the Obama administration and Mohamed Morsi, including assistance of any kind given to the deposed Egyptian president to this day?

The ties of this administration to the Muslim Brotherhood are troubling to those of us who know of that organization’s philosophy and close ties to al Qaeda. Clearly, the words of Refaat Saïd – leader of Egypt’s Socialist party, al-Tagammu’, and previously close friend of former Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide, Mahdi Akef – must be taken literally:

“The organization of the Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist organization, and anyone who asks either to reconcile with them, to join them or to ally with them is himself a terrorist.”

Both Walid Shoebat – a former Muslim Brotherhood member who converted to Christianity and now exposes the terrorists among us – here, and Pamela Geller, here, report that Rhodes’ ‘smoking gun’ email revealed the instruction to Susan Rice to blame the Benghazi attack on a video and also exposed a recipient of that e-mail named Mehdi K. Alhassani, the former leader of the Muslim Student Association, which is a Muslim Brotherhood front group.

“It is a mystery,” Geller says, “how Alhassani slipped through the cracks to become a Special Assistant to the Office of the Chief of Staff, National Security Council Staff, and Executive Office of the President,” adding that “it is unknown why a few hours before the Benghazi attack, Alhassani met in the White House with Samir Mayekar, a George Soros ‘fellow’ for an unscheduled visit.”

The American Thinker’s James Lewis says that most people are still missing the strategic meaning of Benghazi. “Under Obama we have secretly joined the terrorist side in the Jihad War. That is the strategic meaning of Benghazi…a forty-year policy led by the Left to favor Islamic fascism is not, repeat not, an accident.”

Lewis cites intelligence analyst and former CIA officer Clare Lopez and a group of distinguished retired military and intelligence experts “who released a statement last week that was quickly covered up by the media.” But Britain’s Daily Mail did report that after a seven-month review, the group determined that the Benghazi attack “could have been prevented – if the U.S. hadn’t been helping to arm al-Qaeda militias throughout Libya a year earlier.”

According to Lopez, “the United States switched sides in the war on terror with what we did in Libya, knowingly facilitating the provision of weapons to known al-Qaeda militias and figures.” She said the Obama administration tacitly approved the diversion of half of a billion dollars of Qatari arms shipment to al-Qaeda-linked militants” – arms that killed “Christian children in Syria and Kenya in the name of Allah.” The full report is here.

Further, Lewis makes this connection: “Huma [Abedin] was Hillary’s closest aide as Secretary of State, and therefore privy to numerous secrets. You can bet that Mohammed Morsi in Egypt knew all about the inner workings of Hillary’s State Department. Hillary was in charge during the Benghazi debacle. Just connect the dots.”

Walid Shoebat has connected a lot of dots and expands at length on Abedin and her extensive ties to the Muslim Brotherhood in “The Abedin Affairs with Al Saud.”

In addition, it is well known that Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton and her chief-of-staff Huma Abedin enthusiastically supported Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood election and have worked vigorously against the Egyptian military that launched the successful coup d’ état that deposed Morsi in July of 2013. In fact, Abedin not only edited a Muslim Sisterhood magazine, but has close ties through her family to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Of great concern is the large number of sharia advisors that Barack Obama has appointed to high-security positions, including Homeland Security, as detailed by writer Leon Puissegur, who says that “their plans are to place their candidates into elections to win so they can destroy the Constitution and create a nation of Islamic laws!”

Journalist John Rossomando further documents the degree to which the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the Obama administration, including the White House.

And that is not to omit the fact that in 2011, as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton refused to designate Boko Haram, the al Qaeda affiliate, as a terrorist organization despite the repeated urging of the FBI, CIA, and DOJ and over a dozen senators – the same Boko Haram (which means “Western education is forbidden”) that just kidnapped 276 young Nigerian Christian girls with the goal of raping and enslaving them. No doubt the terrorist group used weapons that were never secured after Gaddafi’s ouster in Libya and made their way to Boko Haram. Was this yet another example of Sec. Clinton’s blind eye?

Will the Select Committee exhaustively explore the possibly seditious links between the current administration and with al Qaeda-affiliated Muslim Brotherhood and Boko Haram?

Initially, it appeared that the Morsi-orchestrated event went as planned, with a cell-phone video showing Stevens being removed from the charred building and the audio portion recording the voices of witnesses yelling, “Allahu-Akbar, Allahu-Akbar! He’s alive! He’s alive!” before whisking him off to an al Qaeda-operated hospital, where tragically he died.

In a damning report, Doug Ross confirms the kidnapping scenario and provides a detailed and Complete Benghazi Timeline.

With Stevens’ death, however, Morsi’s grand kidnapping scheme failed. But six long hours passed before anyone knew what had become of Ambassador Stevens. It appears that Morsi was waiting for word from his kidnapping squad on the ground so he could then inform his pals in the White House. But no word was forthcoming.

Journalist/author Jack Cashill is curious about what Obama did on September 11, 2012 and spells out an hour-by-hour scenario that includes where he wasn’t. According to national security spokesman, Tommy Vietor, Obama was not in the White House Situation Room where military strategy is planned.

It is of more than passing interest that blogger Dunetz reports that when Vietor spoke to Fox News’ Bret Baier a couple of weeks ago, he told the anchor that he himself was involved in editing the Benghazi talking points. But Mike Morell, deputy director of the CIA at the time, said in sworn testimony that except for changing one word, the White House had no role in changing the talking points. “Either Tommy Vietor lied to Bret Baier or Mike Morell lied during his testimony to Congress,” Dunetz writes.

Will the Select Committee definitively determine if Tommy Vietor lied or if Mike Morell committed perjury?

Cashill continues: “At 3:40 p.m. Washington time” “[Ambassador] Stevens called his number two man in Tripoli, Greg Hicks, and told him, `Greg, we’re under attack.’ At 4:05 p.m. the State Department Operations Center issued an alert to all relevant agencies: `U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack.’ There was no lack of communication to the outside world.”

General Carter F. Ham, Commander of U.S. Africa Command, who was visiting the Pentagon, said that the fact attackers were using rocket-propelled grenades and well-aimed small arms fire made it clear to him that “this was certainly a terrorist attack…” He personally shared the news with General Martin E. Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and both “immediately” briefed then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.”

At 5 p.m. Obama met with Panetta and Dempsey in the White House for a prescheduled meeting, and he “authorized the pair to take relevant steps, leaving the specifics up to them. They had no further contact with the president that evening and none at all with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.”

“About 10 p.m. that evening,” Cashill says, “Obama made another phone call. Five months would pass before anyone admitted he did so…soon after that 10 p.m. phone call, Secretary Clinton released a memo on the Benghazi attack. The timing suggests she and Obama coordinated the blame-the-video misdirection during their call. To this point in the evening, no one in the military or on the ground in Libya had mentioned the video or suggested that the assault on the consulate was anything other than a coordinated attack.”

Cashill concludes that on the night of September 11, “Obama retreated…for the next two months he did what the Clintons did after the demise of TWA Flight 800: he just kicked the investigatory can down the road and hoped that the media would not call attention to the kicking. If the Clintons could get away with it, why not he?”

Will the Select Committee interview or re-interview Tommy Vietor, Gen. Martin Dempsey, Leon Panetta, Gen. Carter Ham, and, again, Hillary Clinton, to determine the accuracy of the above timeline and if there was any collaboration between Clinton and Obama in both (1) hatching the idea for the Benghazi attack, the better to satisfy Morsi’s goal of freeing the sheik, and (2) creating the idea of blaming the attack on an anti-Muslim video? Will the Select Committee determine if either Vietor or Morell lied? And will the Select Committee include the White House’s collaboration with the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi as a primary line of inquiry? In addition, instead of dispatching Drones for observation of the attack, on whose orders did General Ham fail to send out fighter jets for several low-flying passes over the Benghazi attack area to scare and drive off the terrorist attackers?

During the attack in Benghazi, no military force came to the rescue of Ambassador Stevens and the three other Americans who died. Was the military given orders to stand down? While there are plenty of denials about this, including from our military, Chad Miller at www.dcclothesline.com has written that it might have been none other than Valerie Jarrett who issued such an order. He cites an August 2013 Rush Limbaugh broadcast in which the radio host presents a timeline of the evening of September 11, 2012, when Obama seemed to be missing in action.

Will the Select Committee determine who exactly is running the foreign policy of the United States of America? Is it White House advisor and assistant to the president Valerie Jarrett? Obama top political advisor David Axelrod? Top Democrat donor George Soros? The Muslim Brotherhood?

As reported by writer and private investigator Douglas Hagmann, a CIA whistleblower faces the ire of an angry Justice Department over Benghazi questions regarding illegal gun-running.

Hagmann reports that Robert “Tosh” Plumlee posted 11 “questions” to his Facebook page, which placed him under the threat of a subpoena by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to (1) legally silence him and (2) found out the sources of the information he revealed.

Here is a small sample of Plumlee’s questions:

Is the United States secretly arming and supporting various factions of the Syrian Rebels with high caliber impact weapons from The United States arsenals?
Will our troops one day again face these American made weapons on some foreign battlefield?
Did our Ambassador and others, weeks before they were murdered, notify our State Department and CIA that Syrian Rebels had obtained US Weapons, including “Stinger missiles’ from Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan, shipped from CIA safe houses?
Were they told to “Stand Down?

Will the Select Committee investigate what the CIA was doing in Benghazi? Were guns being smuggled covertly and illegally from Benghazi through Turkey to the Syrian rebels – who were members of al Qaeda? And was Ambassador Stevens protesting that operation or facilitating the transfer? Will the Select Committee expose the fact that the al Qaeda jihadists that American taxpayers armed and financed to overthrow Gaddafi’s Libyan regime in October 2011 are the exact same jihadists who murdered the four Americans in Benghazi?

Chairman Gowdy, Americans are aware that for investigating this important event, you have received death threats from those who are deeply threatened by this line of inquiry. Please know that you and your committee members will remain in the thoughts and prayers of the liberty-loving people in our country.

If Democrats refuse to join – or choose to boycott – your efforts, as Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA) so shamefully suggested on a recent news show, they will be viewed as aiding and abetting what appears to be a massive cover-up and therefore appropriately guilty by association.

In closing, I cite former U.S. attorney, prosecutor of the “Blind Sheik,” writer and author Andrew C. McCarthy, whose new book – Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment – will be published June 3.

“The chief executive, James Madison asserted, would be wholly ‘responsible for [the] conduct’ of his subordinate officials. Therefore, it would ‘subject [the president] to impeachment himself, if he suffers them to perpetrate with impunity high crimes or misdemeanors against the United States, or neglects to superintend their conduct, so as to check their excesses…when AFRICOM abstains from battle, or Lois Lerner obstructs an investigation, or Eric Holder misleads Congress, or Michael Morell doctors talking points, or Susan Rice serially lies on national television, Barack Obama is responsible. It is his bidding that they do, and by failing to fire or discipline them he implicitly endorses their malfeasance.’”

Godspeed, Mr. Chairman.

US Mortgage risk increases due to growth in FHA’s market share and loan level risk

May 12, 2014/in Budget and Finance, Economy, News, Policy, Regulation, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Edward Pinto

Washington, DC, May 12, 2014—American Enterprise Institutes’s National Mortgage Risk Index (NMRI) for home purchase loans hit a new series’ high of 11.89% for April, up from 11.50% in March. The increase was due to FHA, which had higher market share and increasing loan level risk. The FHA’s April home purchase volume was 41,756, an increase of 36% over March. By contrast Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had April home purchase volume of 101,050, an increase of 24% over March and down 4% from the same month last year.

Overall April purchase volume was up 27% over March, the result of the Spring buying season ramping up.

The April NMRI for FHA loans also hit a new series high of 25.12% up from 24.77% in March.

The April NMRI for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans declined slightly to 5.93% from 6.00% in March.

Complete results will be presented on the monthly NMRI briefing phone call scheduled for Tuesday, May 27 at 10AM EDT. To RSVP now, please email Emily.Rapp@AEI.org.

The NMRI score is an objective and transparent mortgage risk measure. It represents an estimated cumulative default rate for new home purchase loans under the assumption of stress conditions from 2007-2012. An overall index level of less than 6% is indicative of conditions conducive to a stable national market. For more information about the NMRI, please visit HousingRisk.org.

AEI’s International Center on Housing Risk produces the NMRI monthly.

A Valuable Research Tool: The “Way Back Machine”

May 12, 2014/in Education, Must Read, News, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Mercedes Schneider

In exposing corporate reformers at their game, I have found that information sometimes “conveniently” disappears from websites once such information is publicized in a less-than-complimentary blog post.

There is a way to view web pages that have been removed or otherwise altered:

The “Way Back Machine”: https://archive.org/web/web.php

The “Way Back Machine” is a search engine of “snapshots” taken of web pages over time.

All one must do is enter the non-responsive or altered url into the search engine; the result will include the number of snapshots taken in a given period. For example, I just entered my blog address into the search engine, and the result was “Saved 24 times between January 31, 2013 and March 7, 2014.”

In the result, the dates “January 31, 2013″ and “March 7, 2014″ are links that I might click on. Clicking on the “January 31, 2014″ link produces my blog as it appeared on that date. At the top of my blog page are 24 boxes in the form of a number line. Clicking on any one of these boxes shows me my blog as it appeared on that date in the past.

The “Way Back Machine” does not save every change to a web page. However, navigating the snapshots often reveals sought-after information that has been altered or removed, yielding enlightening finds for those investigating corporate reformers.

For example, after I wrote about the Gates grant process– namely, that Gates solicits grantees whom he believes will advance his mission– the Gates link, How We Make Grants, went dead.

Thanks to the “Way Back Machine,” How We Make Grants lives on:

https://web.archive.org/web/20140209091533/http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/General-Information/How-We-Make-Grants

Thus, the resulting “Way Back Machine” url is an active url that allows access to the “snapshot from the past” at any time. As a result, writers can include the snapshot url in posts so that readers might view the result for themselves at will.

And here is another invaluable usage:

The Way Back Machine could be used to recover information from damaged websites to aid in website reconstruction. Information one thinks has been lost might not be lost, after all.

My thanks to Suzette Lopez and Jack Hassard for reminding me of this tool.

PA Attorney General Charges and Arrests Test Cheaters — FL AG Bondi Missing in Action

May 12, 2014/in Courts & Law, Education, Featured, News, Policy, Politics, Regulation, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Dr. Rich Swier

Taking a cue from former Georgia Attorney General Mike Bowers (R) and former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue (R), Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane (D) charged and arrested a principal and four teachers for cheating on standardized tests at Cayuga Elementary School in Philadelphia over a four year period (2008-2012).

Kane said the educators changed student answers, provided test answers to students and improperly reviewed Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) test questions before giving the tests. After the cheating stopped in 2012, the schools test scored dropped dramatically, Kane noted.

In 2008-09 state proficiency tests, Cayuga’s fourth graders excelled: 88.8% pass math and 83.9% pass reading. By 2012-13, the most recent numbers available, fourth graders at the school struggled with 31% passing math and 25% passing reading.

Those charged are:

Evelyn Cortez, 59, Dresher, Montgomery County;
Jennifer Hughes, 59, Jeffersonville, Montgomery County;
Lorraine Vicente, 41, Philadelphia;
Rita Wyszynski, 65, Philadelphia; and
Ary Sloane, 56, Philadelphia.

In Georgia, numerous teachers, and principals were convicted or took plea deals and are in prison. Superintendent Beverly Hall had her plea deal rejected and awaits trial in August 2014.

Unfortunately for Florida students and taxpayers, Attorney General Pam Bondy and Governor Rick Scott took a different course of action in response to test cheating: they did absolutely nothing.

Hard evidence was sent to both of these Constitutional officers and elected officials concerning various violations concerning professional development fraud, teacher certification fraud, teacher observation and evaluation fraud, and test cheating – all of which were documented in a state report issued by the Auditor General of Florida and the Miami-Dade OIG Final Report which concluded that, “Miami Norland has benefited in the form of attaining a higher school grade and may have received financial compensation or other benefit resulting from its high pass rate on the industry certification exams” (page 13).

Katherine-Fernandez Rundle, Miami-Dade State Attorney of the 11th Judicial Circuit, did not respond nor take action on these allegations, stating she can do nothing per “local control,” and that the responsibility for investigation and resolution rests with the employee of the perpetrators – Miami-Dade County Public Schools.

After appearing before investigators with the Office of the Auditor General for the State of Florida and the Miami-Dade Office of Inspector General in April and May 2012, in which sworn statements, evidence, and produced two witnesses (teachers who corroborated the test cheating) were given, to ensure that these investigations would be acted upon by the state, the findings were sent to Governor Rick Scott for action.

Governor Scott’s Inspector General emailed a written response declining assistance for lack of jurisdiction and deferred to the Miami-Dade OIG, who declined to investigate this particular matter as the Auditor General’s Office was investigating it.

On February 6, 2013, the FLDOE OIG, sent a written response claiming “lack of primary jurisdiction.” One would think they would have a secondary jurisdiction to investigate violations of state law pertaining to test cheating and any and all related frauds (money) to protect students, teachers, and taxpayers.

Worse yet, I emailed Florida’s and Miami-Dade’s chief law enforcement officers, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle respectively, and the response was disappointing.

On March 8, 2013, Attorney General Bondi emailed the whistle-blower, Trevor Colestock, back basically citing lack of jurisdiction and passing the buck to the school district of all places and various local and federal agencies.

The Miami-Dade State Attorney did not respond whatsoever, though she did prosecute teachers and school administrators in the MOTET teacher certification scandal 8 years earlier.

These improprieties and related crimes (using computers to commit fraud, wire fraud, malfeasance, test cheating, and 20,000+ counts of record tampering and teacher certification fraud) were reported on by multiple media outlets. However, Governor Scott, Attorney General Bondi, FLDOE bureau chiefs and Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle appear to have a “see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil” when it comes to stopping cheating and fraud in Florida’s public schools.

Though the state has inherent police and supervisory powers to enforce and regulate its laws, Florida (unlike the States of Georgia, Texas, and Pennsylvania) has been a passive spectator concerning school districts and test cheating to the detriment of Florida students, teachers, and taxpayers.

Perhaps it is time for Governor Scott and Attorney General Bondi to stop passing the buck and stand against cheating in Florida’s public schools?

Hawaii Spends the Most and Florida Spends the Least on Obamacare

May 11, 2014/in Economy, Healthcare, Must Read, News, Policy, Regulation, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Hawaii Free Press

“April 30 was the final deadline to signup for Obamacare. All the numbers are in. Hawaii spent $920 per enrollment, and $87 per uninsured person and enrolled the fewest people in the USA. Nobody spent more and nobody achieved less,” notes Andrew Walden.

Here is the news:

State-based exchanges spent far more per consumer than states in the federal marketplace did

National Journal: Hawaii spent $920 to enroll each new Obamacare consumer, while Florida spent only $16….

New data from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation details the amount spent on consumer assistance for the Affordable Care Act in each state, and like overall enrollment numbers, the state totals vary a huge amount.

Consumer-assistance programs are those intended to help individuals understand and enroll in coverage under Obamacare, including the Navigator program, the In-Person Assister program, and Certified Application Counselors. The totals do not include funding for the exchange systems or other types of public and private outreach….

Overall, the state-based marketplaces spent far more to help get residents enrolled than states in the federal marketplace. State exchanges accounted for 50 percent of total consumer-assistance funds, yet have only 31 percent of all uninsured, according to RWJF. Federal marketplaces accounted for 33 percent of the funding but house 63 percent of the uninsured, and the five partnership states received 17 percent of the assistance funding, yet include only 6 percent of the total uninsured.

State-based exchanges had far more discretion over how much of their exchange establishment grants they would allocate for consumer assistance, while funding on the federal exchange was based to a larger degree on the number of uninsured residents. Thus state-based exchanges had a much larger range in assistance funding: While spending in federal-marketplace states ranged from $16 per enrollee in Florida to $186 per enrollee in Alaska, spending in state-based exchanges was across the board, from $40 in Idaho to $920 in Hawaii.

Top Five Spenders per Enrollee:

Hawaii: $920 per enrollee, $7,904,918 total (state-based exchange)
District of Columbia: $645 per enrollee; $6,906,057 total (state-based exchange)
Arkansas: $442 per enrollee; $19,211,296 total (partnership exchange)
West Virginia: $385 per enrollee; $7,647,178 total (partnership exchange)
Maryland: $385 per enrollee; $25,620,449 total (state-based exchange)

Bottom Five Spenders per Enrollee:

Florida: $16 per enrollee; $15,932,367 total (federal exchange)
Wisconsin: $20 per enrollee; $2,772,728 total (federal exchange)
Virginia: $20 per enrollee; $4,263,053 total (federal exchange)
Pennsylvania: $22 per enrollee; $6,905,518 total (federal exchange)
Georgia: $23 per enrollee; $7,194,944 total (federal exchange)

Hawaii’s Exchange Spent $87 on ‘Consumer Assistance’ for Every Uninsured Person in State

NRO: Hawaii’s exchange was particularly troublesome for users from its beginning. Perhaps almost as infuriating for residents is the small fortune that the state spent on efforts to help people sign up; the state is spending $87.86 in “consumer assistance funding” for every eligible uninsured person in the state, according to a new report by the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Hawaii’s insurance exchange ranked among the nation’s most dysfunctional, not working at all for the first two weeks. It was supposed to be self-sustaining starting next year but enrollment — 8,742 as of mid-April — fell short of projections; state lawmakers approved another $1.5 million in spending to prop up the exchange for the next year.

But Hawaii wasn’t the champion spender. The District of Columbia spent $163.90 per eligible uninsured person, according to the report….

Most Hawaii exchange enrollees didn’t receive aid

AP: Sixty-two percent of the 8,592 people who bought plans as of March 31 didn’t get aid, data released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services showed. That leaves 38 percent who got help buying a plan.

The numbers run counter to national enrollment figures, for states participating in the federally run exchange as well as for states operating their own exchanges, like Hawaii. Nationally, 85 percent of people who bought plans through an exchange set up under President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul got financial aid….

The only other jurisdiction that had a majority of enrollees sign up without financial assistance was the District of Columbia, which enrolled 10,714 people, 84 percent without using financial assistance….

The last-minute Obamacare shoppers were bargain hunters

WaPo: What explains this federal-state difference in bronze enrollment? Federal subsidies appear to have driven Americans to more expensive silver plans. HHS reported that 86 percent of people selecting plans in the federal exchanges qualified for federal assistance, compared to 82 percent of people in the state-run exchanges.

There was a pretty wide disparity in the percentage of people qualifying for federal subsidies in some state-run exchanges. In the District of Columbia, for example, just 16 percent of sign-ups qualified for premium subsidies. The subsidy eligibility rate was also relatively low in Colorado (60 percent), Hawaii (38 percent) and Vermont (59 percent). In Hawaii’s case, major technical problems with the exchange prevented people from applying for subsidies, officials there said.

Crain’s Business News: Exchanges with the lowest enrollments (as of April 19, 2014) were Hawaii, 8,592, North Dakota, 10,597, the District of Columbia, 10,714, and Wyoming, 11,790….

UPDATE: Final figures May 2, 2014: Hawaii Health Connector Claims 9,785 Enrollees (still the lowest in USA)

The Real Cost of Healthcare: Questions Not Asked or Answered

May 11, 2014/in Commentary, Healthcare, News, Policy, Regulation, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Paul R. Hollrah

A quick review of current literature on healthcare costs and healthcare cost containment is not a very productive use of one’s time. Within minutes of beginning a review of the published literature, the researcher quickly finds himself so deep into the weeds that it is impossible to make any sense of what is being conveyed.

Throughout the entire public debate over the efficacy of Obamacare, no one seemed to be asking the pertinent questions. No one has asked, why is healthcare so expensive, and who gets all that money?

I can recall once reading a story in the Philadelphia Inquirer about a Southeast Asian family who arrived in Philadelphia with their infant daughters… Siamese twins joined at the abdomen. Upon examination by a team of surgeons and pediatricians, doctors concluded that it would be possible to surgically separate the twins and that, after a period of recovery, the two little girls could expect to live happy and productive lives.

But then one of the reporters asked the operative question. The Asian family had no healthcare insurance and very little money, so the question arose, how much would the estimated eleven-hour procedure cost? The hospital spokesman responded, quite matter-of-factly, saying, “About a million dollars.”

No one batted an eye; no one questioned the estimate and no one asked for a cost breakdown. Yet, it is necessary to ask, who gets all that money? How many physicians would participate in the separation procedure? How many nurses? What would be the cost of disposable medical equipment? What would be the cost of post-operative care? A million dollars is a hell of a lot of money for an eleven-hour surgical procedure and a month or so of post-operative pediatric care.

If we assume five attending physicians… two surgeons, an anesthetist, an obstetrician, and a pediatrician… at $1,000 each per hour for eleven hours, the cost for physician’s services would come to $55,000. If we assume five operating room and neo-natal nurses at $100 per hour for eleven hours, the cost of nursing care would come to $5,500. If we assume a cost of $1,000 per hour for the use of the operating theater, the cost of surgical facilities would come to $11,000. And if we assume a cost of $5,000 for drugs, medicines, and miscellaneous medical equipment, the direct costs accumulated on the day of the separation procedure would come to $76,500.

Then, if we assume a post-operative stay of 30 days for the twins, at $400 each, per day, for a bassinette in neo-natal recovery, that cost would come to $24,000. And if we assume a cost of $1,000 per day to have surgeons look in on their patients, $500 per day for nursing care, and $500 per day for miscellaneous medicines, food, and diapers, the total cost of post-operative care would come to $84,000. That would bring the total cost of the separation procedure and the post-op care to $160,500.

All of these estimated costs and daily and hourly rates are admittedly inflated. So if the hospital prepares an invoice for $1,000,000, who gets the other $839,500?

No one in Congress, the White House, or in the mainstream media is asking the operative question that needs to be addressed. No one is asking why healthcare is so expensive. No one is asking, who gets all that money?

A part of the answer to that question was suggested by a recent caller to the Rush Limbaugh radio show. The caller was a bookkeeper in the finance department of a major hospital; her husband was an orthopedic surgeon who practiced at the same hospital. The woman explained that each time an orthopedic surgeon performed a hip-joint or knee-joint replacement, he/she was paid a flat rate of $1,250 for their time and talent. However, when the manufacturer billed the hospital $8,000 for a prosthetic hip joint, the hospital routinely billed the patient, or the patient’s insurance company, $32,000… a 300% markup for the hardware.

Over the past three or four years, a close friend and neighbor has survived a serious bout with cancer. And although I am unaware of the total cost of his cancer treatments by local physicians and cancer specialists at the M.D. Anderson Clinic in Houston, I am aware that the bill for his bone marrow transplant procedure came to approximately $1.2 million.

Again, how many physicians and nurses actually saw him? How many hours did they spend treating him? What was the actual cost of a few hours of operating room usage? How was that $1.2 million split up between a few doctors, a few nurses, a few lab technicians, and the clinic itself? Who got all that money?

In recent weeks, Dr. Tom Coburn has announced that he will retire from the U.S. Senate with two years remaining on his current term. Dr. Coburn is one of the two or three finest members of the U.S. Senate and his departure will be a great loss to Oklahomans and to the country. Unfortunately, Dr. Coburn suffers from cancer and is undergoing treatment at M.D. Anderson in Houston. What caught my attention was a recent statement by Dr. Coburn, saying that each time he has a consultation at M.D. Anderson, he is billed for $32,000.

Again, how many physicians and nurses actually see him on each visit? How many hours do they spend treating him or evaluating his condition? What is the actual cost of the tests he undergoes? How is that $32,000 split up between a few doctors, a few nurses, a few lab technicians, and the clinic itself for just a few hours of their time? If the same team of doctors, nurses, and technicians see even as few as eight patients a day, the total income generated would come to $256,000. Who gets all that money?

Those who work in the healthcare industry… in hospitals, clinics, and doctors’ offices… always have a ready answer. They claim that it is the cost of high-tech equipment and facilities that runs up the cost of healthcare. Baloney! There are few hospitals or clinics in the country that cannot obtain the most expensive items of diagnostic equipment, such as MRI machines, through local philanthropy.

And those large portraits of distinguished-looking men and women hanging on the walls of hospitals and surgical wings? Those are not oil portraits of the hospital’s “Employee of the Month.” No, those are the portraits of the men and women who have shared their wealth by donating millions of dollars to build a wing onto the local hospital and whose names are enshrined in concrete and marble over the front door.

What is needed is a complete understanding by all concerned… especially those of us who pay the bills… of how a single dollar bill makes its way through the healthcare system and how it is divvied up at the end of the day. To do so, it would be necessary to conduct a complete micro-economic study of a select number of major medical facilities, identifying over a specified period of time the source of every dollar that comes in the front door, and the recipient of every dollar that goes out the back door.

In other words, in any overhaul of our healthcare system, our first order of business should be to figure out exactly who is bilking the system… who is getting rich, and who is being bankrupted in the process. Compared to the actual direct cost of healthcare, the price that consumers are asked to pay is far out of balance… perhaps by a factor of as much as four or five. So who gets all that money?

Early in his first term, Barack Obama promised that he and congressional Democrats would reshape the American healthcare system. They promised to insure 40 million uninsured, to substantially reduce the cost of healthcare for everyone, to save the average family as much as $2,400 a year in out-of-pocket healthcare costs, to increase the quality of healthcare for all Americans, and to do it all without increasing the number of doctors, nurses, and hospitals.

No one with an I.Q. larger than their hat size would believe they could do what they promised. But enough low-information Kool-Ade drinkers fell for Obama’s false promise and they elected him. Now they have to live with what he, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid have produced. When the small company and large company extensions granted by Obama expire sometime in 2016, or before, everyone will be able to see the disaster that Obamacare is.

It is likely that, beginning in 2015, a Republican-controlled House and Senate will be left with the task of cleaning up Obama’s mess. And when they do we can only hope that they will be wise enough to begin by asking the question, who gets all the money that pours into the healthcare system? Until we confront that question, real healthcare reform will be nothing more than an impossible dream.

US Department of Education’s War On School Choice in Florida

May 10, 2014/in Education, Featured, News, Policy, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Dr. Rich Swier

The Office of the Inspector General for the United States Department of Education, by their actions, seems to have a double standard for wrongdoing and impropriety concerning charter schools and public schools in Miami-Dade County, Florida.

Last month, The Miami Herald reported that South Miami-based Academica Corp., Florida’s largest charter school management company, is being investigated by the USDOE for “potential conflicts of interests in its business practices.”

Charter school critics said the Inspector General’s findings were a reason to push back on HB 7083, the bill that could weaken the power of school districts over new charter schools. HB 7083 died in the House K-12 Education Committee.

Critics of charter schools and school choice were quick to pounce on the USDOE audit that spotted “potential,” but not proven and definite, improprieties akin to those committed by the school district in terms of bogus teacher evaluation training, teacher certification fraud, and test cheating at Miami Norland Senior High School.

Miami-Dade School Board member Raquel Regalado

“Obviously, there are some serious questions about the way the system works in Florida. The prudent thing for the Legislature to do would be to wait for the federal government to finish its work [on the audit] and then consider changes to the charter school law,” said Miami-Dade School Board member Raquel Regalado.

Jeff Wright, of the Florida Education Association, concurred: “If an audit like this is going on, the Legislature should not give charter schools more opportunities to game the system.”

But Rep. Manny Diaz, the Hialeah Republican sponsoring the bill, who left his job with the M-DCPS last year to become dean of a private college managed by Academica, said his proposal would not open the door to questionable business practices.

“This is not about opening up the Wild Wild West. We want there to be controls [over charter schools]. We just want to make sure the controls are uniform and transparent,” said Diaz.

It is interesting how Ms. Regalado and Mr. Wright come out on an unsubstantiated issue concerning charter schools, but where do they stand on substantiated wrongdoing by Miami-Dade County Public Schools on bogus teacher evaluation training, teacher certification fraud, and test cheating at Miami Norland Senior High School, and why have they not been vocal on those issues?

Furthermore, and more disturbing, the whistle-blower, Mr. Trevor Colestock, reported these issues to the USDOE OIG and they have done nothing to address them. Neither the USDOE or state officials have held anyone from Miami Norland Senior or M-DCPS to account.

Is it because charter schools and proponents of school choice espouse innovative teaching and offer students freedom from the Common Core and other federal government mandates and M-DCPS Superintendent Alberto Carvalho embraces Common Core, Race To the Top, and other federal initiatives?

Miami-Dade: Student, Not Teachers, Feels Heavy Hand of Justice

May 10, 2014/in Courts & Law, Education, Featured, News, Policy, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Dr. Rich Swier

In Miami-Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS), there exists a double standard by the school system and its police department when dispensing justice between students and teachers.

For evidence of this, examine the circumstances between a student, Jose Bautista, an 18 year old senior at Dr. Michael Krop Senior High School, and Mr. Emmanuel Fleurantin and Mrs. Brenda Muchnick, two teachers at Miami Norland Senior High School. Each did something terribly wrong, each was treated very differently.

The question: Has justice been served?

According to a local news report, Mr. Bautista, was arrested and charged with eight felonies counts for allegedly obtaining the principal’s network password and offering to change grades for four students for an unknown sum of money. He was on track to graduate with his class at the end of May. On Friday, May 2nd, a judge set Bautista’s bond at $20,000 and ordered him to be placed under house arrest with a GPS monitor. He has since been released from jail.

Miami-Dade County Public Schools released a statement saying, “The school district takes incidents like this very seriously. In addition to the arrest and ongoing criminal investigation, the Code of Student Conduct provides for corrective strategies up to and including recommendation for expulsion.”

It is unclear if Bautista will be allowed to graduate.

During the 2011-2012 school year, Mr. Fleurantin and Mrs. Muchnick gave the answers to standardized tests, industry certification exams, to a large number of students. Seventeen students confessed to this, some saying whole classes received the answers.

The Miami-Dade OIG Final Report concluded that, “Miami Norland has benefited in the form of attaining a higher school grade and may have received financial compensation or other benefit resulting from its high pass rate on the industry certification exams” (page 13).

With the assistance of cheating, undertaken by Mr. Emmanuel Fleurantin and Mrs. Brenda Muchnick, Miami Norland’s school grade went from a “C” for the 2010-11 school year to an “A” for the 2011-12 school year.

As a result, total federal funds (SIG, RTTT) given out due to a grade influenced by cheating was $100,560; the total state funds per FSRP was between $130,000- $140,000; the total overall combined federal and state incentive funds were $230,560- $240,560.

Each teacher at Miami Norland Senior High School received $1730.41 from all three payouts.

On October 16, 2013, the Miami-Dade School Board voted to terminate Mr. Emmanuel Fleurantin for his role in what has become known as Adobegate.

On November 19, 2013, the Miami-Dade School Board voted to suspend Mrs. Brenda Muchnick for 30 working days without pay for her role in Adobegate.

Mr. Fleurantin is still awaiting the results from his Department of Administrative Hearings case, and Mrs. Muchnick served her inconsequential 30 day suspension without pay and has been back to work at Norland Since January 8, 2014, whereas the whistle-blower, Trevor Colestock, was illegally removed from Norland and has yet to be returned.

Mr. Fleurantin and Mrs. Muchnick were both investigated by M-DCPS and Schools Police, but unlike the student Jose Bautista, both were not charged, handcuffed, or appeared before a judge.

How does Bautista, a student who did something juvenile yet serious, gets charged, cuffed, goes before a judge, has a $20,000 bond, confined to home with a GPS monitor, local media scrutiny, and now has a felony record for the rest of his days, but yet two teachers who should have known better were never charged, cuffed, appeared in court despite unduly influencing the school grade and caused, or attempted to cause, an erroneous $250,000 payout of state and federal incentive funds?

Fleurantin and Muchnick engaged in far more serious crimes than Bautista: multiple potential counts of using a computer to commit and perpetrate a fraud, wire fraud, defrauding (or attempting to defraud) an out of state corporation (Certiport, the test vendor), and defrauding (or attempting to defraud) the State of Florida and the federal government and the taxpayers thereof.

Perhaps Fleurantin and Muchnick got off easy because they were doing what they were told and/or their actions benefited the school district and school/district administrators across the board in terms of recognition, promotion, and pay, and Bautista gets the heavy hand of justice because his actions only benefited himself and not M-DCPS whatsoever.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is courtesy of the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s office.

Florida: Statement on Passage of Inspectors General Reform

May 7, 2014/in Must Read, News, Policy, Regulation, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Dr. Rich Swier

Inspectors general reform (HB 1385) passed the Florida Senate by a vote of 37-1 on May 1st. The House approved the measure 114-0 on April 23rd. The bill now goes to Governor Rick Scott.

“Inspectors general are the public’s watchdogs within state government and this bill gives them more independence to conduct investigations,” said Dan Krassner, executive director of the nonpartisan research institute and government watchdog group Integrity Florida.

“We commend Senator Jack Latvala and Representative Dan Raulerson for their reform efforts (HB 1385) to increase oversight of state operations and accountability for the public’s money.

Presently, state agency heads are able to appoint and remove their own inspectors general, which creates built-in conflicts of interest. This bill calls for inspectors general to instead report directly to the governor’s chief inspector general. The reporting change should allow our internal government watchdogs to do their job without fear of retribution from leaders of the agencies they investigate.

Agency heads and their deputies should not be able to prevent an inspector general from conducting an audit or investigation. Floridians are counting on our internal watchdogs to root out fraud, waste and abuse within state government.

The chief inspector general would make the appointment and removal (only for cause) decisions for the agency inspectors general.”

ABOUT INTEGRITY FLORIDA

Integrity Florida is a nonpartisan research institute and government watchdog whose mission is to promote integrity in government and expose public corruption. More information at www.integrityflorida.org.

Florida League of Women Voters Celebrates Voter Fraud?

May 5, 2014/in Elections, Featured, News, Policy, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Dr. Rich Swier

The Florida League of Women Voters appears to be against any strenuous review of voting rolls with the intent of removing ineligible voters. Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner in 2013 began a process called “Project Integrity“. The idea was to check Florida voter rolls against the Department of Homeland Security SAVE database to insure those in Florida illegally do not vote. The Secretary’s office would verify someone is on the SAVE database and registered to vote in Florida, then that name would be sent to the local Supervisor of Elections (SOE), who would then re-verify if the voter is ineligible. The SOE would then remove that name from the voter rolls.

Project Integrity has been opposed by the Florida League from the start.

“Using the federal SAVE Program to conduct this ‘cleaning’ of the voter rolls is like taking a chihuahua on a hunting expedition — it is an inappropriate tool for this application,” says League President Deirdre Macnab. The League will be watching to ensure that the rights of eligible voters are not undermined. “We urge the Secretary’s office to look for ways to engage the state’s electorate and use the Department of State’s resources to make the voting process more accessible to citizens, rather than more strenuous,” Macnab concluded.

When Secretary Detzner stopped Project Integrity the League celebrated that decision stating “Florida voters should be delighted by this news.” We sent the following questions to Macnab:

Should voter rolls be updated to remove all those not eligible to vote?
Should voter rolls be updated to meet federal and state laws on voter eligibility?
In a press release on suspension of Project Integrity the FL League of Women Voters stated “ Florida voters should be delighted by this news.”
Should illegal aliens be allowed to vote? If so, how many and why?
Why do you use the word “purge” in your press release? Purge implies ethnicity. Ineligible means illegal. Does the League agree?
Your presser states “Previous purges initiated by the Department of State have resulted in embarrassment for the state of Florida and have done nothing to make our elections process more secure.” What does updating voter rolls have to do with security? What are you referring to when you state “embarrassment for the state”. Please send me a poll or study that has this as a finding.
You state, “Prior to the 2012 election, over 182,000 registered voters were inappropriately targeted by the state as potentially ineligible.” Where did you get this number?
There are examples of people who are contacted and later retained on the voter rolls. Is it not proper for local Supervisors and the Secretary of State to check eligibility? Why is it inappropriate to look at potentially ineligible voters?

We received the following reply from Macnab on April 2, 2014:

Every voter takes an oath when they register to vote and pens their signature to the registration form. A new voter pledges that the information provided is both accurate and truthful information. To violate that oath is a felony, punishable by law. In the same vein, we should take the same precautionary steps to honor any voter’s oath before we consider removing them from the voter rolls. Unfortunately in Florida, we have seen instances where eligible voters are removed, with faulty and inaccurate voter list maintenance instituted by the Secretary’s office. The League believes only eligible voters should vote, and we have a process that is working: we know that the independently elected Supervisors of Election and their staff at the county level are working every day to ensure that lists are up to date and that only eligible voters are in fact voting. There are a number of news stories available if you Google this subject that can provide back up to the numbers you mentioned.

On that same day National Review Online reported:

North Carolina’s Board of Elections found that tens of thousands of registered voters from the state have personal information matching that of registered voters in other states, and appear to have voted in states other than North Carolina in 2012. In some cases, votes were cast under names of individuals who had passed away before Election Day.

The review searched databases in 27 other states and 101 million voter records for information such as matching names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers.

The review found that 35,570 North Carolina voters from 2012 shared the same first names, last names, and dates of birth with individuals who voted in other states. Another 765 Tar Heel State residents who voted in 2012 had the the same names, birthdays, and final four digits of a Social Security number as voters elsewhere.

The Stolen Election of 2012

May 5, 2014/in Elections, Featured, News, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Paul R. Hollrah

The April 2, 2014 edition of National Review Online contains a blockbuster story detailing the results of a widespread vote fraud investigation conducted by the North Carolina State Board of Elections. In their review of the 2012 General Election, the board searched some 101,000,000 voter records in databases of 27 other states, using the same names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers of individuals who voted in the North Carolina General Election.

What they found provides convincing proof that Democrats were not going to take any chances in 2012; they were not going to allow Mitt Romney to ruin Barack Obama’s chances for a second term. What the study of the 2012 election shows is that 35,570 North Carolina voters shared the same first names, last names, and dates of birth with individuals registered to vote in other states. Another 765 North Carolina voters had the same first names, last names, birthdays, and final four digits of a Social Security number as those who voted in other states, stretching credulity to its absolute limits. Barack Obama carried North Carolina in 2012 by a margin of just 14,177 votes (0.33%). To what extent were those voters residents of North Carolina who also voted in 27 other states, or were many of them residents of 27 other states who also voted in North Carolina?

In another recent study by the State of Virginia, it was found that some 44,000 Virginia voters are also registered to vote in Maryland. Of course, fraudulent voting by Democrats is not unique to North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland. For Democrats, vote fraud is a way of life… standard operating procedure. And if the Republican Party had any leaders fit to be called leaders, they would see to it that the voting statistics of every state in the nation are evaluated in exactly the same way as the North Carolina voting age population.

For starters, the North Carolina attorney general should hold a press conference, extending an invitation to the 765 North Carolinians with the same first names, last names, birth dates, and Social Security numbers as individuals who were found to have voted in other states to come forward and identify themselves. Those individuals should be allowed to plead guilty to felony vote fraud, pay a hefty fine, and lose their voting rights for a period as prescribed by law.

Of course, not all those who engage in vote fraud could be expected to self-identify themselves. In such cases, the North Carolina attorney general should conduct forensic examinations of absentee ballots held in North Carolina and other states, lifting latent fingerprints from absentee ballots and subjecting signatures to expert handwriting analysis. Those who fail to self-identify, but whose latent fingerprints are later found on absentee ballots should be indicted, tried, subject to a heavy fine, and sentenced to prison. Upon being sentenced for felony vote fraud they should also lose voting rights as prescribed by law.

Federal law requires that all state election boards retain absentee ballots for at least twenty-two months following an election. Many states require ballots to be retained for twenty-four months, or longer. So it is essential that investigators conduct studies of double voting within two years following an election or much of the evidence of vote fraud will be destroyed.

In a recent speech before Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, Barack Obama attempted to rally his base by charging that Republicans are attempting to suppress the black vote in the coming 2014 General Election. Demonstrating once again that he is the dimmest bulb on the porch, he said, “The principle of one person-one vote is the single greatest tool we have to redress an unjust status quo. You would think there would not be an argument about this anymore. But the stark, simple truth is this: The right to vote is threatened today in a way that it has not been since the Voting Rights Act became law nearly five decades ago.”

Of course, as is the case with almost everything Obama says, he was not speaking the truth; he was only saying what he thought would appeal to his low-information base. The fact is, except for Democrat-sponsored fraud, the right to vote has not been threatened at all in recent decades, compared to the years between the Civil War and the mid-1950s. In those years Democrats used the KKK to intimidate and/or murder thousands of blacks for no other reason than that they insisted on the right to vote. Yes, the one person-one vote principle is a critical concept in our system, but that means one person-one vote, not one Republican-one vote and one Democrat-two votes or three votes, as most Democrats see as their birthright.

He went on to say, “Across the country, Republicans have led efforts to pass laws making it harder, not easier, for people to vote…” So if that is a true statement, it must also be correct to say that Republicans have led efforts to make it impossible to board an airplane, to cash a check, to make purchases with credit cards, to enter public buildings, to sign up for food stamps, to sign up for unemployment benefits, and to purchase beer, wine, liquor, and cigarettes. But we all know that’s not the case, so once again Obama is caught telling untruths to people who are either too dumb or too gullible to know that they’re being propagandized by a four-Pinocchio liar.

The truth is, since the vast majority of those behind prison bars are registered Democrats… those who’ve either attempted to disrupt the social order or who’ve attempted to enrich themselves at the expense of others… it is only fair to say that it is Democrats who are directly responsible for most of these impositions on our time and integrity.

He said, “Now, I want to be clear! I am not against reasonable attempts to secure the ballot. We understand that there has (sic) to be rules in place. But I am against requiring an ID that millions of Americans don’t have. That shouldn’t suddenly prevent you from exercising your right to vote. So, yes, we’re right to be on guard against voter fraud. Voter fraud would impinge on our democracy, as well. We don’t want folks voting that shouldn’t be voting. We all agree on that. Let’s stipulate to that, as the lawyers say.”

Unfortunately, with an attorney general like Eric Holder, Obama can stipulate all he wants to. It means about as much as a doctor stipulating that a patient suffers from a terminal, but curable, disease, but then prescribes no course of treatment. Eric Holder has been handed irrefutable evidence of vote fraud crimes by Democrats, all of which have been filed in the “round file.”

Then, suggesting to his gullible listeners that vote fraud is not a problem, he offered a few statistics. He said, “One recent study found only 10 cases of alleged voter impersonation in 12 years… 10 cases. Another analysis found that, out of 197 million votes cast for federal elections between 2002 and 2005, only 40 voters… out of 197 million… were indicted for fraud…”

Since a great many Democratic precincts regularly produce far more than ten cases of in-person voter impersonations, the people who put words on Obama’s teleprompter must have searched long and hard to find a source that would attest to only 10 cases in the entire United States in a 12 year period. Since Obama failed to cite the source for his statistics, one might suspect that they came either from Eric Holder or from the PR office at the Democrat National Committee.

It apparently escaped Obama’s attention that, in 2012, in precincts all across the country, in major cities with heavy Democratic majorities and powerful Democratic machines, Mitt Romney was completely “skunked,” receiving not a single vote out of hundreds of thousands of votes cast. This, of course, is not only a statistical improbability, it is a statistical impossibility, but it went completely unchallenged by Romney and the Republican National Committee.

Giving a tip-of-the-hat to a former racist Democrat president, Obama told his nearly all-black audience that, at the time Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, some of his advisors were recommending caution, saying, “Well, all right, just wait. You’ve done a big thing now; let’s let the dust settle, don’t stir folks up.” But Obama quotes Johnson as replying, “No, no, I can’t wait. We’ve got to press forward and pass the Voting Rights Act. About this there can and should be no argument. Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote.”

Of course, that represents only Obama’s sanitized version of what Johnson may have said at the time. According to two Democratic governors who flew with him on Air Force One, what LBJ actually said was, “I’ll have those n_ _ _ ers voting Democratic for the next 200 years.”

The point is, African-Americans are rarely told the truth about where white Democrats actually stand on the issue of race. If the Republican Party had leaders worthy of the title, they would begin to tell them the truth, treating them as if they are grownups.

To the best of my knowledge, only one fraudulent voter in the entire state of Ohio went to jail for vote fraud in 2013. According to a story in the Cincinnati Enquirer, Melowese Richardson was convicted of voting 5 times for Barack Obama in 2012. She was released on March 11, 2014, after serving only eight months of a five year sentence on the grounds that she is mentally ill… a condition not uncommon among Obama voters.

It’s long past time that Republicans moved forward with a national voter registration database, tying every registered voter to a name, address, birth date, and Social Security number. It’s also long past time that we began making a lot more Melowese Richardsons, whether Democrats or Republicans. And if we don’t have Republican leaders with the stomach for the task, then it’s time to get new Republican leadership. We don’t have to jail all Democrats who commit fraud… we could never build enough jail cells… we only have to jail enough of them to make the rest wonder if perhaps they’ll be the next to hear a knock on their door.

Secure property rights: Hold government to the law by Ron Arnold

April 30, 2014/in Courts & Law, Must Read, News, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

Cliven Bundy marched into my life one Friday morning in January 1992 in a protest bound for a federal courthouse in Las Vegas. He held up one side of a street-width banner that asked, “Has the West been won or has the fight just begun?”

To my great relief, just as Bundy promised, nearly 200 ranchers from all over the state marched behind him, yelling “Property rights!” Nearly a mile later, the marchers fell silent and filed into the courtroom where Wayne Hage of Pine Creek Ranch faced arraignment for the felony of cleaning brush out of his ditches without a U.S. Forest Service permit.

The Forest Service had already confiscated Hage’s cattle and left him bankrupt, just as the Bureau of Land Management would try with Bundy 22 years later.

Hage had already filed a lawsuit against the Forest Service in the U.S. Court of Claims, just as Bundy now has cause to do against the BLM – last week, during their failed attempt to confiscate Bundy’s cattle, agents wantonly bulldozed his water supply into oblivion without court authority.

Wayne Hage did not stand in that courtroom alone because I was honor bound to prevent it – I had published his 1989 book, Storm Over Rangelands: Private Rights in Federal Lands, which unleashed the federal fury.

The message terrified abusive bureaucrats: There are private rights in federal lands – vested rights, not privileges.

His book, the product of three intensive, grueling years consulting with dozens of experts and sifting through many archives, found the dirty little secret that could destroy the abusive power of all federal Western land agencies – by making them obey their own laws.

It was so stunning that a sitting Supreme Court justice secretly sent Wayne a message marveling at his shining intellect – burnished with a masters degree in animal science and honed by academic colloquies as a trustee of the University of Nevada Foundation – and warning of the titanic battle to come.

How true: Hage was convicted of brush cutting but acquitted on appeal. His own lawsuit against the United States took almost 20 years, but proved there are private rights in federal land. He died of cancer in 2006 before he could see how great a victory he had won – and how the battle is still just beginning, as Bundy foresaw.

Wayne’s son, Wayne N. Hage, now manages Pine Creek, and his daughter Ramona Hage Morrison is his intellectual heir. She helped research his book, lived the courthouse agonies with her father and assisted with his seminars on protecting ranchers’ rights. Morrison said:

Private rights in federal lands were recognized in an 1866 water law. It says, “… whenever, by priority of possession, rights to the use of water have vested and accrued, and the same are recognized and acknowledged by the local customs, laws, and the decisions of courts, the possessors and owners of such vested rights shall be maintained and protected in the same.”

That Act was passed a long time ago, but every federal land law since then contains a clause with language similar to, “Nothing in this Act shall be construed to impair any vested right in existence on the effective date of this Act.”

Most ranchers don’t know that and federal agencies exploit their ignorance with harassment that runs them off the land. Actually, understanding vested rights is not too hard – they’re absolute rights not subject to cancellation – but proving up those rights by assembling your chain of title and other technicalities and then making the government protect them is very hard.

The agencies know they don’t own the water rights, so their lawyers fight viciously with misdirection to save their empire from the owners. Ranchers lose in court because they don’t know how to prove up their vested rights and they don’t get lawyers who know the precision required to plead a vested rights case. Very few lawyers know.

Ranchers, get smart. Don’t assume anything. You probably believe a lot of things that aren’t true. Get busy and prove up your vested rights as we did. Get a court to adjudicate them as we did. Yes, your whole life will be one battle after another, like ours. Seek help to develop an army of supporters, as we did. You can shout freedom slogans all you want, but only the courts can destroy the root power of federal abuse.

The BLM has now withdrawn. Bundy has his moment of triumph. The cries of victory are thrilling.

But we know it’s not over yet. The BLM did not leave because angry citizens outnumbered their assault force by 100 to 1. Nothing has touched the BLM’s ability to return.

Get real: the BLM invaders left when it got ugly because it’s an election year and they’re all Democrats. They’ll be back.

Property rights defenders can stop them. We can go on the attack in the courts with organized funding to adjudicate protection for every last vested right in the American West. We have the laws to do it. We now need organization, money, brains, and the will to make it happen. Every vested right that we protect will destroy that much federal power to abuse.

Let no ranching family go unprotected.

That’s the hard way, but it’s the only way that works. Stay on target: the federal power to abuse must be destroyed.

EDITORS NOTE: This article originally appeared in the Washington Examiner.

About the Author: Ron Arnold

Ron Arnold is executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise.

EPA’s McCarthy Defends Hiding Secret Science from Public

April 30, 2014/in Environment, Must Read, News, Policy, Science, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Sean Hackbarth

In a speech filled with more straw men than a corn field in the fall, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy fired back at critics, like the U.S. Chamber, who have called out the agency for its lack of transparency and openness involving scientific data and analysis that it uses to impose costly air regulations on the economy.

The debate stems around access to data on the health effects of fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) on humans. While EPA and researchers have blocked public access to the data, the agency has used it to justify nearly all (98%) of the benefits of EPA air regulations between 2002 and 2012.

“People are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. You can’t just claim the science isn’t real when it doesn’t align well with your political or financial interests,” McCarthy said to the National Academy of Sciences, “Science is real and verifiable.”

See what I mean about straw men?

No one disagrees with any of this. What EPA critics want is public access to the data in order to scrutinize, verify, and reproduce the conclusions.

For instance, William Kovacs notes a major problem with the data:

The studies used to support the 1997 PM 2.5 standard have never been independently reproduced or validated, and EPA has successfully resisted all attempts – including a 2000 Freedom of Information Act request from the U.S. Chamber – to obtain the data underlying the studies upon which EPA based its standards.

Nevertheless, in her speech to the Academy, McCarthy reaffirmed her agency’s refusal to make the data available to public scrutiny.

Science is an iterative process. It builds on previous work and assumes that no one has all the answers. EPA shouldn’t be afraid to open the data to public inspection.

This is especially important when regulators use this data to impose tremendous costs on the economy—especially inelectricity generation–keep jobs from being created, and hold back investments. The public should be able to see the data and not merely take the word of a federal agency.

Despite McCarthy’s claim that EPA critics are attacking science itself, by advocating for openness and transparency we’re defending the scientific process that’s delivered progress to humanity for centuries.

“When we follow the science — we all win,” McCarthy told the audience, and she’s right. However, that requires that the data be open so the public can examine it.

[via memeorandum]

Follow Sean Hackbarth on Twitter at @seanhackbarth and the U.S. Chamber at @uschamber.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo of EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy is by photographer: F. Carter Smith/Bloomberg.

Pentagon to destroy $1 billion worth of ammo. This makes sense because?

April 29, 2014/in Budget and Finance, Commentary, National Security, News, Policy, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Allen West

Why is the Pentagon to destroy ammunition for our men and women in uniform while the Department of Homeland Security is buying up millions of rounds of ammunition? As we asked last week, why are we decimating our military while many government agencies are arming up?

You really have to wonder why, according to USA Today, “The Pentagon plans to destroy more than $1 billion worth of ammunition although some of those bullets and missiles could still be used by troops, according to the Pentagon and congressional sources. It’s impossible to know what portion of the arsenal slated for destruction — valued at $1.2 billion by the Pentagon — remains viable because the Defense Department’s inventory systems can’t share data effectively, according to a Government Accountability Office report obtained by USA TODAY. The result: potential waste of unknown value.”

Everyone complains about fraud, waste and abuse of American taxpayer dollars, and I will admit there is a degree of that in the Department of Defense (DoD), the Pentagon. I firmly supported — still do –an audit of the DoD when I sat on the House Armed Services Committee. But still, it makes you wonder.

Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., and chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee said, “Despite years of effort, the Army, Navy and Air Force still don’t have an efficient process for doing something as basic as sharing excess bullets. This Government Accountability Office (GAO) report clearly shows that our military’s antiquated systems lead to millions of dollars in wasteful ammunition purchases.” The Army and Pentagon, in a statement, acknowledged “the need to automate the process” and will make it a priority in future budgets. In all, the Pentagon manages a stockpile of conventional ammunition worth $70 billion.

Now, this last part is quite perplexing to me, having spent 22 years in the US Army as a combat artillery officer and being quite involved in ammunition management as a Brigade/Regimental operations officer, a Battalion Executive officer, and a Battalion Commander. We constantly received spreadsheets that were reconciled monthly for ammunition allocation and use. In the Army we have Division and Corps level Ammunition Officers whose sole mission is ammunition management, which is forecasted out and allocated yearly.

Excess ammunition? We were begging for excess ammunition for training purposes. And I recall on several occasions when I was an Army exchange officer with the II Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Lejeune working out some issues on ammunition transfer and training between XVIIIth Airborne Corps, Ft. Bragg. So what is this baloney?

Folks, this is why we need more men and women serving on Capitol Hill who have served in uniform and can raise the Bovine Excrement flag. It would also behoove these Members of the House and Senate who are on Armed Services committees to have staffers who are veterans and can provide proper insight and perspective.

However, more importantly, we need former servicemen and women in civilian leadership with oversight of the military who understand the tactical level processes and procedures so that at the higher strategic level, this type of foolishness does not occur. Instead, we have political nepotism and cronyism, as too many are positioned due to their campaign contributions or agenda allegiance, not because of their military experience or expertise.

USA Today says the GAO report illustrates the obsolete nature of the Pentagon’s inventory systems for ammunition. A request for ammunition from the Marine Corps, for example, is e-mailed to the Army. The e-mail is printed out and manually retyped into the Army system because the services cannot share data directly. Not only is this time consuming, but it can introduce errors — by an incorrect keystroke, for example.

Waste, buying new ammunition while usable stockpiles exist, can occur “because the Army does not report information on all available and usable items,” the report states. The annual conference among the services — although it saves about $70 million per year, according to the Pentagon — is inadequate. The services, in fiscal year 2012, exchanged 44 million items, including 32 million bullets for machine guns and pistols. Specifically, the Army’s report does not include information from prior years about usable ammunition that was unclaimed by another service and stored for potential foreign military sales or slated for potential disposal,” the report says.

All of which begs the simple question: who is in charge? Who is tracking ammunition production, allocation, usage, and redistribution? This is why a serious audit system is necessary. If a monthly reconciliation is done at the unit/installation level, there should at least be a quarterly reconciliation at higher levels. If that is being done, then we should have fail-safe systems as well as procedures and methods upgraded to ensure effective and efficient management.

This is unacceptable and I bet you could sell the excess usable 9 mm ammunition at a reduced price to civilian outlets — and make money for the DoD. But then that would mean you’re arming civilians…

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on AllenBWest.com.

Bad Behavior Bonuses

April 25, 2014/in Featured, News, Policy, Politics, Taxes, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Cynthia Canevaro

Imagine you have a job and the company you work for provides you a credit card for your company travel needs, gives you a generous salary with yearly increases plus bonuses and provides you with what most would consider a generous benefits package.

All you have to do is come in, do your job and abide by the rules.

Instead, you decide to misuse the credit card, take drugs, make violent threats and claim fraudulent unemployment benefits. If lucky, you might be afforded a trip to a professional counselor and put on a performance improvement plan. But, most likely you would be sacked – fired – sent out the door.

That’s how it is in the private sector. Not so in our federal government – the same government that spends your hard earned tax dollars.

In fact, just this week the IRS Inspector General announced that more than $2.8 billion in bonuses was paid to IRS employees with disciplinary problems. Included in that $2.8 billion was $1 million paid to IRS employees who owe back taxes!

Repeat – the IRS paid $1 million of your blood, sweat and tears to IRS employees who skipped out on paying their fair share!

It gets better. At the IRS, you can misuse your travel card, take drugs, make violent threats, claim fraudulent unemployment benefits and fail to pay your federal taxes, and still get a bonus and additional paid time off.

In fact, the Wall Street Journal reported this week that the IRS awarded approximately “11,000 hours of paid time off to nearly 1,200 IRS employees with tax issues or official-conduct violations.” They added, “one employee who was suspended for 10 days in September 2011 received a $1,300 performance award in August 2012, the report said.”

You know ladies and gentleman this truly goes beyond egregious. It is the thumbing of the middle finger to those who toil every day to pay for their outrageous behavior. And every member of Congress who doesn’t immediately stand for the elimination of the IRS and the income tax tacitly gives their approval of this insult on the American taxpayer.

And, standing up on the floor of the House and Senate and boasting that, “I have drafted legislation that will prohibit this kind of behavior” is in a word, a cop-out. The people, especially FairTax® supporters, see through this kind of bravado.

There is only one way to solve this continuing problem. It is the enactment of HR 25/ S 122, the FairTax® Act – the only legislation before Congress that defunds and disbands the IRS in its entirety. The flat tax won’t, a VAT won’t and the much-acclaimed “tax reform” plan heralded by the Ways and Means Chairman won’t either.

Only the FairTax eliminates the IRS. So, when someone tells you, “I am for the elimination of the IRS and the income tax – with a post card tax return” – give them the facts.

And when your elected representative gives you a canned ham response about how outraged they are about what is happening at the IRS and then proceeds to submit new legislation – remind them about the FairTax and move on. Why?

Very simply, this November you will have an opportunity to express your voice in a very meaningful way with those who support the FairTax. And I promise you, millions of people who go to work every day – who abide by the rules, do their job and pay their taxes – will thank you.