…………………….Click on image above to watch video.
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Via C-SPAN
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CBO: Obama Budget Adds $5.2 Trillion To Deficit, $1 Trillion In New Taxes
20 MayCBO: Obama Budget Adds $5.2 Trillion To Deficit, $1 Trillion In New Taxes – Big Government
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says President Barack Obama’s 2014 budget would add $5.2 trillion in deficits over the next ten years and contains nearly $1 trillion in new taxes.
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The Obama budget, which was delivered two months after the legally-required deadline, is larded with accounting gimmicks that count as savings war and disaster contingency funds that were never going to be spent. Obama’s budget also assumes sequester-related cuts will all be restored.
But Obama claims his budget is devoid of budgeting tricks.
“The numbers work,” says Obama. “There’s not a lot of smoke and mirrors in here.”
Congressional Republicans are not buying it.
“This new [CBO] report shows that the President’s budget doesn’t come close to solving the problem,” said House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI). “The federal government will take in a record haul over the next ten years. And the President wants yet another massive tax hike. But under his plan, we’ll keep adding to the debt – at an alarming rate.”
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) defending the Obama budget and said the plan offers taxpayers a “big and balanced approach.”
“This is an important validation of the President’s and Democrats’ efforts to restore fiscal discipline through a big and balanced approach while maintaining our ability to invest in a competitive economy and a growing middle class,” said Hoyer.
Obama’s past budgets have resulted in politically embarrassing defeats. In 2011 and 2012, the Senate Democrats and Republicans unanimously rejected Obama’s proposed budgets.
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Your Daley Gator Lying Leftist Liars IRS Cover-up News Roundup For Saturday (Videos)
18 MayAn Internal Revenue Service watchdog testified Friday that he told Obama administration officials in June that he was looking into allegations the IRS targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status.
The revelation by Inspector General Russell George came at the first congressional hearing on the IRS misconduct, which has generated a political firestorm since it was disclosed a week ago.
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George’s testimony represented the first evidence that officials in the Obama administration knew of the allegations as long as a year ago, during the presidential campaign.
Appearing Friday before the House Ways and Means Committee, George said he told the Treasury Department’s general counsel of his investigation on June 4, in a routine briefing of what his office was working on.
George said he did not disclose that he had concluded the targeting was improper.
But his testimony that knowledge of the allegations was not limited to the IRS is likely to fuel efforts by Republicans to link the scandal to the White House and congressional Democrats.
Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said Friday that he was briefed in March that an investigation was underway of IRS screening of conservative groups – though he didn’t learn the substance of the findings until last week.
In an interview with Bloomberg Television, Lew said he had “a getting-to-know-you conversation” with George in mid-March, a couple of weeks after he was sworn in as treasury secretary, and the investigation “was one of the things he briefed me was ongoing.”
“I didn’t know any of the details of it until last Friday,” Lew said.
Lew also disclosed that he has ordered Danny Werfel, whom President Obama named Thursday to take over as acting IRS commissioner, to come up with an action plan within 30 days to address the handling of applications for tax-exempt status.
Obama also has said he first learned of the matter last Friday – when a Treasury Department official, Lois Lerner, revealed during an American Bar Association conference that IRS workers in a Cincinnati office had subjected groups with “Tea Party” or “patriots” in their names for extra scrutiny to determine if they should be tax exempt.
During yesterday’s testimony, Steven Miller, who was forced to resign this week week as the IRS acting commissioner, revealed that Lerner made her disclosure in response to a planted question at the bar association conference.
“We talked about what would be said and how we might do it,” he said.
The revelation irked lawmakers already angry the IRS never told them it had been improperly targeting conservative groups, despite numerous inquiries by members of Congress.
Reps. Joe Crowley (D-Queens) and Sandy Levin (D-Mich.) demanded Lerner resign or be fired.
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Congressman: IRS Asked Pro-Life Group About ‘The Content Of Their Prayers’ – Washington Examiner
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During a House Ways and Means Committee hearing today, Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Ill., grilled outgoing IRS commissioner Steven Miller about the IRS targeting a pro-life group in Iowa.
“Their question, specifically asked from the IRS to the Coalition for Life of Iowa: ‘Please detail the content of the members of your organization’s prayers,’” Schock declared.
“Would that be an inappropriate question to a 501 c3 applicant?” asked Schock. “The content of one’s prayers?”
“It pains me to say I can’t speak to that one either,” Miller replied.
After Schock pressed him further, Miller explained that although he couldn’t comment on the specific case, it would “surprise him” if that question was asked.
The report comes from the Thomas More Society, a national public interest law firm for religious liberty.
From their report:
Coalition for Life of Iowa found itself in the IRS’s crosshairs when the group applied for tax exempt status in October 2008. Nearly ten months of interrogation about the group’s opposition to Planned Parenthood included a demand by a Ms. Richards from the IRS’ Cincinnati office unlawfully insisted that all board members sign a sworn declaration promising not to picket/protest Planned Parenthood. Further questioning by the IRS requested detailed information about the content of the group’s prayer meetings, educational seminars, and signs their members hold outside Planned Parenthood.
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No kidding, you mean it wasn’t done for “efficiency”?
Via Breitbart:
In House testimony Friday, former Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller explained that the IRS mistakes in handling applications for non-profit status from tea party groups were due, in large part, to a flood of applications following the Citizens United decision. Miller said the targeting was a botched attempt to centralize the process to account for the increased workload. There were fewer applications in 2010, when the IRS began targeting conservative groups, than the year before, however.
In 2009, before IRS began targeting tea party organizations, 1,751 groups applied for 501 (c)4 status. That number dropped in 2010 to 1,735. In fact, applications were down across all areas in the Tax Exempt division’s jurisdiction. So, they had more staff available for processing. While the number of applications did increase in 2011 and 2012, there was no increase in applications when the IRS began isolating tea party groups.
Moreover, the IRS reportedly abandoned the targeting in early 2012. It presumably had little trouble handling the increased number of applicants in advance of the 2012 election.
For whatever reason the IRS chose to target tea party organizations for special scrutiny, it wasn’t due to a flood of new applications.
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IT GETS WORSE!
The Obama IRS demanded that several Tea Party groups provide back-end access to their websites.
And, from reliable sources: This happened to several Tea Party groups!
The source has this in writing. It states they wanted access to everything the members had access to, which would be chats, email, contact information, etc. The group raised less than $600. She was targeted as early as October 2010.
Central Texas 912 President, Maria Acosta joined Kristina Ribali from FreedomWorks to discuss being singled out by the Feds.
The IRS asked for back-end access to the group’s website.
And this is a tax question?
Here is the latest creepy story of IRS harassment and abuse.
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UPDATE: The IRS also demanded the Richmond Tea Party in Virginia to provide access to the back-end of their website.
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IRS Says Release Of Groups’ Materials To ProPublica Was ‘Inadvertent And Unintentional’ – TPM
The Internal Revenue Service on Friday issued a statement to ProPublica saying that the agency’s release of pending confidential tax-exempt applications from conservative groups last year had been found to be “inadvertent and unintentional disclosures by the employees involved.”
In the statement, the IRS said the cases had been referred to and reviewed by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.
“When these two issues were previously raised concerning the potential unauthorized disclosures of 501(c)(4) application information, we immediately referred these cases to TIGTA [Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration] for a comprehensive review,” the statement said. “In both instances, TIGTA found these instances to be inadvertent and unintentional disclosures by the employees involved.”
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This is not my country. The Chicago thugocracy we have in the White House is every bit what Michelle Malkin has always said it was, using government to target and oppress political ‘enemies’.
In this segment, Frank Vandersloot tells BillO that after he gave Romney one million to help his campaign, he was then targeted by the Obama campaign on their official website along with seven others. Shortly after that he received a letter from the IRS saying he would be audited. And then on top of that, he also had the Labor Dept. come calling because they wanted to look at his books.
He tells BillO his story:
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Obamacare Tax Dollars Pouring Into ACORN, MoveOn, LaRaza
17 MayObamacare Tax Dollars Pouring Into ACORN, MoveOn, LaRaza – Independent Sentinel
Your Obamacare tax money is being poured into community organizations so they can enroll the uninsured in Obamacare. The obvious end-result is that they will enroll people into the Democratic Party as well.
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The Senate immigration bill does the same thing. It pays community organizations to educate immigrants on their path to citizenship and to the Democratic Party.
Sebelius did an end-run around Congress last week and solicited funds from organizations like Enroll America to help publicize Obamacare. Enroll America management is purely political. President Anne Filipic is a White House insider who networks with community organizers. She was a DNC official before she worked on Obama’s 2008 campaign in Iowa.
She manages messaging for the very community organizations who are taking our money – ACORN (exposed as corrupt but still functioning), LaRaza (the radical open borders group) and MoveOn (a radical socialist organization) are some of them. Filipic also manages the messaging for 39 Democratic members of Congress.
Obamacare requires these far-left community organization be hired as “navigators” to enroll the uninsured. Union members are also being hired as navigators and we know where they stand.
Please read about this at Investors Business Daily
The corruption doesn’t stop there. Community Organizations like ACORN are also involved in taking our money to set up Obamacare CO-OPs.
Obamacare allows for the establishment of Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan (CO-OP). A CO-OP is a federal program created to assist in the development of non-profit, member-run health insurance issuers. The issuers will offer qualified health plans in the individual and small group markets. Organizations participating in CO-OP programs must be non-profit entities.
Once formed at great expense to the taxpayer, they can put the co-op into the healthcare exchange to compete even though it is known they can’t compete.
Many of the people starting up the exchanges have no experience. One has experience providing the poorest service in New York. [Greta Van Susteren expose April 4]
Co-ops are fatally flawed. They can’t compete with the government-subsidized option and they can’t compete with large insurance companies. Enrollees are in charge of decisions affecting costs – no conflict of interest there. They can succeed if they move beyond what they are and join forces with other co-ops and the moon and the stars are correctly aligned in the heavens. [rwjf research]
The government has given co-ops $3.8 billion taxpayer dollars to start up though the failure rate could be about 35% to 40%. No one expects it to be 40% but they’re just mentioning it as a possibility. [The Hill]
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform under Darrell Issa would like information on the co-ops to see where our money is going. They asked in February but Sebelius failed to comply. They asked again at the end of March and have greatly expanded their probe. [Washington Examiner]
Immediately after Obamacare passed, slews of ACORN-like (Alinsky-style) co-ops formed. Heavily subsidized with tax dollars, the co-ops need not be set up by anyone who has any experience or record of success. With all the rules being thrown out by HHS, they didn’t feel the need to have any rules about this?
One of these co-ops is The Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative, an Alinsky-style ACORN group. It formed in August, 2011 at the same time the tax dollar incentive became known.
Obama gave this co-op $56 million to start up their health insurance company even though they have basically no experience in the area.
The Alinsky group is an operation out of Chicago.
…A Saul Alinsky-tied group has been awarded a $56 million federal loan to start up a nonprofit health insurance company – one of several organizations across the country this week tapped to launch a new network of insurers under the sponsorship of the federal health care overhaul.
The Wisconsin group, Common Ground Healthcare Cooperative, was awarded the funding on Tuesday. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, the group is expected to provide coverage statewide within five years after starting on a smaller scale in early 2014… Read more: Fox News
If this isn’t ripe for corruption, I don’t know what is. This is what happens when a community organizer becomes president.
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Corrupt: Obama’s EPA Waived Fee Requests For Friendly Groups, Denied Conservative Groups
14 MayEPA Waives Fee Requests For Friendly Groups, Denies Conservative Groups – Washington Examiner
Conservative groups seeking information from the Environmental Protection Agency have been routinely hindered by fees normally waived for media and watchdog groups, while fees for more than 90 percent of requests from green groups were waived, according to requests reviewed by the Conservative Enterprise Institute.
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CEI reviewed Freedom of Information Act requests sent between January 2012 and this spring from several environmental groups friendly to the EPA’s mission, and several conservative groups, to see how equally the agency applies its fee waiver policy for media and watchdog groups. Government agencies are supposed to waive fees for groups disseminating information for public benefit.
“This is as clear an example of disparate treatment as the IRS’ hurdles selectively imposed upon groups with names ominously reflecting an interest in, say, a less intrusive or biased federal government,” said CEI fellow Chris Horner.
For 92 percent of requests from green groups, the EPA cooperated by waiving fees for the information. Those requests came from the Natural Resources Defense Council, EarthJustice, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, The Waterkeeper Alliance, Greenpeace, Southern Environmental Law Center and the Center for Biological Diversity.
Of the requests that were denied, the EPA said the group either didn’t respond to requests for justification of a waiver, or didn’t express intent to disseminate the information to the general public, according to documents obtained by The Washington Examiner. CEI, on the other hand, had its requests denied 93 percent of the time. One request was denied because CEI failed to express its intent to disseminate the information to the general public. The rest were denied because the agency said CEI “failed to demonstrate that the release of the information requested significantly increases the public understanding of government operations or activities.”
Similarly, requests from conservative groups Judicial Watch and National Center for Public Policy Research were approved half the time, and all requests from Franklin Center and the Institute for Energy Research were denied. “Their practice is to take care of their friends and impose ridiculous obstacles to deny problematic parties’ requests for information,” said Horner. Freedom of Information Act requests from CEI forced the EPA to release emails under the the “Richard Windsor” alias former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson used to conduct government business.
CEI has also filed FOIA requests for emails, text messages and instant messages from Jackson and EPA nominee Gina McCarthy. Horner said he believes the EPA has denied CEI’s requests because his think tank is the most active group seeking to hold the agency accountable. “This is a clear pattern of favoritism for allied groups and a concerted campaign to make life more difficult for those deemed unfriendly,” he said. “The left hand of big government reaches out to give a boost to its far-left hand at every turn. Argue against more of the same, however, and prepare to be treated as if you have fewer rights.” Update: An earlier version incorrectly called the Natural Resources Defense Council the “National Resources Defense Council.”
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IRS Officials In Washington Targeted Conservatives, California Offices Now Involved
14 MayIRS Officials In Washington Were Involved In Targeting Of Conservative Groups – Washington Post
Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved with investigating conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.
IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea-party-affiliated groups, the documents show.
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IRS employees in Cincinnati told conservatives seeking the status of “social welfare” groups that a task force in Washington was overseeing their applications, according to interviews with the activists.
Lois G. Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, told reporters Friday that the “absolutely inappropriate” actions were undertaken by “front-line people” working in Cincinnati to target groups with “tea party,” “patriot” or “9/12” in their names.
In one instance, however, Ron Bell, an IRS employee, informed a lawyer representing a conservative group focused on voter fraud that the application was under review in Washington. On several other occasions, IRS officials in Washington and California sent conservative groups detailed questionnaires about their voter outreach and other activities, according to the documents.
“For the IRS to say it was some low-level group in Cincinnati is simply false,” said Cleta Mitchell, a partner in the law firm Foley & Lardner who sought to communicate with IRS headquarters about the delay in granting tax-exempt status to True the Vote.
Moreover, details of the IRS’s efforts to target conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency in May 2012, far earlier than has been disclosed, according to Republican congressional aides briefed by the IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) on the details of their reviews.
Then-Commissioner Douglas Shulman, a George W. Bush appointee who stepped down in November, received a briefing from the TIGTA about what was happening in the Cincinnati office in May 2012, the aides said. His deputy and the agency’s current acting commissioner, Steven T. Miller, also learned about the matter that month, the aides said.
The officials did not share details with Republican lawmakers who had been demanding to know whether the IRS was targeting conservative groups, Republicans said.
“I wrote to the IRS three times last year after hearing concerns that conservative groups were being targeted,” Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (Utah), the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement Monday. “In response to the first letter I sent with some of my colleagues, Steven Miller, the current Acting IRS Commissioner, responded that these groups weren’t being targeted.”
“Knowing what we know now,” he added, “the IRS was at best being far from forth coming, or at worst, being deliberately dishonest with Congress.”
In a news conference Monday, President Obama said he learned of the investigating in media reports on Friday and has “no patience with it.”
“If in fact IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that have been reported on, and were intentionally targeting conservative groups, then that’s outrageous,” Obama said. “And there’s no place for it. And they have to be held fully accountable.”
White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Monday that the White House counsel’s office learned of an upcoming IRS inspector general’s report on April 22 as part of a routine notification but had not received access to the report.
On Capitol Hill, two Senate panels – the Finance Committee and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations – announced Monday that they will investigate. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Ways and Means Committee have been looking into reports of IRS attempts to single out organizations on the right for heightened scrutiny. Ways and Means has called IRS officials to testify Friday.
“These actions by the IRS are an outrageous abuse of power and a breach of the public’s trust,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.). “The IRS will now be the ones put under additional scrutiny.”
Separately, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) introduced companion bills Monday that would require the IRS to fire any employee found “willfully” violating “the constitutional rights of a taxpayer,” according to statements by both lawmakers. The bills also would make them criminally liable for their actions.
Even as Obama vowed that his administration “will make sure that we find out exactly what happened on this,” however, the IRS offered no new information on how it selected which groups to single out for scrutiny.
The White House is legally barred from contacting the IRS about a tax matter, under a prohibition adopted after the Watergate scandal. And although it can contact the Treasury Department about tax issues, neither Treasury nor the IRS can disclose specific taxpayer information. The IRS can release information about a petition for tax-exempt status only after it has been approved.
Obama is not in a position to remove Lerner, a career official who can be terminated for cause only under normal civil service proceedings. The IRS has two political appointees: the commissioner, who serves a five-year term, and the chief counsel.
As the IRS came under broader political attack Monday, more details surfaced on how the exempt-organizations division struggled to determine which nonprofits should receive “social welfare” status after the 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling. That decision, which allowed corporations and unions to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money on elections, opened the door for groups to accept undisclosed contributions as long as their “primary purpose” was not politics.
In a Jan. 9, 2012, letter to the Richmond Tea Party, IRS specialist Stephen Seok asked questions including “the names of the donors, contributors and grantors,” as well as the size of the contributions and grants, and when they were given.
Richmond Tea Party President Larry Nordvig, whose group applied for tax-exempt status in December 2009 and received it in July 2012, said the extended inquiry had “a very chilling effect” on how much money the group could raise because its donors preferred anonymity.
The Wetumpka Tea Party of Alabama experienced a two-year delay after submitting its initial application.
Becky Gerritson, a 44-year-old stay-at-home mother and the group’s president, said the IRS sent a questionnaire asking for the names of all volunteers, donor identification and contribution amounts, the names of any legislators its members had communicated with directly or indirectly, and the contents of all speeches its members had made, among a long list of other details.
“I was outraged,” Gerritson said. “Being an election year, I felt like it was intimidation.”
The group did not provide the information. Approval came only after the group sought help from the American Center for Law and Justice, which threatened a lawsuit against the IRS, Gerritson said.
Although some of the groups were explicitly labeled “tea party” or “patriot,” others that came under intense scrutiny were focused on challenging the Affordable Care Act – known by many as Obamacare – or the integrity of federal elections.
In a June 3, 2011, letter to the IRS, Mitchell questioned the agency’s motivations for delaying recognition of one of her clients who had filed nearly two years earlier, writing, “Is the [group’s] opposition to Obamacare and the takeover of America’s healthcare system by the government the reason that this application has been held up and not approved?”
Catherine Engelbrecht, president of the Houston-based True the Vote, first filed for tax-exempt status in July 2010. At one point, Engelbrecht – who is still awaiting a determination from the IRS regarding her voting rights organization and a separate tea party group, King Street Patriots – said an IRS employee informed her: “I’m just doing what Washington is telling me to do. I’m just asking what they want me to ask.”
The IRS did not respond to requests for comment Monday.
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Obama Says $1 Trillion In Obamacare Spending Is… Wait For It… An Historic Tax Cut
11 MayObama: $1 Trillion In Obamacare Spending Is Historic ‘Tax Cut’ – Washington Examiner
As part of a Mothers’ Day weekend defense of his signature legislative accomplishment, President Obama claimed that the law represented the “largest health care tax cut for working families and small businesses in our history.“
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His argument was a Hail-Mary effort to redesignate subsidies for individuals to purchase health insurance on government-run exchanges as a “tax cut.” But according to the Congressional Budget Office, these subsidies actually qualify as more than $1 trillion in “Exchange Subsidies and Related SPENDING.” (Emphasis mine.)
Far from being a historic tax cut, Obamacare actually qualifies as one of the largest tax increases in history. It contains roughly $1 trillion in taxes – on insurance plans, medical devices and investment income. And many of the taxes will end up falling on the middle class. The law’s individual mandate, which the Obama administration successful argued was a tax before the U.S. Supreme Court, is projected to hit nearly 5 million Americans with incomes less than $60,000 by 2016.
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International Hacker Gang Stole $45 Million From ATMs
10 MayFeds In NYC: Hackers Stole $45M In ATM Card Breach – Yahoo News
A worldwide gang of criminals stole $45 million in a matter of hours by hacking their way into a database of prepaid debit cards and then draining cash machines around the globe, federal prosecutors said Thursday – and outmoded U.S. card technology may be partly to blame.
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Seven people are under arrest in the U.S. in connection with the case, which prosecutors said involved thousands of thefts from ATMs using bogus magnetic swipe cards carrying information from Middle Eastern banks. The fraudsters moved with astounding speed to loot financial institutions around the world, working in cells including one in New York, Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch said.
She called it “a massive 21st-century bank heist” carried out by brazen thieves.
One of the suspects was caught on surveillance cameras, his backpack increasingly loaded down with cash, authorities said. Others took photos of themselves with giant wads of bills as they made their way up and down Manhattan.
Here’s how it worked:
Hackers got into bank databases, eliminated withdrawal limits on pre-paid debit cards and created access codes. Others loaded that data onto any plastic card with a magnetic stripe – an old hotel key card or an expired credit card worked fine as long as it carried the account data and correct access codes.
A network of operatives then fanned out to rapidly withdraw money in multiple cities, authorities said. The cells would take a cut of the money, then launder it through expensive purchases or ship it wholesale to the global ringleaders. Lynch didn’t say where they were located.
It appears no individuals lost money. The thieves plundered funds held by the banks that back up prepaid credit cards, not individual or business accounts, Lynch said.
She called it a “virtual criminal flash mob,” and a security analyst said it was the biggest ATM fraud case she had heard of.
There were two separate attacks, one in December that reaped $5 million worldwide and one in February that snared about $40 million in 10 hours with about 36,000 transactions. The scheme involved attacks on two banks, Rakbank in the United Arab Emirates and the Bank of Muscat in Oman, prosecutors said.
The plundered ATMs were in Japan, Russia, Romania, Egypt, Colombia, Britain, Sri Lanka, Canada and several other countries, and law enforcement agencies from more than a dozen nations were involved in the investigation, U.S. prosecutors said.
The accused ringleader in the U.S. cell, Alberto Yusi Lajud-Pena, was reportedly killed in the Dominican Republic late last month, prosecutors said. More investigations continue and other arrests have been made in other countries, but prosecutors did not have details.
An indictment unsealed Thursday accused Lajud-Pena and the other seven New York suspects of withdrawing $2.8 million in cash from hacked accounts in less than a day.
Such ATM fraud schemes are not uncommon, but the $45 million stolen in this one was at least double the amount involved in previously known cases, said Avivah Litan, an analyst who covers security issues for Gartner Inc.
Middle Eastern banks and payment processors are “a bit behind” on security and screening technologies that are supposed to prevent this kind of fraud, but it happens around the world, she said.
“It’s a really easy way to turn digits into cash,” Litan said.
Some of the fault lies with the ubiquitous magnetic strips on the back of the cards. The rest of the world has largely abandoned cards with magnetic strips in favor of ones with built-in chips that are nearly impossible to copy. But because U.S. banks and merchants have stuck to cards with magnetic strips, they are still accepted around the world.
Lynch would not say who masterminded the attacks globally, who the hackers are or where they were located, citing an ongoing investigation.
The New York suspects were U.S. citizens originally from the Dominican Republic, lived in the New York City suburb orf Yonkers and were mostly in their 20s. Lynch said they all knew one another and were recruited together, as were cells in other countries. They were charged with conspiracy and money laundering. If convicted, they face 10 years in prison.
Arrests began in March.
Lajud-Pena was found dead with a suitcase full of about $100,000 in cash, and the investigation into his death is continuing separately. Dominican officials said they arrested a man in the killing who said it was a botched robbery, and two other suspects were on the lam.
The first federal study of ATM fraud was 30 years ago, when the use of computers in the financial community was growing rapidly. At the time, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found nationwide ATM bank loss from fraud ranged from $70 and $100 million a year.
By 2008, that had risen to about $1 billion a year, said Ken Pickering, who works in security intelligence at CORE Security, a white-hat hacking firm that offers security to businesses.
He said he expects news of the latest ring to inspire other criminals.
“Once you see a large attack like this, that they made off with $45 million, that’s going to wake up the cybercrime community,” he said.
“Ripping off cash, you don’t get that back,” he said. “There are suitcases full of cash floating around now, and that’s just gone.”
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Obama’s IRS Admits It Targeted Conservatives For Extra Scrutiny During 2012 Election
10 MayIRS Admits, Apologizes For Targeting Conservatives During 2012 Election – Zero Hedge
Just because you are a conservative and paranoid, doesn’t mean the IRS is not after you. And, assuming the AP was not hacked again, this is precisely what happened. In a stunning disclosure, the supposedly impartial Internal Revenue Service has admitted and apologized for flagging and subjecting to extra reviews, conservative political groups – those that included the words “tea party” or “patriot” – during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status. No such privilege was apparently afforded to groups identifying themselves as “liberal.”
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The Internal Revenue Service is apologizing for inappropriately flagging conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status.
Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS unit that oversees tax-exempt groups, said organizations that included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications for tax-exempt status were singled out for additional reviews.
Lerner said the practice, initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati, was wrong and she apologized while speaking at a conference in Washington.
Many conservative groups complained during the election that they were being harassed by the IRS. They said the agency asked them an inordinate number of questions to justify their tax-exempt status.
Certain tax-exempt charitable groups can conduct political activities but it cannot be their primary activity.
It does make one wonder, just how far the IRS goes to make the lives of conservatives a living hell: will all 2012 tax audits be those who on their facebook profile admit to liking Ron Paul? And just how far does the IRS invade personal privacy to determine how any one tax filer is indeed, a “conservative?” But don’t worry – aside from the obvious persecutions, America is a free country for one and all.
One wonders: how long until “conservatives” engage in “tax-avoiding” blowback and really give the IRS reason to persecute them. Alternatively, one wonders the IRS is simply limited by logistical considerations, due to the notional difference in number of actual tax filings submitted by “conservatives” vs “liberals” and the prepondrance of one group over the other…
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Flashback: Mark Levin Asks IG To Probe Possible IRS Misconduct In Dealing With Tea Party – CNS
March 23, 2012
Landmark Legal Foundation sent a letter on Friday to the Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration requesting an investigation to determine whether officials with the Internal Revenue Service have engaged in misconduct in dealing with applications from Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status under section 501 (c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code.
“Landmark Legal Foundation requests an immediate investigation into possible misconduct by the Internal Revenue Service’s Exempt Organization (EO) Divisoin that calls into question the integrity of federal tax administration and IRS programs,” said the letter signed by Landmark President Mark Levin.
“Recent media reports indicate that the EO Division is using inappropriate and intimidating investigation tactics in the administration of applications for exempt status submitted by organizations associated with the Tea Party movement,” Levin wrote.
As CNSNews.com reported earlier this month, the American Center for Law and Justice, which says it represents nearly 20 Tea Party organizations nationwide, put out a statement on March 7 complaining about what it perceived to be improper treatment of Tea Party groups by the IRS.
“This appears to be a coordinated attempt to intimidate Tea Party organizations by demanding information that is outside the scope of legitimate inquiry and violates the First Amendment,” ACLJ Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow said in a statement.
“These organizations have followed the law and applied for tax exempt status for their activities as Americans have done for decades,” Sekulow said. “The problem here is the IRS has gone beyond legitimate inquiries and is demanding that these organizations answer questions that actually violate the First Amendment rights of our clients.”
“This intimidation campaign is as onerous as what the IRS did to the NAACP in the 1950′s and is simply unacceptable,” said Sekulow. “We will aggressively defend our clients and are prepared to take the IRS to court if necessary.”
In his letter to the inspector general, Landmark’s Levin said that the types of inquiries the IRS was making of Tea Party groups were inappropriate.
“The information demanded in many cases goes far beyond the appropriate level of inquiry regarding the religious, charitable and/or educational activities of a tax exempt entity,” said Levin.
“The inquiries are not relevant to these permitted activities,” Levin wrote. “Inquiries extend to organizational policy positions and priorities, personal and poltiical affiliations, and associations of staff, board members and even family members of staff and board members.”
“Finally,” said Levin, “reports that Tea Party-related organizations are being singled out for the IRS’s intrusive inquries raises serious questions about the propriety of the personnel involved in the evaluation of tax exemption applications.”
Landmark Legal Foundation also asked the inspector general to “determine whether the relevant IRS employees are acting at the direction of politically motivated superiors.”
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration provides “independent oversight of IRS activities.”
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Tax Audits Are No Laughing Matter – Wall Street Journal
Barack Obama owes his presidency in no small part to the power of rhetoric. It’s too bad he doesn’t appreciate the damage that loose talk can do to America’s tax system, even as exploding federal deficits make revenues more important than ever.
At his Arizona State University commencement speech last Wednesday, Mr. Obama noted that ASU had refused to grant him an honorary degree, citing his lack of experience, and the controversy this had caused. He then demonstrated ASU’s point by remarking, “I really thought this was much ado about nothing, but I do think we all learned an important lesson. I learned never again to pick another team over the Sun Devils in my NCAA brackets… President [Michael] Crowe and the Board of Regents will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS.”
Just a joke about the power of the presidency. Made by Jay Leno it might have been funny. But as told by Mr. Obama, the actual president of the United States, it’s hard to see the humor. Surely he’s aware that other presidents, most notably Richard Nixon, have abused the power of the Internal Revenue Service to harass their political opponents. But that abuse generated a powerful backlash and with good reason. Should the IRS come to be seen as just a bunch of enforcers for whoever is in political power, the result would be an enormous loss of legitimacy for the tax system.
Our income-tax system is based on voluntary compliance and honest reporting by citizens. It couldn’t possibly function if most people decided to cheat. Sure, the system is backed up by the dreaded IRS audit. But the threat is, while not exactly hollow, limited: The IRS can’t audit more than a tiny fraction of taxpayers. If Americans started acting like Italians, who famously see tax evasion as a national pastime, the system would collapse.
One reason why Americans don’t act like Italians is that they see the income-tax system as basically fair in execution. A tax audit or a tax-fraud prosecution is still seen, usually, as evidence that someone has done something wrong. If it comes instead to be seen as “just politics” then the moral component of the system will be gone. For the system to work, people have to believe that it is fundamentally fair.
This is why the IRS is so strict with its own employees. Paul Caron, a professor at the University of Cincinnati who writes the TaxProf blog, noted in response to Mr. Obama’s remarks that the law calls for the termination of IRS employees who make audit threats for illegitimate reasons. He suggested that Mr. Obama’s “joke” might be grounds for firing if he were an IRS employee.
He’s not, of course, but as the president his words carry much more weight and he should be much more careful. That’s particularly true given that people still haven’t forgotten about the Obama administration’s other tax issues – the appointment of Tim Geithner as Treasury secretary despite an inexcusable failure to pay $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes while working for the International Monetary Fund, and the scandals involving Tom Daschle and others whose appointments failed. (When the Geithner issue came up, news reports indicated that IRS employees were very upset. They can be fired over a simple late filing or a failure to report a mere $500 in income, making Mr. Geithner’s “pass” on much more serious questions quite demoralizing.)
The notion that people who are audited are probably just “enemies of the regime,” coupled with the idea that big shots get a pass – that, as Leona Helmsley is reputed to have said, “taxes are for the little people” – is a recipe for widespread tax evasion. That’s how things work in Italy, and in many other countries around the world. But do we want things to work that way here?
Mr. Obama has been accused of not appreciating the importance of financial capital to the proper functioning of the economy. But ill-chosen remarks like his ASU audit threat suggest that he also doesn’t appreciate the role of moral capital. That, too, is essential to the proper functioning of a modern economy. As he looks for ways to pay for the spending campaign he’s already embarked upon, he’d be well-advised to avoid comments that undercut the very tax system he’ll be depending on.
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This Is Criminal: DOE Spends Over $11 Million Per Permanent Green Job
9 MayThis Is Criminal: DOE Spends Over $11 Million Per Permanent Green Job – Gateway Pundit
Under Barack Obama’s leadership the Department of Energy spends over $11 million per green job.
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This is theft.
OilPrice.com reported:
A new report by the Institute for Energy Research (IER) has shown that despite strong support from the Obama administration, all funded by tax payers, the green energy sector has struggled to grow, and created very few jobs.
The report notes that since 2009 the Department of Energy has invested nearly $26 billion through the Section 1703 and 1705 loan programs, and in that time only 2,308 permanent green jobs have been generated, meaning that each new green sector job cost the taxpayers $11.25 million.
The IER stated in the report that “clearly, in terms of ‘bang for the buck,’ government programs that coddle renewable energy are losers. In terms of jobs, the losers are the American workers who would otherwise be gainfully employed but for the tremendous waste of taxpayer dollars on the administration’s obsession with green energy.”
80% of DOE dollars went to Obama backers. 19 of these green energy companies went bust.
Another green boondoggle, Vehicle Production Group, linked to an Obama donor, went bust this week.
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Federal Government Spends $402,721 On Underwear That Senses Cigarette Smoke
7 MayFeds Spend $402,721 On Underwear That Senses Cigarette Smoke – CNS
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded more than $400,000 to a research project involving underwear that can detect when a person smokes cigarettes.
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The University of Alabama has received two grants totaling $402,721 for the project, which so far has produced a “very early prototype” of the monitoring system, which – in its current state – fits like a vest.
The goal of the three-year study is to “develop a wearable sensor system comprised of a breathing sensor integrated into conventional underwear.”
The Personal Automatic Cigarette Tracker (PACT for short) is intended to accurately measure when and how often people smoke as well as how deeply they inhale. The real-time information would be used to design strategies for smoking cessation.
“The modern methods of monitoring smoking, primarily you rely on self-report,” said Dr. Edward Sazonov, an associate professor at the University of Alabama who is leading the project. “There are few devices which actually allow a more computerized health report,” he told CNSNews.com.
“We are trying to eliminate the need for self-report from people about how much they smoke, when they smoke, how many puffs they take from the cigarette,” he said.
Sazonov has created two wearable sensors: a small bracelet worn on the arm that monitors a smoker’s hand-to-mouth motion; and the underwear sensor that monitors breathing.
“The combination of these two sensors, hopefully, will allow us to monitor cigarette smoking without asking people when and how much they smoke,” he said.
The PACT Sazonov created is a “very early prototype,” that fits like a vest with multiple straps and wires, far from the “non-invasive, wearable” underwear the project developers had in mind.
“It’s not very user friendly,” Sazonov said. “Right now we’re actually in the process of integrating this whole system just so it’s in an elastic band, pretty much like a heart rate monitor.”
The project began in March 2010, with the University receiving $187,368 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. That grant was followed by an additional $215,353 in 2011, though the project will not end until August of this year.
The grants have yielded two studies. In one of them, people were brought into a lab and fitted with the sensors, which tracked normal activities such as eating and physical activity. The goal was to see if the monitor would also detect cigarette smoking, differentiating it immediately from other activities. Sazonov said this study was successful.
A second study had people wearing the PACT for a full day. Those results are still being analyzed.
“The results can be used in support of cessation because potentially in the future we should be able to detect smoking in real time,” Sazonov said.
When asked if he will be applying for more grants in the future when the current funding ends this summer, Sazonov said, “We definitely want to continue with this research, yes.”
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It Figures… Obama’s Nominee For Housing Chief Helped Create Subprime Mortgage Crisis
6 MayHousing Nominee Mel Watt Helped Create The Subprime Crisis – Daily Caller
Mel Watt, President Obama’s nominee for director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, pushed government programs to help welfare recipients buy homes during the creation of the subprime mortgage bubble.
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Watt, a 20-year Member of Congress from North Carolina’s 12th district, also had a hand in programs allowing borrowers with poor credit to buy homes with no down payment. The American financial system was subsequently destroyed when millions of bad borrowers defaulted on their loans, setting off a market crash that wiped out nearly 40 percent of the net worth of Americans.
In 2002, Watt teamed up with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, Bank of America, BB&T, and UJAMMA Inc., to announce Pathways to Homeownership, a pilot initiative designed to give home loans to welfare recipients.
A press release from Watt’s campaign office in October 2002 said that the loans to the welfare recipients would require “as little as $1,000 of the down payment to come from their own funds” and that the city of Charlotte would help borrowers obtain a “down payment subsidy” to cover the rest of the 3% down payment.
If approved to head up Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), Watt will be regulating the very government agencies whose rules he negated in 2003.
Watt, alongside then-Democratic Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, blocked Bush Administration efforts to reduce Fannie and Freddie’s overexposure to subprime loans. “I don’t see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,” Watt said in a banking committee hearing, downplaying the risks inherent in pushing.
In 2007, a full year after the real estate market peaked and began to plummet under the weight of millions of mortgage defaults, Watt and Frank co-sponsored a bill forcing Fannie and Freddie to meet even higher quotas for affordable lending and investing in an “Affordable Housing Fund” for inner city communities.
Watt’s deregulation of Fannie and Freddie came after the government-sponsored enterprises spent billions in his congressional district. “Freddie Mac has purchased $9.5 billion in mortgages made to an estimated 82,000 Charlotte-area residents,” Watt’s staff announced in 2002.
Many of those risky loans ultimately led to the housing bubble and financial crisis. Charlotte was among the hardest-hit areas of the country. The 6.09 percent foreclosure rate for the North Carolina city was more than double the national average of 2.85 percent, according to the Charlotte Observer. CNN.com listed Charlotte number five of the hardest hit foreclosure hotspots in America in 2011.
Watt began setting the subprime wildfire several years before it engulfed the nation. In 2001, Watt helped start the Congressional Black Caucus’ “With Ownership, Wealth” (WOW) initiative, which sought to add one million black households to the ranks of America’s homeowners by 2005. The program was designed to close a racial gap in homeownership between blacks and whites, which according to Watt stood at 46.7 percent vs. 73 percent respectively.
Watt, who once said he has “no use” for a majority of white voters “in the democratic process,” blamed racist lending practices for this gap and in 2008 called for “a more coordinated approach to dealing with these issues of discrimination, failure to be fair in loan terms.”
He continued his race demagoguery in an interview with the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. “Discrimination is an ongoing problem. How do you really effectively legislate and regulate through governmental agencies to eliminate that problem?”
The WOW initiative, relying on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s secondary market mortgage purchases and corporate bank sponsorship forced by the Community Reinvestment Act, set low standards for mortgages to help spur black homeownership. Whether it alleviated the racial disparity in home ownership is unclear, but Americans across racial lines responded to Watt’s government-created incentives for bad mortgage lending. Demographic research [pdf] shows that of the subprime borrowers who were foreclosed on in the ensuing meltdown, a solid majority were white and non-Hispanic.
Watt also drove hard to increase loans to borrowers making no down payment or showing extremely bad credit. “Loan products will be aimed at borrowers experiencing challenges in accumulating wealth and who have not developed traditional credit histories, or who have impaired credit,” explained a 2002 press release on the WOW initiative from the Congressional Black Caucus. “Other mortgage products will be available for low- and moderate-income borrowers with incomes at or below 100% of the Area Medium Income.”
As Watt’s scheme and other public incentives artificially stimulated demand, Charlotte saw home prices rise precipitously before they collapsed in 2006. The failure of many Charlotte residents to pay off their loans led to the housing price collapse. Nationally, the wave of subprime defaults bankrupted Fannie and Freddie, which were placed into a conservatorship by the Treasury Department in 2008.
But rather than punish Watt for pushing this policy, Obama is promoting him to be the chief regulator of the mortgage entities.
“Mel has led efforts to rein in unscrupulous mortgage lenders. He’s helped protect consumers from the kind of reckless risk-taking that led to the financial crisis in the first place. And he’s fought to give more Americans in low-income neighborhoods access to affordable housing,” Obama said on Wednesday, announcing Watt’s nomination.
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$7.9B In Improper Social Security Payments Last Year… But The Sequester Will Destroy America
3 May$7.9 Billion In Improper Social Security Payments In FY 2012 – CNS
The Social Security Administration (SSA) needs to focus on “program integrity,” a polite term for reducing fraud and payment errors, the agency’s inspector general told Congress last week.
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Reducing improper payments is one of the challenges facing the next SSA commissioner, Patrick O’Carroll, Jr., the agency’s inspector general, told the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security on April 26.
In fiscal year 2012, the Social Security Administration reported $4.7 billion in improper payments in the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, a 9.2 percent improper payment rate. (SSI is funded by general tax revenues, not payroll taxes. It helps elderly, blind, and/or disabled people who are poor.)
SSA reported $3.2 billion in the Old-Age, Survivors’ and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program, a 0.4 percent improper payment rate. (OASDI, funded by payroll taxes, is what people generally refer to as “Social Security.”)
That’s a total of $7.9 billion, and it includes some underpayments as well as overpayments.
“SSA’s improper payments largely consist of those erroneously made to ineligible individuals,” O’Carroll said.
“Improper benefit payments occur for many reasons.” Fraud is one reason, he said. This includes beneficiaries who do not tell the agency about changes in their income, resources or living arrangements, which would change the amount Social Security pays them. O’Carroll also mentioned recipients’ “poor understanding of reporting responsibilities,” and administrative errors.
“For many years, my office has encouraged SSA to balance service initiatives, such as processing new claims, with stewardship responsibilities, such as conducting timely work and medical (disability reviews) and SSI redeterminations, to ensure that individuals remain disabled and eligible, and cease payments to those who do not.”
Soaring disability claims are a particular concern for the Social Security Administration.
In his opening statement, subcommittee Chair Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas) said application for disability benefits, triggered by the recession and the weak recovery, have never been higher: “Since 2010, the average number of people filing for disability benefits is just over 249,000 a month,” Johnson said. “At the same time the average number of new jobs created is almost 148,000 each month.”
O’Carroll told the panel he would like to see SSA perform more work-related “continuing disability reviews,” or CDRs, to make sure people collecting disability aren’t working on the side.
SSA estimates that every dollar spent on medical CDRs yields about $9 in SSA program savings over 10 years. Reducing the complexity of Social Security’s disability programs could also streamline operations and reduce millions of dollars in payment errors each year, O’Carroll said.
SSA said it conducted 443,233 medical disability reviews in FY2012, up from 345,000 in FY2011, but the disability review backlog still stands at 1.2 million.
SSA has set a goal of conducting 435,000 medical disability reviews in FY2013, based on the current level of funding. Beneficiaries with a high likelihood of medical improvement undergo a medical review; Beneficiaries with a lower likelihood of medical improvement are mailed a questionnaire, which may or may not trigger a medical review.
Reexamination or “redetermination” of SSI retirement benefits also is effective in reducing overpayments in the SSI program, O’Carroll said. Because SSI is a means-tested program, any change in recipients’ income, living arrangements, or marital status can affect eligibility or payment amount.
SSA reported that it saves $5 for every $1 spent on SSI redeterminations. SSA completed more than 2.4 million redeterminations in FY2011 and 2.6 million in FY2012, and it plans to conduct more than 2.6 million in FY2013. Not every SSI recipient undergoes a redetermination every year; SSA uses a statistical scoring model to identify which cases it will examine.
O’Carroll said his office has encouraged SSA to use data matching with other governmental agencies to detect improper payments. He said SSA also should use more non-governmental databases in doing the redeterminations.
SSA paid more than $800 billion in SSI and OASDI benefits to more than 60 million Americans in FY2012. It estimates that over the next 20 years, another 80 million individuals will retire and file for Social Security benefits.
The hearing was called to discuss the challenges facing the next Social Security commissioner. Michael J. Astrue’s six-year term expired on Jan. 19, 2013, and his successor — once President Obama nominates one – must be confirmed by the Senate.
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Military Signs Contract For Green Jet Fuel That’s Nearly 16 Times The Price Of Conventional Fuel
3 MayWith many claiming to feel the pangs of the sequestration, it appears a green company’s contract for a more expensive jet fuel was allowed to go through.
The renewable chemical and biofuel company Gevo in its first quarter investor relations report stated that it signed a contract with the Defense Logistics Agency to supply 3,650 gallons of renewable jet fuel.
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The order, worth $215,350 total ($59/gallon), is set to be delivered by 2013′s second quarter and has the option to be increased to 12,500 gallons, which would cost up to $737,500.
Gevo calls this an “initial testing phase.”
Under other contracts, the company already supplies renewable jet fuel for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy.
As the Washington Examiner pointed out, DLA set conventional JP-8 jet fuel as costing $3.78 per gallon at FY 2013 rates.
In other renewable jet fuel news, the Wisconsin-based company Virent Inc. delivered 100 gallons of bio-fuel this week to the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.
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The Dayton Daily News reported that the jet fuel produced from 100-percent renewable plant sugars will be tested against applicable standards as the Air Force continues to strive toward its goal of flying on domestic, alternative fuels by 2030.
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U.S. Taxpayers Spend $355,825 To Reduce Stigmatization Of India’s Transgenders
2 MayU.S. Taxpayers Spend $355,825 To Reduce Stigmatization Of India’s Transgenders – CNS
The federal government is spending $355,825 in taxpayer dollars to develop a “culturally relevant stigma-reducing intervention” program for the transgender population in India.
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Bindiya Rana, right, a transgender candidate in Pakistan’s elections, talks with locals in Karachi, Pakistan
The National Institutes of Health issued a two-phase grant to the Ohio-based Baldwin-Wallace College to conduct the study. The first phase cost $173,221. The second phase cost $182,604.
The reason given for the study is “HIV prevalence is disproportionately high among Male-to-female transgenders (Hijra) in India.”
“Stigma among health care providers limits HIV testing, treatment and care and creates a barrier to HIV protective behavior,” the project summary says. “Stigmatization of transgender by healthcare providers has been documented, and is identified as a significant barrier to effective HIV prevention responses among this marginalized, at-risk population in India. However, evidence based interventions to reduce stigma and discrimination among health care providers are seriously lacking.”
The title of the study is “Project Shakti: Stigma Reduction, Health Care Provider Awareness and Knowledge.”
CNSNews.com asked an NIH spokesperson several questions, including, “Since this study focuses on India, what is the benefit to the U.S.? Why is it worthwhile to U.S. taxpayers?”
In a written response, the NIH told CNSNews.com only, “NIH research addresses the full spectrum of human health across all populations of Americans. Behavioral research will continue to be an important area of research supported by NIH.”
The NIH referred back to the project summary for any other comment.
The funding for the project ends in August.
“The proposed project will address this need by developing a theory-based, culturally relevant stigma-reducing intervention targeting health care providers in Mumbai, India,” the NIH project summary says. “The proposed multidisciplinary US-India collaborative research team with significant HIV/AIDS research experience will implement a two-year formative study to develop and pilot health-care provider-focused stigma reducing intervention.”
The project summary continues, “The study has three specific aims: 1) Document cause and manifestation of stigma among health care providers in Mumbai; 2) Use the information to design a provider-focused intervention module, and obtain community feedback; 3) Pilot the revised intervention module among 50 healthcare providers, and assess its feasibility, acceptability and preliminary effect on health service behavior among healthcare providers. These data will prepare the team to conduct a large scale randomized controlled trial in India.”
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Just How Ignorant Is Obama About ObamaCare?
2 MayJust How Ignorant Is Obama About ObamaCare? – Investors Business Daily
At his press conference this week, President Obama tried to reassure Americans about ObamaCare. Instead, he displayed either an incredible lack of understanding about his own law, or something far worse.
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Asked about increasing Democratic concern over what Sen. Max Baucus called a looming ObamaCare “train wreck,” Obama claimed that it’s all much ado about very little.
But almost nothing he said in defense of ObamaCare was accurate. Among his statements:
“A huge chunk of it’s already been implemented.”
In fact, all that’s been implemented so far are a few PR-friendly changes like a mandate to cover children up to age 26 and a more generous Medicare drug benefit.
Democrats put off the bulk of the law – the massive market regulations, the government-run exchanges, mandates to buy coverage, and various taxes and fees – until 2014, both to hide its true costs and to avoid any unpleasantness before the 2012 elections.
“For the 85% to 90% of Americans who already have health insurance… they don’t have to worry about anything else.”
Really? The Congressional Budget Office expects 7 million workers – and possibly as many as 20 million – will lose their employer coverage because of ObamaCare. That’s plenty to worry about.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said millions of seniors will get dumped from their private Medicare Advantage plans by 2017 thanks to sharp payment cuts required by the law.
And small businesses now providing coverage face huge rate hikes thanks to ObamaCare’s many market regulations and benefit mandates. Maryland’s biggest insurer, nonprofit CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, said ObamaCare will force rates up by 15% next year.
“The other stuff’s been implemented and it’s working fine.”
That’s only true if you ignore the fact that ObamaCare’s high-risk pools have been a disaster, attracting a third as many people as predicted while costing far more than the administration budgeted.
Or the fact that Obama had to issue more than 1,200 waivers to companies who said the law’s initial insurance market rules would have forced them to cancel coverage for millions of workers.
The overly complicated small-business tax credit has also been a bust, with only about 5% of eligible firms taking advantage of it. And so on.
“We’re going to be able to drive down costs… and that will save the country money as a whole over the long term.”
Except, Obama’s own health care number crunchers say ObamaCare will force national health spending up 7.4% in 2014, and add billions in costs over the next decade. The Congressional Budget Office says it will add massively to federal health spending.
And the architects of Obama’s reform wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine about how, despite ObamaCare, “health costs remain a major challenge.”
It all leads one to wonder: Is Obama just dangerously misinformed about ObamaCare? Or is he willfully misleading the country?
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Boston Marathon Terrorists And Family Received $100,000 In Welfare Benefits
30 AprTsarnaev Family Received $100G In Benefits – Boston Herald
The Tsarnaev family, including the suspected terrorists and their parents, benefited from more than $100,000 in taxpayer-funded assistance – a bonanza ranging from cash and food stamps to Section 8 housing from 2002 to 2012, the Herald has learned.
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“The breadth of the benefits the family was receiving was stunning,” said a person with knowledge of documents handed over to a legislative committee today.
The state has handed over more than 500 documents to the 11-member House Post Audit and Oversight Committee, which today met for the first time and plans to call in officials from the Department of Transitional Assistance to testify.
“I can assure members of the public that this committee will actively review every single piece of information we can find because clearly the public has a substantial right to know what benefits, if any, this family or individuals accused of some horrific crimes were receiving,” said state Rep. David Linsky (D-Natick), the committee’s chairman.
Linsky’s committee has requested documents from the DTA, the state’s Medicaid director and Health and Human Services Secretary John Polanowicz. But so far the committee has not released the records publicly, citing a privilege the DTA is asserting under state law.
Transitional assistance officials also told the Herald tonight that the agency was conducting its own investigation into whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s family ever notified the DTA about his extended trip to Russia, and has since expanded its probe to include a full history of the benefits received by the entire Tsarnaev family.
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Obama’s Borrowed More Per Household ($53,616) Than Median Household Earns ($50,502)
28 AprObama’s Borrowed More Per Household ($53,616) Than Median Household Earns ($50,502) – CNS
Under President Barack Obama, the federal government’s debt has increased by an amount per household that exceeds the annual median household income.
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Since Obama’s first inauguration on Jan. 20, 2009, the federal debt has climbed $6,167,472,778,984.22. That equals about $53,616 for each of the 115,031,000 households the Census Bureau currently estimates are in the country.
By contrast, the Census Bureau’s most recent estimate of the median household income was $50,502 (for 2011).
If the federal government increased taxes sufficiently to take from the private sector the equivalent of $50,502 for every household in the country – that is, an amount that equals the median household income multiplied by the total number of households ($50,502 x $115,031,000), it would only take in $5,809,295,562,000.
That $5,809,295,562,000 tax increase would not be enough to pay back the $6,167,472,778,984.22 Obama has borrowed so far on the credit of American taxpayers.
To actually pay back what Obama’s has already borrowed, the federal government would need to tax away from the private sector an amount that equals more per household than the median household earns–and then it would need to refrain from spending those additional tax dollars on new or expanded government programs so the money could be used to pay down the debt.
On Jan. 20, 2009, when Obama first took the oath of office, the federal debt was $10,626,877,048,913.08, according to the U.S. Treasury. At the close of business on April 25, 2013, it was $16,794,349,827,897.30.
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Obama: Bi-Partisan Fix To Flight Delays Is Irresponsible Way To Govern… (Obama Wants More Suffering)
28 AprObama stops making sense.
President Obama, the worst economic president since the Great Depression, lashed out at Congress today for passing a bipartisan plan to fix the widespread flight delays.
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He also blamed Republicans once again for the sequester – which was his idea.
Obama wanted Americans to suffer with flight delays a bit longer.
Yahoo reported:
President Barack Obama says the congressional fix for widespread flight delays is an irresponsible way to govern, but he’s prepared to sign the legislation that lawmakers fast-tracked.
He says the bipartisan bill to end furloughs of air traffic controllers is a “Band-Aid” solution rather than a lasting answer to this year’s $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts known as the sequester.
The cuts have affected all federal agencies, and flight delays last week left thousands of travelers frustrated and furious and Congress feeling pressured to respond.
“Republicans claimed victory when the sequester first took effect, and now they’ve decided it was a bad idea all along,” Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address, aired Saturday.
He singled out the GOP even though the bill passed with overwhelming Democratic support in both the House and Senate.
202 Republicans and 159 Democrats voted for the plan to prevent flight delays.
And, Obama doesn’t like it.
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Judicial Watch Uncovers USDA Records Sponsoring U.S. Food Stamp Program For Illegal Aliens
26 AprJudicial Watch today released documents detailing how the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is working with the Mexican government to promote participation by illegal aliens in the U.S. food stamp program.
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The promotion of the food stamp program, now known as “SNAP” (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), includes a Spanish-language flyer provided to the Mexican Embassy by the USDA with a statement advising Mexicans in the U.S. that they do not need to declare their immigration status in order to receive financial assistance. Emphasized in bold and underlined, the statement reads, “You need not divulge information regarding your immigration status in seeking this benefit for your children.”
The documents came in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request made to USDA on July 20, 2012. The FOIA request sought: “Any and all records of communication relating to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to Mexican Americans, Mexican nationals, and migrant communities, including but not limited to, communications with the Mexican government.”
The documents obtained by Judicial Watch show that USDA officials are working closely with their counterparts at the Mexican Embassy to widely broaden the SNAP program in the Mexican immigrant community, with no effort to restrict aid to, identify, or apprehend illegal immigrants who may be on the food stamp rolls. In an email to Borjon Lopez-Coterilla and Jose Vincente of the Mexican Embassy, dated January 26, 2012, Yibo Wood of the USDA Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) sympathized with the plight of illegal aliens applying for food stamps, saying, “FNS understands that mixed status households may be particularly vulnerable. Many of these households contain a non-citizen parent and a citizen child.”
The email from Wood to Lopez-Coterilla and Vincente came in response to a request from the Mexican Embassy that the USDA FNS step in to prevent the state of Kansas from changing its food stamp policy to restrict the amount of financial assistance provided to illegal aliens. In a January 22, 2012, article, the Kansas City Star had revealed that the state would no longer include illegal aliens in its calculations of the amount of assistance to be provided low-income Hispanic families in order to prevent discrimination against legal recipients.
The documents, obtained by Judicial Watch in August 2012, include the following:
* March 30, 2012 – The USDA seeks approval of the Mexican Embassy in drafting a letter addressed to consulates throughout the United States designed to encourage Mexican embassy staffers to enroll in a webinar learn how to promote increased enrollment among “the needy families that the consulates serve.”
* August 1, 2011 – The USDA FNS initiates contact with the Mexican Embassy in New York to implement programs already underway in DC and Philadelphia for maximizing participation among Mexican citizens. The Mexican Embassy responds that the Consul General is eager to strengthen his ties to the USDA, with specific interest in promoting the food stamp program.
* February 25, 2011 – The USDA and the Mexican Consulate exchange ideas about getting the First Ladies of Mexico and United States to visit a school for purposes of creating a photo opportunity that would promote free school lunches for low-income students in a predominantly Hispanic school. Though a notation in the margin of the email claims that the photo op never took place, UPI reported that it actually did.
* March 3, 2010 – A flyer advertises a webinar to teach Hispanic-focused nonprofits how to get reimbursed by the USDA for serving free lunch over the summer. The course, funded by American taxpayers, is advertised as being “free for all participants.”
* February 9 , 2010 – USDA informs the Mexican Embassy that, based on an agreement reached between the State Department and the Immigration & Naturalization Service (now ICE), the Women, Infants & Children (WIC) food voucher program does not violate immigration laws prohibiting immigrants from becoming a “public charge.”
As far back as 2006, in its Corruption Chronicles blog, Judicial Watch revealed that the USDA was spending taxpayer money to run Spanish-language television ads encouraging illegal immigrants to apply for government-financed food stamps. The Mexican Consul in Santa Ana, CA, at the time even starred in some of the U.S. Government-financed television commercials, which explained the program and provided a phone number to apply. In the widely viewed commercial the Consul assured that receiving food stamps “won’t affect your immigration status.”
In 2012, Judicial Watch reported that in a letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions questioned the Obama administration’s partnership with Mexican consulates to encourage foreign nationals, migrant workers and non-citizen immigrants to apply for food stamps and other USDA administered welfare benefits. Sessions wrote, “It defies rational thinking,” Sessions wrote, “for the United States – now dangerously $16 trillion in debt – to partner with foreign governments to help us place more foreign nationals on American welfare and it is contrary to good immigration policy in the United States.”
“The revelation that the USDA is actively working with the Mexican government to promote food stamps for illegal aliens should have a direct impact on the fate of the immigration bill now being debated in Congress,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “These disclosures further confirm the fact that the Obama administration cannot be trusted to protect our borders or enforce our immigration laws. And the coordination with a foreign government to attack the policies of an American state is contemptible.”
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