[Wash Times] The controversial "Obamaphone" program, which pays for cellphones for the poor, is rife with fraud, according to a new government report released Thursday that found more than a third of enrollees may not even be qualified.
Known officially as the Lifeline Program, the phone giveaway became a symbol of government waste in the previous administration. Now a new report from the Government Accountability Office bears out those concerns.
The report, requested by Sen. Claire McCaskill, Missouri Democrat, also says the program has stashed some $9 billion in assets in private bank accounts rather than with the federal treasury, further increasing risks and depriving taxpayers of the full benefit of that money.
"A complete lack of oversight is causing this program to fail the American taxpayer -- everything that could go wrong is going wrong," said Mrs. McCaskill, ranking Democrat on the Senate’s chief oversight committee and who is a former state auditor in Missouri.
"We’re currently letting phone companies cash a government check every month with little more than the honor system to hold them accountable, and that simply can’t continue," she said.
The program, run by the Federal Communications Commission, predates President Obama, but it gained attention during his administration when recipients began to associate the free phone with other benefits he doled out to the poor.
#6
Every time these leftists get in office they view the federal coffers as their personal slush fund. I'd really like to know how much they ran off with in the past eight years. Faster please, with the swamp-draining.
#7
As I recall, the corner pay phones were gotten rid of to deny crack dealers the ability to communicate, not to mention the idiots who were destroying the things for the sheer joy of destruction, which left those in poor neighbourhoods no way to contact the police, etc. in an emergency. This program was supposed to make up for that lack. Part-time daughter, who found herself during the Obama years trying to support herself and two babies on a part-time, low-paid job, was given an Obamaphone when she signed up for food stamps, though she didn't need a second cell phone and never used it after sending me a text to give me the number.
The problem is targetting each aspect of aid to those who truly need it instead of wastefully throwing the whole bundle at everyone. The other problem is recognizing there will always be some level of waste and abuse, and figuring out how to minimize it while still helping those who need help.
#10
Methinks McCaskill's 'taxpayer' comment is a bit overblown, because the article states that, while the program is administered by the USG, the funding comes from the carriers via a mandated fee placed on customers' accounts.
[DAWN] LUCKNOW: A gang-rape and acid attack survivor has once again been attacked with acid in Aliganj locality here, police said on Sunday.
This was the fifth attack on the woman, they said. The latest incident took place on Saturday night near a hostel where she resides.
She was rushed to a hospital where her condition was said to be stable. She has sustained burn injuries on her face and neck, according to police, adding that no FIR has been registered so far as they are waiting for a complaint. A probe is under way, they said.
On March 23, the woman was allegedly forced to drink acid by two men on board a train near here.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had visited her at a hospital and announced a compensation of Rs100,000 for the 45-year-old woman.
The incident came to light when the woman got off the Allahabad-Lucknow Ganga Gomti Express at Charbagh Station here and gave a written complaint to the railway police. She wrote the complaint because she could not speak. According to the complaint, two persons had forced her to drink acid.
Earlier, two men had allegedly raped and attacked her with acid over a property dispute in 2009 in her home at Unchahar, about 100 kilometres from Lucknow.
The woman works with Sheroes Hangout Cafe, an outlet run by acid attack survivors in Lucknow.
In 2012 the woman was attacked with a knife and in 2013 with acid, police sources said.
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07/03/2017 00:00 ||
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#1
Compensation?
What about raw meat from the perps?
[AA.TR] A helicopter carrying eight passengers and crew members from Indonesia’s Search and Rescue (SAR) Agency crashed on Sunday into a cliff in the mountains. That worked well.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/03/2017 00:00 ||
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As the African Union struggles to get members to pay dues, Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe took the bull by the horns and sold his own cattle for a sizeable donation to the body. And now we understand why he told the youth in the country to herd cows.
Mugabe handed over $1 million (880,000 euros) at the start of the AU's bi-annual summit in Addis Ababa, after auctioning off 300 of his own cattle, as well as those belonging to some of his supporters.
The gift was a bid to show his resolve for making the AU self-supporting as the tricky questioning of financing tops the agenda.
"As an African and a farmer, the donation of cattle came naturally to me, given that our continent is rich in cattle and cattle are held as a store of wealth," said Mugabe, who has led Zimbabwe since its independence from white minority rule in 1980.
An AU official said Mugabe had initially offered the cows themselves, but decided to auction them off when the union replied that there was no space for them at the AU's shiny Chinese-built headquarters in Addis Ababa.
The AU is trying to wean itself from the foreign donors that finance the majority of its budget and has called on member states to impose a 0.2 percent levy on certain imports to cover its costs.
Funds from the import levy are supposed to cover 100 percent of the AU's operational costs, 75 percent of its program costs and 25 percent of its peacekeeping budget.
But so far, only a handful of the union's 55 member states have taken steps to implement the tax.
"Unless and until we can fund our own programs, the African Union will not be truly our own," Mugabe said.
Despite nagging questions about Mugabe's health, his ruling party claims that at 93, he is still as strong as an ox.
He is drumming up support ahead of elections next year when he plans to seek office again, steadfast in his plan to rule until the cows come home.
[All Africa] Former Vice-President Namadi Sambo has raised the alarm over the frequent raid on one of his Kaduna residences by operatives of the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), saying the pace of their invasions portrays a desire to find fault by every means possible. I remember him from when he was little...
The latest of these raids took place last Wednesday, when the ICPC operatives, along with heavily armed security operatives stormed the house located at No.1 Alimi Road, for a search that lasted about two hours. He once had a near-fatal encounter with four tigers...
The ICPC, despite concerns raised by Sambo, has maintained sealed lips on the development. But the police, yesterday, denied having anything to do with the raid on the former Vice President's residence. They made an easy entrance. It was like it was greased with butter...
A statement on Saturday by Umar Sani, spokesman of the former vice-president, stated that the house had been searched five times in the last six months, noting that some of the fittings in the house and other valuables had been damaged in the process. The statement said no incriminating thing was found at the residence, a fact attested to by some of the operatives who carried out the search. Everybody was satisfied and they all had some tasty pancakes.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/03/2017 00:00 ||
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[Al Jazeera] The top commander of Colombia's largest rebel movement was hospitalised on Sunday following a stroke and remains in intensive care, just days after his group handed over the last of its individual weapons as part of a historic peace deal.
Rodrigo Londono, better known by his nom de guerre Timochenko, checked himself into a hospital emergency room in the city of Villavicencio shortly after 8am (13:00 GMT) with slurred speech and numbness in his arm, doctors said in a news conference.
They said he remains in intensive care as a precautionary measure but his speech and mobility have already recovered 90 percent from what they described as a temporary blockage of blood flow to his brain.
Doctors said if there are no complications the leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) could be released in the next 24 to 48 hours.
"Of course he's conscious and making jokes," another rebel leader known by his alias Pastor Alape said at the press conference.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/03/2017 00:59 ||
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#2
Been fighting that war a long time, enough for the leadership to age out. We've been hoping for the same effect here in our Swamp. To paraphrase another blogger - Faster, Faster.
#3
Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs. -
Charles James Napier
“Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” - Samuel Johnson
#4
Not into the whole "render unto Caesar" thing, eh? Because it is built into our culture, we don't think about it much, but IMAO, the Establishment Clause (no state religion) is one of the better bits in the Constitution.
#5
Child molesation as taught by Moohamhead's example. Aiesha was 9.
Posted by: Marilyn Jones9984 ||
07/03/2017 13:34 Comments ||
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Aiesha was 9.
She was 9 when he consumated their marriage - he 'married' her when she was 6. Who knows what MoPervert did in the intervening 3 years. Probably not nice things.
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) Iraq’s oil marketing company said Sunday the country exported 592.378 million barrels of petroleum during the first half of 2017.
In a statement, SOMO said that represented a monthly exportation rate of 98.729 nillion barrels, and a daily rate of 3.290 million barrels.
The exports yielded revenues worth USD26.771 million during that period, recording a monthly return of USD4.592 million a month., said the company.
The exports were acquired by 37 world companies, according to the statement.
The Iraqi petroleum ministry said earlier on Sunday that the average of Iraqi petroleum exports during June stood at 3.273 million barrels, up from 3.262 barrels in May.
Iraq is OPEC"s second largest oil producer after Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... , recording a daily production of 477.5 million barrels per day in 2016.
Despite the planned increase, Iraq is recommending an extension of an OPEC agreement to cut members’ production, by 1.8 million barrels daily, beyond June.
A spokesperson of the Cabinet, Saad al-Hadithi, had said that Iraq wants the production cuts to extend for nine extra months to offset oversupply and enhance prices. He said the slashed production since the signing of the agreement last year had helped improve oil revenues gradually for exporting companies.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
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Gaza, Iran, Afghanistan, ISIS with its Captagon factories.... The Hashashin of yore show the long history of the thing.
[IsraelTimes] With high unemployment and little hope, many residents of coastal enclave increasingly turning to narcotics, painkillers.
In the Gazoo Strip, the tiny Paleostinian territory sandwiched between Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean and ravaged by three wars in a decade, drug abuse is often a hidden problem.
While no reliable statistics are available, experts and medical support groups estimate there are tens of thousands of drug users in Gazoo.
Young men are among those most affected in a territory suffering 45 percent unemployment, rising to more than 60 percent among the youth.
Narcotics such as cannabis are sold illegally in the enclave of some two million people, but many of the most serious addicts are hooked on illicitly bought prescription medicines.
Gazoo’s Islamist rulers Hamas, a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",, who have ruled the Strip for a decade and take a firm line on drugs, launched a fresh crackdown this year.
Hamas military courts have sentenced four Paleostinians to death for drug smuggling, the first such punishments for the crime since the terror group seized the Strip in 2007.
Raids have also uncovered record hauls of drugs, particularly Tramadol -- a powerful opiate-based painkiller that is widely available.
Iyad al-Bozum, front man for the Hamas-run interior ministry, told AFP there was an "organized plan to smuggle large quantities of drugs into Gazoo," saying dealers were targeting young people.
While some drugs are smuggled through the Israeli border, most enter from Gazoo’s southern border with Egypt, the ministry said.
Egyptian forces have since destroyed hundreds of cross-border tunnels and Hamas has launched a crackdown against dealers, but drugs have continued to flow into the territory.
In January, Hamas authorities announced they had seized as many drugs in one month as in the whole of 2016, with a street value of around $2 million.
They seized 1,250 packets of cannabis and 400,000 Tramadol pills in January alone, the interior ministry said.
Stigma
As a result of the crackdown, the price of a 10-pill pack of Tramadol is said to have doubled in two years to $120.
In a territory where more than two-thirds of the population rely on humanitarian aid, it is often the inability to pay that forces people to seek rehabilitation, said Sami Aweida from the Gazoo Community Mental Health Program.
Gazoo has no center dedicated to treating drug addicts, making reliable figures on abuse all but impossible to obtain.
Addicts who want to get clean often avoid specialists, Aweida said.
"People prefer to do it discreetly through a liberal doctor."
[Election Law Blog] Big news hiding in Nina Totenberg’s story on Justice Gorsuch voting 100% with Justice Thomas:
But it is unlikely that Kennedy will remain on the court for the full four years of the Trump presidency. While he long ago hired his law clerks for the coming term, he has not done so for the following term (beginning Oct. 2018), and has let applicants for those positions know he is considering retirement.
Kennedy’s position on the court is more than consequential. In the most hotly contested and closely divided cases, his vote often decides the outcome. With every passing day, it has become more clear that President Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, is probably even more conservative than the justice he replaced, Antonin Scalia.
This would put Justice Kennedy’s retirement right before the 2018 midterms, giving the Republican base reasons to turn out and keep the Senate with a Republican majority (already a strong possibility in 2018).
#2
With every passing day, it has become more clear that President Trump’s first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, is probably even more conservative than the justice he replaced, Antonin Scalia.
I've read that sentence about ten times and enjoy it more each time I do.
Posted by: Matt ||
07/03/2017 14:44 Comments ||
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#3
Doing Senate Republicans a favor. Their poor performance might have the base ready to primary the bastards. This increases the stakes for taking risks with otherwise safe seats.
Personally, I'll be donating heaving during the primary season anyway. It's RINO season, and I'm after trophies.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[DailyMail] Troulan, 54, was shot twice in the leg during an ambush in Nairobi. 
[DAWN] LUCKNOW: A gang-rape and acid attack survivor has once again been attacked with acid in Aliganj locality here, police said on Sunday.
As the African Union struggles to get members to pay dues, Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe took the bull by the horns and sold his own cattle for a sizeable donation to the body.
