The federal government faces unfunded liabilities totalling $84 trillion, with more than $30.3 trillion owed to public debt holders, federal employees and current retirees in the form of Social Security and Medicaid benefits, according to a recent report by the nonpartisan National Center for Policy Analysis. 
The federal government pays out millions of dollars to dead people each year — including deceased retired federal workers, according to a new report. In the past five years, the Office of Personnel Management has made more than $601 million in benefits payments to deceased federal annuitants, according to the agency’s inspector general.
In his early activist days, Barack Obama the community organizer sued banks to ease their lending practices. Now his administration is suing banks for issuing risky mortgages. — Jim Hoft
Government, Incompetence, Financial, Oops
It turns out that Calpers, which managed the little pension plan, keeps two sets of books: the officially stated numbers, and another set that reflects the “market value” of the pensions that people have earned. The second number is not publicly disclosed. And it typically paints a much more troubling picture, according to people who follow the money...
But more important, it raises serious concerns that governments nationwide do not know the true condition of the pension funds they are responsible for. That exposes millions of people, including retired public workers, local taxpayers and municipal bond buyers — who are often retirees themselves — to risks they have no way of knowing about.
Crime, Government, Incompetence, Fraud, Theft
An investigation by Philly.com revealed that 1,162 Philadelphia prisoners (13 percent of the city's prison population) received $344 a week on average in unemployment claims before a state agency discovered the scam and shut it down last month. Prisoners are ineligible for unemployment benefits because they cannot actively pursue an outside vocation. The Philly cons carried on the scheme for an average of 18 weeks, raking in over $7 million for themselves.
Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Financial, Fraud, Oops, Theft
Red-faced state officials admitted last night they are trying to find as many as 19,000 missing welfare recipients — after the controversial taxpayer-funded voter registration pitches the state mailed to their addresses last summer were sent back marked “Return to sender, address unknown.” The Department of Transitional Assistance contacted 477,000 welfare recipients who were on their books from June 1, 2011, to May 31, 2012, after settling a voter-rights lawsuit brought by Democratic-leaning activist groups that demanded an aggressive voter information effort by the state. That $274,000 push by DTA resulted in 31,000 new voter registrations — but revealed an alarming number of welfare recipients whose residency in Massachusetts can’t be confirmed.
Government, Incompetence, Financial, Oops
Overpayments are a rampant problem in the unemployment insurance system. The federal government and states overpaid an estimated $14 billion in benefits in fiscal 2011, or roughly 11% of all the jobless benefits paid out, according to reports from the U.S. Labor Department.
Government, Incompetence, Financial, Oops
DETROIT (WXYZ) - Would you ever pay $608 a month to lease an eight-year-old car? We are not talking about a Ferrari. We are talking about a run-of-the-mill Dodge. That is what the Detroit Police Department is paying for a 2004 Dodge Intrepid. And the 7 Action News Investigators have learned there are over a hundred other similar expensive leases still being paid by the department. One expert said this lease arrangement is wasting millions of dollars at a time when the city is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.
Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Financial, Theft
Pat Lu, 48, pleaded not guilty to conspiracy and fraud after police raided his Quincy, Mass. mini-mart and said he was personally skimming $30,000 per month from the federal government’s food-stamp debit card system. Bail was set at $100,000. According to a report from NECN-TV, Lu was the ringleader of a complex scheme involving at least 53 suspects engaged in welfare fraud that has netted $700,000 in the past year and a half.
Government, Incompetence, Financial
After an audit of 24,355 non-Medicaid food stamp recipients in New Hampshire, the report shows 2,200 hold a primary address outside of the state. [...] “We are up to a potential in that program alone of up to $41 million worth of payments that may be questionable,” said House Speaker Bill O’Brien. The report also cites cases of incarcerated or deceased residents getting benefits, including one where the recipient may have been dead since 1983.
Democrat, Government, Incompetence, Financial
RALEIGH — Since as early as January 2011, and perhaps before then, Gov. Bev Perdue’s press office has received access to confidential employment data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics hours if not days before its scheduled release, quite likely in violation of federal law.
Government, Incompetence, Financial, Funny, Adult
According to data collected by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Medicare has spent more than $240 million of taxpayer money on penis pumps for elderly men over the past decade, and will surpass a quarter of a billion dollars this year for costs since 2001. The cost to taxpayers for the pumps more than quadrupled during that period, from a low of $11 million in 2001 to a high of more than $47 million in 2010. And these represent only the costs for external devices, technically classified as “Male Vacuum Erection Systems,” not implantable devices or oral drugs such as Viagra.
Tax, Government, Incompetence, Financial, Waste
As of May 28, 2010, TIGTA identified 2.1 million taxpayers receiving $3.2 billion in education In its response to the report, the IRS did not credits that appear to be erroneous...
Government, Incompetence, Financial, Funny
The federal government pays out millions of dollars to dead people each year — including deceased retired federal workers, according to a new report. In the past five years, the Office of Personnel Management has made more than $601 million in benefits payments to deceased federal annuitants, according to the agency’s inspector general.
Government, Incompetence, Financial
The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAA) is paying $2.6 to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly on the job.
Government, Incompetence
NORFOLK
A Community Services Board employee collected a salary with benefits for 12 years and never showed up for work, several City Council members said Wednesday.
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Obama, Financial
Social Security will pay out more this year than it gets in payroll taxes, marking the first time since the program will be in the red since it was overhauled in 1983, according to the annual authoritative report released Thursday by the program’s actuary.
Government, Incompetence, Sex, Financial, Drugs
The National Institutes of Health has spent over $2 million on a study that, among other things, seeks to incease condom use among intravenous drug users in Kazakhstan.
Government, Incompetence, Financial, Fraud
The Internal Revenue Service hasn’t put in place effective procedures to prevent ineligible taxpayers from claiming tax credits for energy-efficient windows, doors and geothermal heat pumps, said a government audit released today. Auditors sampled 150 tax returns and found no record of homeownership associated with 30 percent of that group. The auditors also found instances in which prisoners or people too young to purchase a house were claiming the credits.
Government, Incompetence, Financial
The Central Intelligence Agency Retirement and Disability System could go bankrupt by the end of 2012 without an appropriation of $513.7 million, according to a request in the 2012 federal budget.
“Independent actuarial projections show the CIARDS fund going bankrupt by the end of 2012 with an unfunded liability of $6.4 billion,” according to the funding request.
Government, Incompetence, Fraud, Healthcare
Nearly 10 percent of all Medicare payments are fraudulent or otherwise improper, and the government isn’t doing enough to stop them.
That’s the conclusion of a Government Accountability Office report released Wednesday. The report, issued at the request of a House subcommittee investigating Medicare and Medicaid fraud, estimates that the federal government is losing $48 billion on the improper payments – a significant amount for a program that “is fiscally unsustainable in the long term” unless action is taken.
Government, Incompetence, Sex, Financial, Adult
The National Institutes of Health has so far awarded $1.44 million to a project that, among other things, is estimating the size of the population and examining the "social milieu" of male prostitutes in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Incompetence, Obama, Financial, Debt
TAPPER: The president seems to think that that borrowing money to pay the interest on the debt is not adding to the debt. I don't understand that math.
CARNEY: What the president made clear is that we need to get to a place -- and his budget absolutely does this -- where we are no longer spending more than we're taking in.
Government, Incompetence, Financial
The number of prisoners who file false tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service has more than doubled in the last five years, according to a new Treasury Department report, and the amount of money the IRS has mistakenly refunded to those prisoners has nearly tripled.
One of the world's leading credit rating agencies, Standard & Poor's, has downgraded the United States' top-notch AAA rating for the first time ever.
Democrat, Government, Incompetence, Financial, Scandal
The federal government has accumulated more new debt--$3.22 trillion ($3,220,103,625,307.29)—during the tenure of the 111th Congress than it did during the first 100 Congresses combined,
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Financial
The issue that day in 2003 was whether mortgage backers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were fiscally strong. Frank declared with his trademark confidence that they were, accusing critics and regulators of exaggerating threats to Fannie’s and Freddie’s financial integrity. And, the Massachusetts Democrat maintained, “even if there were problems, the federal government doesn’t bail them out.’’
Government, Incompetence, Financial
If you don’t tie our hands, we will keep stealing
Democrat, Liberal, Government, Incompetence, Degeneracy, Financial, Funny, Economy, Adult
The National Endowment for the Arts may be spending some of the money it received from the Recovery and Reinvestment Act to fund nude simulated-sex dances, Saturday night "pervert" revues and the airing of pornographic horror films at art houses in San Francisco.
Government, Incompetence, Financial
The Obama administration is forecasting that the deficit for the 2011 budget year, which begins Oct. 1, will remain above $1 trillion for a third straight year, projecting an imbalance of $1.27 trillion. And the administration predicts the imbalances over the next decade will total $8.5 trillion.
Government, Incompetence, Financial
According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the federal government helped pay the home air conditioning bills for more than 11,000 dead people, 1,100 federal employees, and 725 convicts in fiscal year 2009.
Government, Incompetence, Financial
For the last few years, California stood more or less unchallenged as a symbol of the fiscal collapse of states during the recession. Now Illinois has shouldered to the fore, as its dysfunctional political class refuses to pay the state’s bills and refuses to take the painful steps — cuts and tax increases — to close a deficit of at least $12 billion, equal to nearly half the state’s budget. Then there is the spectacularly mismanaged pension system, which is at least 50 percent underfunded and, analysts warn, could push Illinois into insolvency if the economy fails to pick up.
Editorial, Government, Incompetence, Financial
Last night, as part of a procedural vote on the emergency war supplemental bill, House Democrats attached a document that "deemed as passed" a non-existent $1.12 trillion budget. The execution of the "deeming" document allows Democrats to start spending money for Fiscal Year 2011 without the pesky constraints of a budget. The procedural vote passed 215-210 with no Republicans voting in favor and 38 Democrats crossing the aisle to vote against deeming the faux budget resolution passed.
Editorial, Government, Incompetence, Financial
A decade ago, long before the financial calamity now sweeping the world, the federal government's economic brain trust heard a clarion warning and declared in unison: You're wrong.
Government, Incompetence, Financial
Nearly 1,300 prison inmates wrongly received more than $9 million in tax credits for homebuyers despite being locked up when they claimed they bought a home, a government investigator reported Wednesday.
Government, Incompetence, Financial, Scandal, Fraud, Corruption
Arizona Senator John McCain, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, bluntly called it "theft from Indian people." These men were describing the single largest and longest-lasting financial scandal in history involving the federal government of the United States.
Government, Incompetence, Financial
Get Sacramento political coverage of California elections, California budget at The Sacramento Bee
Government, Incompetence, Financial
The Social Security Administration has continued to pay millions of dollars in benefits to dead Americans, and other elderly U.S. residents are at risk of losing badly needed aid because they're improperly recorded as deceased, federal investigator... extra description
Government, Incompetence, Financial
Bailout News Home Page
Government, Incompetence, Financial
WASHINGTON — Although hundreds of well-trained eyes are watching over the $700 billion that Congress last year decided to spend bailing out the nation's financial sector, it's still difficult to answer some of the most basic questions about where the money went.
Government, Incompetence, Financial
“Head Start,” the flagship pre-kindergarten program introduced in 1965, has been a $166 billion failure. That’s the upshot of a sophisticated multi-year study just released by the Department of Health and Human Services.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Majority Democrats in the U.S. Senate muscled through legislation Thursday that would allow the government to go $1.9 trillion deeper in debt. Democratic leaders were able to prevail on the politically volatile 60-39 vote only because Republican Sen.-elect Scott Brown of Massachusetts has yet to be seated. Republicans had insisted on a 60-vote, supermajority threshold to pass the measure. An earlier test vote succeeded on a 60-40 vote.
Government, Incompetence, Financial
Government report blames red tape for long delays in Democrats' green program.
Government, Incompetence, Financial
A federal program designed to help impoverished families heat and cool their homes wasted more than $100 million paying the electric bills of thousands of applicants who were dead, in prison or living in million-dollar mansions, according to a government investigation.
Government, Incompetence, Financial
Thousands of Americans are receiving federal stimulus checks in the mail, this week. Only problem: many of them are deceased.
Government, Incompetence, Financial
According to the 2010 Financial Report of the United States Government, $ 2.3 trillion in outlays were reviewed by federal executive branch entities for improper payments last year; 5.5% of these payments, or $125.4 billion were found to be improper. This represents an increase of $16.2 billion from the fiscal year 2009 estimate of $109.2 billion. Furthermore, the GAO estimates that at 5.49%, the rate of error across the entire federal government is roughly the same. Put differently, this means that in fiscal year 2010, $189.7 billion in federal spending, or 5.49% of $3.5 trillion, was overt waste.