RealClearInvestigations'
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June 30 to July 6, 2024 In RealClearInvestigations, financial writer Bob Ivry ventures into the fuzzy math of federal spending (which also means misspending) and explains why even the bean-counters can't count the beans. Ivry reports: In fiscal 2023, misspending – or what the feds call "improper payments" – amounted to $236 billion. But that's not counting all the departments required to report such payments but don't. Out of that number, nearly three-quarters, or $175 billion, were overpayments that included fraud. The rest were a mix of underpayments ($11.5 billion), payments made outside program rules ($4.6 billion), or what the agencies identified as unknown payments ($44.6 billion), meaning they couldn’t be sure whether there was an error or not. Since 2003, cumulative estimates of improper payments by executive-branch agencies have reached $2.7 trillion, and that’s a lowball estimate. With new spending in store under programs like the Inflation Reduction Act, the Infrastructure Act, and the CHIPS Act, such massive waste is naturally projected to grow. Just measuring the misspending is a losing battle from the start because of inadequate auditing; non-cooperation from federal agencies; and failures to coordinate with state agencies. “As programs get bigger, the likelihood of improper payments gets bigger, too,” says the director of the latest comprehensive Government Accountability Office report. “That’s just math.” Fuzzy federal math. Waste of the Day
by Adam Andrzejewski, Open the Books NIH Still Hiding Pandemic Royalty Details, RCI
Tennessee Voters Pay for Rep.'s Mail, RCI
IRS 'Taxpayer Experience Officer', RCI
The $150 Million Deflated Blimp, RCI
Hiding How a Chip Maker Cashed In, RCI Biden, Trump and the Beltway In the years since the COVID-19 lockdowns, most workers have been dragged back to their offices. Government workers, not so much – despite a directive from President Biden’s chief of staff, Jeff Zients, almost a year ago to “aggressively execute” a pivot back to in-person work. This article reports: Seventeen out of 24 federal agencies were using only about one-quarter of their headquarters’ office space last summer, a Government Accountability Office report found. … Taxpayers shell out about $5 billion a year to lease offices for federal employees, plus another $2 billion to operate those buildings and the more than 500 million square feet of office space that Uncle Sam owns. Inside the offices, some very high-quality air-conditioning pumps into sparsely populated rooms … Only 6 percent of federal workers are working full-time in their offices; 30 percent are fully remote, according to a Federal News Network survey this spring. Some agencies are using less than 10 percent of their space. This article reports that federal workers seem intent on defying the Biden administration’s directive: “People are coming back to the office more days, but to say the least, it’s not very practical or popular,” said Jacqueline Simon, policy director for the American Federation of Government Employees, the union that represents about 750,000 federal and D.C. workers. “They worked heroically throughout the pandemic. The idea that they have to go into the office to please Jeff Zients is absurd.” Other Biden, Trump and the Beltway Biden at 81: Often Sharp, Sometimes Confused, AP
The Conspiracy of Silence to Protect Joe Biden, Intelligencer
Top Aides Shielded Biden Even From Own Staff, Axios
Behind the Curtain: Biden Oligarchy Will Decide Fate, Axios
As Frisco DA, Harris Shunned Catholic Abuse Victims, Substack
Gavin Newsom's Infidelities, Addiction and Teen Lover, Mail
RFK Jr. Kin Dish on Addiction and Alleged Sex Assault, Vanity Fair
Top Court's Historic Immunity Ruling: Takeaways, CNN
Liberal Justices: President 'Now a King Above the Law', NY Times
Delay in Trump New York Sentencing, New York Times
No Jail for Cross-Dressing Ex-Biden Luggage Thief, Just the News Other Noteworthy Articles and Series The negative impacts of COVID-19 school lockdowns on students has been widely documented. This article reports that pandemic policies also damaged pre-schoolers: The pandemic’s babies, toddlers and preschoolers are now school-age, and the impact on them is becoming increasingly clear: Many are showing signs of being academically and developmentally behind. Interviews with more than two dozen teachers, pediatricians and early childhood experts depicted a generation less likely to have age-appropriate skills — to be able to hold a pencil, communicate their needs, identify shapes and letters, manage their emotions or solve problems with peers. How come? “I definitely think children born then have had developmental challenges compared to prior years,” said Dr. Jaime Peterson, a pediatrician at Oregon Health and Science University, whose research is on kindergarten readiness. “We asked them to wear masks, not see adults, not play with kids. We really severed those interactions, and you don’t get that time back for kids.” Twenty years ago, this article reports, FedEx established its own police force. Now it's working with local police to build out an AI car surveillance network: Forbes has learned the shipping and business services company is using AI tools made by Flock Safety, a $4 billion car surveillance startup, to monitor its distribution and cargo facilities across the United States. … Flock’s car surveillance network, which already spans 4,000 cities across over 40 states and some 40,000 cameras that track vehicles by license plate, make, model, color and other identifying characteristics, like dents or bumper stickers. This article reports that civil rights activists are especially concerned because FedEx is providing its Flock surveillance feeds to law enforcement, an arrangement that Flock has with at least four multi-billion dollar private companies. But publicly available documents reveal that some local police departments are also sharing their Flock feeds with FedEx – a rare instance of a private company availing itself of a police surveillance apparatus. Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, said it was “profoundly disconcerting” that FedEx was exchanging data with law enforcement as part of Flock’s “mass surveillance” system. “It raises questions about why a private company … would have privileged access to data that normally is only available to law enforcement,” he said. Just as no sparrow falls beyond God’s view, it seems there is no conservative too small for the New York Times to paint in threatening terms. This article suggests a broad separatist movement among conservatist intellectuals is afoot: As Mr. Trump barrels through his third presidential campaign, his supporters buoyed by last week’s debate, many of the young activists and thinkers who have risen under his influence see themselves as part of a project that goes far beyond electoral politics. Rather, it is a movement to reclaim the values of Western civilization as they see it. Their ambitions paint a picture of the country they want should Mr. Trump return to the White House — one driven by their version of Christian values, with larger families and fewer immigrants. They foresee an aesthetic landscape to match, with more classical architecture and a revived conservative art movement and men wearing traditional suits. The ninth paragraph, however, reports that the basis for the article is a handful of people who have joined the “all-male Society for American Civic Renewal, an invitation-only social organization reserved for Christians.” The Society is tiny – “the group has about 10 lodges in various states of development so far, with membership ranging between seven and several dozen people” – but, the Times warns, it could morph into a real danger: “It’s this idea of organizing discontent at the local level and building a network that over the next decade or three decades or even half-century would just keep moving the Republican Party further and further rightward, and mobilizing voters in discontented parts of the country, a lot of them men,” said Damon Linker, a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Pennsylvania, who has written critically of the crowd. “It’s a highbrow version of the militia movement.” As the housing affordability crisis deepens across the country, a Georgia charity believes one big answer is going small. But the fly in the ointment is your government at work, this article reports: Tiny House Hand Up submitted plans in 2021 for a community of southern-style cottages. Each single-family unit would be 540 to 600 square feet — the perfect size for recent college graduates, lower-income individuals, or anyone looking to declutter their lives. This is exactly what policy-makers say they want. Yet when the charity tried to break ground in Calhoun County, the zoning police shut down the project. The reason? Code enforcers insist that new houses in the area must have at least 1,200 square feet of living space. As supporters of the rule testified during public hearings, the idea is to keep out the “riffraff.” Elsewhere, this article reports, cities and counties routinely deny permits for auxiliary dwelling units, sometimes called “granny flats” or “backyard cottages.” They impose parking restrictions, limit multifamily housing, and label entire neighborhoods as blighted – even when no blight exists – so they can clear out existing homes for commercial development. In 2018, British regulators sanctioned the online gambling giant Flutter for failing to ask how an animal shelter employee was able to bet (and lose) millions of dollars. The answer: he had embezzled it from the charity. While the company promised to do more to recognize problem gamblers in the Britain, Dublin-based Flutter, whose U.S. arm is FanDuel, and Britain’s Entain, which jointly owns U.S. sports betting company BetMGM, are not offering similar protections in the U.S., this article reports: In Britain, the two gambling giants volunteered to curtail VIP programs that induce customers to spend more after acknowledging the potential for harm to gamblers. And Flutter introduced protections for bettors under 25 years old, having said “younger people can be more vulnerable to experiencing gambling harm.” Critically, advocates for gambling addicts say, the firms also accepted that keeping customers safe requires monitoring the affordability of their bets and intervening when there are signs of problem gambling. The two companies [Flutter and FanDuel] haven’t acknowledged that they should be subject to some of the same requirements in America, such as affordability monitoring. What's more, in the U.S. — where public and regulatory scrutiny of the online gambling industry hasn’t been as intense as in Britain — they employ some practices forbidden by regulators in Britain, including offering some online slots features such as enabling gamblers to set the game to play automatically without even having to watch the screen. Such features encourage gamblers to lose control of their gambling and suffer unaffordable losses, consumer protection advocates say. This article reports that in 2021 Flutter introduced a limit for British customers' bets on online slots games to £10 per spin, or about $13. The world’s largest online gambling company by revenues has said it did so because it had identified a trend in its data that “suggested that customer risk levels may increase more sharply” among clients wagering more. In the United States, Flutter’s FanDuel allows customers to bet $800 on each spin. |
