Free Republic

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday proposed to extend health coverage to nearly all of California's 6.5 million uninsured people, promising to spread the cost among businesses, individuals, hospitals, doctors, insurers and government. The plan contains elements that are likely to provoke opposition from a wide range of powerful interests, including doctors, hospitals and insurers, as well as employers and unions. But it also contains incentives for each of them. All children, regardless of their immigration status, would be covered through an expansion of the state and federal Healthy Families program. "I don't think it is a question...

The U.S.- Mexico Social Security Totalization Agreement ...an agreement signed between the Bush administration and the Mexican government in 2004 that would funnel billions of U.S. Social Security funds to Mexican citizens. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has already warned that as a result of this agreement, the number of unauthorized Mexican workers and family members eligible for social benefits will likely increase. The Social Security Administration itself warns that Social Security is within decades of bankruptcy - yet they seem to have no problem making agreements that hasten its demise...

WASHINGTON -- As a result of lawsuits, the U.S. government released this week the actual U.S.-Mexico Social Security Totalization Agreement, an understanding signed between the Bush administration and the Mexican government in 2004 that would funnel billions of U.S. Social Security funds to Mexican citizens. TREA Senior Citizens League, a Washington-based nonpartisan seniors group, announced this week that after Freedom of Information Act lawsuits it filed against the government, it had received the secret agreement document. Brad Phillips, a spokesperson for TREA, told NewsMax that the language in the agreement "raises more questions than it answers — such as what...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- After numerous refusals over three and a half years, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has released the first known public copy of the U.S.-Mexico Social Security Totalization Agreement. The government was forced to make the disclosure in response to lawsuits filed under the Freedom of Information Act by TREA Senior Citizens League, a 1.2 million-member nonpartisan seniors advocacy group. The Totalization Agreement could allow millions of illegal Mexican workers to draw billions of dollars from the U.S. Social Security Trust Fund. The agreement between the U.S. and Mexico was signed in June 2004, and is...

WASHINGTON, July 6 — The Bush administration said Thursday that it would exempt millions of the most vulnerable Medicaid recipients from a new law that requires them to prove they are United States citizens by showing birth certificates, passports or other documents. The action was apparently intended to pre-empt a ruling by a federal judge who is scheduled to hold a hearing on Friday on a lawsuit challenging the new requirement, which took effect on July 1. Dr. Mark B. McClellan, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said that more than 8 million of the 55 million...

A rapist whose victims included "Top Gun" actress Kelly McGillis got taxpayer-funded Viagra for years, despite his fiendish history, it was revealed yesterday as he was sentenced to 50 years in prison. Serial sex predator Leroy Johnson was prescribed the erectile dysfunction pill by doctors at the Bronx-based Fordham-Tremont Community Mental Health Center from early 2003 to mid-2005, according to court records. The health center stopped doling out the little blue pills to Johnson only after new DNA tests linked him to a 1996 knife-point double rape - bringing his total number of rape victims to five. Center officials didn't...

Most Utahns feel a state law that allows undocumented students to pay in-state college tuition should be repealed, according to a new Salt Lake Tribune poll. Seventy-one percent of the 625 registered voters who were interviewed by telephone for the statewide poll this week said Utah should "repeal the current state law that offers the discounted resident college tuition rate to the children of undocumented immigrants." Ruth Bick, a 63-year-old Ogden resident, said Utahns should not have to pay taxes to subsidize a college education for undocumented students. The state's middle class already is burdened enough with big tax bills,...

State Senator Gill Cedillo, infamous for his effort to give drivers licenses to illegal immigrants has now wants to allow them to get grants provided to UC and CSU students and would make them eligible to receive the Community College Boar d of Governor’s Fee Waiver that would allow them to attend Community College in California for free. Read More...

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS | KC weighs costs, benefits One family’s struggle The Monroys, six without documents, work hard to provide for themselves, but they must rely on the social safety net, too.   Meet the Monroys, two illegal immigrants from Mexico.He prepares condiments for $8.25 an hour and cleans offices on the side. She chops vegetables for $8. Together they bring home $30,000 a year.That’s not enough for their family of seven in Overland Park. To get by, they need a little taxpayer help.Medicaid assistance for the baby’s delivery and for her doctor visits.Free breakfast and lunch at school for the...

$39M Katrina Gov't. Credit Charges Probed By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer 7 minutes ago Federal employees helping Katrina victims charged more than $39 million on government credit cards for disaster relief items. Congressional investigators want to make sure the taxpayers got a good deal. And a senator, citing past abuse, wants to know whether anyone used the cards for holiday shopping. Many of the goods, which included $60,639 for sleeping bags and $713 for four 27-inch televisions, were bought at retail rather than cheaper volume prices following the Aug. 29 storm, according to federal records. The spending also included...

June 15, 2006 -- WASHINGTON - A Houston hairdresser with a long rap sheet conned the feds into paying for his sex-change operation with Hurricane Katrina aid, it was revealed yesterday. In a shocking example of mismanagement and fraud in the widening FEMA fiasco, Michael James Green, 25, was charged with bilking the feds out of $36,000 meant for destitute hurricane victims. He claimed to have lived in 18 damaged addresses and used 18 different Social Security numbers, federal prosecutors said. But Green wasn't using the money for food and shelter: He used it to pay for a sex-change operation,...

WASHINGTON - As requests for emergency assistance poured in after Hurricane Katrina, one applicant listed as his address the Greenwood Cemetery in New Orleans. FEMA promptly issued a check for $2,358 for rental assistance. That's just one of thousands of examples of alleged fraud and abuse described in a new report by the investigative arm of congress — abuse that cost taxpayers about $1 billion. One person applied for aid 13 times, using 13 bogus addresses, and received a total of $139,000. The report says FEMA didn't even try to verify the identity of people who applied for aid by...

A US Congressional inspection team set up to monitor reconstruction in Iraq has published a scathing report on failures by contractors to carry out projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars. In one case, the inspectors found that three years after the invasion only six of 150 health centres proposed for Iraq have been completed by a US contractor, in spite of 75 per cent of the $US186 million allocated having been spent. The report says: "Fourteen more will be completed by the contractor, and the remaining facilities, which are partially constructed, will have to be completed by other means."...

The government squandered millions of dollars in Katrina disaster aid, including handing $2,000 debit cards to people who gave phony Social Security numbers and used the money for such items as a $450 tattoo, auditors said Monday. Federal money also paid for $375-a-day beachfront condos and 10,777 trailers that were stuck in mud and unusable. Overcharges, poor accounting and abuses will take "months or years" to rectify, the Government Accountability Office and the Homeland Security Department's inspector general concluded in preliminary reports on how billions of dollars in taxpayer money is being spent. The Federal Emergency Management Agency recognizes it...

When congressional Republicans, a free-spending lot who have helped ratchet up federal spending to record levels, proposed slowing the rate of federal spending growth by a hair, congressional Democrats accused Republicans of wanting to starve the poor and recreate Dickensian England.That scenario, in a nutshell, explains the looming fiscal crisis at all levels of government. The debate is between those who want enormous government and those who want something even bigger than that. Hence, the Associated Press reported this week that "entitlement" spending is growing out of control. The word "entitlement" itself is a problem. Americans believe they are entitled...

FEMA Katrina Funeral Contractor Desecrated CorpsesThursday, 15 September 2005, 2:15 pm Article: Jason Leopold Division of Funeral Corp. Charged With Desecrating Corpses Hired to Collect Deceased Victims of Hurricane Katrina By Jason LeopoldA funeral services company which recently learned that one of its subsidiaries is negotiating a lucrative contract with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to remove dead bodies in areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, paid $100 million to settle a class-action lawsuit several years ago alleging the company desecrated thousands of corpses, and dumped bodies into mass graves.Moreover, the company paid $200,000 to settle a whistleblower lawsuit that sought...

It is one of the secrets of the Beltway: Washington loves disasters. With large-scale disasters, government expands, its friends get wealthy and citizens become as docile as kittens. That is why Congress calls it "disaster relief" — the relief is from the usual restrictions on revenue spending and individual responsibility.

Add another name to the list of residents at the Cape Cod military base where evacuees from Hurricane Katrina are staying. But this one didn't need a plane to get there. Dionne White of New Orleans gave birth Tuesday at Falmouth Hospital to a boy whom she named Cape Cod Bannister, or C.C. for short. It's the first birth to an evacuee staying at Camp Edwards. "I named him that because I love Cape Cod," White told The Boston Globe. "Coming here has been a big break for me. It's like Christmas, just a big old miracle. And you don't...

WASHINGTON -- The House approved $6.1 billion in tax breaks Wednesday to help families recover from Hurricane Katrina and to encourage Gulf Coast businesses to reopen their doors, or at least keep employees on the payroll. The House passed the bill 422-0 as the Bush administration urged residents to get out of the way of another approaching storm, Hurricane Rita, threatening Louisiana and Texas. The vote sent the bill to the Senate, where lawmakers hoped for quick final approval. "This aid comes at exactly the right time to help victims of Hurricane Katrina as they rebuild their lives," said Treasury...

George W. Bush, after five years in the presidency, does not intend to get sucker-punched by the Democrats over race and poverty. That was the driving force behind his Katrina speech last week. He is not going to play the part of the cranky accountant--"But where's the money going to come from?"--while the Democrats, in the middle of a national tragedy, swan around saying "Republicans don't care about black people," and "They're always tightwads with the poor." In his Katrina policy the president is telling Democrats, "You can't possibly outspend me. Go ahead, try. By the time this is over...

AP - 2 hours, 30 minutes ago WASHINGTON - The White House and its GOP allies in Congress will have to be creative if they're going to use spending cuts to defray the cost of Hurricane Katrina rescue and recovery efforts. Many of the ideas circulating are likely political nonstarters like delaying the start of the Medicare prescription drug benefit or favorite White House cuts that have previously been rejected by Congress — some of them several years in a row.

House conservatives called for broad spending cuts yesterday to offset emergency funding in response to Hurricane Katrina, a move that triggered heightened friction between leadership officials and the right wing of the GOP conference. The tensions illustrate a growing divide within the party about how to handle hurricane relief as another storm heads for the battered Gulf Coast region. Yesterday’s rally was an echo of the so-called Republican Revolution, when the current majority first swept into power behind their brash new Speaker, Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), after the 1994 elections. Conference conservatives pointed to a number of government programs, both big...

With all the pitfalls President Bush has navigated in five tumultuous years, the one worry he has rarely confronted is rebellion in his own ranks. But House Republicans, his rock, are increasingly restive about the effect that the president’s expansive plans for rebuilding the Gulf Coast could have on the nation’s already massive budget deficits. Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), the prematurely white-haired leader of the House conservative caucus, set the stage for a tense week for the two ends of Pennsylvania Avenue when he declared Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that to offset the cost of Katrina relief, “We've got...

WASHINGTON – It wasn't just a speech commemorating the 60th anniversary of the United Nations that President Bush delivered in New York yesterday. Instead, he laid out an ambitious program of increased U.S. foreign aid to tackle worldwide problems of poverty and disease. Think of it as Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty" plan gone global. And he characterized this plan as an extension of his war on terrorism. "Confronting our enemies is essential, and so civilized nations will continue to take the fight to the terrorists," Bush said. "Yet we know that this war will not be won by force...

<p>Hundreds of survivors of Hurricane Katrina lined up Thursday outside the Reliant Center in Houston in hopes of getting $2,000 government debit cards, but there's confusion about who can get the cards and when.</p>

The government promised banks a hands-off approach in overseeing nearly $5 billion in Sept. 11 recovery aid to small businesses. What it got in return was numerous loans to companies that didn't need terror relief - or even know they were getting it, The Associated Press found.

WASHINGTON, DC. - Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) wrote a letter to Speaker Hastert, urging him to direct federal hurricane relief aid through channels other than Louisiana public officials. Citing incompetence and a history of corruption, Tancredo said a bipartisan select committee of the House should administer the aid and provide accountability for the $52 billion requested. The letter is reprinted below: Dear Mr. Speaker, Given the abysmal failure of state and local officials in Louisiana to plan adequately for or respond to the effects of Hurricane Katrina on the city of New Orleans, and given the long history of public...

WASHINGTON - The federal government plans to begin doling out debit cards worth $2,000 each to adult victims of Hurricane Katrina, The Associated Press has learned. Homeland Security Department Secretary Michael Chertoff descibed the plan in a conference call with state officials Wednesday morning. The unprecedented cash card program initially will benefit stranded people who have been moved to major rescue centers such as the Houston Astrodome. "They are going to start issuing debit cards, $2,000 per adult, today at the Astrodome," said Kathy Walt, a spokeswoman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry. The cards could be used to buy food,...

...developing. Searched, no story yet.

The federal government could spend as much as $150 billion to $200 billion caring for the victims of Hurricane Katrina and rebuilding from its devastation, according to early congressional estimates -- a total bill that would far surpass the initial costs of recovering from the 9/11 terror attacks and could put Katrina on track to become the most expensive natural disaster in American history... Even as levee breaches were being repaired in New Orleans and oil spills and fires were posing new problems, a torrent of federal relief spending was under way. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is committing funds...

Hurricane evacuees seeking food stamps in Texas started as a trickle and quickly turned into a torrent - eight applications the first day mushroomed to more than 26,000 within four days. To varying degrees, the same story is playing out around the country as state and local governments take in Gulf Coast refugees by the thousands, taxing social programs that in many cases already were stretched thin. Minnesota, already working to absorb a wave of roughly 5,000 Hmong refugees from Laos, is preparing for up to 3,000 Katrina victims while still feeling budget cuts in health assistance and job training...

Herndon officials, looking to address complaints about day laborers loitering on city streets, are expected to decide tonight whether building a shelter for the immigrant workers might solve more problems than it creates. Neighborhoods in Virginia, Maryland and the District have problems with day laborers, many of them illegal aliens, who loiter in parking lots in search of day-to-day work.

NEW YORK MEDICAID FRAUD MAY REACH BILLIONS OF DOLLARS Daily Policy Digest HEALTH ISSUES Thursday, July 21, 2005 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The New York Medicaid program has been misspending billions of dollars annually because of fraud, waste and profiteering, according to a year-long investigation by the New York Times. The size and scope of problem is alarming: New York spends $44.5 billion annually on Medicaid, which is far more than any other state including California -- whose Medicaid program covers about 55 percent more people. New York's Medicaid budget is larger than most states' entire budgets, and costs nearly twice the national...

Clinton speaks before Hispanic civil rights conference From The Morning Call -- July 18, 2005 Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-NY, gestures while giving an address on the challenges of education for the nation's growing Hispanic community, Monday, July 18, 2005, at the annual meeting of the National Council of La Raza, in Philadelphia. (PA Photo/Joseph Kaczmarek) The Morning Call Speaking to the nations' largest Hispanic civil rights organization, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., received a standing ovation Monday when she vowed her support for legislation that would allow illegal immigrant high school students to attend college. Clinton made her remarks...

PHILADELPHIA -- Supporters of a proposed law that would benefit people who arrived in the United States illegally as children said Sunday that it would help more immigrants go on to get college degrees and contribute more to society. During a rally held as part of the annual convention of a national Hispanic civil-rights group, people spoke out in support of the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act. The proposal, known as the DREAM Act, would give undocumented youth the chance to become legal U.S. residents and possibly help them get in-state college tuition. "We are not asking...

Chicago-area immigrants settle lawsuit with Homeland Security CHICAGO: Some notary publics allegedly took advantage of residents, jeopardizing their status BY DAN CATERINICCHIA Associated Press Writer This story ran on nwitimes.com on Sunday, July 17, 2005 12:20 AM CDT CHICAGO | Illegal immigrant Fermin Gutierrez shelled out $1,500 after a notary public said he could get the Mexican national U.S. residency within months, instead of the years the green-card process normally takes. But months later, Gutierrez started getting letters from the federal government saying that he illegally filed for residency and could be deported. That's when he knew the notary had...

BILL O'REILLY, HOST: O'REILLY: In the "Unresolved Problem" segment tonight, we continue our reporting on the chaotic border situation. As you may know, President Bush has proposed a new law that would allow illegal immigrants currently in this country to work toward citizenship if they fulfilled some requirements like having a job and staying out of trouble. Apparently, the Bush administration ordered the border patrol to ask apprehended illegal aliens about the president's proposed new law. And one of the questions was, did the rumors of amnesty influence your decision to illegally enter the USA? Now chances are you've never...

President George W Bush has proposed doubling US aid to Africa over the next five years. He said this would happen if African leaders made a commitment to honest government and the rule of law. Outlining his priorities for the G8 summit next week, Mr Bush said the West now had an extraordinary opportunity to help end extreme poverty in Africa. But on the other main issue facing the summit - climate change - he gave no indication of a compromise. The president criticised those who opposed energy development and wanted to place restrictions upon it. "About two billion people...