Free Republic

With scant weeks to go before the curtain rises on the $41 million Democratic National Convention in Denver, planners find themselves millions in the hole. It's not difficult to see why. Renovating the convention hall at the Pepsi Center already has cost $6 million more than they budgeted, and the work is far from done. In renting offices, the party took top-shelf space in downtown Denver at $100,000 a month, only to discover it needed only half the space, and then filled the offices with rented furniture costing $50,000 a month. A small fortune was spent to make this a...

..........The 30-by-45-foot screen, which was turned on in September, is part of the station's new $85 million headquarters. Visible for a mile to eastbound travelers, it is allowed to display only photos, no words.

Teddy Roosevelt impressed the nation with his focus on conservation and while he was president was responsible for pushing to conserve our nation's wilderness in the form of sundry national parks, mostly in the western U.S. This was a worthy enterprise, few can deny. But what is the true purpose of these conservatories but to set aside tracts of land away from developers so that nature can prevail? Is it not a given that these lands should be governed by nature and but set aside by government? So, we all agree that government may take the unspoiled wilderness and save...

LAREDO – Day after day, Mexican trucks line up as far as the eye can see for entry to the U.S. at the World Trade Bridge, carrying everything from raw tomatoes, broccoli and fresh basil to frozen seafood. They also bring in salmonella, listeria, restricted pesticides and other food poisons. Customs and Border Protection officers take less than a minute per truck to determine which products enter the U.S. and find their way into grocery stores and restaurants across North Texas

AL Gore claims that "good enough for government work" once implied that such work met the highest standards of excellence. Maybe. But in the US Senate's kitchens, "good enough for government work" means any meal that doesn't require a stomach pump. [Snip] As befits a government-run commissary, the Senate cafeteria has a decidedly Soviet attitude toward variety. It has averaged only two new menu items a year over the last decade. The food is so bad, every lunch hour Senate staffers rush to the House side of the Capitol like starving New Yorkers of the future storming the last Soylent...

A judge aborted a drug conspiracy trial Tuesday after some jurors were found to have been playing the puzzle game Sudoku while evidence was being given. Sydney District Court Judge Peter Zahra ended the trial Tuesday for two men facing a possible life sentence for drug conspiracy charges. The trial had been running for 66 days and had cost taxpayers an estimated 1 million Australian dollars (US$950,000). The judge was alerted after it was observed the jurors were writing vertically, rather than horizontally. It had been assumed they were taking notes. "Yes, it helps me keep my mind busy paying...

The troublesome toilet aboard the International Space Station appears to be working again, thanks to a replacement pump taken to the station by the shuttle Discovery. “The toilet appears to have been repaired,” said Rob Navias, the commentator for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s video channel on the Web, NASA TV (www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/). The single toilet aboard the station has separate systems for dealing with solid and liquid waste, and the systems are designed to work without the help of gravity. The solid waste system was operating properly, but the liquid system, which uses air flow to direct urine and...

ALBANY, N.Y. -- The New York state Legislature has given final passage to a bill that would charge $250 for pet owners who don't pick up after their dogs in some parts of the state. That would more than double the current fine. Dog owners currently have to pay $100 if they don't pick up the poop. The change would apply to the five boroughs of New York City, Albany and Yonkers. The Assembly passed the bill Wednesday and the Senate had already passed it. A spokesman for Gov. David Paterson said the governor will review the measure.

Every politician moans that entitlement spending is out of control, so it ought to be easy at least to stop blatant fraud and abuse. Evidently not: Congress is currently resisting an attempt to rein in even a Big Con that everyone acknowledges. The scene of this crime is Medicaid, the open-ended program that provides health coverage for about 59 million low-income people, with the rolls expanding every year. States determine eligibility and what services to cover, and the feds pick up at least half the tab, though the effective "matching rate" is as high as 83%. Now it turns out...

Since 2002, taxpayers have entrusted San Diego community college leaders with $1.5 billion to transform three campuses, modernize six adult education centers and expand academic programs. So far, they have spent less than 15 percent of the money, constructing or renovating about a dozen buildings. The San Diego Union-Tribune analyzed thousands of district records and interviewed dozens of people and found that college officials missed many project deadlines and struggled with runaway costs for land and building materials. Failure to act quickly in the escalating real estate market cost the district millions. Delays in acquiring real estate cost millions of...

The process becomes more important than the product. You don't see anything wrong with attending a meeting on a subject you know nothing about. You feel you contributed to the meeting just by being there. You stop raising issues/problems because you know you will be the one answering them. You fly first class across the country to attend a conference with 100+ people to discuss the fact that the project does not have enough money. You work for an acronym, on an acronym, and your job title is an acronym. You understand the rationalization of an acronym composed of acronyms....

I received a copy of this email from the building manager. It answers that age old question: How many Air Force acquisition program managers does it take to replace a light bulb. From: (Building Manager) Civ USAF AFMC 753 ELSG/OMSent: Thursday, May 08, 2008 12:24 PMTo: 753 ELSG Bldg 1607 OccupantsSubject: New Burnt-out Bulb Replacement ProgramThe IAP (Replaced Del-Jen) Civil Engineering Contract does not provide for burnt-out bulb replacement and it is considered an “Occupant” responsibility for all lights at 10 feet and below. Our ceilings are 9 feet. IAP will replace bulbs in stairwells.If you have any burnt-out fluorescent...

These are the kinds of stories that should be brought up when people tell you that they want the government to run all these Socialist ideas from the Democrats: This time around, the Census Bureau wanted to do things differently, ditching paper for handheld computers that Census workers could use to collect and transmit data from those who don't fill out the forms sent through the mail. It wasn't to be. Despite two years of development and a $600 million budget, the Census Bureau and Commerce Department recently decided that the $600 handhelds weren't up to the job...In the field,...

Kenyans live in squalor as government spends millions on ministries By Mike Pflanz in Eldoret Last Updated: 1:59AM BST 01/05/2008 More than 150,000 Kenyans are trapped in tented camps and fear a resurgence of tribal violence, even as their "unity" government prepares to lavish hundreds of millions of pounds on new ministries. The church in Kiambaa, where 18 people died in January According to the finance ministry, the expanded coalition needs an extra £125 million a month for nine new departments, in addition to the soaring cost of paying for its 93 ministers and their perks. The new government is...

Farewell the age of reason, welcome the idiocracy. Only George Orwell could have invented - and named - the government's Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) that came into operation yesterday. It is the latest in a long line of measures intended to ease the conscience of the rich while keeping the poor miserable, in this case spectacularly so. The consequences of the RTFO have been much trumpeted on these pages. It says enough that one car tank of bio petrol needs as much grain as it takes to feed an African for a year, or that a reported one-third of...

COLUMBUS - Ten years ago, Ohio won the tobacco lottery. It was among 46 states to join a lawsuit accusing tobacco producers of using unfair advertising to get smokers addicted to nicotine. Smelling bankruptcy, 11 tobacco companies and industry trade groups agreed to a settlement, promising the states $260 billion in payments spread out over 25 years. Bob Taft, as the newly elected governor, convinced the state legislature to budget nearly half of Ohio's $10 billion share of the settlement for school construction projects - the state was entangled in a major lawsuit over school funding at the time -...

BALTIMORE — Scientists using federal grants spread fertilizer made from human and industrial wastes on yards in poor, black neighborhoods to test whether it might protect children from lead poisoning in the soil. Families were assured the sludge was safe and were never told about any harmful ingredients. Nine low-income families in Baltimore row houses agreed to let researchers till the sewage sludge into their yards and plant new grass. In exchange, they were given food coupons as well as the free lawns as part of a study published in 2005 and funded by the Housing and Urban Development Department.

Internal funds cover the $13,500 tab for filets and drinks, they say. Auditors call it 'abusive.' WASHINGTON - When the U.S. Postal Service rang up a $13,500 tab at an Orlando steakhouse, it spared no expense during a five-hour meal that government investigators are calling "abusive" in its extravagance. The order -- charged to government credit cards -- included more than $3,000 for drinks, more than $500 for shrimp cocktails and almost $900 for mini crab cakes, according to the Government Accountability Office, the investigate arm of Congress. And then there's the steak. "The better question is probably what they...

California will establish a high-profile, $600 million research center to devise solutions for global warming, the Public Utilities Commission decided in a 5-0 vote Thursday. The California Institute for Climate Solutions will have a $60 million budget each year for 10 years. The money will come from ratepayers of the state's major utilities, including Pacific Gas & Electric, which serves much of Northern California. The new institute, which will seek matching funds to expand its reach, will administer research grants; work to transfer technologies to commercial businesses; and develop a related workforce for these companies. Undecided is where the new...

Video clip of Fox News discussing some serious waste on the part of federal government workers.

BOTHELL, Wash. - At a time when the school district for the Bothell-Woodinville area is talking about closing a school to save money, it's buying home electronics for the personal use of administrators. The Northshore School District says buying TVs, digital cameras and iPods for administrators is part of their pay and helps make them familiar with technology. All but 13 of 93 eligible administrators have taken advantage of the benefit, spending $119,000 under the current contract. "Even an HDTV is used for work, because it's hooked up to a computer and used like a monitor," said Susan Stoltzfus, Northshore...

For decades, conventional wisdom has held that daylight-saving time, which begins March 9, reduces energy use. But a unique situation in Indiana provides evidence challenging that view: Springing forward may actually waste energy.(snip) (A University of California-Santa Barbara study of daylight savings time was conducted during the recent change in Indiana) Having the entire state switch to daylight-saving time each year, rather than stay on standard time, costs Indiana households an additional $8.6 million in electricity bills. "I've never had a paper with such a clear and unambiguous finding as this," says Mr. Kotchen, who presented the paper at a...

The Port Authority has disclosed that a backlog exists on uncounted cash and currency from passenger fares, a situation it blamed on high employee absenteeism. Spokeswoman Judi McNeil said the money, which would normally be deposited in a more timely manner, is sitting in the agency's "currency department," whose location it keeps secret for security reasons. "It's less than $1 million," she said. "Normally, most of it would be counted, deposited and collecting short-term interest by now." Since the Zone 1 base cash fare recently was increased to $2, the number of $1 bills the authority collects has gone up...

The House Democratic leadership has initiated steps to shut down a House Republican-launched earmark reform website (http://earmarkreform.house.gov/). The triggering event was an item reporting that Representative John Murtha (D-Pa.) had just been named “Porker of the Year.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) denied the GOP contention that the move was aimed at suppressing criticism of Murtha’s role in promoting government waste. “The claim that we would try to silence critics of one of America’s most revered public servants is ludicrous,” Pelosi said. “The simple truth is that use of the word ‘porker’ made the site an unacceptable insult to Muslims....

A Bush administration plan to crack down on contract fraud has a multibillion-dollar loophole: The proposal to force companies to report abuse of taxpayer money will not apply to work overseas, including projects to secure and rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. For decades, contractors have been asked to report internal fraud or overpayment on government-funded projects. Compliance has been voluntary, and over the past 15 years the number of company-reported fraud cases has declined steadily. Now, the Justice Department wants to force companies to notify the government if they find evidence of contract abuse of more than $5 million. Failure to...

A North Dakota manufacturer has agreed to pay $2 million to settle a suit saying it had repeatedly shortchanged the armor in up to 2.2 million helmets for the military, including those for the first troops sent to Iraq and Afghanistan. Jeff Kenner and Tamra Elshaug, former managers, filed a whistle-blower suit accusing Sioux Manufacturing of fraud and safety violations. Twelve days before the settlement with the Justice Department was announced, the company, Sioux Manufacturing of Fort Totten, was given a new contract of up to $74 million to make more armor for helmets to replace the old ones, which...

My brother-in-law got a 'farm census' in the mail. He is required to fill it out and return it by Feb 4, by law. The best part is that he lives in the middle of the DFW metroplex and has never been associated with agriculture. His daughter does have a pet sugar glider though. This form is large and 24 pages in legnth. I filled it out for him, basically the first 3 answers are 'none' and it said to skip to the backpage bif it was, and then 3 more questions to say we have no farm here. Now...

THE US will commit $US2 billion ($2.27 billion) over the next three years for a new international fund to promote clean energy technologies and fight climate change, President George W. Bush will tell Congress today in his annual State of the Union speech.

Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson wants to curb government spending by halting federal hiring. If elected, Thompson said, he would stop government agencies from acquiring new personnel for one year and his administration would perform senior-level assessments of agency priorities. “This will give a new administration time to assess its personnel requirements in order to ‘right size’ the federal workforce,” according to a statement posted earlier this week on Thompson’s campaign Web site. Two other candidates have promised to reshape the federal workforce. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said he would not rehire half the positions that will...

Spending our way to financial ruinDec 22, 2007 6:00 AM (4 hrs ago) The San Francisco Examiner Newspaper SAN FRANCISCO - It is no coincidence that U.S. Comptroller General David Walker’s latest warning that the United States is literally spending its way into bankruptcy came the same week Congress passed a 3,416-page omnibus spending bill that no senator or representative will read. Walker’s warning is made all the more urgent because Congress — aided and abetted in many respects by the president — continues to pass massive spending bills with no idea of what’s contained in them. The federal government...

The United States will pledge about $500 million for the moderate-led Palestinian government in the West Bank when Arab, European and other nations meet next week, US officials said Friday.

The economies of many big oil-exporting countries are growing so fast that their need for energy within their borders is crimping how much they can sell abroad, adding new strains to the global oil market. Experts say the sharp growth, if it continues, means several of the world’s most important suppliers may need to start importing oil within a decade to power all the new cars, houses and businesses they are buying and creating with their oil wealth. Indonesia has already made this flip. By some projections, the same thing could happen within five years to Mexico, the No. 2...

New Worldwide Toilet Organization Promises 'Toilet Revolution' Thursday, November 22, 2007 SEOUL, South Korea — The World Toilet Association kicked off its inaugural conference Thursday, hoping to spark a sanitation revolution that will save lives through better hygiene and break taboos about what happens behind closed bathroom doors. To the celebratory rhythms of a percussionist beating on toilets, dozens of government delegates and U.N. representatives began two days of discussions on improving bathroom facilities for the 2.6 billion people worldwide who lack access to proper restrooms. Dr. Shigeru Omi, western Pacific director of the World Health Organization, said 1.8 million...

WASHINGTON - The agency that distributes billions of dollars in American foreign aid cannot "reasonably ensure" that its money does not wind up in terrorist hands, an internal audit has concluded. The United States Agency for International Development funded groups with ties to terrorism on at least two occasions, the agency's inspector general found in an audit. That included approving $180,000 for a Bosnian group whose president was on a "watch list" that barred him from entering the United States, and $1 million for an aid "partner" who later pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents about his involvement with...

The Cobb County homeowner who used enough water during his October billing cycle to fill a backyard pool 58 times told county officials Tuesday that he was working to cut his water use. According to his October bill, Chris G. Carlos used 440,000 gallons of water at his 14,000-square-foot home, which sits on 3.8 lush acres in Atlanta Country Club and includes a pool. He was contacted by county officials on Tuesday. "He was very humble. It is my understanding he told his landscaper to stop all watering last week," said County Spokesman Robert Quigley, who called Carlos. For the...

Around 20 billion kronor in welfare benefits are wrongly paid out by government agencies every year, according to a new study. The report, by a committee drawn from various public authorities, says that 10 billion kronor a year is paid out to people who are knowingly cheating the system. Mistakes by benefit claimants account for 6 billion kronor, with the remaining overpayments due to failures by the public authority issuing the benefits. The committee also published a survey on attitudes to cheating the system. 95 percent of those asked said it was not right to be a benefit cheat. People...

Sweden's international development agency, SIDA, relies on left-wing ideology rather than facts and logic, argues Nima Sanandaji, from the Captus think tank. ”Gender inequality is one of the main reasons for poverty in a world where 99 percent of the world’s total wealth is owned by men and where 90 percent of the total incomes globally are earned by men.” Where does the above quote come from? To begin with, it is of course as wrong as it can get. In a country such as the UK women own more wealth than men. And more than two percent of global...

LONDON, Nov. 3 (UPI) -- British Environment Minister Joan Ruddock has warned citizens that by not eating leftover food, they are effectively causing climate change. Ruddock said that through food waste and excessive shopping, British citizens were paying a significant cost in both environmental and financial terms, The Independent reported Friday. "At this rate we will not have a place to live which is habitable if we don't address climate change globally and the U.K. has to make its contribution," she said of such social problems.

WASHINGTON – It looks like Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., is going to get his wish – $2 million in taxpayer funding for a library commemorating his 37 years in the House of Representatives. The Charles B. Rangel Center for Public service will serve as a repository for his "papers," and the congressman will have his own office in the Harlem complex. The facility has already attracted some $25 million in funding from private sources. Rangel suggests the project will someday be "as important as the Carter and Clinton libraries." That's just one of hundreds of so-called "earmarks," pet projects of...

A cheap system to recycle human waste into biogas and fertiliser may allow 2.6 billion people in the world access to toilets and reduce global warming, an Indian environmental expert said Tuesday. Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of the Sulabh International Social Service Organisation, said his group plans to push the system at the seventh annual World Toilet Summit, to be held in New Delhi at the end of October. The organisation is dedicated to providing toilets to nearly 730 million people in India who lack them. "The Millennium Development Goals set in South Africa in 2002 aim by 2015 to cut...

Expensive trainers 'a waste of cash' By Stewart Payne Last Updated: 6:31am BST 11/10/2007 Expensive trainers do not give more protection to runners' feet than cheaper ones and are not worth the money, according to research published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. The study will come as unwelcome news to the 1.5 million runners in the UK who deliberate long and hard over their choice of footwear, believing that the more they pay the better protection they will get. Worth their weight in gold? Researchers examined nine commonly available trainers, ranging in price from £40 to £75, and...

College Bargain Basement Standards by: Malcolm A. Kline, October 10, 2007 When you pay dearly for a room at a luxury hotel or a meal at a five-star restaurant, the price tag may sting but at least you can see, feel, taste, touch and smell what you are getting. The same is not the case in higher education. “We don’t have answers to parents who ask us if spending one-third of their income on a college education is worth it,” Sarah Martinez Tucker of the U. S. Department of Education said last month at the American Enterprise Institute. Statistics from...

A certain midwestern mayor (dem.) is seeking to build a $100 million dollar entertainment facility in a city where many residents are routinely flooded out of their homes due to inadequate flood control sewers. It is believed that this mayor has sent his people to this website in order to skew the poll results. Well two can play that game. Please take the time to help. Thank you. Please send this to some friends.

Federal employees wasted at least $146 million over a one-year period on business- and first-class airline tickets, in some cases simply because they felt entitled to the perk, congressional investigators say. A draft report by the Government Accountability Office, obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press, is the first to examine compliance with travel rules across the federal government following reports of extensive abuse of premium-class travel by Pentagon and State Department employees. The review of travel spending by more than a dozen agencies from July 1, 2005, to June 30, 2006, found 67 percent of premium-class travel by executives or...

Members of the House Armed Services Committee said Thursday they were saddened and appalled at the number of military officers and civilian officials implicated in as much as $6 billion in contract fraud in Iraq and by the mismanagement that left 190,000 weapons intended for Iraqi security forces unaccounted for. Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton, D-Mo., opened a hearing on incidents of bribery and fraud that occurred in a major contracting office in Kuwait by saying they "were so severe that I fear they represent a culture of corruption," a term repeated by others. But a panel of senior defense...

Several beaches along the Jersey Shore were closed Sunday after medical waste and other trash started washing ashore, authorities said. The source of the waste _ which beachgoers said included syringes, tampon applicators, gauze and other debris _ was not immediately known, and there were no reports of injuries. Most of the waste was found on beaches and in the waters off Monmouth and Ocean counties, authorities said.

As Hurricane Dean roars through the Gulf of Mexico, it reminds everyone how dangerous the weather can be. But it should also remind everyone how poorly the National Hurricane Center has been at predicting storms. Despite dire predictions from the National Hurricane Center, no hurricanes hit the U.S. last year. This year they are again predicting as many as 10 hurricanes, up to five of them hitting the U.S. Fortunately, Dean also seems most likely to miss us. All this raises a question: Is the government’s free weather prediction service so bad that it is worth paying for private companies...

A group from Mexico has won the Stockholm Junior Water Prize at World Water Week, which is being held here for the 17th year. Adriana Alcántara Ruiz, Dalia Graciela Díaz Gómez and Carlos Hernández Mejía received the prize from Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Victoria. The Mexican team has found a way to absorb lead in industrial waste water with the help of eggshells.

There is $220 billion worth of waste, fraud and abuse in federal spending, according to a months-long analysis of 17 federal agencies and departments by the Inspectors General of all the federal agencies and the General Accounting Office. Their study, called "Government at the Brink - Urgent Federal Government Management Problems Facing the Bush Administration" (June 2001) was released by Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) on his last day as Chairman of the Senate Government Affairs Committee, before the Democrats took control of the Senate. The Senate Government Affairs Committee staff lists the top 10 most egregious examples, including, for example,...

Michigan residents leaving cities for suburbs Updated: June 28, 2007 12:28 PM GRAND RAPIDS -- A new U.S. Census Bureau report shows more and more Michigan residents are fleeing big cities and heading straight for the suburbs. The report shows two-thirds of those cities have lost population over the past six years, including Flint (9.8 percent), Detroit (8.4 percent), Lansing (4 percent), and Grand Rapids (2.3 percent). The drop in Detroit is the second highest in the nation, next to New Orleans which is trying to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina. Americans have left industrial cities in the Northeast and Midwest,...