The unaccountable lame duck Congress is preparing to put Americans on the hook for an additional $1.15 billion in spending on a Pigford II settlement program that is rife with fraud despite the fact that current law caps the amount to be spent on these claims at $100 million.

To make matters worse, the Democrats who temporarily control the Rules Committee will not even allow my amendment protecting taxpayers from this excessive and fraudulent spending to be presented on the House floor for a vote.

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Big Government has obtained an advance copy of Homeland Security’s Inspector General report detailing ACORN’s misuse of a federal grant from FEMA.  The report will be released to the public on December 8th. We’ve included it below.

EMBARGOED 12-8-10 DHS IG Report – ACORN Grants

Contacted by Big Government about the report, incoming Chair of the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, Rep. Darrell Issa, had this comment:

It is really unthinkable that anyone would use the guise of public safety and helping victims of a tragedy like Hurricane Katrina as a calculating way to inappropriately obtain taxpayer dollars.  As the discussion over how to reign in government’s growth and spending moves forward, there couldn’t be a more important time to ensure that the grants awarded with taxpayer dollars meet rigorous criteria and are subject to vigilant oversight to ensure that grant recipients are not given access to taxpayer dollars under false pretenses.”

The key things in the DHS IG’s report were:

• “We concluded that the ACORN Institute should not have received these funds, did not fully implement and evaluate the program as approved, and could not substantiate all its grant expenditures.
• “The FEMA did not have sufficient oversight processes to prevent the award or to fully evaluate the use of the grant money.”
• The Technical Evaluation Panel that reviewed ACORN’s grant request recommended it not be funded but “FEMA overrode the panels’ recommendation and awarded the grant without documenting how it addressed the Technical Evaluation Panel’s concerns.”
• ACORN described an Urban Fire Initiative that did not actually exist until they requested the funding:  “the Urban Fire Initiative did not exist prior to the grant application, but was created specifically for activities funded by the FY 2007 Fire Prevention and Safety Grant.  Neither ACORN Institute nor the Urban Fire Initiative was involved in any of the above activities and events.”
• ACORN claimed partnerships with local fire departments but “there was no evidence of these partnerships were in place…”
• FEMA relied on “self certification” and “has no requirement or standard procedure in the evaluation process of the Fire Prevention and Safety grant applications to validate the legitimacy of significant claims and assertions used to qualify an applicant for the grant…”

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Updated.

From the Associated Press:

The House on Tuesday passed landmark legislation to pay for some $4.6 billion in settlements with American Indians and black farmers who say they faced discrimination and mistreatment from the government.

Lawmakers voted 256-152 to send the measure to President Barack Obama, whose administration brokered the settlements over the past year.

The package would award some $3.4 billion to American Indians over claims they were cheated out of royalties overseen by the Interior Department for resources like oil, gas and timber. Another $1.2 billion would go to African-Americans who claim they were unfairly denied loans and other assistance from the Agriculture Department.

The settlements have broad bipartisan support but had stalled on Capitol Hill over costs until the Senate broke a stalemate earlier this month. (more…)

As House Republicans prepare to take the reigns, it’s clear that incoming House Government Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa is taking his responsibilities seriously.  National Journal reports that Issa is doubling his investigation staff and is planning a hearing a day on Obama Administration abuses.  Potential hearings include Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Medicare fraud, wasteful stimulus money and hopefully attempts to ration drugs and treatments under ObamaCare.

Within three weeks, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is expected to decide whether breast cancer patients be denied access to the life-extending drug Avastin because of its cost.  The FDA does not have the authority to deny access to drugs based upon cost but that is what is happening.  During deliberations, Jean Grem let the cat out of the bag when she explained her anti-Avastin vote by observing, “We aren’t supposed to talk about cost, but that’s another issue.”

Calling Mr. Issa.

What we have here is clear – it is government attempting to ration drugs based upon their cost.  Does the FDA have the authority to take such action?  It’s clear the answer is no.  But as government begins to ratchet the cost curve on heath care down, government agencies will attempt to deny care and treatment to the sick and elderly in order to save money – if we let them.

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The first plastic was created in 1855 by British metallurgist Alexander Parkes.   As nobody knew quite what to do with it, plastic remained obscure until the 1890’s when another Brit developed polymers called “silicones.”

By 1910, plastic was a fully synthetic compound revolutionizing industry, consumer products and military supply.  It is still the world’s most utilized material.

When plastic became readily available in 1910, life expectancy in the U.S. was 50.  Today it is nearly 79 and there are about 80,000 American over 100 years old.  Clearly, plastic is not a serious health concern.

Nevertheless, the Obama Administration has just unleashed yet another attack on plastics, using an end-run by bureaucratic fiat, hoping we won’t notice.

The Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) is a Carter-era law governing the Environmental Protection Agency’s management of chemicals through collecting data and designing regulatory protections.  Although its original intent was to address toxic PCBs, bureaucrats found other chemicals needing management once that crisis passed.

Some of the agency’s regulations have been good, such as rulemaking on lead paint and asbestos abatement.  But now EPA is abrogating the process by focusing on silicone.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Joshua Stanton of One Free Korea to discuss the latest developments as tensions remain high in the dispute between South and North Korea.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

TNL: Overthrowing Kim: A Capitalist Manifesto (Part 1)
WikiLeaks: China weary of North Korea behaving like ’spoiled child’
S. Korea’s Fine Line: Talk Tough, Keep Finger Off Trigger
North Korea provokes neighbours with ‘new’ nuclear facility announcement
One Free Korea

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From the Associated Press:

Staggering Election Day losses are not the Democratic Party’s final indignity this year. At least 13 state lawmakers in five states have defected to Republican ranks since the Nov. 2 election, adding to already huge GOP gains in state legislatures. And that number could grow as next year’s legislative sessions draw near.

The defections underscore dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party—particularly in the South—and will give Republicans a stronger hand in everything from pushing a conservative fiscal and social agenda to redrawing political maps.

In Alabama, four Democrats announced last week they were joining the GOP, giving Republicans a supermajority in the House that allows them to pass legislation without any support from the other party. The party switch of a Democratic lawmaker from New Orleans handed control of Louisiana’s House to Republicans for the first time since Reconstruction.

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From Politico:

Vice President Joe Biden welcomes California Rep. Darrell Issa to the White House Tuesday, the White House’s first outreach to the chairman that has vowed to investigate every corner of government.

The meeting, which will be at 3 p.m. in the White House, will focus on tracking stimulus spending, White House and Hill sources say.

Issa is looking to dig into specifics about stimulus oversight: enforcing the law that the spending of stimulus dollars must be reported, empowering inspectors general with subpoena power and potentially some improvements to Recovery.gov.

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This week the EPA celebrates its 40th birthday. In honor of the occasion, they’ve launched a dedicated website called EPA@40, and it’s head, Lisa Jackson, will take off on a week-long party circuit designed to “highlight the impact of [the EPA's] efforts to clean up the air Americans breathe and the water they drink and the communities they live in” as well as her agency’s crusade to attend to “the unfinished business of the environmental movement.”

What started as a way to help the government respond to environmental disasters and spread conservation awareness, however, has metastasized into a bloated, over-reaching disaster of it’s own, championing extensive governmental intervention, curbing freedoms and, most recently, costing hard-working Americans their jobs, all in the name of preserving the environment.

In the midst of an economic downturn, the EPA will once again retool it’s famous, founding Clean Air Act, rewriting the historical legislation to suit Obama’s own bureaucratic needs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020. Sounds fantastic, right? Well, it’ll have a devastating effect on the private sector:

Achieving that level of reduction in greenhouse gases won’t be easy or cheap. This immense new burden on the private sector comes at precisely the wrong time for an economy still struggling to create new jobs and reduce near double-digit unemployment…The cost estimates are indeed staggering, according to an econometric study by the Manufacturers Alliance that projects more than 7.3 million lost jobs by 2020. The hardest-hit states include Texas, which would lose 1.7 million jobs, and Louisiana, with 938,000 positions lost. Others include California (846,000), Illinois (396,000) and Pennsylvania (351,000). Total losses would reduce the nation’s gross domestic product by $1.7 trillion, according to the Manufacturers Alliance.”

Of course, these new standards wouldn’t just affect isolated industries or particular states.

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It’s a full court press by the Obama Administration.  The goal: to hurry the Senate into approving the stalled nuclear arms treaty, the New START Treaty, with Russia during the Lame Duck session.   This treaty is flawed, yet the Administration and allies in the Senate want to rush passage, because they are unwilling to seriously address shortcomings contained within the four corners of the Treaty and secret side agreements cut to secure Russian consent.

Last week, President Obama tried to buy the vote of linchpin Republican Sen. Jon Kyl by promising billions in “nuclear modernization” funds—a top priority for the defense-minded conservative.  At the NATO conference, he conjured up a rump meeting with Dmitry Medvedev, allowing the Russian president to warn of “very unpleasant” consequences should the treaty fail.  The President then dispatched Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the TV talk show circuit to make the dubious assertion that Ronald Reagan would’ve loved this treaty.

Signed by President Obama earlier this year, the New START treaty purports to limit strategic warheads held by the U.S. and Russia while establishing a new, bilateral inspection system.  The President calls the treaty “a national security imperative,” but skeptical Senators want more time to study the deal.  They’ve also demanded to see the negotiating record to see if negotiators entered a side agreement to halt the U.S. missile defense program—a claim made by members of the Russian Duma.

The Administration has stone-walled the document request for months.  Yet now it insists lawmakers must vote on the treaty—without this critical information—in a matter of days.

Why the rush?

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Salon.com, who, through their interesting editor Joan Walsh has done all they can to discredit and smear the tea party is trying to find a buyer for itself. Having lost close to $5 million in the last fiscal year, it seems lefties like Walsh aren’t particularly good at running an actual business.

I urge my colleagues to consider what the Claims Settlement Act truly presents before voting on the bill this week. This legislation includes over a billion dollars to settle the Pigford II discrimination claims with black farmers. Unfortunately, Pigford is rife with fraudulent claims and to settle before an investigation can take place does the American taxpayer a disservice. Justice should be served to those who experienced discrimination, but settlement funds should only go to those wronged.

By the National Black Farmers Association’s own data, only 18,000 black farmers exist in the United States, but under Pigford II 94,000 claims of racial discrimination have been filed thus far. A number of individuals involved in Pigford, ranging from USDA officials to black farmers themselves, are ready and willing to appear as witnesses before Congress to bring these allegations into the light.
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Congress is rushing through its lame duck session to finally appropriate funds to pay out claims from the Pigford II settlement. The settlement is meant to clear up claims from black farmers who claim discrimination from USDA and also missed out on the first settlement.

The legislation sets aside $1.5 billion to pay these claims. The legislation also makes cuts in other federal programs to “pay for” the new spending. Among the cuts are $500 million for nutrition programs for women, infants and children.

From the Senate language:

Subtitle E–Rescission of Funds From WIC Program

SEC. 841. RESCISSION OF FUNDS FROM WIC PROGRAM.

Notwithstanding any other provision of law, of the amounts made available in appropriations Acts to provide grants to States under the special supplemental nutrition program for women, infants, and children established by section 17 of the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 (42 U.S.C. 1786), $562,000,000 is rescinded.

Well.

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I’m understandably fond of my video exposing the flaws of Keynesian stimulus theory, but I think my former intern has an excellent contribution to the debate with this new 5-minute mini-documentary.

The main insight of the mini-documentary is that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) only measures how national output is allocated between consumption, investment, and government. That’s useful information in many ways, but if we want more output, we should focus on Gross Domestic Income (GDI), which measures how national income is earned.

Focusing on GDI hopefully would lead lawmakers to consider ways of boosting employee compensation, corporate profits, small business income, and other components of national income. Focusing on GDP, by contrast, is misguided since any effort to boost consumption generally leads to less investment. This is why Keynesian policies only redistribute national income, but don’t boost overall output.

The analysis in this video also helps explain why Obama’s so-called stimulus was a flop. The White House genuinely seemed to think a bigger burden of government spending was going to create jobs, but the real-world numbers show higher joblessness.

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From The Hill:

The Senate’s approval of a $1.15 billion settlement for black farmers meant to deal with decades of past discrimination capped a roller-coaster year on the issue for Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.

Vilsack was in the legislative trenches for much of this year pushing for the settlement’s passage, which still must be approved by the House. With a vote expected to come up next week, passage by the lower chamber seems likely since the House has approved the settlement already this year.

In an interview with The Hill, the former Iowa governor said each and every question by senators had to be answered before the settlement funds could be passed.
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So, let me get this straight. The big data-dump of 250,000 leaked diplomatic cables reveal that American diplomats occasionally spy on other diplomats, the Arabs don’t like the Persians, British royalty can be rude, and Obama and his disciples have poor opinions of other world leaders. Oh, and the Chinese government might be trying to censor parts of the internet, the Russian government might have ties to organized crime and members of the Afghan government might be corrupt.

Really? The UK’s Guardian says the leak of the diplomatic cable “sparks a global diplomatic crisis.” Michael Kinsley famously said once that a “gaffe” in DC was committed when someone mistakingly spoke the truth. I guess the stripped-pants crowd is a bit more high-strung. Speaking the truth isn’t a gaffe among the embassy set, its a full-blown ‘crisis.’

Congressman Peter King (R-NY) says the Wikileaks organization should be classified as a “terrorist organization” and its founder, Julian Assange should be criminally prosecuted. Personally, I think Mr. Assange should be sued for false advertising. The revelations from the diplomatic cables aren’t anywhere near what was promised. I want my money back.

Of course, it is possible that more startling revelations come to light. Color me skeptical, though, as it seems Assange would lead with his best stuff. Regardless, I don’t think the real scandal is the content of the cables. I think it is this:

How the hell does a 22-year old private have access to this stuff?

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From AFP:

US President Barack Obama on Monday proposed a freeze on most government pay in a move to trim the country’s massive deficit.

The White House said the two year freeze would save two billion dollars in the 2011 fiscal year.

The measures will apply to all civilian federal employees including at theDepartment of Defense.

Military personnel will not affected.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss the Black Friday sales figures, the policy wishes of America’s CEOs and Brazil’s booming inflation.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Black Friday Starts to Brighten
The CEOs’ Top Priorities
TNL: Brazil Gets Ireland’s Disease

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