Helping Homeowners In Michigan
Archive for July 7th, 2010
Federal Government Helped Pay Home Air-Conditioning Bills for Federal Employees, Prisoners and More Than 11,000 Dead People
July 7th, 2010 | 
Author:
The payments were made by a $5 billion program known as the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). LIHEAP is designed to provide federal assistance, administered by the states, to help people pay the energy bills to heat their homes in the winter and cool them in the summer. The funds are disbursed by the Department of Health and Human Services and are distributed based on a formula that takes into account a state’s weather and the size of its low-income population.
The GAO examined the LIHEAP programs in seven states: Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, New York, Illinois, Michigan, and New Jersey. The agency found evidence of fraud in each state.
“Our analysis of LIHEAP data revealed that the program is at risk of fraud and providing improper benefits in all seven of our selected states,” reported the GAO. “About 260,000 applications–9 percent of households receiving benefits in the selected states–contained invalid identity information, such as Social Security numbers, names, or dates of birth.”
Most glaring among the problems the GAO found were the pervasive payment of LIHEAP benefits to dead people, some of whom, records show, had been dead for quite a long time.
“The identities of over 11,000 deceased individuals were used as applicants or household members for LIHEAP benefits,” reads the GAO report. “Our analysis matching LIHEAP data to the SSA’s death master file found these individuals were deceased before the LIHEAP application date.” (SSA is the acronym for the Social Security Administration.)
One such fraudulent case involved an Ohio application that used the name of a person who, according to the death certificate, had been dead for more than four years. Ohio paid the person $400 in federal LIHEAP benefits, the GAO found.
Another recurring problem the GAO found was the payment of benefits to federal employees who make too much money to qualify for the program. The GAO found that 1,100 federal employees were receiving heating and A/C subsidies despite being able to afford to pay their own bills.
“Matching LIHEAP data with federal civilian payroll records, we identified about 1,100 federal employees whose federal salary exceeded the maximum income threshold at the time of their application,” the GAO reported.
One such case involved a Chicago-area Postal Service employee making $80,000 per year. According to the GAO, the woman, who was not named in the report, claimed on her LIHEAP application that she had no income. However, when pressed by GAO investigators, she admitted that she was not entitled to the benefits but wanted the money anyway because: “Times are tough and I needed the money.” She also said that she saw “long lines” and wanted some “free money.”
The program also provided subsidies to the wife of another Chicago-area postal worker, who earned $84,000 per year, after the wife certified that her husband had no income.
Gravestone in the Stelton Baptist Church Cemetery in Edison, New Jersey. (Photo by Richard Arthur Norton/Wikipedia Commons)
The third chronic issue the GAO discovered was that the program repeatedly paid the air conditioning and heating bill of convicts who were in jail at the time the payments were made.
The GAO found that in four of the seven states–only four provided reliable incarceration figures–725 LIHEAP applications used the names of convicts to obtain federal subsidies.
“For the four states that provided reliable incarceration data, we found 725 instances where the identities of individuals incarcerated in state prisons were used as applicants or household members,” the report says.
Among the 725 cases the GAO identified was the case of a federal employee who listed two incarcerated family members on her LIHEAP application. The GAO found that the woman–a purchasing agent for the Department of Veterans Affairs–would not have qualified for the $700 in benefits she received had she not falsely included her two convicted relatives.
In another case, from Virginia, $430 was paid for an individual that prison records indicated had been incarcerated for more than 15 years prior to the benefits being paid. That application, the GAO found, did not contain any proof of identity, such as a driver’s license or Social Security number.
Ill-Noise Is Broke But Gives 14% Raises?
Springfield, Ill. – More than 40,000 unionized state workers got a pay raise last Thursday, bringing to 7 percent the amount they’re gotten since last year. These same state employees are in line for another 7 percent by next July 1st, all at a cost of a half-billion tax dollars a year.
May I ask when the citizens of the State of Illinois decide they’re not going to pay – period?
May I ask when the citizens of the State of Illinois decide that all public-sector unions shall be de-certified and barred from the state?
Oh, they can’t do that, right?
Really?
You sure?
How will the State compel those citizens to go to work?
See, the citizens have the absolute right to strike. To refuse to work. To refuse to pay bills, including to The State. To, simply put, refuse.
There is no law that says you can be compelled to labor.
And whether these unions like it or not, whether these corrupt and evil politicians like it or not, without tax revenues the state cannot pay them irrespective of any so-called “demand” or “obligation” to do so.
So here’s my answer to this sort of crap: GO ON STRIKE.
The unions think it’s just fine to do such a thing.
So, America, for the 49.5% of you, when you reach between your legs, do you feel two round things down there? Is that a wee little sausage down there too, or do you find things that clang like church bells and a big hairy stick?
For the other 50.5% of the population, yours are not so visible, but they’re just as important. Do you have shriveled up raisins in there or a big honking pair of estrogen-producing ovaries? Is that a uterus in your belly or is it is a vestigal ornament to claimed womanhood?
YOU, the citizens, are the final arbitrator of government’s propriety and profligacy.
YOU, the citizens, hold the final veto.
Always.
YOU, the citizens, may express that veto in peaceful and lawful refusal to fund the insanity of these institutions and scammers any time you decide you’ve had enough.
That is, if you actually have a pair of balls.
So far, all I see are raisins.
Tickerguy Interviews
Tickerguy Interviewed by Michael Medved (July 6, 2010):
Tickerguy Interviewed by Bill Still (from 2008):
Posted in Banks, Bill Still, Corruption, Debt, Economic Crisis, Economy, Federal Reserve, Financial System, Fraud, Government, Karl Denninger, Money | 
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The Fallacy Of "Record Corporate Cash"
How many times have you heard that: “Corporations are flush with cash; they have record amounts of free cash on their balance sheets”?
Dozens, right?
It’s touted as a positive thing.
Baloney.
Corporations hoard cash when they are convinced that things are going to get bad. No corporation hoards cash if it has somewhere better to deploy it – that is, somewhere it is convinced it can invest and produce a return for the business.
So what does a “record level of cash” tell us about business prospects? Simple: Business sucks today and forward prospects are deteriorating, not improving.
Simply put, businesses not only fear the need for all that cash, they have no compelling places to invest in the growth of the company’s revenues and profits. They can’t make the argument for expanding their plant, hiring, an M&A deal or even a stock buyback. They expect a hard rain or worse, an outbreak of tornadoes, not smooth sailing and fair skies.
Don’t be suckered by the mainstream media.
Government and Economy Decline In Tandem
I did not hear it, but I read that Ben Bernanke, chairman of the satanic Federal Reserve, admitted that “Our nation’s fiscal position has deteriorated appreciably since the onset of the financial crisis and the recession.”
Well, neither he nor the Federal Reserve are going to take any of the blame, even though they are solely responsible, and he says that the problem is the government’s fiscal position, as “The exceptional increase in the deficit has in large part reflected the effects of the weak economy on tax revenues and spending, along with the necessary policy actions taken to ease the recession and steady financial markets.”
No mention, of course, of the crucial role of the Federal Reserve, which was to create the money to create the boom, which created the bust, and now to create the money to bail everybody out so that we, as a nation, would have time to leisurely wait for some miracle to happen, sort of like at the end of old Grecian dramas where the plot has become so impossibly and hopelessly tangled up that the only solution was to resort to a “deus ex machina,” which is when a supernatural power comes roaring in and magically fixes everything, applause, applause, applause, curtain comes down, the actors take a bow and everybody goes home happy.
As if waiting for a deus ex machina was not enough, Bernanke then contradicts himself. In the first paragraph when he said that the fiscal position of the nation has “appreciably deteriorated,” which is code for “We’re Freaking Doomed In Spades (WFDIS)” because the American system of governments IS the economy!
In fact, the incestuous conglomeration of local, county, state and federal government is now so large that it, literally, is the economy when you combine local government spending and county government spending and state government spending and federal government spending, which collectively now spends slightly more than half of GDP! Half! And taxpayers pay them to employ 1-out-of-6 workers! And government supports half of the population consisting of the old, young, infirm and needy or greedy in some way or another.
Therefore, I postulate that since government, and those who depend on government spending, is the majority of the population, if the government is not doing well, then the economy is not doing well.
This is like when you were a kid and you learned that when mom isn’t happy, then nobody is going to be happy, or, if you are an adult, when the boss isn’t happy, then nobody is going to be happy, which happened to me just last week when my boss was waiting for me, in my office, when I dragged myself back from lunch two hours late, stinking of beer and pizza, mostly because I had dribbled a lot of each down the front of my shirt and pants.
For some strange reason, probably indicating drunkenness and/or mental illness, I decided, on the spot, that a good offense was preferable to a good defense. So I said to her, “What in the hell are YOU looking at?”
Well, it made her unhappy, and she subsequently made me unhappy. And while I am always ready to use things like this to prove, as if any more proof is needed, that people are naturally hateful to me and they are all out to get me, in this case I will merely use the point to prove that when the government is not happy, the economy is not happy, although this is immediately contradicted by that moron Ben Bernanke, of the Federal Reserve, who says that the economy is recovering! Hahaha!
In fact, he said that not only is the economy recovering, but it will continue to recover! Just listen to this: He actually said, “As the economy and financial markets continue to recover, and as the actions taken to provide economic stimulus and promote financial stability are phased out, the budget deficit should narrow over the next few years”! Hahahaha!
This makes me laugh out loud – hahahaha! – at the humorous, “Theater of the Absurd” quality of saying such a thing, sort of like Pollyanna on steroids and antidepressants! Hahaha!
Then he goes on “Even after economic and financial conditions have returned to normal,” which is a point in his remarks where I just couldn’t take any more of that crap, and my mind leapt to add “In your freaking dreams, Bernanke! Show me one time in all of history where some dirtbag government and its half-witted populace bankrupted themselves with printing, and then borrowing and spending, too much fiat money, for too long, and how printing, and then borrowing, more fiat money fixed everything! Just one! Hahahaha!”
Naturally, he does not acknowledge my rude interruption, and goes on, as if I was not even there, ignoring my rude taunting, by saying that it is still the government’s fault for borrowing and spending all the money that the Federal Reserve created, and that “in the absence of further policy actions, the federal budget appears to be on an unsustainable path. A variety of projections that extrapolate current policies and make plausible assumptions about the future evolution of the economy show a structural budget gap that is both large relative to the size of the economy and increasing over time.”
And what he will do is print the money the government needs, which will cause terrifying, bankrupting inflation in consumer prices, which should lead me to say that buying gold, silver and oil are the only things that will let you keep up, and probably make you a fortune in the process.
And sure enough, it did lead me there! Whee! This investing stuff is easy!
The Mogambo Guru
For Money Morning Australia
proudly supports:
Bill Still For President
for Congress
Michigan 11th District
By Bill Still
There is only one answer for the world economic situation; monetary reform.
1. No More National Debt
2. No More Fractional Lending
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