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FROM OVERSIGHT TO OVERLOOKED: THE GOVERNMENT’S FAILURE TO CONTROL TRILLIONS IN MISSPENT FUNDS

Tuesday, February 18, 2025
Dennis Kucinich and Elizabeth Kucinich

The Government Accountability Office (GAO), created more than a century ago to assist Congress in its constitutionally mandated oversight responsibilities, issued a report just last year which estimated that in a span of 20 years, including 2023, that the US Government made $2.7 TRILLION dollars in improper expenditures resulting from overpayments, inaccurate record keeping, and fraud. In fiscal year 2023 alone, GAO determined the federal government improperly dispensed $269 Billion.

Let this sink in for those who are getting the vapors about administrative overreach into sensitive Treasury payment systems: TRILLIONS of our tax dollars have been lost through faulty payment systems. Rising taxes, mounting deficits and loss of faith in government are the effects.

The problem isn’t that President Trump and Elon Musk are diving into this, but that sweeping action to attack corruption has not been attempted by Congress, or by the Executive branch, in many a year.

This critical condition is above and beyond political parties and personalities. The failure to root out financial and other corruption in the US government has placed our nation in grave jeopardy through rising, seemingly uncontrollable deficits.

Government elites, kleptocrats, conniving with contractors, have long enabled this perilous condition, not the work-a-day federal employees.

The revolving door, individuals moving from high office in government to highly paid positions in the private sector, and back to the revolving door, has represented a takeover of the government by private interests.

This awareness inspires caution about the motives, intent and direction of the present bureaucratic realignment.

As a member of the Government Oversight Committee for 16 years, I yelled “stop thief,” many times into a din of indifference, inertia and blind acceptance of corruption as the implicate order. It was extraordinary to witness elected officials who helplessly shrugged at a system riddled with thievery while they, and they alone, were empowered to set it right.

Years before I was elected to Congress, I was Mayor of Cleveland. In my first year in office, I was able to cut city government spending by 10% without reducing service –through the elimination of waste, fraud and abuse – and ran the government on a cash basis.

I look at present federal spending, approaching $7 Trillion annually, $5.2 Trillion coming from revenues and $1.9 Trillion borrowed (adding to the deficit), with the interest on the national debt now exceeding $1 Trillion dollars annually.

I can easily envision that the elimination of waste, fraud and abuse at a federal level could save the American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars annually, helping to protect revenues for basic government services and lowering the national debt’s dangerous trajectory.

As the President’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative moves relentlessly through the innards of the federal government, it exposes decades of failure of administrative responsibility for the custody of U.S. taxpayers’ money.

I am not, nor have I been an apologist for this or any White House. Immediately, I am deeply concerned about the potential destruction which may be visited upon the American people by the summary firings and defunding of entire government agencies.

Yes, the government is riddled with waste. It is also true that the government provides essential services, programs and lifelines for millions. There clearly needs to be a reset, but it can and must be done with care and caution consistent with forming a more perfect union. Public money for public good.

Congress, as a body, has for years failed to act on the systemic corruption which its own auditors uncovered. Upon receiving detailed reports on misspending Congress could have denied funds to departments and agencies until accounts were put in order. It did not. Instead, offending agencies often saw their budgets increase.

The Supreme Court may ultimately decide on legitimate questions of the constitutionality of DOGE’s bull-in-the-china-shop approach, its end-run of Congress’ statutory authority to create an operative federal department, and its indiscriminate reduction of the federal work force.

The revelations of the staggering amounts of money involved in misspending, government waste, fraud and abuse will surely shock most American taxpayers who, at best, are living paycheck to paycheck, and once informed of the scope of waste of their tax dollars will demand action to stop it.

NOW EVERYONE CAN SEE IT: THE ECONOMY IS TERRIBLE

Saturday, February 15, 2025
Jeffrey A. Tucker | The Epoch Times

Commentary

For years, I’ve waited for some honesty about economic data. The official numbers have not made sense. The labor numbers were all over the map with growing disparities between data-collecting methods. The output numbers did not fit with on-the-ground realities. The price numbers from government did not reflect sources from private industry. Putting it all together, we have been surrounded for years by an unannounced inflationary recession with awful jobs numbers.

Saying this has marked me as a crank, sadly, but the last five years has convinced me and multitudes of others that official claims and numbers simply cannot be trusted. Testing my intuition against real experts, I commissioned a study from some serious data mavens who know this world better than I. They concluded that prices had risen at twice the levels admitted, that labor markets were weak, that output was low, and that we’ve been in technical recession since 2022.

We published that study and awaited the blowback and refutations. They never came. Not one communication to me took issue with the numbers. Not one expert wrote to say we had distorted anything. Not one person in a position to know pushed back on the conclusion. I admit that this spooked me. How many people know that the United States is in recession but simply are not saying for professional reasons?

In the world of economics, practitioners cling to data sources as firm doctrine. As they used to say in the Soviet Union, the data might be fake but it is all we have! What if the same is true in the United States? It seems perhaps unthinkable since the reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Commerce Department have long been considered the gold standard of truth. What happens if we discover that no one really knows what is going on?

Here we are only a month into the second Trump term. The truth is suddenly coming out.

A former comptroller of the currency, Eugene Ludwig, has written an astonishing article for Politico, of all places. He throws cold water on every major data source we have. His conclusions fit well with what we had said six months ago and what I’ve intuited since 2020. He flat-out says that output is far lower than we know, effective unemployment is far higher, and prices have risen as much as twice as government has admitted.

The author begins by reminding readers of a top narrative from last year, namely that voters were unhappy about economic conditions. And yet, reporters would always say, the data is actually quite strong. The thinking was essentially that people were being quite silly and were ignorant of what the data mongers were finding. In other words, if you were among the smart set, you should know that actually inflation is falling and that all is well with labor and output.

Dr. Ludwig offers another explanation very similar to what I and others have argued for a long time, namely that the voters were not wrong; the real problem is that the data were not probably reporting real-world conditions. “What if the numbers supporting the case for broad-based prosperity were themselves misrepresentations?” he asks. “What if, in fact, darker assessments of the economy were more authentically tethered to reality?”

He goes on to explain unemployment, for example. The main unemployment numbers do not consider the quality of jobs, the hours worked, the extent to which people have been underemployed, or whether they had just given up entirely. A clue was always there in the form of the employment-population ratios, which never recovered. They never considered, for example, what it means that multiple jobs holders had reached new records and whether the wages earned were enough to keep people from having to live on the streets.

And on income, the numbers do not consider the sheer number of people barely getting by. You might have averages that look fine but masked the millions of people trapped below levels capable of providing for a family. When you consider median instead of average wages, people are “making 16 percent less than the prevailing statistics would indicate.”

And on prices, here is where we find real deception. By looking at so many goods, the consumer price index (CPI) masks the price increases that matter the most for the goods that people actually buy on a regular basis. He writes: “Our alternative indicator reveals that, since 2001, the cost of living for Americans with modest incomes has risen 35 percent faster than the CPI.”

He and many other researchers have figured out that the true cost of living might have risen by twice what the CPI indicates. This affects output data, which has been seriously distorted by the explosion in government spending and debt. Once you adjust private productivity by a realistic measure of inflation, you get numbers consistently within the red zone of negative real growth.

And the conclusion: “The problem isn’t that some Americans didn’t come out ahead after four years of Bidenomics. Some did. It’s that, for the most part, those living in more modest circumstances have endured at least 20 years of setbacks, and the last four years did not turn things around enough for the lower 60 percent of American income earners.”

Yes, this is the sort of article that causes one to want to scream: Now you tell us!

I’m guessing that we are going to get more truth now that Trump is in charge but it is not a truth we want to hear. Already we are seeing hot inflation numbers, revised jobs numbers, and lower inputs to the output numbers. It would not surprise me to see a back-dated recession being admitted by the summer, which will be trumpeted as proof that Trumponomics has failed and must be abandoned.

Do you see how this works? The numbers have become so politicized as to be nearly useless. Even this article does not take the extra step of adjusting output by prices, which would have revealed the technical recession about which we’ve written.

The official numbers might be fake. And yet we all cling to them... because they are all we have.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

JUDGE MATT LYNCH SWEARS IN NEPHEW SCOTT TO 11TH DISTRICT COURT OF APPEALS

Friday, January 24, 2025

Over 300 supporters of Geauga County attorney, Scott Lynch, braved single-digit temperatures to witness his swearing in to the Eleventh District Court of Appeals to begin the only uncle-nephew combination of Appeals Court Justices. Held at St. Mary’s Banquet Room at 401 North Street in Chardon, the January 22^nd get-together facilitated supporters’ avid celebration of the younger Lynch’s victory in the November general election. They rose to their feet and applauded too many times to count for the success of a local son and the well-liked Lynch family.

Present for the accolades were the younger Lynch’s father, a former mayor of Euclid, and his wife and three children. Attendees experienced the rare treat of listening to the combined soprano voices of his wife and daughter, as their song praised God in a house of worship.

Judge Scott Lynch explained that although initially he had tended not to be enthusiastic about participating at the Appeals Court level, he realized that like other members of his Lynch family, he was devoted to exercising both fair, unbiased judgment based on evidence and competitive spirit that he had first learned as a middle-school basketball player.

The crowd savored every moment as the wind howled outside and the frigid temperatures reinforced the fact that this Geauga County winter might be one to remember, but for the couple hours of this inside celebration everyone was able to appreciate the joy and sense of accomplishment as two Eleventh District Court of Appeals Judges share the unique honor of responsibly serving justice in the same court simultaneously.

It feels like a good beginning for the dispensation of Justice for citizens of Geauga, Lake, Portage, and Trumbull Counties. Best wishes to us all as we bring in 2025. We fervently wish the two appellate Lynches as well as their Eleventh District fellow judges, all the best as they seek to exercise justice for us all.

LOS ANGELES FIRE BUDGET CUT, HUNDREDS OF HYDRANTS STOLEN FOR SCRAP BEFORE FIRES

Friday January 10, 2025
Kenneth Schrupp | The Center Square

Hundreds of fire hydrants were stolen from the ground for scrap metal in advance of the blazes raging across Los Angeles, highlighting the local government’s challenges in maintaining basic order and infrastructure.

“These fire hydrant thefts are yet another sign of how crime is out of control in Los Angeles County,” said Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman to The Center Square before his November election. “Thieves know they’ll face little or no consequences if they are caught, so they’re willing to risk the public’s safety for a small profit."

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who has been away on a taxpayer-funded trip to Africa as a member of a Biden administration delegation, recently cut the fire department’s budget by $17.6 million.

Upon her arrival back in the United States, Sky News asked Bass whether she regrets cutting the fire department’s budget, and if she feels she owes citizens an apology for being absent as the city burned.

Bass ignored the questions, her eyes glued to the ground as she proceeded through the airport.

Days before Bass left for Ghana, the National Weather Service’s Los Angeles Bureau warned of “extreme fire weather conditions.”

The day before fires broke out, Bass shared a NWS warning, suggesting she may have been aware of the fire before her departure.

“There is an expected destructive and potentially life-threatening windstorm starting Tuesday morning through Wednesday afternoon,” said Bass. “Stay safe LA!”

LAKETRAN WILL BE REINSTITUTING THE 1/4% SALES TAX?

Friday, January 10, 2025

Mr. Capelle,

Attached is a public records request for Laketran.

Citizens are very concerned about the public statement made by your Board member, Donna McNamee at a recent Commissioner meeting. She indicated that Laketran will be reinstituting the 1/4% sales tax. We would like to confirm that statement.

We do not believe that this will sit well with residents of Lake County when they are being taxed out of their homes with the ever-increasing property taxes, and they cannot keep up with the escalating food and energy prices.

We congratulate you on the grand opening, but be advised the timing could not be worse. The Board members seem tone deaf to what is happening in Lake County. Property tax bills are going out this month, probably before your grand opening. Making a big splash now seems inappropriate and ill-advised to us.

As always, thank you for your transparency. If you ever want to do a podcast again to reach out to the citizens, we would be happy to do so.

Brian Massie
Lobbyists for Citizens

NATIONAL DEBT TO INCREASE $196 BILLION AFTER SOCIAL SECURITY FAIRNESS ACT SIGNED

Tuesday, January 7, 2025
Thérèse Boudreaux | The Center Square

President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan Social Security Fairness Act, which increases payouts to retired public sector workers and raises the national debt by at least $196 billion.

The act rescinds the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset, which adjusted the retirement benefits for public sector workers and their families, including police officers, firefighters, public health workers and public school teachers.

The WEP reduced Social Security benefits for people who worked in both government and private-sector jobs before retiring, thereafter receiving both a pension and partial Social Security benefits.

The GPO made similar adjustments for spouses and survivors who also worked in government jobs not subject to Social Security paycheck reductions.

"Americans who have worked hard all their life to make an honest living should be able to retire with economic security and dignity," Biden said during the signing ceremony Sunday. “I’m proud to have played a small part in this fight.”

Biden added that more than 2.8 million retirees who currently receive limited Social Security benefits will see an average increase of $360 on their monthly payments. More than 2.5 million of those recipients will also receive a lump sum payment of thousands of dollars to cover undistributed benefits from 2024.

While the Congressional Budget Office estimates the act will cost $196 billion, fiscal watchdogs say it will cost closer to $233 billion when debt interest is taken into account.

A report by the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, a fiscal advocacy organization, said the change will also speed up Social Security’s insolvency, which is projected to occur in 2035, by six months.

“The Social Security Fairness Act would impose a heavy burden on taxpayers by adding $233 billion to the national debt, hastening Social Security insolvency, and reducing scheduled benefits for individuals who have been paying into Social Security for their entire careers,” said NTUF Vice President of Research Demian Brady. “Rather than undermining the broader Social Security system, reforms should focus on addressing its long-term fiscal challenges.”

The national debt grew by $2.5 trillion in fiscal year 2024 alone, reaching $36.3 trillion, The Center Square reported.