Congratulations
– Again!
To the Journal Inquirer for its excellent
reporting on….!!
State employee welfare fraud cases detailed in court
By Ed Jacovino Journal Inquirer
September 21, 2013
http://www.journalinquirer.com/page_one/state-employee-welfare-fraud-cases-detailed-in-court/article_4150c9e6-2257-11e3-b950-0019bb2963f4.html
September 23, 2013
From: The Federation of Connecticut
Taxpayer Organizations
Contact: Susan Kniep, President
Website: http://ctact.org/
Email: fctopresident@aol.com
Telephone: 860-841-8032
The Long, Sorry Tale of
Pension Promises: How Did States and Cities Get Into This Mess? (Roger
Lowenstein / Wall Street Journal)
Also
check out below: State Hires a Convicted Prostitute Who Steals $44,000 and
Receives No Jail Time; Obama
Administration Helped Kill Transparency Push on Military Aid; CT House Speaker
Brendan Sharkey wants to eliminate car taxes which the Federation suggests
will increase property taxes on homeowners and businesses; Democratic Activist
Wins Pension, East Haven GOP Mayor Still Denied; House Republicans Vote to Cut
$39 Billion from Food Stamps; Ex-San Mateo Country official Convicted of Child
Porn May Get to Keep $127,000 Annual Pension;No Joke
- Economists Suggest the State Borrow More;
Justice Dept Watchdog Never Probed Judges’ NSA Concerns; House votes to
fund government, defund ObamaCare.
Stock market's anxieties turn
to debt-ceiling battle
By Wallace
Witkowski, MarketWatch Sept.
22, 2013, 8:02 a.m.
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — How Congress and President Barack Obama deal with the debt ceiling is likely to
determine market volatility for the rest of the year.
Now that the expected tapering of $85 billion
a month in asset purchases fizzled out at the Federal
Reserve’s September policy meeting, investor attention has shifted to the
brewing showdown over the budget and the debt ceiling.
Already the House has thrown down a gauntlet to the Obama
Administration, passing a budget bill that keeps the government running through
mid-December but guts funding for Obama’s health-care law. Without a budget by
Oct. 1, when the government’s fiscal year 2014 begins, a shutdown becomes a
real possibility.
Adding to pressure is a Congressional Budget Office report in the past week
showing that national debt is now 73% of GDP and that the federal budget
“cannot be sustained indefinitely.” Continue reading at …. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/stock-market-anxieties-turn-to-debt-ceiling-2013-09-22
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Slip-Up or Cover-up?
Christopher Keating of The Hartford Courant reports…..
State Hires Convicted
Prostitute, Who Steals $44000
To summarize the Hartford Courant article, the cases involving
3 women dates back to 2010 for a total loss of public welfare funds of
$53,000. Apparently the Rell administration failed in pursuing background checks as
we have learned one was
“a convicted prostitute with criminal convictions for drug possession and
larceny, according to public records”. Contrary to state law state
auditors were never notified but discovered the matter on their own during a
recent audit. Two had been charged with
a “felony count of first-degree larceny by defrauding a public community”, they
both pleaded guilty, and, hard to believe but true, the women “received suspended sentences and did not serve
time in prison. “A third worker was fired in
August 2012 after allegations of fraud”.
House Republican Leader Cafero stated the
obvious… "Are you kidding me? You hired a convicted prostitute and thief
to handle state money? Hello!'' The
outstanding question now is - Was this a slip up or a cover up! Read the story in its entirety at http://articles.courant.com/2013-09-15/news/hc-employee-arrests-20130909_1_auditors-state-department-state-money
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Ex-San Mateo County Official
Convicted of Child Porn May Get to Keep $127,000 Annual Pension (Joshua Melvin
/ San Mateo Times)
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From the Federation: Connecticut House Speaker Brendan
Sharkey wants to eliminate car taxes as he stresses “increasing local
government efficiency to make up for the lost revenue”. In essence his proposal translates to higher
property taxes for home owners and businesses.
Mr. Sharkey should understand municipalities could manage their budgets
and control property taxes if the State were to eliminate or dramatically
reform its most impacting mandates: Collective Bargaining and Binding
Arbitration Laws which have been the cost drivers of union wages, healthcare
benefits and pensions, as approximately 85% of local property taxes throughout
the 169 Connecticut towns pay for personnel related expenses.
Read the following as offered by
CT Policy Institute Weekly Government
Rundown
House Speaker
To Revive Debate on Car Tax, Municipal Tax Reform
September 16,
2013
Connecticut House Speaker Brendan Sharkey announced Thursday that the upcoming
2014 legislative session will once again address municipal property tax
reform. Last session, municipal leaders shot down Sharkey’s
proposal to standardize and phase out local property taxes on cars, arguing
municipalities need the tax revenue. Municipal leaders have indicated
they may once again object to a phase-out of the tax. Sharkey stressed the importance of increasing local
government efficiency to make up for the lost revenue, and plans to re-launch the legislature’s
Municipal Opportunities and Regional Efficiencies (MORE) Commission to identify
savings opportunities. The Connecticut Council of Municipalities has
noted that one driver of Connecticut’s high local property taxes, on cars in
otherwise, is the large number of unfunded municipal mandates – i.e. costly
things that the state government requires localities to do, without providing
them the resources do them.
What it means for you: Connecticut is one of
two states in the nation to have a car tax, and the only one to have the
magnitude of the tax vary by locality. Is this a good way for Connecticut to stand out? Tax specialists say no. But it
does seem odd for state government to denounce high local taxes while
simultaneously mandating local government spending.
Audit of Connecticut’s Community Colleges Finds Deficiencies
An auditor’s report
for the Connecticut Community colleges released on Wednesday found “significant deficiencies” in the
oversight of finances at the colleges. Issues the report cited included
improper controls over school inventory, failing to follow proper notice and
bidding procedures for large purchases and contracts, and paying part-time
instructors for classes that were cancelled. The report’s author characterized the missteps as “small on
their face, but we're looking at protecting controls that may lead to bigger
losses of … resources." The audit looked at Fiscal Years 2010-2011,
when the community college system had its own board of trustees. That
board has since been merged with the board for the state’s regional
colleges. You can read the full audit report here.
What it means for you: The
dollar amounts at issue in the identified missteps represent a small portion of
the colleges’ budgets, but any time taxpayer money is not properly managed it
should be a matter of public concern.
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Democratic Activist Wins
Pension, East Haven GOP Mayor Still Denied
Jon Lender , Government Watch September 21,
2013 The twists and turns involved with some public employees' pensions are
seldom illustrated better than by the case of Marilyn Cruz-Aponte — a longtime
Democratic activist in New Britain who retired years ago from that city's work
force and now serves as Hartford's $101,833 assistant to the director of public
works. Aponte's effort to collect a $40,000-a-year pension from New Britain
now, while she's still working for the city of Hartford, was frustrated in June
after it got intertwined with the controversial pension case of Joseph Maturo Jr., the East Haven mayor who made national news in
2012 by saying he might have some tacos on the day four of his town's policemen
were charged with terrorizing local Latinos.
Continue reading at ….. http://articles.courant.com/2013-09-21/news/hc-lender-column-pension-veto-0922-20130921_1_disability-pension-act-concerning-reemployment-joseph-maturo-jr
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Obama Administration Helped
Kill Transparency Push on Military Aid
by Cora Currier ProPublica, Sep.
17, 2013, 2:22 p.m.
The U.S. spent roughly $25 billion last year on
what’s loosely known as security assistance—a term that can cover everything
from training Afghan security forces to sending Egypt F-16 fighter jets to equipping Mexican port police with radiation scanners.
The spending, which has soared in the past
decade, can be hard to trace, funneled through dozens of sometimes overlapping programs across
multiple agencies. There’s also evidence it’s not always wisely spent. In Afghanistan,
for instance, the military bought $771 million worth of aircraft this year for
Afghan pilots, most of whom still don’t know how to fly them.
Last year, legislators in the House drafted a
bill that would require more transparency and evaluation of security and all
foreign aid programs. The bill was championed by an unlikely coalition of Tea
Party budget hawks and giant aid groups such as Oxfam America.
But the Obama administration successfully pushed
to have security assistance exempted from the bill’s requirements, according to
a letter obtained by ProPublica and interviews with
Congressional staffers. Continue reading
at ….. http://www.propublica.org/article/obama-administration-pushed-to-keep-military-aid-out-of-transparency-effort
*************************
The Atlantic Wire Reports
House Republicans Vote to Cut
$39 Billion From Food Stamps
The House passed a bill on Thursday that would
cut as
many as 3.8 million Americans from food stamps, according to the Congressional
Budget Office. The cuts would come from a combination of ending state waivers
for able-bodied, unemployed adults, and from tightened eligibility
requirements. Currently, experts estimate that 48 million Americans will
participate in the program in 2014. The vote was close, at 217-210,
with 15 Republicans siding with every Democrat in the House against the
bill. Using 2012 data from the U.S. Census Bureau, we calculated
how many households in each member's district received food stamp assistance
last year comparing that to how they voted. Here's what we found. Households
that received food stamps, by party and vote ….. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/09/house-republicans-vote-cut-39-billion-food-stamps/69644/
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This is no Joke!
Economists Conclude that More
Borrowing Will Improve Economy, Create Jobs
According to CTNewsJunkie.com: Researchers at the Connecticut Center for
Economic Analysis found that if the state released half of its $6 billion in
unissued bonds, its economy — the only one in the country to shrink in 2012 —
would improve. In a report researchers found that if the state Bond Commission
approved $3.1 billion in borrowing, then it would bring state employment back
to its 2010 levels. The numbers would be even higher if some of the borrowing
was able to generate federal matching funds for various construction projects
and other strategic investments.
The Federation suggests: The exodus from Connecticut of
homeowners and businesses is due to the insatiable appetite of our state
elected officials to spend beyond the taxpayers’ ability to pay. As the Forbes
August, 2013 article notes How Did Rich Connecticut Morph Into One Of
America's Worst - Performing Economies? “during the past two decades some
300,000 more Connecticut
residents have moved out of the state than have moved in. “This compares
with the current population of about 3.5 million.”
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The Hill Reports
House votes to fund
government, defund ObamaCare (video)
The House on Friday passed legislation that
defunds ObamaCare but would keep the government
running through mid-December. The legislation was approved on a party line 230-189
vote, with only 1 Republican voting against it and 2 Democrats supporting it.
Passage of the bill sets up a showdown with the Senate, and moves the two sides
closer to a possible government shutdown on Oct. 1.
**************
Bloomberg Reports:
McCain Tells Pravda Corrupt Putin Regime Coddles Tyrants
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USA
Today Reports:
Justice
Dept. Watchdog Never Probed Judges' NSA Concerns
In
response to a FOIA request from USA
TODAY, the Justice Department said its ethics office never looked into
complaints from two federal judges that they had been misled about NSA
surveillance.
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