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Turkey ruling AKP 'loses majority'
Today's Headlines
Headline Comments [Views]
Page 6: Politix
4 17:12 Frank G [3] 
7 17:20 Besoeker [2] 
1 08:19 Procopius2k [5] 
1 10:33 JohnQC [1] 
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Page 4: Opinion
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-Lurid Crime Tales-
Top Weather Service official creates consulting job -- then takes it himself with $43,200 raise
[WASHINGTONPOST] A senior National Weather Service official helped write the job description and set the salary for his own post-retirement consulting post-- then came back to the office doing the same job with a $43,200 raise, the agency's watchdog found.

The deputy chief financial officer also demanded that he be paid a $50,000 housing allowance near Weather Service headquarters in downtown Silver Spring in violation of government rules for contractors, one of numerous improprieties in a revolving-door deal sealed with full knowledge of senior agency leaders, according to an investigation by the Commerce Department Inspector General's office.

With his consulting job and housing allowance in place, P. Donald Jiron retired from the Weather Service in early May 2010, then returned to work as a consultant the next day, while collecting his government pension, Sherlocks said. By the time he was fired 21 months later, the government had paid him another $471,875.34.

The investigation made public this week does not name Jiron, who worked as a GS-15 before his retirement and now lives in Williamsburg, Va. But government officials familiar with the case identified him. His lawyer, Matthew Kaiser, said in a statement, "Mr. Jiron has not done anything wrong" because he acted "at the direction of and with the approval of his supervisor at all times."
Posted by: Fred || 06/07/2015 00:00 || Comments || Link || [5 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Another reason for the Reynolds Revolving Government Employment Tax(c, Glenn Reynolds). Leave government and keep your fingers in the cookie jar, 50% of the new salary above the old, becomes pure tax revenue.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 06/07/2015 8:19 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Politix
New York Times editor calls Rubio driving story 'very standard scrubbing'

[WASHINGTONPOST] The striking aspect of the Rubio story was its bundling. Though the piece reported 17 combined citations by the couple, the candidate has racked up only four of them. So the weight of the Times's accountability journalism falls on Rubio's wife. "Regarding potential presidential spouses, they are not the main focus, but we write about them, as do other outlets," writes Ryan. "Columba Bush and Bill Clinton
...former Democratic president of the U.S. Bill was the second U.S. president to be impeached, the first to deny that oral sex was sex, the first to have difficulty with the definition of is...
have already attracted a fair amount of attention, obviously, and I am sure other spouses will draw more coverage going forward."

A great deal of that coverage will doubtless come from the New York Times
...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize...
, which has been hot on the trail of Democratic frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton
... sometimes described as For a good time at 3 a.m. call Hillary and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as Another John Quincy Adams ...
and others. The Rubio's-wife-can't-drive piece, after all, may force the paper to undertake an ungodly amount of candidate scrutiny: If news hounds are going to bust out one candidate for drawing traffic citations once every 54 months, then they'll have to hold other candidates to a comparable level of propriety. Hey, is Huckabee a leadfoot?
Posted by: Fred || 06/07/2015 00:00 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  When is the NYTs going to start coming forth with Hildabeest stories?
Posted by: JohnQC || 06/07/2015 10:33 Comments || Top||


Government
Blumenthal set to testify before Benghazi panel.
[Wash Times] Sidney Blumenthal, a former aide to President Bill Clinton and a key ally of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, will testify before the House select Committee on Benghazi on June 16, the panel announced Friday.

Mr. Blumenthal will answer questions about memos he drafted on Libya when Mrs. Clinton ran the State Department, Politico reported Friday.

"This appearance before the Select Committee on Benghazi involves a witness deposition, which is typically done in private," an advisory from the committee states, Politico reported.

The session will be closed to the media and the public.

Committee Chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, raised questions about Mr. Blumenthal's involvement in the State Department's response to the Benghazi attacks on Sept. 11, 2012. The Republican lawmaker did so after reviewing thousands of documents, which showed Mr. Blumenthal and the secretary traded frequent emails on the security and diplomatic climate in Libya before the attacks.

Mr. Blumenthal was not employed at the State Department when he drafted the memos but he was being paid by the Clinton Foundation at the time, Politico reported.
Posted by: Besoeker || 06/07/2015 13:01 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:

#1  I was hoping for truncheons, pliers and blowtorches
Posted by: Frank G || 06/07/2015 13:59 Comments || Top||

#2  Blumenthal set to testify lie before Benghazi panel.

FIFY
Posted by: Iblis || 06/07/2015 15:54 Comments || Top||

#3  I was hoping for truncheons, pliers and blowtorches
Don't forget the electric drills to the kneecaps.
Posted by: Glenmore || 06/07/2015 16:48 Comments || Top||

#4  good point. Auger bits
Posted by: Frank G || 06/07/2015 17:12 Comments || Top||


Social Security Disability - $17 billion incorrectly paid.
[The Hill] The Social Security Administration overpaid nearly half of the people receiving disability benefits over a 10-year period, according to a new report by the agency's inspector general.

Social Security overpaid beneficiaries by nearly $17 billion, the report estimated, between October 2003 and February 2014.

The agency was able to recover about $8.1 billion of it, the report said.

Many of the payments were delivered to people who either were no longer disabled or to earned too much money to qualify. Some payments went to people who were in prison or had died.

The inspector general followed a randomly selected sample of 1,532 over that 10-year period who either received disability benefits or supplemental security income for the poor.
Auditors found that 45 percent of the beneficiaries were overpaid at some point during the decade by $2.9 million. Based on that result, the inspector general estimated Social Security overpaid $16.8 million from 2003 to 2014.

The report comes just a year before the Social Security Disability Trust Fund is projected to be exhausted, and lawmakers on Capitol Hill are divided over how to handle the shortfall. If Congress fails to act, beneficiaries would receive a nearly 20 percent cut in benefits.

Republicans largely oppose keeping the disability fund afloat by reallocating revenue from the Social Security retirement fund to the disability fund. The GOP-led House in January approved a rule that would make a reallocation of the payroll tax more difficult.

Instead, GOP lawmakers have said they'd like to focus on program integrity initiatives to weed out fraud and abuse to find savings.
Anyone wonder why some unemployed people 'have stopped looking' for jobs ?
Posted by: Besoeker || 06/07/2015 07:49 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:

#1  I often wonder what the total cost to the taxpayer is for SS disability, welfare, crony capitalism, fraud, illegal immigration, aid to foreign countries that never gets where it is supposed --in other words, fraud of all kinds?
Posted by: JohnQC || 06/07/2015 10:11 Comments || Top||

#2  The CATO estimates fraud, abuse and corruption costs $100bil per year or more. I'd bet that is a very low estimate. What does $100bil buy you? What does a billion $ buy you? With a little multiplication, one can get $100bil.
Posted by: JohnQC || 06/07/2015 10:30 Comments || Top||

#3  The taxpayer only pays a small part of the cost. The government is going massively into debt to pay the rest, debt that will never be repaid. It's all good!
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 06/07/2015 12:09 Comments || Top||

#4  The problem is that if they started cracking down, somebody would find one person who was wrongfully denied benefits. This would be "proof" that Republicans are heartless bastards.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia || 06/07/2015 13:28 Comments || Top||

#5  Not to worry... There's literally trillions of IRAs and 401Ks out there the government can "manage" for the greater good of the looter class.
Posted by: CrazyFool || 06/07/2015 16:18 Comments || Top||

#6  they will also sieze all the pension funds, public and private.
Posted by: Shagum and Tenille6972 || 06/07/2015 17:14 Comments || Top||

#7  Quite a market for gun safes these days, even for non-gun owners. Can't imagine why ?
Posted by: Besoeker || 06/07/2015 17:20 Comments || Top||



Who's in the News
25[untagged]
7Islamic State
5Govt of Pakistan
4Govt of Iran
2Govt of Syria
2al-Nusra
2Taliban
1Antifa/BLM
1Govt of Saudi Arabia
1al-Qaeda in Pakistan
1Hizbul Mujaheddin
1Houthis
1al-Qaeda
1Muslim Brotherhood
1Narcos
1Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan
1TTP
1Baloch Liberation Army

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Two weeks of WOT
Sun 2015-06-07
  Turkey ruling AKP 'loses majority'
Sat 2015-06-06
  Pakistan refuses to share nukes with Saudi Arabia
Fri 2015-06-05
  Texas-born al Qaeda suspect pleads not guilty in New York
Thu 2015-06-04
  Boston TV: 2 Men In Boston Terror Probe Allegedly Planned To Kill "Boys In Blue"
Wed 2015-06-03
  ASWJ member shot dead
Tue 2015-06-02
  Indian Army Kills Three Militants near Kashmir Border
Mon 2015-06-01
  Suicide Bombing in Northeast Nigeria Mosque Kills at Least 9
Sun 2015-05-31
  Gunmen storm two coaches near Mastung, butcher 19 passengers
Sat 2015-05-30
  4 dead as Saudi Arabia 'foils' attack on mosque
Fri 2015-05-29
  Rebels seize Assad's last stronghold in Idlib
Thu 2015-05-28
  Airstrikes kill at least 80 in deadliest bombings of Yemen war
Wed 2015-05-27
  Shiite militia claims ISIS leader killed near Fallujah
Tue 2015-05-26
  Suicide bomber blows himself up during Rangers operation in Karachi
Mon 2015-05-25
  Syria: IS executes hundreds in Palmyra
Sun 2015-05-24
  Prayer leader explodes in mosque


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