Unemployed gangs

$30,000 in unemployment benefits were provided to local gangs in Los Angeles on behalf of Anthony "can't find work in jail" Garcia.

Garcia wasn't the sharpest pencil in the box, having been arrested for a murder after having some of the evidence of the murder scene tattooed on his chest.

But he still proved to be too spry of a crook for the unemployment office to catch on to his scam that had family members collecting $1,600 per month from October 2008 to March of 2010.

Checks, balances, aww, forget it...

THIS is whyipaytaxes.
read more: Father & Girlfriends of Inmate Arrested for $30,000 Unemployment Fraud(ktla)

Coffee, enemas and long distance prayer

Repost to share about the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a mostly unheard of branch of the National Institutes of Health:

Coffee Enemas, Aromatherapy, and Intercessory Prayer: Your Tax Dollars At Work

Their source:Federal center pays good money for suspect medicine(CT)

I don't know about you, but I think it is terrific that we've spent taxpayer dollars ($660,000(!)) on investigating whether or not long distance prayer can heal AIDS abroad. Its not like we're supposed to avoid using state money to further the cause of religions or anything crazy like that...

I do suppose the coffee enemas are understandable when you consider just how full of shit this particular branch of the government is...

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

Morbid Security

You'll remember my post (yeah, right) about a trend in Japan of folks keeping the corpses of their parents around so they can forge and cash their social security checks. At the bottom of my post I mentioned that it won't be too long before this becomes a trend in the U.S. Well... The trend is certainly moving westward.

Hazel 'Don't forget the Glade' Maddock and her daughter Jasmine 'Just put a blanket over her' Maddock lived with Jasmine's grandmother Olive. When Olive passed away, they simply locked the bedroom door and Hazel told Jasmine that "the death should not be reported until the pension was secured."

After 6 months of not seeing a favorite neighbor, a local resident reported that something fishy was going on at the Maddock's. When an officer first gained entry to the home he immediately smelled a rancid odor and noticed that the house was infested with mice and swarms of flies. After using a crowbar on Olive's bedroom door, it was discovered that the body had already decomposed to a skeleton while lying on the bed.

Upon arrest, Hazel's response was "I'm no expert I didn't know if she was dead."

Pretty sure it doesn't take a doctor to realize that if you haven't seen a person come out of her room for 6 months and your house is filled with swarms of flies and the smell of decomposing flesh that maybe you ought to knock on the door and ask if everything is alright.

I guess I'm no expert either...

THIS is whyBRITSpaytaxes.
read more:Grandmother corpse: Benefit fraud daughter jailed(bbc)

Toll dodging

In an impressive feat, a man in China was able to evade $560,000 in toll charges over a 9 month period by affixing military plates to his vehicle. Then they fined him another $300,000 and sentenced him to life in prison.

Of interest:
That one could run up over a half a million dollars in tolls over a 9 month period makes me wonder if he did a lot of driving, or if there are simply too many toll booths in China. (I'd say both. He was running overweight loads which incurred larger than normal toll charges.)

That one could obtain military plates to put on his vehicle to evade tolls makes me wonder about their military quartermasters.

That one could be expected to repay $800,000 while spending life in prison... Well, I suspect he'll be costing more than what he already owes.

In the end:
In a relatively un-China-like move, they have decided to re-try the poor guy because of a bit of a people's revolt on the Internet. Hopefully the cost of this re-trial and the amount they save by not imprisoning him for the rest of his life are a wash.

THIS is whyCHINESEpaytaxes.

read more: Outcry prompts retrial for Chinese toll dodger(bbc)

Commonwealth corruption

A few weeks ago, I published a post about the Commonwealth Games in India. The focus of my post on the hiring of large langur monkeys to control the crowds of smaller monkeys that are pretty much a menace throughout Delhi. After all, the only thing we love more than stories about monkeys are the dang little monkeys themselves... Adorable!

At the introduction of that post, I linked to a slide show of horrors showing the athlete's quarters at the Commonwealth games. Overall, I was trying to make the point that India had not prepared for the games at all, in spite of the tax money that had gone into it.

Well... They found some of the money and arrests are being made. No big surprise, the money was being siphoned by corrupt officials who were handing contracts to friends, not construction companies...

THIS is whyindianspaytaxes.

read more: Two Delhi Commonwealth Games officials arrested(bbc)

And you thought WE knew a thing or 2 about Medicare fraud

In a case of finding cures for diseases that don't exist that would make Big Pharma envious, 83 unnecessary operations were carried out in a private clinic in Milan, Italy. And I'm not talking a nip here, a tuck there... Oh no.

I'm talking unnecessary mastectomy on an 18 year old girl, 3 lung surgeries on an 88 year old woman when one would have done the trick, at least one unnecessary lung removal, and so many surgeries that 5 elderly patients died.

In the end, about $3.4 MILLION was charged to the Italian version of Medicare for surgeries that had no medical purpose.

In all, 14 people were arrested. The apparent ringleader, Brega 'Chop Shop' Massone said of his 15.5 year sentence: Its unfair, I was the scapegoat!
Imagine. 15.5 years in exchange for playing a part in forever scarring a young woman, scamming the citizens of Italy for millions of dollars, and killing off several elderly patients. And he thinks the sentence is unfair.

THIS is whyITALIANSpaytaxes.

read more: Italy doctors jailed for 'clinic of horrors' operations(bbc)

Prostitutes for research

No... Its not the porn industry hiring whores for research. Nope. Its the U.S. Government!

Back in the late 40s, the U.S. government, with approval from the Guatemalan government, hired a bunch of whores with syphilis and brought them into the Guatemalan prison system to infect criminally insane people with syphilis. The test subjects had absolutely no idea they were test subjects.

Fun!

Ostensibly, they wanted to see what could be done to prevent syphilis from spreading. Then, when that didn't work, they wanted to see what could be done to better treat syphilis.

In the end, syphilis wins!

THIS is whyipaytaxes.
read more: US sorry over deliberate sex infections in Guatemala(bbc)

Thats funny, it didn't taste like syphilis...

I miss mom... But I don't miss her social security!

This has been going on for awhile, and I'm sure its far from over....

Japan has over 40,000 folks that are over 100 years old. Or so their social security rolls would have you believe.

As it turns out, moving back in with your dead parents can turn into a healthy living in Japan.

The first story I saw was when some city council members thought they'd cash in on a local photo op by congratulating Sogen 'I'm Not Dead Yet' Kato for turning 111. But the family resisted saying that the old fellow had locked himself into a room to be a living Buddha. The councilmen were having none of this and had the police force their way in where they found the mummified remains of Sogen, who had been dead for many years.
The family had collected over $109,000 off of Sogen's pension.

Then there were a few more stories. Like the one about the woman who is still collecting her payments at an address that was turned to a park in 1981.

Now they busted a dude that has been carrying around his mom's remains in a backpack. Because he couldn't afford her funeral, he thought he'd keep her around and collect her checks. He describes how he washed the body for awhile then eventually broke her into pieces and loaded her into the backpack.

In all, there are more than 200 folks over the age of 100 that are collecting checks but otherwise cannot be found.

THIS is whyjapanesepaytaxes.

PS - You know we're gonna have a bunch of this ourselves now that the boomers are aging and the kids are moving back home...

read more:
Almost 200 centenarians 'missing' in Japan(bbc)
Tokyo's 'oldest woman' is missing(bbc)
Tokyo's 'oldest man' was a corpse(bbc)

Can't golf today, gotta pick up my welfare check!

Phillip 'Tiger' Bond decided he had had enough of the rat race we call life and found himself a way out: Collecting disability from the government.

Of course, just because he was *ahem* unable to work for a living doesn't mean he had to stop golfing several times a week. After all, what is the point in not being able to work if you can't enjoy it?

He went so far as to compete in several golf tournaments.

He got £36,000 before investigators were able to film him on the links.

Not only did the British government give him £36k, but they also had to investigate, prosecute, and now house Mr. Bond for the next 7 months... (Which is all cheaper than continuing to pay him disability)

THIS is whyBRITSpaytaxes.

Read more:Disability benefit fraudster filmed playing golf jailed(bbc)

Peeling back the Band Aid

Get ready to have your stomach turned. But at least yours is full...

You all (30s and older) will remember the 1985 Band Aid and other relief efforts pursued by governments and other organizations around the globe to help alleviate the 1984-85 droughts in Ethiopia that left most Ethiopians malnourished if they weren't one of the 1 MILLION who starved to death. A host of jokes about sandwiches and Ethiopians followed, but many Ethiopians were saved by these individual and government donations.

What you won't remember:
At the direction of the CIA (they deny it, of course) hundreds of MILLIONS of dollars from these efforts were siphoned off into rebel groups who bought weapons to fight the Russian backed Ethiopian government of the time.

Here's some key information that will set your stomach to turning:

In one instance, a member of Christian Aid bought sacks of grain inside of Ethiopia worth $500 MILLION. Underneath the handful of grain sacks that Christian Aid inspected were many more sacks of fine Ethiopian sand. Yum!

The man who swindled Christian Aid into spending all this money on sand, Meles Zenawi, went on to become Ethiopia's prime minister in 1991.

He remains the PM to this very day in spite of having used money intended to help his fellow citizens to kill them with guns instead.

The deputy head of the CIA at the time sought to "impose ever stiffer costs on the Soviet Union for its Third World adventurism." What better way to do this than sell bags of sand to aid groups in order to use the money to buy guns? (I'll bet many of those guns were bought from the U.S.)

The deputy head of the CIA at the time was none other than our very own Secratary of Defense, Robert Gates. He's no Prime Minister of a third world country, but he has certainly been well rewarded for his career choices.

I can't even sum this one up in a quick snide sentence. As an American citizen, I apologize to the world...

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

read more: Ethiopia famine aid 'spent on weapons'(bbc)

Stealing from our citizens

Why do we pay taxes?

To defend our Air Force Reserves recruitment efforts when they steal songs from the American music industry to play during their Super Bowl ads.

Though, I'm not sure what will cost more:
The legal defense and resulting fines for using a White Stripes song without authorization (which will cost more than licensing it the proper way)
-OR-
Running Super Bowl ads.

Seriously. How is it OK that government agencies are vying for the multi-MILLION dollar ad spots during the Super Bowl? I know they have a working budget for recruiting, but this doesn't seem like the best way to spend it to me...

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

read more: White Stripes battle US Air Force over Super Bowl ad(bbc)

Interest swaps

Its a damn fine thing that we were able to bail out the banks long enough to for them to come calling on the bogus investments they sold to us as interest swaps and whatnot.

Follow the money:
Banks sell interest swaps to government agencies, pensions, school districts, and others that use taxpayer money to pay their bills. The idea is that they'll magically get lower interest rates on money borrowed because this banker in a really nice suit told them it would.
taxpayers 0 Banks 1

Suddenly, that very same banker almost goes out of business. A true travesty of justice as we picture him trading in that really nice suit to feed his family. Instead of letting them realize the consequences of their failures, our government uses taxpayer money to pay their bills for them.
taxpayers 0 Banks 2

Now that everything is running smooth, it comes time to think about how big of a bonus the banker in a really nice suit will get. Wait a minute, I know. He can tell all his interest swap customers that not only did they not get the lower interest rates, but things are so tough out there that they suddenly owe the banks MILLIONs of dollars.
taxpayers 0 Banks 3

Thats right. A fabricated product did not perform as promised. Though rather than losing your investment in the product outright, you actually owe more now!

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

read more: Auditor general looks to ban swaps(marketplace)

My cash, for your clunker

The Senate has approved another $2 BILLION for the CARS program. (read more)

Much like all the other schemes giving away the tax money we all pay to only a select few who qualify, this is getting ridiculous. Lucky are the douchebags who both purchased a shitty gas guzzling vehicle more than a year ago AND can afford to buy a new car now...
I, for one, could afford a new car now, especially with $4,500 of your money, but the piece of junk sable in my driveway, a true clunker, is rated at 19 miles per gallon, so I don't qualify.

For those of you who think we're saving the environment:
1.) In certain circumstances, businesses are getting the credit with as little as a 1 mile per gallon improvement in fuel economy over the traded in vehicle. (read more)
2.) I for one can't wait to find out that the entrepreneurial spirit amongst the car dealerships and scrap yards is alive and well in the U.S. as it is in Germany. They've been running their own Cash for Clunkers program for most of this year. This week, their law enforcement shut down their program after finding containers of 'clunkers' ready to ship to Africa to be re-sold. Rather than getting these clunkers off the road, we're simply putting them on other roads, and allowing the dealerships and scrap yards to double dip the profits. (read more)

For those of you who think we're saving our economy:
1.) Now that dealerships are moving their old inventory under this program, the price of vehicles is going up again, making it harder for most folks that can buy a car to get a great deal.
2.) I don't have facts and figures, but I heard a story on NPR that in Germany, Toyota has outsold all other vehicles in their cash for clunkers program. The statistics in the U.S. aren't yet available, but I'm sure its not all American made cars being sold.

Taking from many, giving to few...

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

Fine

Bank of America gets $25 BILLION from taxpayers to facilitate the purchase of Merrill Lynch.

In spite of promising its shareholder it wouldn't, BOA summarily gave $3.6 BILLION of it to the management team at Merrill, apparently for the real bang up job they did driving it out of business.

Now, rather than letting the investigation of this douchebaggery unfold, BOA is settling with the government for $33 MILLION.

Not bad. $33 MILLION to cover up a $3.6 BILLION dollar scam. Not bad at all.

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

read more: Bonus fine for Bank of America(bbc)

Library: Bad. Hockey: Good!

I'm on a roll today, thought I'd keep going for one more...

As I mentioned below in the fireworks rant, Rockford, IL is in the top 10 cities in the U.S. with its ultra high unemployment rates. Needless to say, the city itself is desperately slashing budgets and services to its citizens. Among these are homeless shelters, clinics, the public library, and much more.

NOT among the budget cuts is an ADDITIONAL $1 MILLION likely to be given to the local concert hall, the Metro Center. To be clear, it is more than $1 MILLION EACH YEAR for the next 3 YEARS. Meanwhile, the library's budget cuts will be permanent.
I might add, that a very small percentage of the city uses the Metro Center on a regular basis and many of us have never been there at all. Last year they had a 80's Hair Band concert that didn't even fill the stadium halfway. They also host the local minor league hockey team that NEVER fills the stadium even halfway.

Cutting services, adding corruption.

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

(I have no sources to quote. This is just what I understand of the politics in my town.)

Psycho

That title is a reference to the movie. And, of course, this post...

When Mr[s]. Thomas Prusin-Parkin's (First flag: Dude with a hyphenated last name) mother died in 2003, he just couldn't bear to let her [identity] go. So, he provided the funeral director with a fake ss# and assumed her identity. Ever since her death, [s]he would put on a wig and some makeup, grab her walking stick and collect social security checks and rent subsidies, visit banks, appear in court[!], file for bankruptcy[!!], and renew her driver's liscense[!!!]. (He even got a friend to pose as a nephew while getting her liscense...)

The late Mrs. Prusik still gettin' her shit done.

In the end, Tom 'Mom' Prusin-Parkin collected over $115,000 directly from the government. No totals were given on the material gains on the bankruptcy...

At least no one got stabbed while taking a shower!

THIS is whyipaytaxes...

read more: US man 'posed as his dead mother' (bbc)

Prosecutorial Incompetence

All charges against Alaska's favorite Senator, Ted "Why don't you ask my wife about that" Stevens have been dropped. Turns out, the team on the job from Bush's DOJ dropped the ball, time and again, blatantly. Almost seems as though they tried it. (technically, they didn't try it, but...)

Stevens roams free after decades of trading government contracts for personal favors and now we're paying for a big ol' investigation into the DOJ's incompetence...

This is whyipaytaxes.

On a side note, I sat with a friend this evening who is experiencing the frustration of a prosecutor unable to do his job. I won't go into the whole story and obviously leave out some key details, but...
Basically, this guy got busted on his third DUI 2 years ago. He demanded a jury trial, as is his right, and court date after court date has gone by. Today was to be the Big One, the jury was called and all. But the trial got delayed yet again because the prosecution was unprepared. They still had a few affairs to get in order.
1.) Had HE been the one unprepared, they would have thrown him in jail.
2.) While awaiting trial, he is being forced to submit to regular urine tests, twice weekly. This will not credit him as any sort of probation served.
3.) They called out the jury for that? Man, those must've been some pissed off jury members...

Imagine living your life knowing that on a special date in three months you might go straight to jail. On that special date, they say, well, maybe on this new special date, in three months.

Can't believe I forgot...

So, a handful of weeks ago when the nation collectively got their panties in a bunch over a couple hundred MILLION dollars in bonuses to AIG execs, I totally forgot to point out the $4 BILLION Merrill Lynch gave in bonuses a month early (12/08) to avoid losing those bonuses as they went out of business.

tsk tsk tsk... We're such sheep! They got away with a whole bunch more money without much of a bitchin' at all. But when it became popular to bitch about things like this you suddenly have Barney "Don't like 'em? Tax 'em!" Frank demanding their heads...

Whatever. I guess that one was a freebie. Your welcome.

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

Found it!

They found the mysterious hole that our tax money has been disappearing into. Turns out, its Countrywide! Yay!

Former Countrywide Execs Making Bank From Crisis(slate)

If this one doesn't piss you off, you must be dead inside.

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

$77M TARP

What they should have done was just take over the banks and send the former employees regular ol' tarps [to live under].

In 2008 banks spent $77 MILLION on lobbying and campaign contributions. In exchange they got a giant TARP worth $700 BILLION in cash. Not a bad return on investment. Open Secrets did the math: 258,449% ROI.

Not too shabby at all...

List of banks that received TARP funds.(br)

Providing humanitarian aid in time of disaster...

THIS is whyipaytaxes.