Watchdog: US spending $772M on aircraft Afghans 'cannot operate or maintain'

The chief watchdog for Afghanistan reconstruction warned in a recent audit that the Pentagon is moving forward with a $772 million purchase of aircraft that the Afghan army "cannot operate or maintain." 

The latest quarterly report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction cited the aircraft purchases among its top concerns. The IG's office had earlier issued a report in June detailing how "the Afghans lack the capacity -- in both personnel numbers and expertise -- to operate and maintain" existing and planned fleets. 

The findings are likely to contribute to the budget debate on Capitol Hill over the funding. The bulk of the purchase is a $554 million contract for 30 Mi-17 helicopters from Russian firm Rosoboronexport. 

Senators already are trying to strip funding for those contracts, out of concern for the company's ties to the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Before Congress went on recess, a Senate budget panel signed off on a spending bill that guts funding for the Mi-17 choppers. 

Daily politics news delivered to your inbox: sign up for our newsletter 

The IG audit cited a different set of concerns -- that the Afghan unit responsible for the aircraft has just one quarter of the personnel it needs to be at "full strength," that recruiting and training challenges inhibit growth; that the Afghan Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Interior have no agreement on the "command and control" of the unit; and that few of the pilots in the unit are fully qualified to fly with night vision goggles. 

The report urged the U.S. military to suspend contracts until the Afghan ministries come to an agreement. It also called for a better plan to be developed for transferring the unit over to the Afghans.

Via: Fox News

Continue Reading.....

Caretaker Sentenced for Collecting Dead Man’s Social Security for 16 Years

(CNSNews.com) – An Oregon woman who ran an adult foster home will serve 57 months in prison for concealing the death of a man in her care so she could collect more than $200,000 of his Social Security benefits.

The woman is connected to three other deaths of elderly patients, and buried the body of one man to prevent welfare workers from finding out she was living in “squalid conditions” with a pet monkey.

Carel June Cody, 47, collected $203,528 in retirement payments from the man, John Arnold, in his mid-70s, who died sometime in 1996 under her care.  Cody was not charged with his death, though “authorities suspect he died of abuse or neglect.”

Three other men died under Cody’s care in a state-certified adult foster home, but charges were never filed.  Instead, Cody will serve nearly five years in prison for bank fraud, theft of government funds and aggravated identity theft.

Cody buried Arnold’s body in a hole and covered it with bags of lime.  His remains were never recovered.

“Cody told authorities that she had concealed Arnold’s death to prevent state welfare workers from discovering that she was living in squalid conditions with a pet monkey, according to court records,” the Social Security Administration said.

U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken said the case “defies explanation.

Via: CNS News

Continue Reading....

Whatever happened to all those promises Obama made during the State of the Union?

All that applause. All that adoration. The president's state of the union address was considered brilliant by much of the press.

So what happened to all the promises?

The president's laundry list of goals for his second term have either been defeated or not even brought out for a vote by either House. The sole exception is immigration reform and most of that "comprehensive" measure is going nowhere in the House.

The Hill:

The White House's problem is perhaps best epitomized by the battle over gun control. The crescendo of February's speech was the president's emotional call for a vote on new regulations, noting the presence of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) -- who was shot by a would-be assassin -- in the audience.

But the president's push for new gun controls flamed out in the Senate, where Democrats were unable to corral enough votes even for a background check expansion favored by two-thirds of all Americans.

A proposal to raise the minimum wage to $9 per hour hasn't earned a hearing in the House of Representatives yet, and Democratic plans are unlikely to progress to a vote. Earlier this week, fast food workers in seven cities nationwide went on strike to protest the $7.25 going rate.

The president also made an impassioned call to repeal the sequester -- $80 billion in across-the-board cuts to the federal budget. But with a fresh round of budget battles arriving this fall, Republicans insist they want to maintain the same level of austerity.

In one of the more poignant moments of his address, the president pointed to a 102-year-old woman in the audience who waited hours to vote in the 2012 election.

Although Obama has appointed a new commission to examine voter access and poll waiting times, there are few substantive steps the federal panel can take to force the state and local governments that facilitate voting to act. Meanwhile, a Supreme Court decision striking down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act will likely open the floodgates to stricter voter identification requirements in Southern states.

And on immigration, a rare legislative win in the Senate -- where a comprehensive reform package passed in a bipartisan 68-32 vote -- has been neutered by the insistence by House Republicans that they will address changes to immigration law in a piecemeal fashion. President Obama had hoped to sign a bill before the August recess, but the House has barely begun work on their reform efforts.

The effect of gridlock has begun to wear on the president's approval ratings. A Marist poll released last week showed just 41 percent of Americans approving of the job the president was doing, his lowest numbers since September, 2011.

It isn't just Republicans. Democrats in the senate also refuse to take up much of his agenda - largely because they couldn't pass.

Rich Baehr thinks that the public is finally starting to tune out Obama. I don't see how you can come to any other conclusion when you realize just how impotent Obama has become.

Via: The American Thinker

Continue Reading....

Taxpayers spent more than $4 million on Eric Holder’s travel costs

Taxpayers spent more than $4 million over the last four years on Attorney General Eric Holder’s travel costs, according to a new report.

Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, says it determined those figures detailing Holder’s travel costs from March of 2009 to August 2012 through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The group deemed $697,525.20 of those expenses as “taxpayer-funded personal travel expenses.”

Judicial Watch did not compare those figures to other attorneys general. But the president of the group blasted Holder, who uses government aircraft for security reasons.

“I hope these documents help Attorney General Holder understand the burden his unnecessary personal travel places on American taxpayers,” said Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton. ”The notion that federal officials such as Holder have access to a fleet of luxury jets for discounted personal travel for ‘security’ reasons should strike most Americans as a scam that needs to be reformed.”

The report details 213 trips outside Washington. The group classified 31 as personal trips, including “two trips to Martha’s Vineyard with a flight-only price tag of $95,184.50, as well as eight trips to Farmingdale, N.Y., at a flight cost of $118,553.71.”

Among trips listed by the group: Taxpayers spent $15,452.50 for Holder to give a speech at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network in New York City.

Via: The Daily Caller

Continue Reading...

Washington Post to be sold to Amazon's Jeff Bezos

The Washington Post Co. has agreed to sell its flagship newspaper to Amazon.com founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos, ending the Graham family’s stewardship of one of America’s leading news organizations after four generations.

Bezos, whose entrepreneurship has made him one of the world’s richest men, will pay $250 million in cash for The Post and affiliated publications to The Washington Post Co., which owns the newspaper and other businesses.

Seattle-based Amazon will have no role in the purchase; Bezos himself will buy the news organization and become its sole owner when the sale is completed, probably within 60 days. The Post Co. will change to a new, still-undecided name and continue as a publicly traded company without The Post thereafter.

The deal represents a sudden and stunning turn of events for The Post, Washington’s leading newspaper for decades and a powerful force in shaping the nation’s politics and policy. Few people were aware that a sale was in the works for the paper, whose reporters have broken such stories as the Watergate scandals and, in May, disclosures about the National Security Agency’s surveillance program.

For much of the past decade, however, the paper has been unable to escape the financial turmoil that has engulfed newspapers and other “legacy” media organizations. The rise of the Internet and the epochal change from print to digital technology have created a massive wave of competition for traditional news companies, scattering readers and advertisers across a radically altered news and information landscape and triggering mergers, bankruptcies and consolidation among the owners of print and broadcasting properties.

Via: Washington Post

Continue Reading.....