Report: IRS Hands Out $14 Billion For Green Energy, Doesn’t Keep Track Of It

A new government watchdog report found that the Internal Revenue service has handed out billions of dollars to support green energy projects, and then failed to mention how the money was spent on building new power generation.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports that IRS tax subsidies to green energy operators “accounted for an estimated $13.7 billion in forgone revenue to the federal government for renewable projects and $1.4 billion for traditional projects” between 2004 and 2013.

That’s a lot of money, but the IRS can’t (or won’t) tell government auditors how much green energy generating capacity their tax subsidies are supporting. The GAO says the IRS “is not required to collect project level data from all taxpayers” who claim an Investment Tax Credit (ITC) or Production Tax Credit (PTC).

“IRS officials stated that IRS is unlikely to collect additional data on these tax credits unless it is directed to do so,” the GAO reported. “Since 1994, GAO has encouraged greater scrutiny of tax expenditures, including data collection. Without project-level data on the ITC and PTC, Congress cannot evaluate their effectiveness as it considers whether to reauthorize or extend them.”

Via: Daily Caller

Continue Reading.....

If Hillary becomes president, who will make her obey the law?

A President Hillary Clinton would have far more power to set up a secretive system of communications than a Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Who could tell her no? (AP Photo)

Last year, before Hillary Clinton's secret email system became publicly known, Congress passed a law to keep presidents from trying the same trick. If Clinton wins the White House, the law could well be put to the test.

The statute is the Presidential and Federal Records Act Amendments of 2014. It recognizes that government officials sometimes (or in Clinton's case, all the time) want to use private email accounts — in the words of the law, "non-official electronic messaging accounts" — to conduct government business. Such communications are still federal records, Congress declared, and must be preserved in accordance with existing laws requiring not just the president but all federal officials to preserve their documents.

This is what the new law says about emails:

The President, the Vice President, or a covered employee may not create or send a Presidential or Vice Presidential record using a non-official electronic message account unless the President, Vice President, or covered employee (1) copies an official electronic messaging account of the President, Vice President, or covered employee in the original creation or transmission of the Presidential record or Vice Presidential record; or (2) forwards a complete copy of the Presidential or Vice Presidential record to an official electronic messaging account of the President, Vice President, or covered employee not later than 20 days after the original creation or transmission of the Presidential or Vice Presidential record.

That's pretty clear. All presidential communications must be preserved in a timely fashion.

The next paragraph of the law stipulates that federal employees who intentionally violate the Presidential Records Act are subject to "disciplinary action" as determined by the "appropriate supervisor." Such punishments can include suspensions and cuts in pay and rank.

None of that, of course, applies to the president of the United States. As far as the chief executive is concerned, there's no enforcement mechanism in the law.

"The Presidential Records Act is set up on the notion — like all of our laws — that people are going to comply," notes a lawyer who follows these issues after service in the Justice Department in both the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. "There isn't really a clear legal way to hold the president accountable for this stuff." 

Via: Washington Examiner

Continue Reading....

MICHELLE O TO GO: Food trucks deliver school lunches to students during summer break

PAUL, Minn. – Government-sponsored food trucks will be stalking students this summer with the goal of giving out thousands of “healthy” free lunches officials don’t trust parents to provide.

Officials at St. Paul public schools recently announced they’re working with the local food bank Second Harvest to dispatch a mobile food truck to expand locations offering students free lunches during the summer. Last year the district supplied 71 locations, and the truck will help to add another 10 to 15 in 2015, KSTP reports.

The district’s director of nutrition services, Stacy Koppen, said the truck will drive around to different locations between 10:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. to help feed the city’s needy youngsters. The truck will track down students at “spots like suggested basketball courts or fields where kids like to play,” according to the news site.

The very expensive-looking specially rigged step van features a billboard with grinning teens alongside the message “Kids and teens: Get your free meals here.” The district apparently didn’t offer the details on how the new program is financed, or how much the truck cost, and the news station didn’t bother to ask. School officials said the truck will be manned by volunteers.

Koppen said the district serves 29,000 lunches a day during the school year, but only 6,000 a day during the summer, so officials reasoned a truck is necessary to make sure students aren’t starving.

“Time and again, we such a steep decline that we wonder, ‘Where are these children going? Are they getting the healthy, nutritious food they need for their health and academic success?’” Koppen told KTSP.

“We want to make sure that when children return to school for the next school year, that they are at the optimal health status and that they are ready to learn,” she said, adding that the free food is available to all, not just low income kids.

Via: EAG

Continue Reading....

NY-bound passenger jet reports near-miss with drone

A commercial airliner narrowly missed colliding midair with a drone at 2,700 feet as it neared New York's LaGuardia Airport Friday morning, just hours after a string of incidents involving lasers pointed at planes, according to federal officials.

The pilot reportedly had to swerve upward over Brooklyn's Prospect Park in order to avoid the drone as the plane neared the airport. The incident followed several earlier instances of pilots reporting they had lasers pointed at them near New York airports.

"The crew ... reported that the unmanned aircraft was operating in the vicinity of Prospect Park in Brooklyn at an altitude of about 2,700 feet."

- FAA

"The flight crew of Shuttle America Flight 2708 reported climbing 200 feet to avoid an unmanned aircraft while on final approach to LaGuardia Airport at about 11 a.m. today," the Federal Aviation Administration said. "The crew ... reported that the unmanned aircraft was operating in the vicinity of Prospect Park in Brooklyn at an altitude of about 2,700 feet."

Via: Fox News

Continue Reading....

FIVE SCANDALS FOR HILLARY CLINTON AND BERNIE SANDERS THAT WOULD SINK ANY REPUBLICAN

On Thursday, Dan Joseph of Media Research Center uncovered an old column written by 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VA). In that column, Sanders bestowed upon the world his wisdom with regard to men and women:

A man goes home and masturbates his typical fantasy. A woman on her knees, a woman tied up, a woman abused. A woman enjoys intercourse with her man – as she fantasizes being raped by 3 men simultaneously.

The date: February 1972. The place: the Vermont Freeman. Mother Jones called this charming description of male-female sexual differences “a stream-of-consciousness essay on the nature of male-female sexual dynamics.” Thus far, Sanders’ abuse fantasies and his own fantasy that women dream of rape by multiple men have been covered by precisely zero mainstream news outlets. Mother Jones didn’t even bother quoting the essay directly, instead choosing to embed a screenshot. That’s because rape fantasies are funny and charming when they come from an aged socialist hippie.

Welcome to the 2016 presidential race, where Republicans are targeted for scandal when the media deliberately misquote them, but Democrats get away with behavior that would make Caligula blush.

Yesterday, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was quoted speaking about the benefits of ultrasounds, which he said were “a cool thing out there.” The media spun the quote as though Walker had called it “cool” to mandate transvaginal ultrasounds when Walker wasn’t even talking about transvaginal ultrasounds.

Via Breitbart

Continue Reading....

Former House speaker Dennis Hastert indicted by federal grand jury

YORKVILLE, Ill. —

J. Dennis Hastert, the longest-serving Republican speaker in the history of the U.S. House, was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury on charges that he violated banking laws in a bid to pay $3.5 million to an unnamed person to cover up “past misconduct.”

Hastert, who has been a high-paid lobbyist in Washington since his 2007 retirement from Congress, schemed to mask more than $950,000 in withdrawals from various ac­counts in violation of federal banking laws that require the disclosure of large cash transactions, according to a seven-page indictment delivered by a grand jury in Chicago.

The indictment did not spell out the exact nature of the “prior misconduct” by Hastert, but it noted that before entering state and federal politics in 1981, Has­tert served for more than a decade as a teacher and wrestling coach at Yorkville High School in Illinois.

In 2010, confronted about the “prior misconduct,” the former speaker agreed to pay $3.5 million to the person “to compensate for and conceal his prior misconduct against Individual A,” prosecutors alleged.

That person, whose identity was shielded by prosecutors, has known Hastert most of his or her life, growing up in Yorkville, the city next to Hastert’s home town of Plano, in the exurbs west of Chicago. Prosecutors said the actions “occurred years earlier” than the 2010 meeting that sparked the payments.

Via: Washington Post

Continue Reading....

NYPD: Gangs responsible for spike in shootings

NEW YORK (MYFOXNY) -

Inside what looks like an ordinary storefront is the headquarters for a youth group. Community leaders are hoping it will help stop the rise in gang youth crime.

The NYPD has set its sights on dismantling the gangs police say are largely responsible for the shootings and murders in the city.

"This is a violent, violent bunch of guys -- they're all G Stone Crips," said Deputy Chief Kevin Catalina of the NYPD Gang Unit. "We took down associates of theirs a couple of weeks back. During that takedown, we pulled 11 guns off these guys."

While overall crime is down almost seven percent, shootings are up 7.1 percent so far this year. Murders are up 15.3 percent. Even with the increase, it's a much lower number than the 1980s and 1990s.

"For those of us who were here in the bad old days, when we had 2,000 or more murders a year, a lot or ordinary citizens were getting caught in those crossfires, it was a horrible, horrible time," Mayor Bill de Blasio said.

But Dr. Darrin Porcher, a former NYPD lieutenant, said there is cause for concern.

"Whenever there is violence in the community, it always creates a hazard for the common citizen," Porcher said. "So when we think in terms of this violence, bullets have no names. They land anywhere."

The majority of those involved in gang or crew shootings are under 21. Many are in their teens. That is why former gang member Shanduke McPhatter, now a community activist, established G.M.A.C.C. Teens at risk have new Apple computers to do their homework and that keeps them off the streets. A weight room to get them focused on health and to work out frustrations instead of doing it through violence.

"When you talk about what's happening in our communities, we're really predominantly dealing with cliques and crews," McPhatter Said. "These are young organizations who really have no leadership, who really have no goals, no history of what they're doing."

McPhatter said he doesn't have all the answers but he is hoping that his program can at least save some lives this summer.

Via: Fox NY

Continue Reading.....

National Review Editor: ‘#SomeBlackLivesDontMatter’ to Civil Rights Movement

With just over a year between Rich Lowry‘s newsworthy comments on Arizona’s SB 1062and President Barack Obama‘s apparent hatred for Benjamin Netanyahu, you’d think we have another year to go before the National Review editor makes headlines, no? Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

Lowry’s latest column attempts to tackle the #BlackLivesMatter movement and Baltimore’s high murder rate in the month of May with some satire and a new hashtag: #SomeBlackLivesDontMatter, which is also the title of the column. The satire? Not sure.

The essay’s 905 words attempt to devote as much time as they possibly can to rationalizing the hashtag title. Sure, Lowry cites plenty of recent statistics to try and back up his claims. But the real, thinly-cut meat of the matter boils down to his title’s desire to troll the #BlackLivesMatter social media movement.

Lowry’s cynicism stands out the strongest in the sixth paragraph:

Let’s be honest: Some black lives really don’t matter. If you are a young black man shot in the head by another young black man, almost certainly no one will know your name. Al Sharpton won’t come rushing to your family’s side with cameras in tow. MSNBC won’t discuss the significance of your death. No one will protest, or even riot, for you. You are a statistic, not a cause. Just another dead black kid in some city somewhere, politically useless to progressives and the media, therefore all but invisible.

Maybe, maybe not, but Lowry’s narrow focus on Baltimore neglects the protests’ national theater (a few concluding remarks on New York notwithstanding). Again, this all just seems like a ploy to tweet #SomeBlackLivesDontMatter, and many agree:

Via: Mediaite

Continue Reading....

Guy Who Created Obama’s ‘Hope’ Poster: ‘Americans Are Ignorant And Lazy

Shepard Fairey, the artist who designed Barack Obama’s “Hope” poster that symbolized his 2008 campaign, said that he thinks Americans are largely “ignorant, lazy, uneducated and complacent.”

In an interview with Esquire, the 45-year-old said Obama hadn’t even come close to living up to his expectations, but he thinks the American people are to blame for that.

“We also need a public that isn’t so uneducated and complacent,” Fairey said. “I hate to say Americans are ignorant and lazy, but a lot of them are ignorant and lazy.” (RELATED: Shepard Fairey Is A Fraud)

“Obama has had a really tough time, but there have been a lot of things that he’s compromised on that I never would have expected. I mean, drones and domestic spying are the last things I would have thought [he’d support].”

But Fairey, who was a “big supporter” of Occupy Wall Street, thinks Obama’s goals were thwarted because things were out of his control.

“I’ve met Obama a few times, and I think Obama’s a quality human being, but I think that he finds himself in a position where your actions are largely dictated by things out of your control.”

“What frustrates me to no end are people who want to blame Obama or blame anything that is something that if they were actually doing anything as simple as voting, it might not be as bad as it is.”

Via: Daily Caller

Continue Reading....

U.S. No Longer Considers Cuba State Sponsor of Terrorism

Five months after President Obama‘s announcement that the United States and Cuba would move to normalize diplomatic relations, the State Department has officially removed the island nation from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.

According to Bloomberg Business and multiple other outlets, Cuba’s removal from the list was officially announced via an emailed statement on Friday morning.

“While the United States has significant concerns and disagreements with a wide range of Cuba’s policies and actions,” cautions department spokesperson Jeff Rathke, “these fall outside the criteria relevant to the rescission of a State Sponsor of Terrorism designation.”

President Ronald Reagan added Cuba to the State Department’s list back in 1982. In order for the announced removal to occur, Congress either had to approve (or not block) the the action during the 45-day period following Obama’s April 14th announcement of a massive “four-month interagency review.” No prominent steps were taken to block the removal, hence Friday’s announcement.

However, this has no effect on the trade embargo the U.S. first placed on Cuba back in 1960 during Dwight D. Eisenhower‘s presidency. It remains in place until both countries have had adequate time to normalize diplomatic relations.

Via: Mediaite

Continue Reading....

Ben & Jerry's Doesn't Let Facts Get In Way of 'Climate Justice'

ONE MORE REASON NOT TO BUY THERE PRODUCT!!!

In a recently published info-graphic, entitled “Climate Change By The Numbers”, Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream serves up a seamy confection of poor analysis, misleading truths, and downright falsehoods.  The bright and breezy assemblage (one in a series promoting “Climate Justice”) approaches the topic with such childlike simplicity it practically spoon-feeds us its ‘factual’ memes.  In the very first sentence, we’re told that the science of climate change is a “story” that is “told with numbers”.  Thus, it seems only fair to count the errors in this shoddy work.

Predictably enough, the graphic begins with a frightening pronouncement:

To support the claim, they tell us that “9 of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000”.  At best, the assertion is cavalier; at worst, it is untrue.  In order to believe it, we must first forget that the temperature records in question are a brief 160 years old (a relative eye-blink compared to the 4.5 billion years of earth’s total existence).  We must then play ignorant to a host of recent studies that have suggested the Medieval Warm Period was global in scope.  Thirdly, we have to ignore the fact that earth’s temperatures have NOT risen, hand-in-glove, with CO2 emissions.  Indeed, even reliable Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) alarmists like Michael Mann have felt obligated to try to explain the seventeen-year hiatus in global warming.  And lastly, in order to swallow the fear inspired by the headline, we must pay no attention to the scientific evidence that CO2 levels have historically lagged behind corresponding changes in temperature.

Via American Thinker

Continue Reading...

California: How not to Handle a Water Crisis

Californians have a love affair with water. It’s used for pools, irrigation, green grasses, and washing cars. Yet, because of the drought the grass is turning brown, cars are staying dirty, and pools might be a thing of the past. American Thinker interviewed people who have some knowledge about this crisis. 

There have been about four years of drought. The water supply has been severely depleted largely due to the all time low level of the Sierra Nevada snowpack, which usually provides about one-third of the state’s water. Governor Jerry Brown in an executive order directed the State Water Resources Control Board to implement a twenty-five percent mandatory reduction. Cuts will vary from community to community, based upon per capita water use. 

Russell Lefevre, the Torrance Director of the Metropolitan Water District, told American Thinker that to deal with the crisis they went to their twenty-six customers, totalling about nineteen million residents, and imposed a fifteen percent cutback. He also explained that the governor’s plan has nine tiers and the cutback he issued by executive order differs by community, ranging from 8% to 36%. For example, Beverly Hills and Palos Verdes must cut back by 36% while Los Angeles and San Diego’s cutback is 16%. Why is the governor requiring more of a cutback than the MWD?

Via: American Thinker

Continue Reading....

TEAM OBAMA BLAMES ‘HARSH WINTER WEATHER’ FOR GDP REVISION; RECOMMENDS TPP TRADE BILL

The Obama administration reacted to news that broke this morning about the economy shrinking 0.7 percent in the first quarter of 2015. The number was lower even than the bad economic news first reported, as the Commerce Department’s first estimate showed 0.2 percent growth in the first quarter.

But Jason Furman, the Chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, cautioned Americans from over reacting to the news.

“The first-quarter slowdown was the result of harsh winter weather, tepid foreign demand, and consumers saving the windfall from lower oil prices,” he wrote in a statement.

Furman pointed out Obama’s efforts to pass a Trans-Pacific Partnership trade bill might help improve the economy, by increasing national exports.

“The President is committed to further strengthening these positive trends by opening our exports to new markets with new high-standards free trade agreements that create opportunities for the middle class,” he wrote.

He also pointed to Obama’s commitment to infrastructure spending and his attempt to block sequestration in the upcoming budget as another positive step for the economy and cautioned Americans from not focusing too much on one report.

“As the Administration stresses every quarter, GDP figures can be volatile and are subject to substantial revision,” he concluded. “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one single report, and it is informative to consider each report in the context of other data that are becoming available.”

Via: Breitbart

Continue Reading....

Judge Roy Moore: Impeach Ginsburg for Marrying Two Men Ahead of SCOTUS Ruling on Gay Marriage

(CNSNews.com) – On May 17, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg officiated the marriage of two men and used the occasion to cite her constitutional right to do so. In June, the high court – including Ginsburg’s vote - will announce its decision on whether homosexual marriage is guaranteed by the Constitution.

That’s grounds for impeachment, Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore told CNSNews.com in an exclusive interview.

“She’s basically thumbing her nose in front of the other justices that she’s going to say what she wants to say and do what she wants to do, and she’s going to ignore the rules of ethics,” Moore said, adding that judges are bound by those rules.

“I think there’s grounds for the legislature of the United States and Congress to act,” Moore said. “They could act to impeach her; they could remove her for bad behavior, because judges serve for good behavior under Article 3 (of the Constitution).

Moore said the fact that Ginsburg made a public statement that she had a right under the Constitution to perform a same-sex wedding, under the ethics rules, is bad behavior given her role in deciding the Obergefell v. Hodges case.

“They could find that’s bad behavior and subject to impeachment and removal,” Moore said.

“Wearing her black robe with her signature white lace collar, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg presided over the marriage on Sunday afternoon of Michael Kahn, the longtime artistic director of the Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington, and Charles Mitchem, who works at an architecture firm in New York,” Dowd wrote.

“The gilded setting was elegant: Anderson House in the Embassy Row neighborhood, the headquarters in Washington of the Society of the Cincinnati, a club for the descendants of the French and American soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary War,” Dowd wrote. “During the ceremony, the couple slipped black and gold Harry Winston rings onto each other’s fingers.

“But the most glittering moment for the crowd came during the ceremony," Dowd wrote. “With a sly look and special emphasis on the word ‘Constitution,’ Justice Ginsburg said that she was pronouncing the two men married by the powers vested in her by the Constitution of the United States.

“No one was sure if she was emphasizing her own beliefs or giving a hint to the outcome of the case the Supreme Court is considering whether to decide if same-sex marriage is constitutional,” Dowd wrote.

Via: CNS News

Continue Reading....

IRS Hires $1,000-An-Hour Lawyers And It Might Have Violated Federal Law

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is paying a Washington law firm $1,000 an hour in taxpayer money to perform a corporate audit, despite its claim of being severely underfunded.

The IRS’ $2.2 million contract with big-money firm Quinn Emanuel has sparked a Senate Finance Committee investigation, with the committee’s chairman saying that the IRS “appears to violate federal law.”

Senate Finance Committee chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch wrote a letter this month to IRS commissioner John Koskinen stating his concerns relating to the contact, which pays Quinn Emanuel $1,000 an hour to perform an audit of Microsoft.

Hatch said that the contract appears to violate laws against the IRS sharing confidential taxpayer information with third parties. (RELATED: Lois Lerner Sent The White House Confidential Taxpayer Info).

“Despite these statutory prohibitions against the outsourcing of certain revenue functions or sharing of confidential taxpayer information, in May of last year the IRS hired a litigation law firm to assist in the income tax audit and investigation of a corporate taxpayer, including the conduct of sworn interviews,” Hatch’s letter stated.

“The IRS’s hiring of a private contractor to conduct an examination of a taxpayer raises concerns because the action: 1) appears to violate federal law and the express will of the Congress; 2) removes taxpayer protections by allowing the performance of inherently governmental functions by private contractors; and 3) calls into question the IRS’s use of its limited resources.”

But the Obama administration quickly re-wrote the rules shortly after hiring Quinn Emanuel.

Via: Daily Caller

Continue Reading....

Most Democrats Think Illegal Immigrants Should Vote

Are voters ready to let illegal immigrants vote? A sizable number, including most Democrats, are.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that one-out-of-three Likely U.S. Voters (35%) now believes that illegal immigrants should be allowed to vote if they can prove they live in this country and pay taxes. Sixty percent (60%) disagree, while five percent (5%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Fifty-three percent (53%) of Democrats think tax-paying illegal immigrants should have the right to vote. Twenty-one percent (21%) of Republicans and 30% of voters not affiliated with either major political party agree.

The U.S. Supreme Court has just agreed to hear a case challenging how Texas sets up state legislative districts. Texas currently counts everyone in the state, including illegal immigrants, before carving up districts of proportional population size, but the challenge argues that only eligible voters should be counted because the current system creates some districts with much larger numbers of eligible voters than others.

Sixty-six percent (66%) of voters agree with the legal challenge and say states should only count eligible voters when setting the size of legislative districts for voting purposes. Just 23% favor the current system in Texas that counts all residents including illegal immigrants. Eleven percent (11%) are not sure.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The survey of 952 Likely Voters was conducted on May 27-28, 2015 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Fifty-five percent (55%) of voters think the United States is already more democratic than most other nations, but 17% say it is less democratic. Slightly more (19%) feel America is about equally as democratic as most other nations.

Women are more supportive than men of letting tax-paying illegal immigrants vote, but the two are in general agreement that the size of voting districts should be determined by counting only the number of eligible voters.

Via: Rasmussen Reports

Continue Reading....

The Freddie Gray Effect? Police Wonder If They'll Be Arrested for Doing Their Job as Baltimore Gets Bloodier

BALTIMORE — A 31-year-old woman and a young boy were shot in the head Thursday, becoming Baltimore’s 37th and 38th homicide victims so far this month, the city’s deadliest in 15 years.

Meanwhile, arrests have plunged: Police are booking fewer than half the number of people they pulled off the streets last year.

Arrests were already declining before Freddie Gray died on April 19 of injuries he suffered in police custody, but they dropped sharply thereafter, as his death unleashed protests, riots, the criminal indictment of six officers and a full-on civil rights investigation by the U.S. Justice Department that has officers working under close scrutiny.

“I’m afraid to go outside,” said Antoinette Perrine, whose brother was shot down three weeks ago on a basketball court near her home in the Harlem Park neighborhood of West Baltimore. Ever since, she has barricaded her door and added metal slabs inside her windows to deflect gunfire.

“It’s so bad, people are afraid to let their kids outside,” Perrine said. “People wake up with shots through their windows. Police used to sit on every corner, on the top of the block. These days? They’re nowhere.”

Via: Fox News

Continue Reading....

Jailhouse Crock: Unfinished prison costs Detroit area taxpayers $1.2M per month

Four years after breaking ground and with construction costs totaling $151 million, the Wayne County Jail sits empty in downtown Detroit. The empty structure is costing taxpayers upwards of $1.2 million in upkeep per month. (AP)

A prison in downtown Detroit that was deemed too expensive to complete is now a construction site frozen in time that still costs cash-strapped local taxpayers more than $1 million a month.

It was supposed to be a state-of-art lockup in the heart of the Motor City, but four years after breaking ground, with construction costs totaling $150 million and no end in sight, the city pulled the plug on the project four years ago.

Now, the Wayne County Jail sits empty among the ruins of a bankrupt city, costing taxpayers upwards of $1.2 million in debt service and monthly upkeep costs for electricity, security, sump pumps - and even off-site storage for pre-fabricated jail cells that will never be used.

“The Wayne County Jail was a mess since it was created,” Rose Bogaert, head of the Wayne County Taxpayers Association and chair of the Michigan Taxpayer Alliance, told FoxNews.com. “At this point, the only thing we should do is cut our losses. If someone is willing to purchase it, we should sell it.

“Everyone knows that these projects never stay within budget, and this one was in a bad location to begin with," she added. "It never made sense. There needs to be more thought put into these projects before they start building.”

County officials have yet to make a decision as to what to do with the facility. But while they dither, the monthly meter is running. According to figures compiled by the Detroit Free Press some of the monthly costs include:

• Security: $10,849
• Sump pump maintenance: $12,852-
• Warehouse space to store pre-cast jail cells: $15,000
• Electricity: $4,000
• Debt service: $1.1 million

Despite the hefty costs of the jail, and the county teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, Wayne County Executive Warren Evans does not appear to be any closer to making a decision on the building site.

Via: Fox News

Continue Reading....