Let's go study "fraud, waste, and abuse" of Tax $$$ by wasting $$$ at the Ritz Carlton

Members of a key panel created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the stimulus bill, have scheduled a meeting on November 22 to consider ways to prevent "fraud, waste, and abuse of Recovery Act funds." The meeting will be held at the super-luxe Ritz Carlton Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona.
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Ritz-Carlton, Phoenix

Camlback Corridor, Phoenix, Arizona

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Agenda and Notice of Partially Closed Meeting of the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel

A Notice by the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board on 11/09/2010

Publication Date:

Tuesday, November 09, 2010

Action:

Notice Of Partially Closed Meeting.

Dates:

The open portion of the RIAP meeting will be held on Monday, November 22, 2010, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Entry Type:

Notice

Page:

68841-68842 (2 pages)

Document Citation:

75 FR 68841

Document Number:

2010-28243

Shorter URL:

http://federalregister.gov/a/2010-28243

Summary

In accordance with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Public Law 111-5 (Recovery Act), and the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 (FACA), the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board's (Board) Recovery Independent Advisory Panel (RIAP) will meet as indicated below. Notice of this meeting is required under Section 10(a)(2) of FACA. This notice is intended to notify the general public of their opportunity to attend the open portion of the meeting.Show citation box

DATES:

The open portion of the RIAP meeting will be held on Monday, November 22, 2010, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.Show citation box

ADDRESSES:

The Ritz-Carlton, 2401 East Camelback Road, Phoenix, AZ 85016.

89000 mistakes ! ! !

AP is reporting that a government investigator says 89,000 stimulus payments of $250 each went to people who were either dead or in prison.

The Social Security Administration's inspector general said in a report Thursday that $18 million went to 72,000 people who were dead. The report estimates that a little more than half the payments were returned.

89000 mistakes with just 1 stimulus check, and people want these same guys to run their health care?????

$800,000 of Economic Stimulus on African Genital-Washing Program

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), spent $823,200 of economic stimulus funds in 2009 on a study by a UCLA research team to teach uncircumcised African men how to wash their genitals after having sex.

The genitalia-washing program is part of a larger $12-million UCLA study examining how to better encourage Africans to undergo voluntary HIV testing and counseling – however, only the penis-washing study received money from the 2009 economic stimulus law. The washing portion of the study is set to end in 2011. See more here

"Real or Fake"

See more at Bankruptingamerica.org

John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek "Rap It Out"

Yo, Check out the Rap

The place you should study isn’t the bust
It’s the boom that should make you feel leery, that’s the thrust
Of my theory, the capital structure is key.
Malinvestments wreck the economy

The boom gets started with an expansion of credit
The Fed sets rates low, are you starting to get it?
That new money is confused for real loanable funds
But it’s just inflation that’s driving the ones

Who invest in new projects like housing construction
The boom plants the seeds for its future destruction
The savings aren’t real, consumption’s up too
And the grasping for resources reveals there’s too few

So the boom turns to bust as the interest rates rise
With the costs of production, price signals were lies
The boom was a binge that’s a matter of fact
Now its devalued capital that makes up the slack.

Whether it’s the late twenties or two thousand and five
Booming bad investments, seems like they’d thrive
You must save to invest, don’t use the printing press
Or a bust will surely follow, an economy depressed

Your so-called “stimulus” will make things even worse
It’s just more of the same, more incentives perversed
And that credit crunch ain’t a liquidity trap
Just a broke banking system, I’m done, that’s a wrap.
H/T Econstories
H/T Real Revo

$160,000 Per Stimulus Job?

Jake Tapper works his calculator. WH calls it ABUSE
The White House argues that the actual job number is actually larger than 640,000 -- closer to 1 million jobs when one factors in stimulus jobs added in October and, more importantly, jobs created indirectly, such as "the waitress who's still on the job," Vice President Biden said today.

So let's see. Assuming their number is right -- 160 billion divided by 1 million. Does that mean the stimulus costs taxpayers $160,000 per job?

Jared Bernstein, chief economist and senior economic advisor to the vice president, called that "calculator abuse."

He said the cost per job was actually $92,000 -- but acknowledged that estimate is for the whole stimulus package as of the end of 2010.

See the full story and video here

Did you know you paid for "THUNDERCRACK"?

National Endowment of the Arts gave $25000 to a porn movie.

H/T to Real Revo

Repubs meet Hee-Haw. Where is Cousin Junior?

Stimulus Porkulus money to Stimulate organized crime coffers???

Swindlers, con men, and thieves could siphon off as much as $1 out of every $10 spent as billions of dollars in stimulus money begin flowing into all corners of the economy in coming months,according to David Williams, the chief executive of Deloitte Financial Advisory Services.

Williams suggested that the fraud and theft losses from the roughly $787 billion stimulus package approved earlier this year could reach about $50 billion.

"The rule of thumb typically is that of the about $500 billion worth of money that's going to run through the procurement process, somewhere between 5% and 10% of that usually finds it way into potential problems," Williams said. "That's sort of the benchmark that I use."

See full story at Marketwatch