Auditor General not permitted to audit welfare benefits

Pittsburgh's WTAE news team wanted to do an investigative report on cash welfare benefits. A sister station in Minneapolis had been assured by Minnesota state officials that the cash benefits program was well safeguarded to protect taxpayers' money but the KTSP news team found a lot of problems in the system. For instance, Minnesota claimed that EBT cards can't be used in liquor stores but KTSP found they can -- and are -- being used in liquor stores. Recipients in MN were using EBT cards for "tattoos, liquor and out-of-state vacations", according to WTAE, and using them in all 50 states plus the US Virgin Islands. Transactions from just one month (May 2010) from Pennsylvania EBT cards show that the cards are used in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. There were nearly 800 transactions in California alone in just that month.


In fact, our own Department of Public Welfare doesn't know how or where Pennsylvania recipients are using EBT cards and apparently they don't care. The DPW does not track individual expenditures on the cards so they don't know where the cards are being used. State Auditor Jack Wagner hoped to audit the records but the DPW has refused to allow the AG's office access to the information, citing privacy concerns. The DPW has denied 4 requests from the AG's office to date, over the last year. This is inexcusable in that these are public funds and the Auditor General position exists solely to oversee and improve how tax money is being spent.


The DPW lacks sufficient controls and documentation to prevent fraud and abuse. Even worse, Wagner's investigation was very basic due to DPW's refusal to cooperate still found the the "potential for fraud and abuse is high" based on the number of out-of-state transactions alone.


Wagner states the the sheer volume of out-of-state transactions in neighboring states "could indicate that recipients may be residing in other states or could be involved with inappropriate activity. In May 2010, there was 72,179 transactions worth over $4 million in New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Delaware, Ohio and West Virginia."

"The sheer volume of out-of-state transactions disclosed by our auditors demonstrates the possibility that recipients are potentially engaged in costly travel and may be residing in other states,” Wagner said."

In May 2010 alone, there were nearly 95,000 out-of-state transactions worth more than $5 million. However, Wagner is unable to determine if any of these transactions were improper because DPW will not cooperate with his office. Despite DPW's refusal to be audited by our chief financial watchdog, Wagner was still able to identify at least one case of definite fraud because a series of transactions in just one day withdrew nearly $150,000 from a single account.

Wagner states that DPW lacks the appropriate policies and procedures to prevent fraud and abuse in the system. He recommends that DPW develop policies tomonitor usage, verify recipient eligibility and ensure funds aren't being spent contrary to the intended purpose of the program. Read Wagner's press release on this topic here.

It's obvious that DPW is failing Pennsylvanians miserably as the department appears to be completely incompetent. They aren't serving the needy properly if resources are being wasted on abusers. They aren't serving taxpayers at all by neglecting to be responsible stewards of our money. By refusing to comply with the audit, DPW demonstrates complete disregard for all Pennsylvanians and prove that this department is a total failure in it's current state.


All those responsible for the management and policies in DPW should be immediately removed and replaced with capable, competent leaders who respect the citizens of this state. Citizens should contact their local representative and tell them to demand DPW submit to a comprehensive audit by the AG's office. It's fine to offer privacy protection for recipients of public welfare but privacy control should not be so stringent as to allow wanton fleecing of taxpayers with no regard for the integrity of the programs.

Democratic lawmakers grandstanding and passing the buck on education cuts

School funding in Pennsylvania is an arcane property-tax based system long criticized by just about everyone. There are many repurcussions for all invloved and seem to be few, if any, good things about the system. Districts have unequal funding since property taxes are based on local millage rates. Some of the poorest, worst-performing school districts in the state share a border with some of the wealthiest and best. The students from the poor districts are stuck in failing schools despite being a stone's throw from successful ones. Taxpayers are held hostage by school board decisions and demands of unions, no matter how incompetent or unreasonable. People buy houses and pay them off, owning the home outright only to lose them to the county if they can't afford tax increases over which they have little to no control.


These aren't the only problems, nor are they new problems. But the state's current budget crisis has brought an entirely new dimension to light. After 8 years of Ed Rendell's utter incompetence as Governor, Pennsylvania has a $4 billion deficit. Rendell increased spending by about 40% over his tenure but none of that money appears to have been spent wisely. We lead the nation in bad roads and structurally deficient bridges. Our public transportation systems and schools lack dedicated funding. All we have to show for Fast Eddie's frivolous spending are crony contracts and overpaid politicians.


We've run out of money and our state is in worse shape in many areas than ever before. What passed for leadership from Rendell has been a complete failure in every sense, catapulting Pennsylvania into the bottom in many categories. Bring in Tom Corbett, barely sworn in as our new Governor, and his attempts to bring some fiscal sanity back to the Keystone state. Corbett actually increased state spending on education to the tune of $240 million. But temporary federal stimulus funds for education are no more, meaning that schools are getting $900 million less total. The Governor and the state legislature have no authority to force the federal government to hand out stimulus money to schools and did all they could by increasing education funding despite a $4 billion shortfall.


Sidebar: All school districts were well aware that the federal stimulus money was a temporary payout which would end in 2010. They only received the money for two school years, which means they knew damn well not to make any big or permanent changes that their budgets could not support after the stimulus funds were gone. They had no reason to believe these emergency programs would continue. They could easily have parceled out the windfall carefully so as to not spend it all immediately or they could have allocated the funding in ways in which it wouldn't be too sorely missed after it ended.

In addition, less than 30% of eligible Pennsylvania schools applied for federal grant money available to them for the current school year. And they are all well aware of the state's budget crisis. Yet they aren't taking any responsibility for their own fiscal mismanagement or poor planning. Instead they're laying sole blame on the Governor's administration. Corbett is being excoriated for not simply taxing an additional one billion dollars out of Pennsylvania's citizens in order to indulge the whims of school administrators and reward their bad behavior with stimulus funds.


It's lunacy, pure and simple. But just when we all assumed it couldn't get any more ridiculous, some do-nothing Democrats in the state legislature are trying to get school districts to sue Corbett for discrimination. Our arcane system of funding education primarily via property taxes means that some schools receive significantly less funding than others. The schools collecting less in property taxes depend much more heavily on the state budget's direct funding of education. Thus, poorer schools are losing more money without the federal stimulus funds than wealthier districts in more affluent areas.


Our schools certainly have some serious and immediate problems as a result -- an inequitable and questionable funding system, subpar adminstrative and leadership, and immediate funding needs, just to name a few -- but none of these are the fault of our new Governor, nor will they be solved in a courtroom. The suggestion to sue his administration reveals complete ignorance on the part of these state representatives. They clearly don't understand how our state funds education, nor do they seem to care. They are putting all taxpayers at risk of having to come up with a billion dollars that we don't have should the suit succeed (although under the circumstances, such a lawsuit would be so frivolous that seems highly unlikely). It's the lowest form of pandering on the parts of Rep. Bill Kortz and Marc Gergely.


Kortz and Gergely aren't truly concerned about education or else they would be proposing new ways to fund all schools equally. Both men are grandstanding with this hare-brained scheme to encourage school districts to sue taxpayers right into the poorhouse. It's nothing but cheap political scheming: Blame the GOP and if you say it enough times, these dumb voters will believe it, despite the fact that it's not true. Voters need to contact Kortz and Gergely to request their funding proposals. It will be interesting to see what they have to offer constituents besides cheap political shots and pandering, if they have anything else to offer. 

English-only government helps immigrants, hurts no one

There are more than 320 languages spoken in the US so it's surprising that most bilingual actions by our government are only conducted in Spanish. This sends an ugly message to the majority of immigrants who speak neither English nor Spanish. We're saying that we cater only to a select immigrant population and they're not in the preferred group. Immigrants who can't speak English are ostracized in our society to a great extent so our goal should be to help them learn English, not to help them avoid learning it.


State Representative Scott Perry has crafted HB 888 which calls for all government business, including printed documents, to be conducted only in English. Despite being characterized as prejudiced against immigrants, the proposed law actually benefits immigrants. Perry points out that English proficiency is a requirement of our citizenship tests. We're hardly doing them any favors by providing government materials in a foreign language when in fact they need to be able to read and write in English in order to become citizens.


Immigrants proficient in English enjoy an average income about 30% higher than those who don't learn the language. People living in America but not proficient in English face bleak financial futures with limited opportunities and low wage rates. Their earning potential is equal to that of a high-school droupout with no GED. Conducting government business in foreign languages decreases the need thus the motivation to learn English. That relegates immigrants into a subculture characterized by poverty, a lack of opportunity and being cut off from much of society.


The US Department of Labor has found that immigrants receiving the most foreign-language support learn English more slowly than immigrants who receive less language support or none at all. The DOL theorizes that the large number of Spanish-speakers in the US allows immigrants to live and work here without the need for English while other immigrant populations don't have the opportunity to live and work largely amongst native speakers. Conducting government business in Spanish may actually go a long way toward creating a group of second-class citizens cut off from much of American life. That's not in anyone's best interests and it hurts us all.


Safety is also a consideration. So long as government business is not English-only, people who can't read or write in English can have driver's licenses, including CDL's. They can't reasonably be expected to read signs, construction limitations or safety requirements yet we allow them to drive tractor trailers. If they can't speak, read or write English, how do they get insurance and keep it up to date? How can they safely navigate our roads or obey the laws? In a country where nearly 100 die each day in motor vehicle accidents, allowing people with little or no proficiency in English to have a driver's license, especially a commercial one, should be criminal.


Those who say English-only government is discriminatory are ignoring the facts. Our current system is discriminatory in that it relegates Spanish speakers to a subclass in our society, potentially doing them great harm with little, if any, good.  

'Green' also means other people's money

FEMA may run out of money in less than a week but Democrats can't live with cuts to questionable 'green' initiatives even in the midst of the Solyndra scandal. That about sums up the priorities and incompetence of Congress. There's an immediate need to more than $1 billion in disaster aid and that money has to come from somewhere. The GOP crafted what they characterize as a bill with bipartisan appeal that would divert more than $1.5 billion in loan monies slated for 'greener' vehicles to disaster aid. Democrats refuse to divert the money and voted down the bill, leaving many Americans in limbo.


What the Democrats don't seem to understand is that our supply of money is finite. If we have to pay for something important right now, the money has to come from somewhere and the government loan program for automakers is a fine choice. Higher fuel efficiency is not an equal priority to helping people recover from a natural disaster. This begs the question: How many union jobs are tied to this loan fund? Union jobs are the obvious impetus because what else would put loans for R&D at private companies (who are generally making money hand-over-fist) ahead of Americans devestated by a natural disaster except big-money campaign donations to the Democratic party?


The Democratic opposition is wholly political in that it refuses to prioritize needs in our country. While some GOP members also voted against the bill because they felt the off-setting cuts weren't deep enough, only 6 Democrats voted in favor. It's hard to give the GOP naysayers hell here because the off-setting cuts are in fact insufficient. There are plenty of frivilous funding examples that should be cut anyway but especially right now in the midst of our record debt and deficit and even moreso due to the shortage of disaster funding. But unlike the GOP opposition to this bill, which has a reasonable opposition in light of the current financial situation, Democratic opposition is not just politicial but completely self-serving. It's a blatant statement to the nation that political power is the party's only concern: Getting elected, getting re-elected and continuing to advance an agenda that fails America even in the face of widespread disapproval from citizens.


In the midst of the Solyndra scandal, many of the Democratic party's 'green' initiatives should be scaled back or put on hold entirely as this adminstration's utter incompetence has been bared for all to see. That the deal was bad for taxpayers is evident from the very beginning. That the company didn't meet the standards to receive the loan seems to have been evident to everyone involved throughout the process, all the way up the chain of command. The White House closely monitored the entire process and can't play dumb on this one as they have tried (quite unsuccessfully) with other recent failures of enormous proprtions, like Operation Fast and Furious. From rushing the approval so that Biden could grandstand for the cameras to the restructured agreement giving private investors precedence ahead of the DOE to recoup money in the event of Solyndra's collapse, everything about this is obviously saturated with cronyism and political payback.

Those ignorant on global warming aren't who you expect

Society treats people who question man-made global warming pretty much as conspiracy theorists deserving of tinfoil hats. Any doubts about climate change are equivocated with utter insanity including but not limited to: eschewing science, hating nature and the environment, being a right-wing nutjob, extraordinary ignorence and intentionally ignoring basic scientific facts. The vast majority of Americans appear to be grossly ignorant of this topic entirely, but not because they question the edicts. Rather, the least informed on this matter are often those who wholly accept the popular myths.



Most of what we read and hear from popular media on global warming is presented as fact and ignores significant criticism from the scientific community. Those who just accept what they read in the local paper or see on the national news are likely to believe that if human behavior doesn't change drastically, we will soon kill our planet. And those who do research the topic for themselves have to put considerable effort into locating credible sources, as objective sources aren't easily found. An internet search of 'scientific dissent on global warming' generates lots of blogs and popular conservative sites, regardless of search engine. This allows global warming disciples to pretend that dissent is meritless because they can point to anectdotal examples like opinion pieces and simply deride them as ignorant.


More importantly, it makes it difficult for people to educate themselves on the issue and helps misinformation to flourish. People who accept global warming edicts from Al Gore and the UN like to claim that there is no scientific dissent on this issue, that the scientific community is in agreement with their pronouncements and has the data to back up these claims but that's grossly inaccurate. There is generally a scientific consensus on climate change but the anthropogenic effects are hotly contested. Popular opinion seems to be that we must drastically overhaul our way of life in order to prevent irreversible damage to the environment when in fact anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is questionable, at best. It's also important to note that science is not a consensus but rather a process of exploration and investigation to establish truth. It's simply not enough that they believe in it; They must be able to present sufficient supporting data sufficient to justify their position because that's what science requires. It's not a matter of opinion or personal belief.


There are theories and data that support AGW and then there are equally compelling theories and data that show the effects of AGW to be negligable. Computer models on the subject differ greatly and have long been suspect in accuracy. Solar activity plays a big part in earth's temperature and weather patterns. We can't ignore the fact that the planet has always displayed cyclical warming and cooling patterns, including drastic shifts in weather. There is a lot of documentation disputing AGW as a major concern yet the average person appears to be believe that our way of life is going to destroy life as we know it unless we institute drastic measures at exhorbitant costs to completely overhaul every aspect of life on this planet.


Professionals from all walks of life who fail to embrace the populist assumptions of AGW are dismissed as unqualified simply because they're not climate scientists but the sciences are not exclusive fields lacking connection to one another. We would not dismiss a physicist's opinion on an issue in a chemistry lab simply because it comes from a physicist and not a chemist. We wouldn't ignore a physician who comments on matters of biology, nor condemn an engineer for offering data relevant to a matter of botany. Yet the climate debate is closed to the entire scientific community outside of the world's climate scientists if and when these otherwise learned professionals offer a dissenting observation.


Criticisms from medical, veterinary, physics, engineering and science professionals are derided yet all layman are embraced by the AGW community so long as they accept the mantra without question. Look no further than Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, who couldn't handle undergrad math and science classes at Harvard and never finished graduate school. Or Charless Monnett, the wildlife biologist and whale researcher who "determined" that AGW is killing bears. Or any liberal Hollywood celebrity. Or many media personalities who choose to eschew objectivity in their reporting.


All fields of science are complex and overlapping, taking cues and making discoveries based on interdisciplinary works yet climate science is shutting out all other disciplines while embracing layman, politicians and special interests -- many of whom stand poised to profit handsomely from it, including Al Gore. There is compelling evidence to suggest that the effects of AGW are being overstated and exploited -- and legitimate criticisms are being silenced -- for political and financial gain. We must stop passing out tinfoil hats instead perform our due diligence to educate ourselves on the facts of the issue instead of subscribing to the popular quasi-information being fed to us all.