Here are just a few of the projects that the Washington Post investigation found:

- “In Inglewood, Calif., a sprawling, overgrown lot two blocks from city hall frustrates senior citizens who were promised a state-of-the-art housing complex more than four years ago. Although the city invested $2 million in HUD funds, the developer doesn’t have the financing to move forward.”

-”In Newark, two partially completed duplexes sit empty in a neighborhood blighted by boarded-up homes lost to foreclosure. The city paid nearly $400,000 to build the houses, but after a decade of delays, the developer folded and never finished. The money has not been repaid.”

-”The D.C. region has a particularly troubled track record. In Prince George’s County, the nonprofit Kairos Development Corp., received $750,000 in 2005 to build dozens of homes. Six years later, Kairos has not built a single house.”

Just another example of government waste and zero accountability.

View the full report here.

Last June the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report which found that in 2010 alone $125 billion in improper federal grant payments were made. Federal Grants have become an increasingly popular way to achieve national objectives – from 1990 to 2010 the federal grant program has grown from $135 billion to $600 billion. The improper payments in 2010 account for over 20% of the annual budget!

So how do improper grants happen–the GAO report goes on, “Our audits found that agencies awarded grants without adequately documenting the grantee selection process. In some instances,we found agencies did not perform preaward reviews until after the grants had been awarded.“

“Through our work, we found weaknesses in grant oversight and accountability issues that span the government. Specifically, we identified long-standing challenges in oversight of undisbursed grant award balances, and significant levels of improper payments in grant programs…In August 2008,we reported that during calendar year 2006 about $1 billion in undisbursed funding remained in expired grant accounts…We recommended in August 2008 that the Director of OMB instruct executive departments and independent agencies to annually track the amount of undisbursed grant funding remaining in expired grant accounts and report on the status and resolution of such funding in their annual performance plans and Performance and Accountability Reports. As of April 2011, OMB had not issued governmentwide guidance regarding undisbursed balances in expired grant accounts.”

The GAO has issued multiple reports over the years on Federal Grant programs and has consistently come up with the same deficiencies – the grants are being made improperly or not made at all. Their reports always contain recommendations on how to remediate the deficiencies and subsequent reports show these recomendations go unimplemented.

What is the point of the GAO if no one will ever be held accountable?

View the full report here

• $936,818 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act went to stimulating online soap operas.
• $764,825 went to studying how college students use mobile devices for social networking
• $1.35 million went to entrepreneurship training in Barbados
• $22.04 million was spent on a duplicative occupational training program
• $206,000 went to the government to create its own version of Farmville
• $100,000 was spent towards growing the Massachusetts video game industry
• $500,000 went to analyzing the spread of political info on the web

You want to see more. Check out Senator Tom Coburn’s Wastebook 2011.

What’s worse than a government sanctioned study that shows nearly a billion dollars of waste? The government ignoring it and pushing forward to add more waste, with the  construction of a proposed $400 million Los Angeles federal courthouse, that the state can’t even fill with judges. To date, the planning of this courthouse has cost taxpayers $150 million, without a single shovel hitting the ground. Studies the district have done show that there are judicial vacancies across the board in the other L.A. courthouses, and the list of judges that were supposed to be filling this new courthouse is dwindling. Even the GAO has spoken out specifically about this project and stated that the new courthouse is not needed, and in fact L.A. should be thinking about selling its other courthouses that are experiencing vacancies. Yet just 4 days ago it was announced plans would go forward.

It’s this type of blatant disregard for taxpayer money that everyone should be angry about. There’s no accountability at any level and the waste just continues. This weeks post was hard for me to write, not for lack of wasteful spending, but for the abundance of it that I have to choose from. Even if we were to raise taxes of any kind – is this what you’d want it to be spent on? Would we really be better off? I will keep posting these every Wednesday and you may see your answers start to change.

Click to see the full report

What critics are saying: Romney criticized Newt last night for his involvement with Freddie, but actually has investments in both Fannie and Freddie. He also has/had offshore investments, including a Swiss bank account.

What are supporters saying: ALL of his investments are held in blind trusts, which means he doesn’t even know what he’s invested in and his administrators are not allowed to discuss it with him. In general, most diversified portfolios will have some sort of foreign investment holdings. The U.S. taxes on worldwide net income, which means any income generated in a foreign country will still be subject to U.S. taxation. He also gave a significant portion of his income to charity.

Revisit our 15% tax rate post about Romney.

Romney’s self-deportation in a nutshell is - don’t let illegal immigrants work and they’ll be forced to either find a legal path to citizenship or they’ll go back to their respective country of origin – i.e. “self-deport”. This approach organically leaves only two choices for illegal immigrants-(1)earn legality or (2)leave the U.S. The goal in this is essentially to have the U.S. save face by avoiding the backlash of forcible deportations and still give immigrants legal options for staying here.

It seems as though all of the Republican candidates see the importance of legal immigration, considering its strong foundation in this country - but the key word for them is legal.

A study done by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (F.A.I.R.) claims that illegal immigrants cost the U.S. $113 billion a year and that the burden has hit the states especially the hardest. In California, the additional cost of immigration each year is $21 billion – a number which is more than its current deficit. Opponents of these studies claim that it doesn’t fairly account for the GDP created by the population and unfairly includes children of illegals, who will eventually become U.S citizens.

Either way both Democrats and Republicans can agree that the system is flawed and in desperate need of reform. There’s an estimated 13 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. today and the number is growing. The DREAM Act, which was mentioned during the debate, is a bi-partisan bill that makes a pathway of legality for illegal immigrants that came here as children – however, it is being held up because many republicans believe that without modifications the bill encourages illegal immigration.

The hard truth is the term “illegal” isn’t just a label it refers to a law being broken and that’s why its clear we need reform. But what type of reform is up for debate. If it were a simple situation we would follow the letter of the law – but we’ve kept the status quo of turning the other cheek for so long that we have generations of families here now and that’s why finding the solution has become so difficult.

What kind of solution would you support?

This post can practically write itself and I’m just going to copy and paste excerpts from an employment and training programs report released by the Government Accountability Office (GAO):

“…little is known about the effectiveness of most programs. In fiscal year 2009, 9 federal agencies spent approximately $18 billion to administer 47 programs….Nearly all programs track multiple outcome measures, but only five programs have had an impact study completed since 2004 to assess whether outcomes resulted from the program and not some other cause”

So just what did the 5 impact studies find, according to the GAO:

“The five impact studies generally found that the effects of participation were not consistent across programs, with only some demonstrating positive impacts that tended to be small, inconclusive, or restricted to short-term impacts.”

To summarize, 9 agencies, spent $18,000,000,000, on 47 programs, which their own studies have shown have little if any positive impact.

I get that the government wants to say its helping the unemployed find jobs and these programs, at least, on the surface, seem well-intended. But how can we justify billions being spent on any program that doesn’t even work. When we decide to spend billions in the first place, shouldn’t effectiveness be a minimum requirement? This is a lose-lose situation for everyone – the unemployed aren’t actually being helped and taxpayer money is being virtually thrown away.

Read the full report here.

First off the claim that 15% is less than what the average American pays is very misleading, when in 2009 (the most recent year data is available from the IRS) the average American was taxed at about 11%. Second there is no magical tax code section that allows only rich people to legally evade paying taxes. The special capital gains rate does not only apply to the rich, when you go out and purchase stocks and subsequently sell them, that same special rate will apply to you too.

As far as Romney goes, his tax preparer popped his information into a tax software program and the system generated what he owed according the law – we’re not talking about something that he did illegally. And don’t forget the intention of the lower capital gains rate to begin with, which was to encourage investment – exactly what Romney did.

I really have a hard time understanding the mind set of enacting laws with the intention of creating growth and then villainizing people when they follow them. I especially can’t stand the medias attempt to further the divide between the so called rich and poor by using misleading information. Something you’ll hear a lot from us here is that we all need to work together – whether you like it or not the top 50% of people pay 97.7% of all taxes, with the top 1% paying 36.7%, this is certainly significant.

Check out this site which shows different income tax statistics.

How could they be good for us? They create jobs. It’s just that simple. When we chase corporations out with our high corporate tax rates and over regulation we lose jobs and revenue. Studies done by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) show that corporate taxes are the most harmful to economic growth. Recognizing this many countries have lowered their corporate tax rates. So why is it then that the U.S. remains unchanged and has one of the highest corporate tax rates out of all developed countries? Because Corporation has become a dirty word and the general public has been made to hate them. Albeit not without good reason, but it’s that old saying cutting off your nose to spite your face. We force out the corporations and with them their jobs and their revenues.

It’s certainly true that large corporations can choke out small businesses, treat employees poorly and unevenly distribute profits. As a small business owner myself I can absolutely appreciate the sentiment of protecting the future of the mom and pop shops, but the truth is my business wouldn’t exist without corporations. The cost of producing many of the raw materials I use in my products would be to large for a small business to bear on its own. It may be a hard pill to swallow but corporations exist and make up a part of our 100%. We should be working together to create policies that entice corporations to stay and create jobs while holding them accountable to the communities they operate within.

This synergistic approach has not gone unrecognized by corporations who affectionately refer to it as “creating shared value” – no longer is charitable giving a percentage of a budget its becoming an integral part of the business model. Nestle Co. created shared value when they launched their “Cocoa Plan” – an intiative to improve, stabilize and reduce poverty in the rural communities where their cocoa is produced. In 2010, they trained 2,400 farmers, produced 210,000 plants, implemented clean water programs in 12 villages and bought 6,400 tons of cocoa from 9,056 different farms in 20 cooperatives.  What does shared value mean to them -”Creating Shared Value is the basic way we do business, which states that in order to create long-term value for shareholders, we have to create value for society.”

As corporations begin to evolve, understanding the value in aligning shareholder goals with community ones, shouldn’t our politics begin to evolve as well? This isn’t to say Corporations deserve a get out of jail free card for their bad behavior, but it’s time both sides worked together towards mutually benficial goals.

Want to read more about Nestle – click here

See the full OECD study – click here