GAO Report Confirms Pigford Designed for Undetectable Fraud

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An official government report released Friday admits that the Pigford “Black Farmers” Settlement was designed with no mechanism for objectively determining fraud but hid that shocking conclusion under pages of bureaucratic doublespeak.

“Burying the lede” is a journalistic term used to describe the act of hiding essential information by putting non-essentials in front of it. On December 7, 2012, the United States Government Accountability Office released report number GAO-13-69R, also known as “Civil Rights: Additional Actions in Pigford II Claims Process Could Reduce Risk of Improper Determinations.”

Just based on the title, you can already tell the report is needlessly wordy. This helps bury what should be the bigger story—that the Pigford settlement isn’t the mere victim of a few fraudsters but was, in fact, set up to make fraud not just rampant but also totally undetectable.

Breitbart News has been reporting for years now that the Pigford settlement allowed people to collect $50,000 just for claiming that they “attempted to farm” and that no other proof was needed. As a result, many claim that billions of dollars in fraudulent “attempted to farm” claims were paid out by the federal government. The new GAO report actually confirms what the late Andrew Breitbart pointed out time and again: the Pigford settlement is a massive swindle on the U.S. taxpayer, and it was designed that way from the start.

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CBO: Feds Borrowing $4.8 billion Per Day in FY 2013, So Far

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The federal government ran a deficit of $292 billion for the first two months of fiscal year 2013 – October and November 2012 – amounting to $4.8 billion of borrowed money each day.

“The federal budget deficit was $292 billion for the first two months of fiscal year 2013, $57 billion more than the shortfall recorded in October and November of last year,” CBO said in its Monthly Budget Review Friday.

This means that the government borrowed $4.8 billion for each calendar day so far in 2013. If the Treasury Department restricted its borrowing to only weekdays, its per day average would jump to $6.5 billion per day thus far in fiscal year 2013.

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New ‘Gang of Eight’ On Immigration

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Make way for a new Gang of Eight.

An octet of senators has begun to meet to discuss immigration reform, multiple sources told POLITICO. It’s a possible sign of progress on what’s expected to be a top legislative priority on Capitol Hill next year.

Sources said the fledgling group’s members include: Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Michael Bennet of Colorado, Bob Menendez of New Jersey, and Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Mike Lee of Utah and Sen.-elect Jeff Flake of Arizona.

Some of the senators are already publicly teaming up on the issue. For instance, Schumer announced on “Meet the Press” shortly after the election that he and Graham were joining forces again on immigration, reviving talks from 2010 when the duo had outlined a four-point comprehensive reform proposal.

“Graham and I are talking to our colleagues about this right now and I think we have a darn good chance using this blueprint to get something done this year,” Schumer said on the Nov. 11 show. “The Republican Party has learned that being … anti-immigrant doesn’t work for them politically and they know it.”

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DeMint Move Ignites Talk of 2016 Presidential Run

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photo credit: gage skidmore

South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint’s surprise announcement that he will leave the U.S. Senate in January to take over leadership of the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank has ignited speculation among grass-roots conservatives that DeMint may use the new post as a launching pad for a presidential bid in 2016.

“Jim DeMint will have a bigger microphone than before,” conservative direct-marketing pioneer Richard Viguerie tells Newsmax. “If he wants to, this opens up a lot more opportunities for him. I think there’s a decent chance that he’ll be a serious presidential candidate in four years.”

Viguerie called the move to Heritage “an intermediate step.”

“It’s going to be a boon to the cause, to Heritage,” he said. “And it gives [DeMint] a major opportunity to run for president in four years. And if so, he would be the instant front-runner among most conservatives.”

DeMint already had effectively term-limited himself by announcing he would not seek another six years in the Senate. When GOP hopes of seizing control of the Senate were dashed in November, he was looking at four more years of life as a back-bencher, with relatively little influence over legislation passed by the upper chamber.

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FEMA Teams Told to ‘Sightsee’ as Sandy Victims Suffered

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Hurry up and wait.

That’s what first responders were left to do after being deployed by FEMA to assist in the storm-ravaged areas in the initial days after superstorm Sandy, FoxNews.com has learned. A FEMA worker who spoke to FoxNews.com described a chaotic scene at New Jersey’s Fort Dix, where emergency workers arrived as the storm bore down on the Atlantic Coast. The worker said officials at the staging area were unprepared and told the incoming responders there was nothing for them to do for nearly four days.

“They told us to hurry, hurry, hurry,” the worker, who works at the agency’s headquarters in Washington and volunteered to deploy for the storm recovery effort. “We rushed to Fort Dix, only to find out that our liaison didn’t even know we were coming.”

“The regional coordinator even said to us, ‘I don’t know why you were rushed here because we don’t need you,’” said the worker, who spoke out of frustration with the lack of planning and coordination following the devastating storm.

‘I worked in Katrina and Katrina was run better than Sandy.’

Read more from this story HERE.

FEC Report: Romney and RNC Donors Taken to the Cleaners

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Federal Election Commission financial reports filed Thursday showed that two consulting firms with close ties to key staffers at the Romney campaign and the Republican National Committee were paid more than $152 million by the three organizations that funded Mitt Romney’s unsuccessful 2012 presidential campaign.

FLS Connect, LLC, the Minnesota-headquartered firm where RNC chief of staff Jeff Larson was a partner from 1999 to 2010 and Romney campaign political director Rich Beeson was a partner from 2005 to 2007 and again from 2009 to 2011, received $56.3 million during the 2011-2012 election cycle. $38.6 million was paid to the firm by the Republican National Committee between January 1, 2011 and November 26, 2012, according to FEC reports. In addition, the Romney campaign paid FLS Connect $17.7 million during the same period . . .

Targeted Victory, LLC, the Virginia-headquartered firm that was co-founded by Romney campaign digital director Zac Moffat, received a total of $96.4 million during the 2011-2012 election cycle. $72 million came from Romney Victory, Inc., $22 million came from the Romney campaign, and $2.4 million came from the Republican National Committee.

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Smith and Wesson Posts 48% Increase In Second Quarter Sales As Demand Surges For All Firearm Products

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U.S. firearms manufacturer Smith and Wesson reported a 48 percent increase in sales in its announcement of the company’s second-quarter financial results for fiscal year 2013.

The company’s press release read: “Net sales from continuing operations for the second quarter were a record $136.6 million, up 48.0% from the second quarter last year. The increase was led by continued strong sales across all of the company’s firearm product lines.”

As CNSNews.com previously reported, gun sales have surged since the reelection of Barack Obama, reaching an all-time single day record on Black Friday this year with 154,873 background checks completed by the FBI.

Read more from this story HERE.

Unemployment Rate Falls; Number of Unemployed Stays the Same

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If it looks like there’s something weird in today’s unemployment announcement, that’s because there is. While the U-3 unemployment rate has declined slightly, to 7.7 percent, that doesn’t seem to reflect an increase in the number of Americans who are actually working.

In fact, labor force participation, the more important statistic for American workforce measurements, is down slightly. The unemployment rate looks better because it’s being measured against a smaller denominator. At Eagle Daily Investor, which is owned by the parent company of Human Events, Paul Dykewicz explains why it’s important to look beyond the headline statistic:

” . . . in November, 2.5 million persons were “marginally attached” to the labor force, essentially unchanged from a year earlier. The data, which are not seasonally adjusted, reflect individuals who the federal agency described as not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. However, those people were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the four weeks preceding the survey, the Bureau of Labor Statistics explained.”

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Coburn: GOP’s 2014 Candidates Must Come from ‘Real World’

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Breitbart News recently sat down with Oklahoma Senator Dr. Tom Coburn to get his thoughts on the fiscal cliff and what Republicans can do to win the 2014 midterm elections.

On November 15 Dr. Coburn gave a speech at the American Spectator’s Annual Dinner, addressing these issues. He called the current situation in America a “Valley Forge” moment for conservatives and suggested the GOP concentrate on a few points: truth, oversight, action, and accountability.

Dr. Coburn is famous for keeping an eye on wasteful spending by the government, but the majority of his colleagues ignore his reports. If the government took into consideration his reports and managed the waste instead of making excuses, the current financial mess would not be so difficult to overcome.

“Oversight isn’t very popular in Washington because politicians on both sides prefer to create new programs instead of looking at whether the programs we’ve already created are working,” said Dr. Coburn. “But I believe, oversight resonates with families because that’s how they live their lives every day. In the real world, people look at their budgets and make choices. In Washington, we make excuses, and defer choices to future generations.”

“The task before us is simple,” he explained. “Telling the truth, conducting oversight, taking action and holding politicians accountable will lead us out of our Valley Forge and on to victory.”

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Secret Service Under Investigation Over loss of Sensitive Files On Metro

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The Secret Service is the target of an investigation into an “immense breach” involving the loss of two backup computer tapes left on a Washington, D.C., Metro train that contained sensitive personal information about all agency employees, contacts and overseas informants, according to multiple law enforcement and congressional sources.

The ongoing probe is one of 13 new investigations involving the Secret Service launched by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General (DHS-OIG) in recent months. The new investigations stem from information received during the course of DHS-OIG’s ongoing ‘Culture of Secret Service’ probe, requested by the Senate Homeland Committee in the wake of the Cartagena, Colombia prostitution scandal in April. While these new investigations are ongoing, the Culture of the Secret Service report is expected to be released sometime in the spring.

The Secret Service acknowledged the incident surrounding the lost tapes, but downplayed the security risk.

Sources said the tapes were lost on the Red Line of the Metro in 2008 by a young, low-level associate of a private contracting company that had been hired to transport them from Secret Service’s Investigative Resources Management division at the agency’s headquarters in the Penn Quarter section of Washington, D.C., to a secure vault in Olney, Md., where government agencies store contingency plans, documents and other backup material. The employee had volunteered to deliver the tapes because he lived near the location of the vault, but got off at the Glenmont, Md., Metro stop without the tapes, according to sources.

Sources said the “personally identifiable information” — or “PII,” in government-speak — on the tapes includes combinations of the following: Social Security Numbers; home addresses; information about family members; phone numbers; dates of birth; medical information; bank account numbers; employment information; driver’s license numbers; passport numbers; and any biometric information on file with the Secret Service.

Read more from this story HERE.