The Defense Department is unable to account for $8.7 billion of the $9.1 billion in Development Fund for Iraq monies in received for reconstruction in Iraq. This according to a study published today by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.
"This situation occurred because most DoD organizations receiving DFI (Development Fund for Iraq) funds did not establish the required Department of the Treasury accounts and no DoD organization was designated as the executive agent for managing the use of DFI funds," the report states.
The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) finds that only one Defense organization actually set up the accounts required by the Treasury.
"The breakdown in controls left the funds vulnerable to inappropriate uses and undetected loss," SIGIR says.
The study recommends that the Secretary of Defense create new accounting and reporting procedures to avoid such mistakes in the future. It also recommends designating an executive agent to oversee progress, establishing measurable milestones, and determining whether any DoD organizations are still holding DFI funds.
It all comes down to one basic verb. Can you find it in the following paragraph?
Obama's executive order reads, "By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act (22 U.S.C. 288), and in order to extend the appropriate privileges, exemptions, and immunities to the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol)…"
There's the magic verb: "to extend!"
As I wrote in any earlier column on Interpol, is it also just coincidental that Interpol is exempt from typical American search and seizure laws?
Sound too conspiratorial to be true? Like the cover-up ops of spy novels? Well, it's reality. And it is possibly the most bizarre, inhumane and abusive way that the White House is expanding its power over the American people.
It's not an extremist belief or theory of the far Right. It's a fact that has been confirmed by publications such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC and even documented by the far-Left blog, Salon.com.
LONDON — Perhaps the only consistent thing about Britain’s socialized health care system is that it is in a perpetual state of flux, its structure constantly changing as governments search for the elusive formula that will deliver the best care for the cheapest price while costs and demand escalate.
Even as the new coalition government said it would make enormous cuts in the public sector, it initially promised to leave health care alone. But in one of its most surprising moves so far, it has done the opposite, proposing what would be the most radical reorganization of the National Health Service, as the system is called, since its inception in 1948.
Practical details of the plan are still sketchy. But its aim is clear: to shift control of England’s $160 billion annual health budget from a centralized bureaucracy to doctors at the local level. Under the plan, $100 billion to $125 billion a year would be meted out to general practitioners, who would use the money to buy services from hospitals and other health care providers.
Idaho topped the list where it comes to reducing state jobs. I am very thankful for the one I have, but also applaud the effort at trimming down and reducing spending. It is a somewhat complicated symbiosis in my mind. via idahostatesman.com:
Idaho reduced state jobs by 6.9 percent between June 2009 and June 2010, leading the nation in state government employment cuts, says the Rockefeller Institute of Government.
Of the 28 states that cut state jobs, Idaho was easily the biggest trimmer, trailed by Hawaii, which cut 4.5 percent of state jobs.
Meanwhile, during that time period, Idaho's local governments grew jobs by 2.7 percent. Private employment was down 0.8 percent.
Only a month and a half away now! Pre-season is heating up and KTVB has a couple of articles on the Broncos. First, the polls:
Media Poll (1st place votes)
Coaches Poll (1st place votes)
Boise State (42)
386
Boise State (8)
64
Nevada (1)
333
Nevada (1)
55
Fresno State
300
Fresno State
50
Idaho
207
Utah State
37
Louisiana Tech
200
Hawaii
36
Utah State
196
Idaho
33
Hawaii
166
Louisiana Tech
26
New Mexico State
81
New Mexico State
14
San Jose State
66
San Jose State
9
Second, Kellen Moore is announced as the preseason WAC Offensive Player of the Year:
Salt Lake City, UT -- On Monday the WAC announced the media around the Western Athletic Conference have voted Boise State junior quarterback Kellen Moore as the conferences preseason Offensive Player of the Year for 2010.
Nevada defensive end Dontay Moch was voted the preseason Defensive Player of the Year.
Moore led the Broncos to an incredible 14-0 season in 2009 which included a 17-10 victory over TCU in the Fiesta Bowl.
Think cap and trade is dead? Think again: Politico’s Mike Allen reports that Obama and the Democratic congressional leadership have a plan, a continuation and deepening of the disregard for the American public they so amply demonstrated through the process by which they passed the despised HCR bill:
Phil Schiliro, the White House congressional liaison, has told the Senate to aim to take up an energy bill the week of July 12, after the July 4 break (and after the scheduled final passage of Wall Street reform). Kagan confirmation will follow, ahead of the summer break, scheduled to begin Aug. 9. The plan is to conference the new Senate bill with the already-passed House bill IN A LAME-DUCK SESSION AFTER THE ELECTION, so House members don’t have to take another tough vote ahead of midterms.
The rest of the piece goes on to make it clear that this plan has the full support of President Obama, who himself does not face re-election until 2012 and wants cap and trade passed before the year is out.
This “fierce urgency of now” comes from the obvious political consideration that a lame duck Congress has nothing to lose. Once it’s been thrown under the bus and lies there bleeding (actually, you might say it threw itself in front of the bus, but let’s not quibble about the finer points), it might just as well enact a piece of legislation that will further bankrupt the country and please the left fringe and nobody else. Beware a group that’s still in power but has stopped fearing any consequences from the public.
Crazy! Based on the eyewitness accounts, he lost one engine prior to the jet losing control. Don't know if it was mechanical, bird strike, or other, but the pilot managed to eject with no time to spare. You can see the plane come in on a slow, high angle pass, then lean to one side just before. The canopy blows off but because there is not much airflow to pull it back and away, the pilot almost gets put right into it like Goose from Top Gun.
