Free Republic

You've met America's 'worst mayor' Tiffany Henyard, and now meet the woman who may be the country's worst sheriff. Rochelle Bilal is currently the deputy sheriff for the City and County of Philadelphia, and has been for the last four years - but she has recently been embroiled in scandal, including frivolous spending, maintaining a secret 'slush fund,' and allegedly losing 76 guns from her department. Bilal's campaign team also came forward and acknowledged that 30 fake positive 'news' stories posted to their site were generated by ChatGPT after the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that outlets could not find the stories...

A top aide to new Philadelphia Sheriff Rochelle Bilal said he was fired and escorted out of the office by armed deputies after raising concerns about controversial spending practices that have dogged the agency for years. Brett Mandel, who lasted just five weeks as Bilal’s chief financial officer, said her first order of business was to continue spending with little budgetary planning or oversight. She spent out of a multimillion-dollar fund of money from fees collected by the office for sheriff’s sales, serving writs, and other duties, Mandel said, describing it as a “slush fund.” Mandel said that he was...

WASHINGTON — After months of negotiations, lawmakers in the House and Senate have reached an agreement on Wednesday on legislation that would address how sexual harassment claims are dealt with in Congress, it was announced Wednesday. The legislation would hold members of Congress personally liable for awards and settlements stemming from harassment and related retaliation they personally commit, including those who leave office. They can no longer pay out settlements with taxpayer funds and would be required to foot the bill within 90 days or their wages could be garnished.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The IRS is unable to account for $67 million spent from a slush fund established for Obamacare implementation, according to a Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) report released today. The “Health Insurance Reform Implementation Fund” (HIRIF) was tucked into Obamacare in order to give the IRS money to enforce the tax provisions of the healthcare law. The fund, totaling some $1 billion of taxpayer money, was used to roll out enforcement mechanisms for the approximately 50 tax provisions of Obamacare. According to the report: “Specifically, the IRS did not account for or attempt to quantify...

U.S. taxpayers flying standby in Solyndra bankruptcy case Published: September 29, 2011 OKLAHOMA City was the birthplace of Braniff Airways. Lost it to Dallas, in 1945. Dallas lost it 37 years later when Braniff nosedived into bankruptcy. In 1986, Oklahoma City tried to lure a major Boeing maintenance center. Lost it to Lake Charles, La., which lost it a few years later when Boeing operations were grounded by the economy. Oklahoma City went after a $1 billion United Airlines maintenance center. Lost it to Indianapolis, in 1991. United's parent company filed for bankruptcy 11 years later and scuttled the Indy...

Bloomberg backs 9/11 benefits billLast Updated: Monday, December 20, 2010 | 6:51 PM ET CBC News New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg urged the U.S. Congress on Monday to approve a bill to help the police, firefighters and other emergency workers who became ill after working in the area around the World Trade Center towers that collapsed on 9/11. "Caring for the men and women who rush to our defence on that dark day and on the days that followed is nothing less than a national duty," Bloomberg said during a news conference attended by politicians, police officials and the families...

How 'Race to the Top' is rewriting U.S. education WASHINGTON — When Education Secretary Arne Duncan inserted a half-page program description into the economic stimulus act last year, few except top Democratic leaders knew that it would create Race to the Top, a multibillion-dollar sweepstakes to overhaul U.S. schools that gave Duncan's department unprecedented power. With only $4.3 billion — less than 1 percent of federal, state and local education dollars — Race to the Top is one of many small, relatively inexpensive projects that lawmakers plopped into the recovery act.

States, Cities Likely to Slash Jobs As Stimulus DwindlesPublished: Tuesday, 9 Mar 2010 | 1:58 PM ET By: Albert Bozzo Senior Features Editor The worst looks to be over for private-sector unemployment, but it may be just beginning for state and local government workers. State and local government payrolls typically don’t decline much until a year after the beginning of a recession because budgets are already in place and fairly inflexible. As a result, payrolls were stable in 2008 and a good part of 2009. But not anymore. Revenue-starved states are taking more drastic steps to balance budgets. "This is...

Today, Grover Norquist and I are calling for an investigation into Rahm Emanuel’s activities at Freddie Mac, and the White House’s blocking of an Inspector General who would look into it. The letter follows: (Letter printed in body of comment below) Rahm Emanuel was appointed to the board of Freddie Mac in February of 2000 by Bill Clinton, after serving as White House political director where he was a vocal defender of Mr. Clinton during the Monica Lewinski matter. He served there until leaving to run for Congress in 2001, which qualified him for $380,000 in stock and options and...

The big news in last year’s budget release was the revelation that the Obama administration planned to use cap-and-trade to raise $646 billion dollars over ten years to finance its big spending programs. At the time I wrote here in the Fox Forum that estimate was a lowball of what actually constituted the biggest tax increase in U.S. history, something White House economist Jason Furman later admitted when he revealed the real revenue would likely be triple the official estimate. So the first thing I checked in this year’s budget was how much revenue was expected from the cap-and-trade energy...

Obama team, Congress divided on TARPLawmakers at odds over how to spend remaining $330 billion By Sean Lengell Friday, July 10, 2009 The Obama administration and Congress are squabbling over how to spend the hundreds of billions of dollars that remain from last year's $700 billion bank bailout fund. The debate will grow more pressing in the coming months as Capitol Hill lawmakers review the progress and map out the future of the nine-month-old Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. While TARP was established to help jump-start the faltering economy by offering quick capital to financially distressed financial institutions, many...

The Blanco administration is still spending state money on lawmakers’ pet projects, six months after the governor officially pulled the plug on what critics call slush funds. Among those receiving money are the son and former daughter-in-law of a lawmaker. Rep. Arthur Morrell, D-New Orleans, acknowledged his family members are on the payroll of Forever Our Children, an after-school tutoring program he used his legislative clout to establish. He said he discounts any criticism of the arrangement. “I had a couple of comments about it, but I told them where to go,” Morrell said. Forever Our Children was one of...

<p>When I'm walking my dogs or jogging in 8-degree weather, one thought pervades my junk-drawer brain: How do they do it?</p> <p>How do animals big and small survive frigid January weather?</p> <p>Heading snout-first through a blizzard, I imagine myself as a squirrel, mole or weasel -- not a hard thing to imagine, my wife says -- wearing a leotard of fur and trying to survive frigid weather for one full day. Perhaps I would survive, but I'd be cranky.</p>

Hawaii's state pension fund, unable to escape the clutches of one of the worst bear stock markets in history, fell for the second year in a row as it ended its 2002 fiscal year with a $419 million investment loss. Investments by the Employees' Retirement System fund lost 5.08 percent for its fiscal year ended June 30 and finished with a market value of just more than $8 billion, according to unaudited figures released yesterday. The drop in the fund's market value from just under $9 billion at the end of fiscal year 2001 is attributable to benefit payouts of...

<p>Maybe it's time to install a payment window in the governor's office. Consider the raises that Gov. Gray Davis approved for the state's prison guards.</p> <p>On Jan. 16, he signed a 34 percent pay increase for the correctional officers, raising pay from $50,000 to $65,000 per guard over the four-year contract. Then, just over two weeks ago, he collected a campaign donation of $251,000 from the officers' union.</p>