Free Republic

The thing we were told never happens, happened on Skid Row for 20 years The U.S. Department of Justice announced Monday that a Marina del Rey woman has agreed to plead guilty to a federal charge of paying individuals, including homeless people on Skid Row, to register to vote using false or vague addresses, a scheme prosecutors say spanned approximately 20 years. Court documents state Brenda Lee Brown Armstrong, 64, also known as “Anika,” paid individuals small amounts of cash, cigarettes, or other items to complete voter registration forms, often using her former address or nonspecific locations. She faces one...

The Federal-State Unemployment Insurance program paid out $10.3 billion in benefits in 2012 to people who should not have received the money, according to the Department of Labor (DOL). The data provided on the government website, paymentaccuracy.gov, shows those payments amount to 11.42 percent of all the unemployment insurance checks handed out—an increase from 11.36 percent in 2011 and in excess of the government’s “target” for overpayments of 9.66 percent. The DOL states that most of the data reported on its paymentaccuracy website was for the federal government’s fiscal year, which runs from Sept. 30 to Oct. 1, but that...

Parent of second Shangri-La client says son offered money to register to vote By Joel Gallob Of the News-Times The mother of a second mentally handicapped Lincoln County resident asserted this week that Shanrgi-La corporation inappropriately induced her son to register to vote on Ballot Measure 28. She said her son, age 23, is diagnosed as autistic, and does not follow politics. She said he can read, but noted that his comprehension of what he reads is modest at best. He is, however, a whiz at Nintendo games and good with computers in general, and worked at a video store...