Category Archives: Treasury

The Shameful Truth at the Veterans Admin Continues

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The shame of the Veterans Administration continues. Maybe it is time to launch a criminal prosecutor or at least task the FBI to investigate the Veterans Administration. At least, falsifying government documents is a felony.

Watchdog: 900,000 vets may have pending health care requests

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly 900,000 military veterans have officially pending applications for health care from the Department of Veterans Affairs, the department’s inspector general said Wednesday, but “serious” problems with enrollment data make it impossible to determine how many veterans were actively seeking VA health care.

About one-third of the 867,000 veterans with pending applications are likely deceased, the report says, adding that “data limitations” prevent investigators from determining how many now-deceased veterans applied for health care benefits or when. The applications go back nearly two decades, and officials said some applicants may have died years ago.

More than half the applications listed as pending as of last year do not have application dates, and investigators “could not reliably determine how many records were associated with actual applications for enrollment” in VA health care, the report said.

The report also says VA workers incorrectly marked thousands of unprocessed health-care applications as completed and may have deleted 10,000 or more electronic “transactions” over the past five years.

Linda Halliday, the VA’s acting inspector general, said the agency’s Health Eligibility Center “has not effectively managed its business processes to ensure the consistent creation and maintenance of essential data” and recommended a multi-year plan to improve accuracy and usefulness of agency records.

Halliday’s report came in response to a whistleblower who said more than 200,000 veterans with pending applications for VA health care were likely deceased.

The inspector general’s report substantiated that claim and others, but said there was no way to tell for sure when or why the person died. Similarly, deficiencies in the VA’s information security — including a lack of audit trails and system backups — limited investigators’ ability to review some issues fully and rule out data manipulation, Halliday said.

The VA has said it has no way to purge the list of dead applicants, and said many of those listed in the report are likely to have used another type of insurance before they died.

VA spokeswoman Walinda West said Wednesday the agency has publicly acknowledged that its enrollment process is confusing and that the enrollment system, data integrity and quality “are in need of significant improvement.”

Sens. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., chairman and senior Democrat of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, said in a joint statement that the inspector general’s report pointed to “both a significant failure” by leaders at the Health Eligibility Center and “deficient oversight by the VA central office” in Washington.

The lawmakers urged VA to implement the report’s recommendations quickly to improve record keeping at the VA and “ensure that this level of blatant mismanagement does not happen again.”

As of June 30, VA has contacted 302,045 veterans by mail, asking them to submit required documents to establish eligibility, West said. To date, VA has received 36,749 responses and enrolled 34,517 veterans, she said.

“As we continue our work to contact veterans, our focus remains on improving the enrollment system to better serve veterans,” West said.

The Health Eligibility Center has removed a “purge-and-delete functionality” from a computer system used to track agency workloads, West said. VA will provide six months of data to demonstrate that any changed or deleted data on VA workloads has undergone appropriate management review, with approvals and audit trails visible, she said.

IG report: 300,000 vets died while waiting for health care at VA

WASHINGTON –  More than 300,000 American military veterans likely died while waiting for health care — and nearly twice as many are still waiting — according to a new Department of Veterans Affairs inspector general report.

The IG report says “serious” problems with enrollment data are making it impossible to determine exactly how many veterans are actively seeking health care from the VA, and how many were. For example, “data limitations” prevent investigators from determining how many now-deceased veterans applied for health care benefits or when.

But the findings would appear to confirm reports that first surfaced last year that many veterans died while awaiting care, as their applications got stuck in a system that the VA has struggled to overhaul. Some applications, the IG report says, go back nearly two decades.

The report addresses serious issues with the record-keeping itself.

More than half the applications listed as pending as of last year do not have application dates, and investigators “could not reliably determine how many records were associated with actual applications for enrollment” in VA health care, the report said.

The report also says VA workers incorrectly marked thousands of unprocessed health-care applications as completed and may have deleted 10,000 or more electronic “transactions” over the past five years.

Linda Halliday, the VA’s acting inspector general, said the agency’s Health Eligibility Center “has not effectively managed its business processes to ensure the consistent creation and maintenance of essential data” and recommended a multi-year plan to improve accuracy and usefulness of agency records.

Halliday’s report came in response to a whistleblower who said more than 200,000 veterans with pending applications for VA health care were likely deceased.

The inspector general’s report substantiated that claim and others, but said there was no way to tell for sure when or why the person died. Similarly, deficiencies in the VA’s information security — including a lack of audit trails and system backups — limited investigators’ ability to review some issues fully and rule out data manipulation, Halliday said.

The VA has said it has no way to purge the list of dead applicants, and said many of those listed in the report are likely to have used another type of insurance before they died.

VA spokeswoman Walinda West said Wednesday the agency has publicly acknowledged that its enrollment process is confusing and that the enrollment system, data integrity and quality “are in need of significant improvement.”

Sens. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., chairman and senior Democrat of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, said in a joint statement that the inspector general’s report pointed to “both a significant failure” by leaders at the Health Eligibility Center and “deficient oversight by the VA central office” in Washington.

The lawmakers urged VA to implement the report’s recommendations quickly to improve record keeping at the VA and “ensure that this level of blatant mismanagement does not happen again.”

As of June 30, VA has contacted 302,045 veterans by mail, asking them to submit required documents to establish eligibility, West said. To date, VA has received 36,749 responses and enrolled 34,517 veterans, she said.

“As we continue our work to contact veterans, our focus remains on improving the enrollment system to better serve veterans,” West said.

The Health Eligibility Center has removed a “purge-and-delete functionality” from a computer system used to track agency workloads, West said. VA will provide six months of data to demonstrate that any changed or deleted data on VA workloads has undergone appropriate management review, with approvals and audit trails visible, she said.

IRS Commissioner Still has a Job After a $600M Mistake?

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IRS Inspector General

Just check out page 2 of the Inspector General’s report found here.

Over $572 Million in Excess Obamacare Tax Credits Paid Out

FreeBeacon: provided relief to individuals who received overpayments

The Internal Revenue Service paid out over $572 million in excess Obamacare tax credits and sent incorrect forms to over half a million individuals due to a computer programming error, according a new government report.

The report released by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration on Tuesday inspected the interim results of the IRS’s verification of Obamacare’s Premium Tax Credits, which were created to assist low or medium-income individuals and families to purchase health insurance in the marketplace.

 IRS Commissioner

Those who are eligible to receive tax credits under Obamacare can choose to have their credits paid either directly to their health insurance provider as a partial payment towards their monthly premiums—known as the Advance Premium Tax Credit—or can receive the tax credits as one lump sum on their annual income tax return.

According to the IRS, $11 billion worth of tax credits were paid in advance to insurers for fiscal year 2014. By March 26, 2015, the IRS processed around 1.4 million tax returns that showed $4.4 billion in credits, bringing the total to more than $15 billion for 2014. Individuals claimed more than $240 million in additional premium credits and received $572 million in excess advance payments, according to the agency.

The inspection also brought to light a computer programming error that led to more than half a million individuals receiving incorrect health insurance forms.

Incorrect versions of the Health Insurance Marketplace Form, or Form 1095-A, were sent out to 800,000 individuals who participated in Obamacare’s federal exchange.

The forms were sent as a result of a computer programming error that ultimately displayed premium amounts for calendar year 2015 rather than 2014. Taxpayers use the premium amount to determine their allowable Paid Tax Credit.

After the mistake was discovered, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services said that it would send corrected 1095-A forms and urged the affected individuals to hold off filling out their forms. However, the Treasury estimated that 50,000 of these individuals had already filled out their tax returns as of February 2015.

Treasury announced in late February that people who had already completed their tax returns did not have to correct the errors by filing an amended tax return and stated that they would not seek to recoup the excess payments.

“On February 24, 2015, Treasury announced that taxpayers enrolled in the Federal Exchange who have already filed their tax return do not need to file an amended tax return to correct errors in their PTC claim resulting from an incorrect Form 1095-A,” the report said. “Treasury stated that the IRS would not pursue action to recoup excess PTC these taxpayers may have received as a result of the error.”

Treasury further said in March that it would extend this relief to every person who filed an incorrect tax return with the wrong premium amounts.

“On March 20, 2015, Treasury expanded relief from filing an amended tax return to all taxpayers who received and filed a tax return based on an incorrect Form 1095-A,” the report states.

The extent to which the incorrect forms contributed to the $572 million in excess payments is unknown and still being evaluated.

The inspection also found that the IRS could not verify nearly 40 percent of enrollees who comprised the more than $15 billion in dispersed tax credits due to lack of information.

“This is par for the course with Obamacare. Even after years of work and billions of tax dollars spent, this law again and again fails to prevent the prodigious waste of Americans’ money,” said Curtis Kalin, a spokesman for the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste

“There must be an effective system in place to track where subsidies have been sent and to whom. That is one of the most basic safeguards against waste and fraud. Taxpayers deserve the assurance that their money isn’t being hopelessly squandered, especially when there are commonsense ways to prevent it.”

Democrats Met with Adversary Ambassadors, Yes Vote on Iran

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Lobby versus Lobby, Country vs. Country, Money and Influence are all the high standard in Washington DC. This is ‘ZACTLY‘ how it all works in and around the Hill.

Meanwhile, who influenced Barack Obama to rename a mountain or to demand the Washington Redskins NFL football team to seek a new name?

Democrats Admit to Being Lobbied by Russia, China and Europe Before Backing Iran Nuclear Deal

(CNSNews.com) – More than a dozen of the 34 Democratic senators who have declared their support for the Iran nuclear agreement cited arguments by America’s five negotiating partners that there would be no better deal forthcoming if the U.S. rejects this one.

On Wednesday, the number of senators to have publicly stated support for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) climbed to 34 – all Democrats – thereby giving President Obama the backing he needs to sustain his veto of a Republican-led resolution disapproving it, which is expected to pass by mid-September.

As previously undecided senators one by one came out in support of the agreement over the past month, references in their statements to the views of the other P5+1 governments involved in the negotiations – Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany – were strikingly common.

Many of them attended a briefing by ambassadors from those countries in early August.

When she announced her support for the deal on August 6, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said, “In a meeting earlier this week, when I questioned the ambassadors of our P5+1 allies, it also became clear that if we reject this deal, going back to the negotiation table is not an option.”

Four days later Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said she had asked the ambassadors of the five other countries involved in the talks “detailed questions about what their countries and others would do if Congress does not approve the agreement.”

“[N]ot one of them believed that abandoning this deal would result in a better deal,” she said. Instead, “international consensus” would splinter, sanctions would unravel and Iran’s nuclear program would be left unconstrained.

On Aug. 13, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) also referred to the ambassadors’ briefing.

“[S]ome say that, should the Senate reject this agreement, we would be in position to negotiate a ‘better’ one,” he wrote. “But I’ve spoken to representatives of the five nations that helped broker the deal, and they agree that this simply wouldn’t be the case.

Instead, these diplomats have told me that we would not be able to come back to the bargaining table at all, and that the sanctions regime would likely erode or even fall apart…”

“[A]t a recent meeting of leaders from our partner nations, I specifically asked the ambassadors to the U.S. from China, the United Kingdom, and Russia whether their countries would come back to negotiate again should the U.S. walk away from the deal,” Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) said on Aug. 17.

“They unanimously said, ‘No,’ that there was already a deal – the one before Congress.”

“I have no reason to disbelieve all five governments [Russia, China, Britain, France, Germany] speaking together,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) on Aug. 18. “I have heard their warnings that if we walk away from this agreement before even giving it a try, the prospect of further multilateral negotiations yielding any better result is ‘far-fetched.’”

“This agreement is not perfect, but I have personally spoken to leaders representing the P5+1 countries and the European Union who have said quite clearly that if the United States rejects this agreement, they will not join in new negotiations for a better deal,” Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) said on Aug 24.

“There are those who say that we should go back to the negotiating table and try to get a better deal,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said on Aug. 25. “I respect that view, but I have heard directly from top ambassadors representing our P5+1 partners as well as members of the administration that starting over is not an option.”

“Earlier this month, several of my colleagues and I met with representatives of our five negotiating partners,” Sen. Thomas Carper (D-Dela.) said on Aug. 28.

“They told us bluntly that if Congress kills this deal, the broad coalition of countries imposing sanctions on Iran would collapse,” he said. “If Congress rejects this deal now, a better one will not take its place, they declared.”

Menendez challenges ‘take it or leave it’ argument

Other JCPOA supporters who mentioned having taken into account the views of the other P5+1 ambassadors included Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Chris Coons (D-Dela.) and Robert Casey (D-Pa.).

One of just two Democratic senators to have come out in opposition to the JCPOA, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), challenged the notion that the other P5+1 countries would simply walk away from sanctions if the U.S. rejected the JCPOA and pushed for a better deal.

In his speech announcing his intention to vote to disapprove the deal, Menendez said the attraction of doing business with the United States would far outweigh the lure of Iran’s much smaller economy.

“Despite what some of our P5+1 ambassadors have said in trying to rally support for the agreement, and echoing the administration’s admonition, that it is a take it or leave it proposition, our P5+1 partners will still be worried about Iran’s nuclear weapon desires and the capability to achieve it,” he said.

“They, and the businesses from their countries, and elsewhere, will truly care more about their ability to do business in a U.S. economy of $17 trillion than an Iranian economy of $415 billion,” Menendez said.

He was alluding to U.S. secondary sanctions, which would close the U.S. marketplace to companies and banks that do business with Iran.

 

Soros and China vs. M1A1’s and F-35’s: Irregular Warfare

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A kinder, gentler weapon, software, economic terrorism and exploiting weakness. What the U.S. military knows and what government leaders know but find difficult to defeat, IRREGULAR WARFARE.

The main protagonist in this section of the history book will not be a statesman or a military strategist; rather, it will be George Soros. Of course, Soros does not have an exclusive monopoly on using the financial weapon for fighting wars. Before Soros, Helmut Kohl used the deutsche mark to breach the Berlin Wall–a wall that no one had ever been able to knock down using artillery shells [see Endnote 13]. After Soros began his activities, Li Denghui [Li Teng-hui 2621 4098 6540] used the financial crisis in Southeast Asia to devalue the New Taiwan dollar, so as to launch an attack on the Hong Kong dollar and Hong Kong stocks, especially the “red-chip stocks.” [Translator’s note: “red-chip stocks” refers to stocks of companies listed on the Hong Kong stock market but controlled by mainland interests.] In addition, we have yet to mention the crowd of large and small speculators who have come en masse to this huge dinner party for money gluttons, including Morgan Stanley and Moody’s, which are famous for the credit rating reports that they issue, and which point out promising targets of attack for the benefit of the big fish in the financial world [see Endnote 14]. These two companies are typical of those entities that participate indirectly in the great feast and reap the benefits.

Soros pours out all his bitterness in his book, The Crisis of Global Capitalism. On the basis of a ghastly account of his investments in 1998, Soros analyzes the lessons to be learned from this economic crisis.

When it comes to the axiom, Know Thy Enemy, China has made an art of this objective. China does so by any means possible with notable success.

In 1999, China used analysts to understand their adversaries such that the primary mission was to achieve a wide set of competitive edges, all under the ethos of ‘Unrestricted Warfare’.

Going beyond the common air or ground war operations, there are countless other methods to gain advantage or defeat others in a competitive world.

A 200 page essay published in 1999 came to the attention of U.S. military leaders. It is a compelling read and germane to conflicts today and well into the future.

Unrestricted Warfare  by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui 

Qiao Liang is a Chinese Air Force Major in the People’s Liberation Army and co-authored a book titled  ‘Unrestricted Warfare’. The scope of the book is China’s Master Plan to Destroy America.

Meanwhile, if you can stand more, there is Russia. The two countries are using the very same software warfare tactical playbook and it too has not gone unnoticed.

EU sets up unit to counter Russia’s disinformation campaigns

Janes: The EU announced on 27 August that it is forming a small “rapid response” team of officials within the European External Action Service (EEAS) to deal with Russian propaganda.

To be launched on 1 September, the team will monitor Moscow’s propaganda manoeuvres and advise EU and national authorities and their media campaigns accordingly, said EU officials.

The move comes in response to a request in March by EU leaders to Federica Mogherini, the EU’s chief of foreign and security policy, to mount a response to “Russia’s ongoing disinformation campaign”.

The team will be comprised of 8-10 Russian-speaking officials from Sweden, the UK and other countries within the EEAS, the EU’s foreign policy wing.

***

The Cyber War: As tension between the United States, Russia and China continues to escalate, reports of cyber warfare between the nations has become increasingly prominent. Modern warfare can be waged in numerous ways, and it seems that this virtual form of conflict will be an increasing theme as the 21st century develops.

 

The cyber warfare between the United States, Russia and China is part of an overall epoch-defining conflict between the three nations. This is largely based on economic disagreement and rivalry, but has also spilled over into military and territorial disputes as well. Although this war has remained physically peaceful thus far, the potential for future conflict between the three nations remains significant. And with the likes of Edward Snowden revealing the extent of government snooping, we can expect more reports of governmental cyber attacks in the future.

 

Meet Criminal Ebrahim Shabudin Costs Taxpayers Millions

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Securities and Exchange Commission v. Thomas S. Wu, Ebrahim Shabudin, and Thomas T. Yu 

Exec at center of first TARP bank failure gets 8 years in prison

Fraud scheme cost taxpayers more than $300 million

More from Drew Harwell at the Washington Post: In 2009, less than a year after its $300 million taxpayer-funded rescue, the United Commercial Bank burned through the cash to become America’s first bailout-boosted bank to fail during the financial meltdown.

But this week, one of the imploded bank’s former senior executives was sentenced to eight years in prison for covering up its collapsing loans, becoming one of the few high-ranking bankers to face punishment for crisis-era crimes.

Ebrahim Shabudin, a former chief credit officer for the San Francisco-based bank, falsified records to hide major loan losses from auditors and investors in what prosecutors called a “delay-and-pray” scheme, even as the bank sought and pocketed cash from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.

The bank, which once managed nearly $11 billion in assets and ran more than 50 branches across the United States, China and Taiwan, became the ninth largest to fail since 2007 even with help from the multitrillion-dollar bailout. Its dramatic failure cost the federal fund that insures Americans’ deposits more than $675 million.

The bailout’s chief watchdog called the years-long investigation into Shabudin “one of the most significant prosecutions” for crimes in the shadow of the financial meltdown. In March, after a six-week trial, a federal jury convicted Shabudin, 66, of seven counts of conspiracy and corporate fraud, making him one of the rare high-level bankers to head to court due to crisis-era crimes.

“Shabudin had every opportunity to do the right thing, but he was motivated instead to preserve the bank’s reputation at all costs, even if it meant committing a crime,” said Christy Goldsmith Romero, the special inspector general for TARP. “He was essentially gambling with taxpayers’ bailout dollars, and it was taxpayers who ultimately lost.”

But his sentencing may do little to quiet criticism that few big fraudsters have been punished in the meltdown’s long aftermath. The watchdog has secured convictions against 200 bank officers and other officials, but most were involved in smaller community banks, not Wall Street titans like those that used taxpayer money to pave over bad bets or dole out big bonuses.

Originally specializing in lending to Chinese Americans, the bank grew aggressively through commercial real-estate loans, becoming the first U.S. financial institution to buy a Chinese bank.

Its high-risk lending nearly doubled the bank’s loan portfolio between 2004 and 2007, to more than $8 billion, and made a rising star of chief executive Thomas Shiu-Kit (“Tommy”) Wu, who in 2006 was named auditing giant Ernst & Young’s financial-services Entrepreneur of the Year.

But as the bank’s river of risky loans began to fail, Shabudin and Wu held off on downgrading loans they knew were falling apart, ordered subordinates to understate the bank’s losses by at least $65 million, and blasted out false information in press releases, earning calls and annual reports.

Federal watchdogs including from the Federal Reserve, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the FBI joined the case, making Shabudin and bank senior vice president Thomas Yu the first senior bank officials charged with fraud at a bailout-boosted financial institution.

Shabudin was the bank’s third officer to be criminally convicted, after Yu and chief financial officer Craig S. On pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges late last year. An outstanding warrant is in place for Wu, the chief executive, who has not yet been apprehended.

[SIGTARP proves that some bankers aren’t too big to jail]

Though credited with helping stabilize the wobbling economy, the bailout is remembered by many for its corporate largesse, including the hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses paid to the heads of failing banks rescued by taxpayer cash.

Yet many of SIGTARP’s cases have focused on brazen acts of accounting fraud and smaller banks’ misspent millions. In one case, the executive of Mainstreet Bank, a community bank in Missouri, used nearly $400,000 of the bank’s $1 million bailout to buy a waterfront Florida condo.

The first person convicted of stealing bailout funds, Charles Antonucci, pleaded guilty in 2010 to bribes, fraud and embezzlement while serving as president of the Manhattan-based Park Avenue Bank. He was sentenced last month to 30 months in prison, down from a potential maximum of 135 years, because prosecutors said he cooperated with the bank probe.

William K. Black, a former bank regulator and University of Missouri associate professor specializing in white-collar crime, said Shabudin’s role in only the ninth-largest bank failure highlights the failure of regulators to combat larger frauds.

The Justice Department has still “prosecuted no banking leader for leading the three epidemics of fraud that hyper-inflated the bubble, drove the financial crisis, and caused the Great Recession,” referring to appraisal, loan and secondary-market fraud.

“Thousands of elite bankers reported pathetically inadequate” estimates of their bad debts similar to this bank’s, “and they face no investigations, much less prosecutions,” Black said. “The larger bank frauds were all bailed out this time around.”