Proof Republicans Don't Care About 'Lost' Health Insurance

October 31, 2013 03:00 PM

Proof Republicans Don't Care About 'Lost' Health Insurance

We've heard so much sound and fury and angst from media and Republicans this week about the whole "If you like your plan you can keep it" promise, which is intended to play in the wild as Republican concern for constituents losing their health care plans. It almost makes you think they care, doesn't it?
They don't. Thanks to Jonathan Cohn, we know as fact they don't give a damn about people losing their health insurance. The New Republic:

It’s good politics, I’m sure. It’s also breathtakingly cynical. Republicans have repeatedly endorsed proposals that would take insurance away from many more Americans—and leave them much, much worse off.
Start with the federal budgets crafted by Paul Ryan. You remember those, right? Those proposals passed through the House with unanimous Republican support and were, in 2012, a basis of the Republican presidential platform. Those budgets called for dramatic funding cuts to Medicaid. If Republicans had swept into power and enacted such changes, according to projections prepared by Urban Institute scholars and published by the Kaiser Family Foundation, between 14 and 20 million Medicaid recipients would lose their insurance. And that doesn’t even include the people who are starting to get Medicaid coverage through Obamacare’s expansions of the program. That's another 10 to 17 million people.

And of course, those numbers don't include the millions getting the door slammed in their faces because they don't qualify for subsidies but do qualify for Medicaid, if Republican governors hadn't declined the Medicaid expansion.
Beyond that, the non-existent Republican plan to "repeal and replace" conspicuously lacks the "replace" part of the equation.

Under the Republican plan, by contrast, people losing employer insurance would end up in the dysfunctional, non-reformed individual market—the one full of confusing, junk policies that might not cover basic services like maternity or mental health or have huge gaps in coverage. And the people losing Medicaid? They would end up with … nothing at all.

Spare me all of the breast-beating over the website and the "if you like your plan" nonsense. This is the real story right here, and the one most people aren't hearing.

White House gives out it's own Tricks and Treats.

October 28, 2013
(Washington, D.C.)  - Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) is back with a vengeance to highlight the dark side of Washington’s spooky spending sprees and far more rare fiscal treats.  Just in time for Halloween, CAGW’s 12^th annual illustration of financial tricks and treats features an assortment of the federal government’s fiscal woes and wonders, both sinister and satisfyingly sweet.  CAGW agrees that everyone’s entitled to at least one good scare this Halloween, so prepare to be afraid.  Be very afraid…    

Trick:  Obamacare Rollout - Look! It’s moving. It’s alive. It’s alive! It’s…a train wreck. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reported that almost $394 million was spent to support the “glitchy” Obamacare web portal that was supposed to work flawlessly to allow individuals to sign up for healthcare exchanges starting on October 1, 2013.

Treat:  Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) - Rep. Rob Andrews (D-N.J.) compared MEADS to Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, saying “you think it is dead and it keeps popping out of the bathtub again.” This time MEADS may be drowned for good as the Pentagon cancelled the program effective at the end of fiscal year (FY) 2013.

Trick: Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) -Your eyes are not deceiving you:  MEADS is both a trick and a treat this year.  The ghost of MEADS past will return for what will (hopefully) be the final time for a test in November.  Hosted by the U.S., this test is widely speculated to be a showpiece for the system contractor and partner nations Germany and Italy in order to attempt to attract additional countries willing to invest in the program.  

Trick:  Payments to the Deceased - These zombies are still collecting a paycheck! In a June 2013 audit report, the Social Security Administration Office of the Inspector General revealed that the agency had paid “2,475 beneficiaries for months or even years after it received notifications they were deceased.”

Treat:  Sequestration Spending Caps - To some Democrats who opposed spending cuts, it may have seemed like Republicans went a little “batty” in 2011 when they agreed to the sequestration provisions of the Budget Control Act.  Sequestration spending caps will have cut discretionary spending levels by $85.3 billion in 2013 and will cut $109.3 billion annually from 2014-2021.  It was a treat for taxpayers that these cuts were maintained in the October 16 budget deal that re-opened the government through January 15, 2014.

Trick: Stolen Identity Refund Fraud (SIRF) - Victims…aren’t we all?  This may be true for Eric Draven from the 1994 thriller The Crow, but it should not be the case for U.S. taxpayers.  Unfortunately, each year thousands of Americans are defrauded by criminals who use their identities to submit fraudulent tax returns.  The Internal Revenue Service could issue $26 billion to identity thieves over the next five years.

Treat: National Drug Intelligence Center (NDIC) - In FY 2013, Congress agreed with the Obama Administration’s proposal to eliminate $12 million in annual funding for the NDIC.  CAGW, among others, noted for years that the center was largely duplicative of other federal, state, and local programs, and produced many of the same documents as other sources.  The NDIC was a pet project of the late Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), who supplied the program with a total of $47.5 million in earmarks.

Trick:  STEM Consolidation - Like a cheesy horror film, President Obama’s FY 2014 budget is predictable yet impossible to ignore.  The President requested a restructuring of the more than 200 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education programs that are spread throughout 13 agencies at an annual cost of $3.1 billion.  Not only did he fail to propose saving a single red penny, he requested an increase in funding of $195 million.

Treat:  High Speed Rail Program - In June 2013, the House Appropriations Committee declared that none of the $15.3 billion provided in the FY 2014 transportation appropriations bill would be used to fund the California high-speed rail program, preventing the “ghost-train-to-nowhere” program from claiming billions in federal funds.

Trick: RAC’s suspension - CMS is taking the words “frightening,” “horrific,” and “terrifying” to new levels with their three-month suspension of the use of recovery audit contractors (RACs), who help identify improper payments and expose billing system vulnerabilities in Medicare claims.  Since 2009, the recovery audit contract program, which was created to reduce the amount of improper payments, has returned $4.5 billion to the Medicare Trust Fund.

Treat: Yucca Mountain - On August 13, 2013, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit played the part of the “good witch” when it issued a writ of mandamus ordering the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to resume its review of the Yucca Mountain license application.  The mandamus order requires the commission to move forward with the licensing proceeding “unless and until Congress authoritatively says otherwise or there are no appropriated funds remaining.”

Trick: Debt Ceiling - Unlike the nightmares from Freddie Krueger’s Elm Street, this is no dream!  H. J. Res. 59 was signed into law by President Obama on October 17, 2013.  The legislation will finance the government through January 15, 2014 and raise the debt limit through February 7.  As a result, the national debt jumped by a record $328 billion, bringing the total U.S. debt to a terrifying $17.1 trillion.  Every man, woman and child in the U.S. population of 316,870,868 owes $53,896.06 as his or her share of the debt, or $148,629 for each taxpayer.  Now that’s scary!

CAGW  is a private, non-partisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, mismanagement, and inefficiency in government.

There's Something Absolutely Insane Happening In The House Right Now

Posted: 10/30/2013 11:13 am

There's something absolutely insane happening in the House of Representatives right now.
To fully appreciate said insanity, we have to take an unpleasant but brief trip down memory lane -- back to the darkest days of the 2008 financial crisis. Insurance giant American International Group (AIG) was on the verge of collapse, and the U.S. government stepped in with an $85 billion bailout. The risky behavior that drove AIG to the brink was largely fueled by a financial instrument known as derivatives trading.
In the wake of the financial crisis, many people were less than enthusiastic about the prospect of footing a multi-billion dollar bill every time Wall Street gambled its way into a corner. So, when Congress passed a new set of financial regulations known as Dodd-Frank in 2010, it included a provision that required banks to conduct some forms of derivatives trading in a more isolated way in an effort to reduce risk and make government bailouts less likely. Many reform advocates would have preferred much stronger protections, but given the $12.4 million in campaign contributions and $105 million in lobbying expenditures by Wall Street industry groups attempting to influence the law, it was certainly better than nothing.
Now, the House is scheduled to vote on a bill that would roll back these derivative regulations and let banks go back to the same set of rules that let them break the economy in the first place. This brings us to insane part: According to the New York Times, the bill is currently enjoying "broad bipartisan support" in the House. So, why is it that both parties have found a way to agree on a substantive regulatory change at a time when partisan bickering is supposedly making any progress impossible?
It's certainly not because the public is up in arms about rolling back derivative regulations -- most Americans have never heard of derivatives trading, let alone pressured their Member of Congress to deregulate it. No, this is happening for a very different reason: Big bank lobbyists wrote this bill.
That's not a cute turn of phrase or an exaggeration -- The New York Times reports that 70 of the 85 lines in the new House bill reflect recommendations made in a piece of model legislation drafted by lobbyists for Citigroup, another bank that played a major role in the 2008 crisis and also received billions of federal stimulus dollars. The same report also revealed "two crucial paragraphs, prepared by Citigroup in conjunction with other Wall Street banks, were copied nearly word for word." You can even view the original documents and see how Citigroup's lobbyists redrafted the House Bill, striking out ideas they didn't like and replacing them with ones they did. Wall Street is quite literally writing its own rules.
Wall Street's astonishing level of influence comes courtesy of the disproportionate roll money plays in our political system. The derivatives bill was sponsored by Rep. Randy Hultgren (R - IL). According to Maplight.org, a nonpartisan research organization that tracks money around congressional votes, Hultgren's top source of campaign contributions is the Securities and Investment industry. The Bill also has 8 co-sponsors -- four Republicans and four Democrats. Maplight's data also shows donors with Wall Street ties as major sources of campaign funding for six of the eight cosponsors (Reps. Spencer Bachus (R - AL), Scott Garrett (R - NJ), Jim Himes (D - CT), Sean Maloney (D - NY), Bradley Schneider (D - IL), and David Scott (D - GA) ).

Bill cosponsor Rep. Jim Himes (D - CT) is a former Goldman Sachs executive

But wait, there's more. Members of the House received $22.4 million from interest groups that support the bill -- that's 5.8 times more than they received from interest groups opposed. Wall Street has also spent nearly $50 million on lobbying in 2013 alone.
So to review: We have a bill that would roll back protections put in place after the financial crisis that was literally written by lobbyists for one of the major players in that same financial crisis. This bill is being sponsored by a bipartisan group of Congressman -- including a former Wall Street executive -- who depend on Wall Street to fund their campaigns. This bill enjoys bipartisan support in a House that received over $22.4 million in Wall Street contributions and is under constant assault from nearly $50 million worth of Wall Street lobbyists in 2013.
This bill is just the latest example of a sickening status quo that has taken hold in our nation's capitol. Journalists and pundits may continue to dance around the issue with euphemisms like "influence peddling" and "insider culture," but such wholesale purchase of the legislative process by special interests reveals a more urgent truth: Our government has become a place where fundraising takes priority over the public good. Our government feels more accountable those that bankroll its members than the people it was elected to represent. Our government requires massive amounts of money, be it in the form of campaign contributions, lobbing expenditures, or outside spending, in exchange for any kind of policy outcome.
Our government is corrupt. It's time we did something about it.

IRS handed out $132 billion in wrongful payments under low-income tax credit program

 OCTOBER 22, 2013 AT 4:11 PM

The Internal Revenue Service has made "no significant improvements" toward ending massive improper payments under the Earned Income Tax Credit program, according to an audit released Tuesday, which shows the agency issued more than $132 billion in wrongful tax credits over the past decade.
It's also "unlikely that the IRS will significantly reduce those improper payments in the future, in part because it does not want to discourage low-income earners who qualify from applying for the credit, according to the audit by the office of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.
The IRS failed to implement required safeguards against improper tax credits and, as of 2012, was annually handing out at least $11 billion to those who did not qualify for the benefit, the audit showed "And that is disturbing," Treasury Inspector General J. Russell George said in a statement.
The IRS defended itself in a statement, noting that improper payments have declined since 2010 and that privacy laws hamper agency efforts to produce the quarterly reports on such payments.
"The IRS continues to work with [the Office of Management and Budget] to develop supplemental measures to better gauge the impact of IRS’ compliance and outreach efforts," the statement said.
The Earned Income Tax Credit offsets income tax owed by low-income earners. But the audit found that about 21 percent of all refunds are "improper," meaning they "should not have been made or were made in an incorrect amount."
The 40-page audit, written on Aug. 28 but released nearly two months later because of confidentiality laws, measures the department's compliance with the Obama administration's 2009 executive order, "Reducing improper payments and eliminating waste in federal programs."
Apparently the IRS is failing miserably at this task, particularly when it comes to the required quarterly reporting of questionable "high dollar" tax credits of more than $5,000. When auditors dug into those high-dollar refunds themselves, they found that improper payments remained rampant.
Auditors reviewed 60,793 high-dollar tax credit payments issued in 2009 alone and found that more than 10,400 payments worth $52.8 million should have been reported as improper high-dollar payments
The report concluded that overall, the IRS has not established annual targets to reduce improper payments.
The report found that the IRS has over the past decade wrongfully handed out as much as $132 billion in earned income tax credits, a situation not likely to improve soon.
The IRS blames "the complexity of the [Earned Income Tax Credit Program] as well as the need to balance the reduction of improper payments while still encouraging eligible individuals to use the credit," the audit shows. The IRS actually works to ensure that as many low-income earners as possible know about the credit and apply for it, reaching out to more than 1.8 million taxpayers through print media, conference calls and radio interviews in Spanish and English.
The credit allows those who qualify to receive a lump sum payment when the Earned Income Tax Credit amount is more than what an individual or family owes in taxes.
Auditors recommended that the IRS develop a program to identify high-dollar improper payments. The IRS agreed to the recommendation, auditors said, and "will develop quarterly reports."

IRS pays illegal immigrants $4.2 billion while stalling Tea Parties.

Published October 22, 2013

watchdog.org
While harrying and stalling Tea Party groups seeking nonprofit status, the Internal Revenue Service mailed $4.2 billion in child-credit checks to undocumented immigrants.

Critics say midlevel IRS bureaucrats continue to abuse the Additional Child Tax Credit program by dispensing $1,000 checks to families in this country illegally.
“The law needs clarification that undocumented immigrants are not eligible,” Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, told Watchdog.org in a statement.
To make Congress’ intent clear -- that only legal U.S. residents are entitled to ACTC credits -- Grassley co-sponsored a clarifying amendment with Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo.
“Unfortunately, the majority leader (Harry Reid, D-Nev.) cut off debate, so we weren’t given the chance to offer our amendment,” said Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

White House CIA imported cocaine into america suppling domestic drug dealers.

 

Texas Congressman Ron Paul has long lobbied against government restrictions on the drug use of American citizens, but in the past the outspoken former Congressman has linked the US with narcotics closer than one might imagine.

As early as 1988, Paul was preaching of a relationship between the Central Intelligence Agency and Contras in Nicaragua amid the Iran-Contra scandal that plagued the Reagan administration. That relationship, said Paul, was one built with an intricate drug trade.

According to the GOP frontrunner in the race to the White House, the CIA imported cocaine from the Contras into America and then supplied domestic drug dealers with their loot, a transaction that allowed the Agency to operate its illegal trade with its Latin American neighbors that would have been otherwise impossible to fund with legitimate money....

Instead, said Paul, the CIA used dirty money made by the Agency’s drug deals to help afford the cost of arming the Contras against Sandinistas.

Speaking at a gathering of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, a NORML, Paul told an audience along the campaign trail back during his bid for the presidency in 1988 that the CIA was involved in dealing coke.

Drug trafficking is "a gold mine for people who want to raise money in the underground government in order to finance projects that they can't get legitimately. It is very clear that the CIA has been very much involved with drug dealings," Paul said in the address. "The CIA was very much involved in the Iran-Contra scandals. I'm not making up the stories; we saw it on television. They were hauling down weapons and drugs back. And the CIA and government officials were closing their eyes, fighting a war that was technically illegal."

Danilo Blandón, a former cocaine trafficker pegged by the US government, testified in 1981 that in regards to his own operation, "whatever we were running in LA the profit was going to the Contra revolution." Blandón, from Nicaragua, added that he was outfitted with supplies by the CIA and sold cocaine cheaply to California dealers in order to turn a profit around for the government.

Rumors of the connection have circulated since the Iran-Contra affair though and have gone largely unreported. Paul, however, is no stranger to calling out corrupt government whenever he can. In televised debates of would-be Republican contenders for the GOP nomination this year, Paul has repeatedly gone after Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama for involving America in foreign wars for interests not vested in the American public .In the case of the War on Terror, Paul recently remarked that the Bush administration was full of glee after the September 11 terrorist attacks as it had finally allowed the government a reason to invade.

Skeptical about politicians' promises.” Retain Sequestration Spending Caps

October 21, 2013

Alexandra Booze 202-467-5318

(Washington, DC)- Today, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) called for the members of the Budget Conference Committee to retain previously negotiated sequestration-level spending cuts after H. J. Res 59 was signed into law by President Obama.  The legislation will finance the government through January 15, 2014 and raise the debt limit through February 7.  The 29 member conference committee, led by House and Senate Budget Committee Chairmen Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.), is directed by H.J. Res. 59 to hold talks and reach a long-term budget agreement by December 13.
They will have to negotiate a deal on the heels of the announcement on October 18 by the Treasury that the U.S. debt jumped by a record $328 billion, bringing the total U.S. debt to $17.075 trillion.  There are only eight weeks for the committee to agree to the first budget resolution in four years.
On October 7, CAGW began its “Shut Down the Waste” campaign by calling on Congress and President Obama to focus on eliminating wasteful government spending both during discussions over the continuing resolution and raising the debt ceiling and throughout any future budget discussions.  CAGW has since issued recommendations every day through both traditional and social media highlighting recommendations from “Prime Cuts 2013 and other sources.”  The campaign was created to ensure that taxpayers and elected officials do not ignore the hundreds of billions of dollars that can be saved by eliminating, waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement.
“It is imperative that Congress and the Budget Conference Committee use this opportunity to take immediate action to shut down the waste, not shut down the government,” said CAGW President Tom Schatz.  “The current agreement to the prevailing political impasse is only a short-term solution, maintaining sequestration levels should be the minimum amount of spending cuts in the final budget deal.”
Other ongoing efforts to combat wasteful government spending include the October 15 launch of CAGW’s three “shocking” videos which were produced to educate taxpayers, the media, and elected officials about the need to end profligate spending.  The national debt is estimated to increase to $17.5 trillion by the end of this year, eventually amounting to $25.9 trillion in 2022.  With the national debt currently at $17.057 trillion, every man, woman and child in the U.S. population of 316,870,868 owes $53,896.06 as his or her share of the debt, or $148,629 for each taxpayer.

You might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If you can get arrested for hunting or fishing without a license, but not for entering and remaining in the country illegally — you might live in a nation that ...was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If you have to get your parents’ permission to go on a field trip or to take an aspirin in school, but not to get an abortion — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If you MUST show your identification to board an airplane, cash a check, buy liquor, or check out a library book and rent a video, but not to vote for who runs the government — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If the government wants to prevent stable, law-abiding citizens from owning gun magazines that hold more than ten rounds, but gives twenty F-16 fighter jets to the crazy new leaders in Egypt — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If, in the nation’s largest city, you can buy two 16-ounce sodas, but not one 24-ounce soda, because 24-ounces of a sugary drink might make you fat — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If an 80-year-old woman or a three-year-old girl who is confined to a wheelchair can be strip-searched by the TSA at the airport, but a woman in a burka or a hijab is only subject to having her neck and head searched — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If your government believes that the best way to eradicate trillions of dollars of debt is to spend trillions more — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If a seven-year-old boy can be thrown out of school for saying his teacher is “cute,” but hosting a sexual exploration or diversity class in grade school is perfectly acceptable — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If hard work and success are met with higher taxes and more government regulation and intrusion, while not working is rewarded with Food Stamps, WIC checks, Medicaid benefits, subsidized housing, and free cell phones — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If the government’s plan for getting people back to work is to provide incentives for not working, by granting 99 weeks of unemployment checks, without any requirement to prove that gainful employment was diligently sought, but couldn’t be found — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If you pay your mortgage faithfully, denying yourself the newest big-screen TV, while your neighbor buys iPhones, time shares, a wall-sized do-it-all plasma screen TV and new cars, and the government forgives his debt when he defaults on his mortgage — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots.

If being stripped of your Constitutional right to defend yourself makes you more “safe” according to the government — you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. What a country! How about we give God a reason to continue blessing America! A Country Founded by Geniuses but Run by Idiots: Attributed to Jeff Foxworthy ~ Tom Retterbush

Exposing the Dark Underbelly of Israel: The Horrors Your Tax Dollars Support

October 16, 2013

A Palestinian woman and boy walk among Israeli soldiers and military vehicles in the West Bank town of Nabi Samuel.
Photo Credit: Ryan Rodrick Beiler / Shutterstock.com

I wanted to show Americans what they’re paying for. Every American's relationship to Israel can be summed up as money for nothing and checkpoints for free. We’re giving them $30 billion over the next 10 years to guarantee their qualitative military edge over all other countries. We also have to see Israel’s role in destabilizing the Middle East and in seeking to ensure that U.S. policy guarantees that Israel’s Arab neighbors are weakened and that the people of the Arab world can’t determine their own future. That’s why Israel had such a comfortable relationship with Hosni Mubarak—because he was a Western and Gulf puppet who was helping to participate in the siege of Gaza and why Israel is so excited about the coup that ousted Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood might have ceded to US demands to police the Sinai, but now with Sisi, the crackdown on Gaza is much more extreme. They have filled up possibly 80 percent of the tunnels that bring vital food and medicine and even fish into the Gaza Strip, which is shocking considering that the Gaza Strip is a coastal territory -- they must import fish through tunnels because they’re not allowed to fish. And now we're seeing Egyptian naval forces join the Israeli navy in arresting Gazan fishermen.
Now the coup regime in Egypt has committed a series of massacres which were inevitable as soon as they took power on July 3. They massacred non-violent Muslim Brotherhood demonstrators, especially in the Rabba area of Cairo--they killed over 1,000 people. And the U.S. has been threatening to withdraw some military aid to Egypt--of course, they’re not going to fully hold this regime accountable for the massive human rights crimes it's committing. And Israel all the while has been demanding veto power over the United States’ efforts to hold Egypt accountable. The Israeli government is enthralled with Sisi's coup regime and the Egyptian military, and it will do all it can to see the US fund it and prevent it from being held accountable. So to see Israel as this normal, European country that exists completely independently of the chaos in the Middle East is completely bogus.
And the other reason is much more simple: that we are paying for the only open ethnocracy in the world, and its entire existence and its domination and control over the lives of millions of Palestinians and the exclusion of millions more Palestinians simply because they’re not Jews. The whole fate of all these people who are living between the river and the sea, mired in misery and refugee camps, is in the hands of the American people and Washington

Pentagon unit held 'phony' ceremonies for MIAs, using planes that can't fly

Petty Officer 1st Class Barry Hirayama / U.S. Navy

A joint service honor guard escorts a transfer case during an "arrival ceremony" at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Honolulu on April 27, 2012. The Defense Department has acknowledged that human remains were not in fact arriving on that day. The ceremonies are held by the Pentagon's Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command.

Investigative Reporter, NBC News
HONOLULU — A unit of the U.S. Department of Defense has been holding so-called "arrival ceremonies" for seven years, with an honor guard carrying flag-draped coffins off of a cargo plane as though they held the remains of missing American service men and women returning that day from old battlefields.
After NBC News raised questions about the arrival ceremonies, the Pentagon acknowledged Wednesday that no honored dead were in fact arriving, and that the planes used in the ceremonies often couldn't even fly but were towed into position.
The solemn ceremonies at a military base in Hawaii are a sign of the nation's commitment to returning and identifying its fallen warriors. The ceremonies have been attended by veterans and families of MIAs, led to believe that they were witnessing the return of Americans killed in World War II, Vietnam and Korea.
The ceremonies also have been known, at least among some of the military and civilian staff here, as The Big Lie.

---

Photos behind the scenes show that the flag-draped boxes had not just arrived on military planes, but ended their day where they began it: at the same lab where the human remains have been waiting for analysis.
The Pentagon insisted that the flag-draped cases do contain human remains recently recovered, just not ones that arrived that day. It said its staff "treat the remains with the utmost of care, attention, integrity, and above all, honor." The Pentagon statement did not explain why the rituals were called "arrival ceremonies" if no one was arriving, or why the public had been told that remains removed that morning from the lab were about to go to the lab to "begin the identification process." (Read the full Pentagon statement.)
From now on, the Pentagon said, the ceremonies will be re-branded as "honors ceremonies," expressly described as symbolic honors for bodies previously recovered.
"The name changed because they've already arrived, technically," said Army Staff Sgt. Andrew Smith, public affairs officer for the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC), whose mission is to return and identify the 83,000 missing service men and women from World War II, Korea and Vietnam. The agency is identifying the dead at a rate of fewer than 80 per year, at a cost of more than $1 million per identification. Bodies now wait in the JPAC lab an average of 11 years before being identified, according to an internal report released this year.
What the audience seesHere's what the public has seen at the ceremonies, usually held about four times a year.
A C-17 military transport aircraft was parked, its ramp down, outside hangar 35 at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. At precisely 9 a.m., after generals and other dignitaries were introduced, a military chaplain offered a prayer, the audience sang "The Star-Spangled Banner," and a Marine bugler played "Taps." Then a military honor guard in dress uniforms carried flag-draped transfer cases, which look like coffins, down the ramp and across in front of the audience. The cases were placed in the back of blue buses and driven away.
The emcee, reading from an official script, thanked the audience for "welcoming them home." The script continued, "After removal from the aircraft, the remains will be taken to the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command's Central Identification Laboratory. There, JPAC scientists will begin the identification process."
The Defense Department has used the arrival ceremonies as publicity tools, posting videos of the "arrival" on its website, on YouTube and on Facebook. A video of one of the ceremonies is shown below, and others are online here and here. The videos sometimes say explicitly that "the remains returned to U.S. soil on the C-17," and other videos leave the viewer to draw that conclusion.
A video posted online by the Department of Defense shows the JPAC "arrival ceremony" of Vietnam and World War II vets at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii on December 9, 2011. Similar videos have been posted throughout the past seven years. The Pentagon has acknowledged that no one was actually arriving at any of the ceremonies, and that the planes they were carried from often could not fly. The Pentagon said its script for the ceremonies had been "misinterpreted."
A peek backstage
Here's what actually happened, according to eyewitness accounts and photographs taken behind the scenes at one of the ceremonies.
Before 6 a.m., the members of the honor guard assembled at the loading dock behind the JPAC headquarters on the base. They loaded the transfer cases, which had been stacked outside the door to the lab, and the buses drove to the hangar.
The C-17 had been towed into position outside hangar 35. The honor guard loaded the transfer cases into the belly of the plane, then practiced walking them through the empty hangar. Then the honor guard returned to the plane, and waited.
At nearly 9 a.m., the public was allowed in: invited politicians, media, families of the missing and veterans. Employees from JPAC were bused over to fill out the crowd.
Then the show began, with tears and salutes as the remains were marched to the buses, then driven off to the lab to "begin the identification process."
'A very pissed-off citizen'Jesse Baker, an Air Force veteran of World War II and Korea living in Honolulu, said he has been to more than 50 of these ceremonies. He told NBC News that he's always been under the impression that the plane had just arrived carrying recovered remains.

"If I have been fooled, I am going to be a very pissed-off citizen, because I've been going for years," Baker said. "And I know a lot of guys who are going to be pissed off. ... They're out there honoring warriors."
Baker tried to make sense of why America's Department of Defense would work so hard to trick him and other veterans. "That's disturbing. I don't know when they stopped being honest and switched over to this Mickey Mouse, but whoever did it, I hope they find him a new job somewhere."
One leading figure in the MIA/POW field said she has known for years about the charade. The head of the largest group of families of missing service men and women, Ann Mills-Griffiths, is a staunch defender of JPAC, but she told NBC that she has warned Pentagon officials and JPAC repeatedly that they should stop holding "those phony arrival ceremonies."
But Mills-Griffiths, the chairman of the National League of POW/MIA Families, said she had never told any family members that the ceremonies were phony, because she supported JPAC's mission, if not the way it was carrying it out.
'Static aircraft'On Wednesday, after NBC submitted questions, the Pentagon acknowledged that the airplanes were often towed out of maintenance hangars for the ceremonies and could not have just flown in. "Many times, static aircraft are used for the ceremonies, as operational requirements dictate flight schedules and aircraft availability," said a Department of Defense spokesperson, Navy Cmdr. Amy Derrick-Frost.
The Pentagon said its own words, used since 2006, had led to the ceremonies being "misinterpreted" as arrivals.
"Based on how media announcements and ceremony remarks are currently written, it is understandable how these 'arrival' ceremonies might be misinterpreted, leading one to believe the ceremonies are 'dignified transfer ceremonies,' which they are not." She said the Pentagon is reviewing its procedures and is committed to conducting all recovery operations honorably.
NBC asked about another discrepancy: Current and former JPAC employees said that the emcee often announces that the remains were from specific countries where JPAC staff had not recently recovered remains. The Pentagon statement said that the correct country is always announced, but that it may have been a few months since the remains were recovered. And occasionally, it said, there has been no JPAC mission to a country, but the remains have been turned over by those countries and are still deserving of a "symbolic tribute."
An emotional ceremonyOther veterans, a former POW's wife, even the bagpiper at the ceremonies — all told NBC they had assumed the arrival ceremony meant that soldiers' remains were actually arriving. They said they found the ceremony to be moving.
"It was a very humbling experience for me," said bagpiper Alan Miyamura. "The thing that I remember most vividly is the silence. ... It meant respect and a feeling that these soldiers are welcomed home."
The ceremony "makes me very proud that our country does such a thing," said Carole Hickerson, whose first husband was a POW in the Vietnam War. She helped design the black POW/MIA flag. "You don't know how important a funeral is until you don't have one."
'Acutely dysfunctional'After NBC News requested permission to attend an arrival ceremony in July, JPAC canceled the ceremony. It hasn't held any ceremonies since April, scheduling and canceling them repeatedly.
The Pentagon spokesperson said the commander of JPAC, Army Maj. Gen. Kelly K. McKeague, authorized in April the renaming of the ceremonies "to more accurately reflect the purpose of these events." However, public affairs staff at JPAC, which organized the events, continued to call them "arrival ceremonies" on into the summer, and until Wednesday they were still identified that way on the agency's website. (That page of the JPAC website was renamed to "honors ceremonies" on Wednesday.) The Pentagon would not answer when asked when Gen. McKeague and other military officers became aware that the public was being misled.
NBC asked on Oct. 3 to interview Gen. McKeague as well as the scientific director and head of the laboratory, Dr. Thomas Holland, and Johnie Webb, who directs the ceremonies as deputy to the commander for external relations and legislative affairs. McKeague and Webb did not respond to an email from NBC. Holland replied briefly, saying, "I hope you get permission" for the interview. "I have no control over ceremonies."

 

Before the "arrival ceremony" on April 27, 2012, the transfer cases began their day stacked outside the JPAC lab. JPAC employee Rick Stone photographed them there and followed as they were driven to the ceremony on the blue bus with the honor guard.


Several investigations of JPAC are under way, in Congress and inside the Pentagon. An internal report called the agency "acutely dysfunctional," and a Government Accountability Office report said the effort to identify missing and unknown service men and women has been undermined by squabbling between agencies.

Rick Stone

After the ceremony, the transfer cases were right back where they began the day, outside the JPAC lab. The audience was told that remains in the cases were being taken to the lab to begin the process of identification.

Photos behind the scenesPhotographs were taken before and after at an arrival ceremony in April 2012 by Rick Stone, a former police chief who was the deputy chief in JPAC's World War II investigations branch. (Photographs are allowed on the base, according to the JPAC public affairs office, in any area where there is no sign specifically forbidding them.) When remains are brought back by JPAC staff, Stone said, they arrive from the airport in a plastic box in an employee's private vehicle, with no ceremony.
On Aug. 1, NBC reported that Stone's requests to disinter bodies of war dead for identification had been denied even when he had been able to narrow the possible identities to only a few, or even just one, possible match among the MIAs.
Stone said he supports the honorable mission of JPAC, but began to see the "arrival ceremonies" as symbolic of the way JPAC focused on public relations while it keeps information from the families of missing warriors.
"It's an open fraud inside JPAC," he said of the arrival ceremonies. "But it's more than just the arrival ceremony. The fraud is really their inability to bring closure to more families. Our noble mission is to go find some of these kids, and this thing is so fouled up we don't even recognize the mission."

'The Big Lie': Pentagon held fake arrival ceremonies

Remains of honored fallen soldiers are not actually in the flag-draped coffins

• Friday, October 11, 2013

• 

  U.S. flag-draped casket is carried to a U.S. Air Force aircraft by the Joint POW/MIA  Accounting Command. JPAC, team of the U.S. military during a repatriation ceremony at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi, Vietnam, Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2008

• A unit of the U.S. Department of Defense has been holding so-called "arrival ceremonies" for seven years, with an honor guard carrying flag-draped coffins off of a cargo plane as though they held the remains of missing American service men and women returning that day from old battlefields. After NBC News raised questions about the arrival ceremonies, the Pentagon acknowledged Wednesday that no honored dead were in fact arriving, and that the planes used in the ceremonies often couldn't even fly but were towed into position.
  The solemn ceremonies at a military base in Hawaii are a sign of the nation's commitment to returning and identifying its fallen warriors. The ceremonies have been attended by veterans and families of MIAs, led to believe that they were witnessing the return of Americans killed in World War II, Vietnam and Korea.
  Photos behind the scenes show that the flag-draped boxes had not just arrived on military planes, but ended their day where they began it: at the same lab where the human remains have been waiting for analysis.

Picture's of Insane Tourists Blatantly Defying The U.S. Government’s Demands

The government shutdown has shuttered all the monuments and park services in D.C.

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And signs like this are littered all over the city, demanding that people stay out of the beautiful parks FOR THEIR OWN SAFETY.

 

1. But look at these radicals who are blatantly defying the federal government by having a stroll and eating lunch in a CLOSED PARK.

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2. Check out these anarchists wandering around this grassy field in front of the Washington Monument.

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“Uhhhh… guys?”

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3. Who are these reprobates?

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4. The reflecting pool is closed, so QUIT IT with your romantic picnic!

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5. Stop taking dumb tourist photos of your girlfriend! This is a SHUTDOWN.

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6. Oh. My. God. People. The Washington Monument is CLOSED. Quit posing with it!

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7. This tree could have fallen on YOU, geniuses!

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8. This squirrel is risking his life right now.

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9. This sidewalk is SHUT DOWN people. Do you want America to fail?

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10. Look at all that yellow tape, and you just jog through it like the hater you are.

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11. There are TWO signs telling WWII vets to stay out of the memorial in their honor. What are they doing?!

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These park rangers cannot even contain the insanity going on at the WWII memorial.

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12. Just look at this kid at the Korean War Memorial.

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13. Just look at these Americans desecrating MLK’s legacy through nonviolent protest of government barricades.

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14. The yellow CAUTION tape has been ripped through at the FDR memorial!!

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15. How did SHE get in here?!?!?!?!

 

National Park Service: “We got more cones in the back! Don’t tempt us.”

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16. Is breaking into this government sidewalk really a good example for your child? Ask yourself, lady.

 

17. Even these police officers are revolting by walking their dogs in the park! Society is DOOMED.

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But don’t even TRY to enter the George Mason Memorial.

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And thank god for the single gate in front of the World War I memorial…

 

It seems to be working. At least there is some shred of sanity left.

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18.

LINK

See also: 17 Signs You Grew Up With A Government

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