Families were more dependent on government programs than ever last year.

Nearly half, 48.5%, of the population lived in a household that received some type of government benefit in the first quarter of 2010, according to Census data. Those numbers have risen since the middle of the recession when 44.4% lived households receiving benefits in the third quarter of 2008.

Click for full-size image

The share of people relying on government benefits has reached a historic high, in large part from the deep recession and meager recovery, but also because of the expansion of government programs over the years.

Federal authorities are pressuring Nashville-based Gibson Guitar to hand over an additional 25 bundles of Indian wood that the company allegedly planned to use in its famous guitars.

The complaint was filed today in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee and mirrors a 2010 action that sought official forfeiture of wood obtained in a 2009 raid of Gibson facilities. The latter of those cases has been stayed, pending the outcome of the most recent suit.

As has been the case in previous allegations, at issue is the classification of certain wood imported to the United States from India. Namely, a June shipment of 1,250 sawn logs was classified as "finished parts of musical instruments," which is allowed under Indian law. In reality, according to the sworn affidavit of Fish and Wildlife Service agent Kevin Seiler, the wood was unfinished – a violation of the Lacey Act.

Congress remains hopelessly divided over how to fund disaster aid, an impasse that could result in a government shutdown if not solved by September 30. But lawmakers face a more pressing deadline. Currently, the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Disaster Relief Fund (DRF) is poised to run out of cash by Tuesday, if not earlier, with the account at the dangerously-low level of $175 million, according to Senate aides.

Senate Democrats on Friday defeated a House GOP-backed stopgap Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund the government through November 18 by a vote of 59-36. The $1.04 trillion measure contained $3.7 billion for disaster aid, $200 million of which was offset by cuts to green energy programs, including a loan account that once helped fund the now-defunct, controversial solar panel firm Solyndra.

"This is really not the time to say we're going to balance the budget on the backs of those hit by natural disasters," cried House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi

The Obama administration is in a race against the clock to close by month’s end more than a dozen renewable-energy loan guarantees totaling $9 billion. Of that, just over $3 billion would come directly from the federal government’s coffers.

The administration now has two weeks to finalize the process amid an escalating political battle over a federally backed solar company spiraling into bankruptcy and facing an FBI probe. President Obama once praised the company, California-based Solyndra, as “the true engine of economic growth.”

At a House hearing Wednesday, there was bipartisan concern about risking more taxpayer dollars on renewable energy projects that ultimately fail. While Republicans’ rhetoric was more heated, Democrats agreed it is a critical issue.

“Taxpayers have over $500 million at risk as a result of Solyndra’s bankruptcy,” said House Energy and Commerce ranking member Henry Waxman, D-Calif. “We need to understand what happened and how we can avoid

The US Department of Energy and its Oak Ridge National Laboratory have built a security system that is aimed at thwarting at least some of the copper thefts that plague utilities and other large facilities.

Specifically, "ORNL, DOE, the utility and several subcontractors installed a comprehensive perimeter security system consisting of energy efficient lighting, surveillance cameras that operate in a high voltage environment and an anti-cut, anti-climb fence system with integral intrusion detection cable. The complete system protects a perimeter area of 3600 linear feet."

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is offering advice to parents and teens about sex education, including assurances that teens may “experiment” with homosexuality as part of “exploring their own sexuality,” and that masturbation should be of concern only “if a child seems preoccupied with it to the exclusion of other activities.”

The information, located on a “Questions and Answers About Sex” link on the “Quick Guide to Healthy Living” portion of the HHS Web site, also describes children and infants as “sexual beings.”

Under the question “When Do Kids Start Becoming Curious About Sex?” the answer notes that infants have curiosity about their bodies.

Citigroup Inc. (C) and Bank of America Corp. (BAC) were the reigning champions of finance in 2006 as home prices peaked, leading the 10 biggest U.S. banks and brokerage firms to their best year ever with $104 billion of profits.

By 2008, the housing market’s collapse forced those companies to take more than six times as much, $669 billion, in emergency loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve. The loans dwarfed the $160 billion in public bailouts the top 10 got from the U.S. Treasury, yet until now the full amounts have remained secret.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s unprecedented effort to keep the economy from plunging into depression included lending banks and other companies as much as $1.2 trillion of public money, about the same amount U.S. homeowners currently owe on 6.5 million delinquent and foreclosed mortgages. The largest borrower, Morgan Stanley (MS), got as much as $107.3 billion

The Obama administration is considering pulling foreclosed properties owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac off the market and renting them out. This could, according to Credit Suisse analysts, ultimately help avert another 3-5 percent decline in home prices. Although this move would place the federal government in the somewhat controversial position of landlord to potentially thousands of tenants, the proposal to “trim the glut of unsold foreclosed homes on the market is worth looking at,” according to Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke in testimony to Congress last week.

Given that national rent rates are on the rise, it will probably surprise no one that the cash-strapped federal government is considering getting involved in this aspect of real estate. However, another idea rumored to be on the table is that federal officials might sell the foreclosed properties to investors in bulk to rent out.

Efforts to avert a shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration failed Friday amid a disagreement over a $16.5 million cut in subsidies to 13 rural communities, ensuring that nearly 4,000 people will be temporarily out of work and federal airline ticket taxes will be suspended.

Lawmakers were unable to resolve a partisan dispute over an extension of the agency's operating authority, which expired at midnight Friday.

The subsidy cut was included by Republicans in a House bill extending operating authority for the FAA, which has a $16 billion budget. Senate Democrats refused to accept the House bill with the cuts, and Republican senators refused to accept a Democratic bill without it. Lawmakers then adjourned for the weekend.

There’s an 800-pound gorilla in the nation’s hardest-hit housing markets: hundreds of thousands of foreclosed properties are selling, and there’s four times as many potential foreclosures behind them.

The Journal writes today that one idea gaining support in Washington is an effort to pull some of those properties off the market and rent them out, either on homes owned by federal agencies or loan giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

These firms and U.S. banks currently own more than 500,000 foreclosed homes, and there’s another 2 million loans in some stage of foreclosure. The high share of distressed sales in many struggling markets is contributing to continued declines in home prices.

“Can we find a way to try and reduce that overhang or to try to provide incentives for investors to covert them?” said Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in testimony to Congress last week.

As leaders in Washington try to reach agreement on a budget deal, a record majority of American voters say they distrust the federal government.

Only 33 percent of voters say yes, they generally trust the government, a record low according to a Fox News poll released Wednesday. The previous low was last year’s 35 percent (June 2010). The level of trust has dropped a total of 21 percentage points from a post-9/11 high of 54 percent trust in June 2002.

A majority of voters -- 62 percent -- do not trust the government. That’s up from 60 percent last year, and up significantly from 36 percent in 2002.

How good is a government job? We all know that government workers get generous pensions, job security and health benefits.

Now a new USA Today analysis reports that it's almost impossible to lose a federal job.

Federal Employees who work at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Small Business Administration, or more than a dozen other government agencies "are more likely to die of natural causes than get laid off or fired...."

Death is the "primary threat" to their job security.

The federal government fired only about one-half of one percent of its entire workforce last year. In the private sector, the percentage of workers who get fired for "poor performance" is 5 times higher.

How much do you get paid with that kind of job security?

Twice as much as private sector counterparts.

Give me a break.

No felony charges will be filed against the Colorado woman who allegedly sexually assaulted a Transportation Security Administration agent in Phoenix.

On Tuesday the Maricopa County district attorney decided to turn the case of Yukari Miyamae of Longmont over to city prosecutors. She could still be charged with a misdemeanor.

Police said Miyamae grabbed the female agent’s left breast, squeezed and twisted it with both hands.

Miyamae’s attorney says her client was violated, endangered and threatened by the actions of TSA agents. She denies doing anything wrong.

A Salinas car manufacturing company that was expected to build environmentally friendly electric cars and create new jobs folded before almost any vehicles could run off the assembly line.

The city of Salinas had invested more than half a million dollars in Green Vehicles, an electric car start-up company.

All of that money is now gone, according to Green Vehicles President and Co-Founder Mike Ryan.

The start-up company set up shop in Salinas in the summer of 2009, after the city gave Ryan a $300,000 community development grant.

When the company still ran into financial trouble last year, the city of Salinas handed Ryan an additional $240,000. Green Vehicles also received $187,000 from the California Energy Commission.

The number of wiretaps conducted by federal and state law enforcement in 2010 jumped 34 percent from the prior year, according to a new federal report.

The 2010 Wiretap Report said federal and state courts approved 3,194 orders for intercepting wire, oral or electronic communications. That was up from the 2,376 intercepts approved in 2009.

The top three states with approved wiretap applications were California, New York and New Jersey.

The report did not include wiretaps regulated by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) or those approved by the president outside the authority of the federal wiretap law and the FISA.

In what appears to be a gross Obama administration oversight, former Bush administration political officials are still receiving taxpayer-funded credit cards in the mail.

Former DOL official Don Todd, who used to oversee the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) told TheDC that the government sent him a ready-to-activate taxpayer-funded credit card.

Todd, who now works in the private sector at nonprofit Americans for Limited Government (ALG), destroyed the card, but he’s shocked at how he still got one in the mail, years after he left his politically appointed government post. Todd’s last day at the DOL was Jan. 20, 2009. The DOL is still sending him credit cards.

Jokingly, Todd told TheDC that this oversight reminds him of former President Ronald Reagan’s comments about how a government bureau is the “nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.”

“A government job is a gift that keeps on giving,” Todd joked.

The idea was simple enough: Create a cloud-based software tool that can comb through the entire universe of military intelligence reports for a given region, group, or individual and come back with actionable intel that battlefield commanders can use on the ground, and do it in realtime.

But analysts that have used the system, as well as documentation obtained by Politico, show that the tool is hurting more than it is helping because it doesn't work properly. And that's when it works at all.

The Distributed Common Ground System, or DCGS-A as it's known in "milspeak," was conceived as a means of parsing the reams of intelligence reports, drone data, and other battlefield reportage and delivering to commanders the intelligence they need right when they need it--even during actual combat activities.

Weapons linked to a questionable government strategy are turning up in crimes in Valley neighborhoods.

For months the ABC15 Investigators have been searching through police reports and official government documents. We’ve discovered assault weapons linked to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ controversial "Fast and Furious" case strategy have turned up at crime scenes in Glendale and Phoenix communities.

THE HISTORY

Phoenix ATF agents recently testified during a Congressional hearing that they knowingly allowed weapons to slip into the hands of straw buyers who would then distribute the weapons to known criminals.

The strategy was designed to lead ATF officials to key drug players in Mexico, but some agents admitted they never fully tracked the weapons after suspicious buyers purchased them.

Almost 100,000 terminally ill people do not get proper care, according to a Government review which concluded that a new funding system would save millions of pounds and better serve individuals.

Democratic leaders called on Wednesday for additional spending to boost the sluggish U.S. economy, setting up a fresh hurdle for bipartisan efforts in Washington to head off a government debt default this summer.

Democrats' demand for new stimulus spending is at odds with the work of negotiators, led by Vice President Joe Biden, who are trying to find trillions of dollars in savings as part of a deal that would allow Congress to sign off on new government borrowing before the U.S. runs out of money to pay its bills.

Those talks, which resumed on Wednesday, have largely focused on spending cuts over the next 10 years. Senate Democrats want the deal to include more money for highway construction, a payroll tax cut and clean-energy subsidies to bring down the 9.1 percent unemployment rate.

"Get the recovery right before you get in this deficit-cutting mode," Assistant Senate Democratic Leader Dick Durbin told reporters. "Get people back to work. Let's start moving in that

Increasing federal debt will be a growing burden on government action, crowding out lawmakers’ ability to adopt tax and spending priorities in good times and reducing flexibility during recessions, all while making a fiscal crisis more likely and hindering long-term growth, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.

In the annual Long-Term Budget Outlook, the legislature’s budget scorekeepers said that the ratio of debt to GDP this year will be 69 percent, 7 percentage points higher than last year. In 2021, the CBO predicts debt will reach 76 percent of GDP, but under a more dire—and more likely—scenario, the public debt will be 101 percent of GDP 10 years from now, well into the economic danger zone of 90 percent or more.

Last year, that worst-case scenario predicted a debt-to-GDP ratio of 87 percent in 2020, demonstrating that the public debt picture has worsened considerably, in part due to a bipartisan tax deal last year that reduced expected revenue.

General Motors (GM) continues apace its government-backed conversion from a company existing to manufacture automobiles for money – into a fully-formed, Leftist ideological entity working as another wing of the Barack Obama Administration’s fundamental transformation of America.

A de facto non-profit organization posing as a for-profit car joint.  That seems less and less concerned with designing cars people want, and is instead looking to redesign the nation – with products and policies Americans have time and again demonstrated they don’t want anything to do with.
How else to explain the continued expanded production of the expensive, unprofitable (yet heavily subsidized) and unpopular Chevy Volt?

Earlier this year, the Transportation Security Administration halted a program that allowed airports to privatize their screeners, citing safety concerns, but airport administrators say TSA stopped the program with little warning and without adequate justification.

The Daily Caller spoke with three Montana airports — Glacier Park International Airport, Missoula International Airport and Bert Mooney Airport — which all said they were encouraged by TSA to apply to for the privatization program — known as the Screening Partnership Program (SPP). All three airports’ applications were denied in January.

One airport director even said TSA agents actively protested the airport’s attempt to privatize, going so far as to stand at gates in uniform and tell passengers they would be less safe if the airport joined the SPP.

The man Congress put in charge of auditing the billions of dollars dumped on Iraq after Saddam Hussein was toppled has told the Los Angels Times he can't rule out the possibility that $6.6 billion in cash sent from the U.S. was stolen.

Special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction Stuart Bowen told the Times the missing money may represent "the largest theft of funds in national history."

It was not, it is crucial to note here, U.S. tax-payer dollars which have gone missing in Iraq. The money came from a special fund set up by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with Iraq's own money -- funds which were withheld from the nation during a decade of harsh economic sanctions under Saddam.

The Social Security Administration made $6.5 billion in overpayments to people not entitled to receive them in 2009, including $4 billion under a supplemental income program for the very poor, a government investigator said Tuesday.

In all, about 10 percent of the payments made under the agency's Supplemental Security Income program were improper, said Patrick P. O'Carroll Jr., the Social Security inspector general.

Error rates were much smaller for retirement, survivor and disability benefits, which make up the overwhelming majority of Social Security payments, O'Carroll told a congressional panel.

Gov. Bev Perdue and her Democratic allies have claimed that the budget passed by the General Assembly would decimate public employment in North Carolina. And yet during the current recession, government agencies have been spared the massive job losses that have afflicted private companies.

Public sector employment levels in North Carolina have been stable since the start of the recession in December 2007. It would take a loss of 63,000 government jobs to match the nearly 9 percent net loss that has occurred in the private sector during that time.

It’s the seedy underbelly of Washington, D.C. The hallways of Congress are often dark alleys of wasteful spending and pork-laden deal-making. Down these lanes, shadowy special interests and empire-building bureaucracies lie in wait to relieve innocent taxpayers of their hard-earned money.

They spend billions on wasteful programs, pet projects, and the accumulation of personal power. They threaten to bankrupt our country as our national debt soars out of control.

The victims often don’t even know it’s happening. Many don’t realize how bad it is. Do you?

Take the following test to see if you can detect five of the dirty spending secrets Washington doesn’t want you to know...

An Ohio restaurant mentioned last week by President Barack Obama as an indirect beneficiary of the government's Chrysler bailout will go out of business Sunday after a more than 70-year history.

Co-owner Richard Lawrence of New Chet's Restaurant in Toledo says business has fallen victim to the economy and the workplace smoking ban approved by Ohio voters in 2006. He told The Blade newspaper of Toledo on Wednesday that auto industry cutbacks also hurt.

Lawrence says he used to deliver up to $300 in food per week to Chrysler Group LLC's Jeep plant in Toledo, but now that's down to about $100 worth.

Obama visited the plant on Friday and told workers that without them, who would eat at Chet's or patronize other local businesses?

As millions of Americans honor the service and sacrifices of veterans this Memorial Day, the FBI said it will be busy keeping a close eye out for reports of "frauds" who don fake medals and tell tales of false heroism in hopes of taking advantage of honest patriotism.

While at any particular time the FBI is investigating from 15 to 30 cases of people illegally posing as American war heroes, the Bureau said public veteran celebrations, like the parades taking place across the nation today, are ripe targets for imposters.

"They're going to come out of the woodwork," Don Shipley, a private watchdog and former U.S. Navy SEAL, told ABC News. "This is like Christmas for a phony."

Scientific studies conducted in the public interest appear to have veered off course, according to a new report that documents government-sponsored research gems such as having shrimp walk on tiny treadmills to measure the impact of sickness on crustaceans.

While the exercises may be adorable to watch, Sen. Tom Coburn says he's not so sure it advances the cause of science.

The Oklahoma Republican issued a new report Thursday that concludes the National Science Foundation has misspent $3 billion on "waste, fraud, duplication and mismanagement." It offers a list of research projects that could have been left as questions for the universe.

A Tacoma seventh grader faced federal interrogation at school for what he posted on his Facebook page.  His mom said it all happened without her knowledge or permission.

Timi Robertson said she had just finished lunch with a friend Friday when she got a phone call from her son's school.

"I answered it, and it's the school security guard who's giving me a heads up that the Secret Service is here with the Tacoma Police Department and they have Vito and they're talking to him," Robertson said.

After Osama bin Laden was killed, 13-year-old Vito LaPinta posted an update to his Facebook status that got the Feds attention.

"I was saying how Osama was dead and for Obama to be careful because there could be suicide bombers," says LaPinta.

A week later, while Vito was in his fourth period class, he was called in to the principal's office.

"A man walked in with a suit and glasses and he said he was part of the Secret Service," LaPinta said. "He told me it was...

In late 2010, General Motors agreed to sponsor a propaganda film celebrating the 90th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The CCP made film titled (translated to English) “The Birth of a Party” or “The Great Achievement of Founding the Party" is set to premiere all over the Communist nation on June 15 reported China AutoWeb last September. The auto website adds:

"According to an announcement posted on Shanghai GM’s official web site yesterday, whose title reads "joining hands with China Film Group, Cadillac whole-heartedly supports the making of the Birth of a Party... as the CCP marries totalitarianism with capitalism and fools the people with entertainment, only the "politically correct" or stupid–or those who pretend to be so–can get rich. And GM seems to know this very well. While Audi, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Volvo have all rushed to please China’s rich and powerful through physical enlargement (offering models of extended wheelbases), Cadillac gratifies the..."

The Supreme Court is being asked to decide whether the government can dictate the message of a Christian ministry. And a brief submitted along with the question cites a page of biblical references as authority, listing them even ahead of the U.S. Constitution, statutes and previous case law.

The idea of a forced message is among the issues that are being raised in the case involving the ministry of Daniel Chapter One, which has gone to the high court to protest the actions of the Federal Trade Commission and the Food and Drug Administration.

The federal government is currently conducting more than 60 "stolen valor" investigations of individuals suspected of making false claims about their military records, according to the Department of Veteran's Affairs, and about 30 people nationwide have b

U.S. District in Denver heard arguments from a federal government attorney today, who asked the court to throw out a State of Colorado lawsuit against the federal government. The State of Colorado is suing the federal government for not meeting its consti