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POPSFraud Could Undermine Housing Tax Credit as Troubling Report Emerges
The Government Accountability Office reports that $10 billion had been spent on 1.4 million credits as of late August. As the economy hit trouble in 2008, Congress passed a $7,500 tax credit for first-time homebuyers as a no-interest, long-term loan to stimulate the housing market. The credit was expanded under the economic recovery act passed in February to $8,000, not as a loan, but a fully refundable credit. Economists worry that the tax break is going to those who would have purchased homes anyway, and filling homes by vacating others " as renters become buyers " without benefit to the economy as a whole. Estimates are that more than three-quarters of the expected 1.5 million taxpayers who will have tapped the program would have bought homes even without the tax credit, putting the price to the government at about $43,000 per homebuyer who would not have bought a house without the credit. The Government Accountability Office reports that 59 percent of those claiming . .
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POPSAnd the Winner Is . . . Peggy the Moocher On Election Day, the federal government quietly reported that it will borrow a record $550 billion in the current quarter to fund the bipartisan bailout. The Treasury Department plans to borrow more than a half-trillion dollars in the current October-December quarter and another $368 billion in the first three months of next year. Estimated total for the whole year: $1.4 trillion. Democrats plan to add another $500 billion in “stimulus”-palooza legislation. Credit card companies, utilities, insurance companies, and car-loan and student-loan debtors await their turn. Peggy the Moocher shows there are still basically two starkly contrasting views of government in this country among the rank-and-file electorate. Unlike Joe the Plumber, Peggy sees government as her salvation and the president as her subsidizer-in-chief. She voted with the expectation that the Spreader of Wealth will reward her with payback. Joe just wants Washington to leave him alone to fend for himself.
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POPSBillions of dollars California unclaimed money in Treasury Most Americans suffering from the ongoing credit crunch aren't aware that there are billions of dollars unclaimed money in California and other States. The lost money is sitting-around waiting for unclaimed property owners to step forward and file a claim.
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POPSFBI Investigating Companies At Heart Of Meltdown Last week, the Federal Reserve provided an emergency $85 billion loan to AIG, which teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. Lehman Brothers was forced to file for bankruptcy after attempts to engineer a private rescue fell apart. All the companies were laid low from bad bets on complex mortgage-related securities. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke made the joint decision last week that the only way to stop the carnage was to deal with the root cause of all the troubles, billions of dollars of bad mortgage debt sitting on the books of major financial companies. This debt has triggered the worst credit crisis in decades, causing credit markets to essentially freeze up despite the fact that the Fed joined with major central banks around the world to pump billions of dollars of reserves into the financial system. IndyMac Bancorp Inc. and the former Countrywide Financial Corp., are also under. scrutiny.
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POPSYou Owe $455,000 * “People seem to think the government has money,” said former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker. “The government doesn’t have any money“ * The United States Department of the Treasury and the Office of Management and Budget published a report stating that the U.S. cannot grow our way out of the government’s liabilities, that the liabilities are quickly growing, and that failing to take drastic and immediate action would lead to very bad consequences (the report was written in 2006) * The International Monetary Fund - which oversees third-world economies - are so concerned about the solvency of the U.S. economy that they are conducting a complete audit of the whole US financial system If you owed $455,000, you might very well have to file for bankruptcy, unless you had some rich uncle who could bail you out. But if your uncle had bailed you out numerous times in the past and if you had consistently broke your promises to re-pay him - he’d probably cut you off
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POPSObama's Entire Illinois Legislative Record Built In A Single Year He became Obama’s kingmaker. Several months before Obama announced his U.S. Senate bid, Jones called his old friend Cliff Kelley, a former Chicago alderman who now hosts the city’s most popular black call-in radio program. Cliff Kelley recollected the private conversation as follows: “He said, ‘Cliff, I’m gonna make me a U.S. Senator.’” “Oh, you are? Who might that be?” “Barack Obama.” Jones appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills. State Senator Rickey Hendon, the original sponsor of landmark racial profiling and videotaped confession legislation yanked away by Jones and given to Obama, complained to me at the time. “Barack didn’t have to endure any of it, yet, in the end, he got all the credit.
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POPSABC, FBI Punk'd by Terror 'Fan Video' "The intel community appears to have (once again) fallen victim to poorly researched open source news reporting," writes Evan Kohlmann over at the Counterterrorism Blog. Look, reporters get stories wrong all the time. And ABC, to its credit, has revised its original report... but only slightly. There's a caveat from Venzke buried in the piece. The headline now reads: "Al Qaeda Supporters' Tape to Call for Use of WMDs." The quote from FBI spokesman Kolko remains the same. Video is here: http://worldanalysis.net/postnuke/html/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1016 Read more at source...
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POPSHubble Image Collection v3.0 There is a 500mb download that contains 130 of the best images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope., each in three resolutions. There is also a list of 'goodies' on the left of the page with a range of Hubble downloads,
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POPSThe War on Corruption--Still Code Red Note: A link to a description of the methodology and software used to create the diagrams above from the original newspaper article can be found here. The file will be a zipped MS Word document appearing there with the highlighted phrase "DL_NETVIEW\HOWTONETWORKS.ZIP"
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POPSMortgage Lender In Advanced Negotiations With Bank of America The takeover buzz surrounding Countrywide arose just two days after the company was forced into a hurried statement insisting there was "no substance" to rumours that it was about to file for protection from its creditors. Countrywide reported a $1.2bn loss in October - its first quarter in the red for 25 years. The company has cut more than 11,000 jobs and at the height of panic about the credit crunch last summer, several of its offices were besieged by anxious
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POPSTools For Girls You can get them in floral too. I bet they've hidden a little mirror in there somewhere too. It wouldn't be a really girly tool kit without it. :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ng2Ls4OA2k4
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POPSVIP TUNE RIP-OFF- It's real it happened to me!
It's true. Yesterday, I received a credit card statement on a card that I had paid off. On it, there was a charge for 29.99 on July 10th, from a company called VIP TUNE from Limassol... I knew, I didn't charge anything like that and also knew, no one in my family had either. (actually I had cut that card up 3 months ago)... Upon calling the bank who issued the card... they acted dumb...like they knew nothing about it...somewhere though, between their words it seemed THEY KNEW ALL ABOUT IT BUT STILL REPUDIATED IT... Finally the conversation culminated with WE WILL SEND YOU OUT A FEDERAL REGULATION E FORM. They also said they will close the account and issue a new number and card... I KNOWED they KNOWED about this fraud. Now, I just have to wait until the form comes in and hopefully it will be resolved. Wanted to alert all about this new rip-off so everyone will check their bank statements closely. Go to: http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/261/RipOff0261334.htm to read more about it.
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POPSCan Your Plants Recognize You? Plants have a secret social life. Apparently they can tell their siblings from plants not related to them, and in doing so compete against unrelated plants. Wow, and I thought the neighborhood cats were interesting.
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POPSThe Motivator A fun little site that makes motivational posters out of images you upload or urls.
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