An audit by the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, Stuart Bowen Jr., shows significant waste, abuse, and fraud of funds. The Iraq war and reconstruction is estimated to have cost $300 billion so far.
Among the questionable items: Continue reading
In true consumer fight-back style, Ellen Fein has started a website to criticize Dr. Larry Rosenthal. Ellen is one of the authors of the book “The Rules”, while Rosenthal calls himself the “Dentist to the Stars.”
Ellen claims that Rosenthal botched her dental work on her website lyingdentist.com. She says on the site that she had veneers put on her top teeth and was happy with those. When she returned to Rosenthal to get her bottom teeth done, she says he gave her “gigantic” teeth and he altered her bit. Both, she claims, have caused her pain and countless medical problems.
Rosenthal has filde a $5 million lawsuit against her, alleging that Ellen has been harassing him and trying to get $100,000 from him because she’s unhappy with the dental work.
According to an article in the Janesville Gazette, Wisconsin officials conducted a class to help illegal immigrants understand how to get a drivers license before April 1, 2007. On April 1, those applying for licenses or renewing licenses must have proof of legal residency. Up until then, such proof is not necessary, therefore illegal aliens can easily get drivers licenses in Wisconsin. Continue reading
Milwaukee Public Schools officials expect enrollment to drop from 84,900 students to 81,600 students this fall. That’s a drop fo 3,300 or 3.9%.
Here’s the big question: Will their budget drop proportionately????
From Robert FitzPatrick of Pyramid Scheme Alert:
In a crucial development that could rock the entire multi-level marketing business, a class action lawsuit has been filed this month against Quixtar (Amway) charging that the company is running an illegal pyramid scheme. (filed in US District court in the northern district of California on January 10, 2007, case number 3:07-cv-00201-EMC.)
The charges against Amway/Quixtar go to the very heart of the company’s business practices and most other multi-level marketing (MLM) schemes’, that there is no retail “direct selling” opportunity, only an endless chain recruitment program.
The charges are being brought by one of America’s most prestigious law firms, Boies, Schiller and Flexner. David Boies of this firm represented Vice-President Al Gore in front of the US Supreme Court in the world famous case, Gore vs. Bush that contested the vote counting in Florida after the 2000 election. The other firm partnering with Boies, Schiller & Flexner in the suit is Gary, Williams, Parenti, Finney, Lewis, McManus, Watson, & Sperando, P.L.. in Stuart, Florida. This firm has a powerful track record of successful class action suits against large companies.
The suit is based on the very same charges that the Federal Trade Commission has brought against Equinox, SkyBiz and other MLMs that regulators shut down. The suit charges that the Quixtar program . based upon selling products to recruits “for personal use”, then authorizing them to recruit others to do the same while requiring or incentivizing them to maintain quota levels of monthly purchases, and then rewarding them in a multi-level compensation system . is a fraud. The suit also attacks Quixtar’s infamous “tools” business as a second pyramid scheme perpetrated on new recruits. The “tools” scheme was exposed in a 2004 special report on NBC Dateline.
Using Quixtar’s own payout data a report published by Pyramid Scheme Alert has shown that 99% of all Quixtar recruits never earn any profit. In the report, “The Myth of MLM Income Opportunity,” the 99% loss rate was shown to be caused by the pyramid recruitment model and the lack of retail sales, not the “failure” of the recruits.
Microsoft’s competitors in Europe alleged today that the new Vista operating system continues the illegal practices by Microsoft discovered in Europe 3 years ago. The group complaining includes IBM, Nokia, Sun Microsystems, Adobe, Oracle, and Red Hat.
In 2004, the European Commission determined that Microsoft purposely made Windows software incompatible with competitors’ server software, as well as trying to get makers of audio and video streaming software out of the market.
Microsoft was set to release Vista on Tuesday, but the European Commission said Vista is aimed at increasing Microsoft’s dominance. The company is pushing its XAML markup language so that it may replace HTML, the current standard for publishing on the Internet. Microsoft is also using OOXML (open XML) on the Microsoft Office platform. This dictates how a document is formatted and stored, and competitors are also claiming that Microsoft is using this to increase its monopoly.
Security software makers have complained that Microsoft is denying them access to Vista, which they need to help create their products to protect computers from malicious viruses and software.
The Chicago Board of Elections distributed computer discs to aldermanic campaigns in 2003 which contained the Social Security numbers of more than a million voters. The voter information on the discs also included names, addresses, and birthdates.
Since this inceident, more discs containing Social Secuirty information have been distributed. Officials said that there was no evidence of identity theft from the incidents, but the Board of Elections will notify voters that their data has been compromised.
Voter records have now been changed to only include the last four digits of Social Security numbers.
A story in the Wall Street Journal tells how an 89-year-old survivor of Nazi concentration camps stayed alive because of his ability to counterfeit money. Adolf Burger and 140 other prisoners forged so much British currency, that 12% of all pound-sterling bills in 1945 were fake.
The goal at the time was to break the trust in British currency, and ultimately damage the country’s economy. However, the quest was unsuccessful as German agents skimmed millions of dollars off the counterfeiting oper Continue reading
On Friday, Ben Glisan, Enron’s former Treasurer was released from home confinement. He was sentenced to 5 years in prison, but was released from prison and put under home confinement in September. He has served about 2/3 of his original sentence for his guilty plea to charges of conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud. Continue reading
Bryan Wagner, the investigator contracted by Hewlett-Packard to help find the source of information leaks, has been charged in federal court with crimes of aggravated [tag]identity theft[/tag] and [tag]conspiracy[/tag]. The conspiracy charge carries a maximum penalty of 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The identity theft carries a penalty of up to 2 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
While working for Action Search Group, Wagner is alleged to have obtained the names, addresses, Social Security numbers, telephone call logs, and telephone records of the HP board members and reporters. He is further accused of using a reporter’s Social Security number to create an online account to get the reporter’s telephone records.
In November, the former CEO of HP, Patricia Dunn, was charged in state court with four felonies related to the spying scandal. She has pleaded not guilty to charges of: using false or fraudulent pretenses to obtain confidential information from a public utility, wrongful use of computer data, identity theft, and conspiracy to commit each of those crimes.
The charges stem from her alleged orders to have an investigator identify the board members who may have leaked information from their private meetings to the press. Also charged with the same crimes are Kevin Hunsaker, a former senior lawyer for HP, Ronald DeLia, a private detective, and Bryan Wagner.