How foreign governments handle U.S. Aid

67 Governments Fail US Transparency Test: New Release

The State Department’s annual review of how foreign governments handle public money found that most of those assessed cleared the bar and a large minority did not.

The report is the closest thing Washington has to a report card on where US aid dollars can actually be traced. What did it say?

State of play

The tally is stark. Of 139 governments and the Palestinian Authority, 73 met the minimum fiscal transparency standard and 67 did not. Of the 67 that fell short, 14 made significant progress toward the minimum over the past year. The review is broad. The assessment covers governments that receive US assistance, judging whether the public can see how that money is raised and spent.

By the numbers

The split is close. Of the 140 assessed, 73 cleared the bar and 67 fell short, a near-even divide. Most failers are stuck. Only 14 of the 67 are improving, leaving 53 that showed no significant progress toward the minimum.

Foreign aid is under the microscope. With the administration paring overseas spending, a failure of transparency is now a direct argument against writing the next check.

Transparency deters graft. Open books make it harder to divert funds, so the standard is a first line of defense against corruption in recipient states. It exposes where aid disappears.

Read about it...

Tarlov accuses Elon of Corruption

Jessica Tarlov’s Epic Fail Against Musk—Elon Mopped The Floor With Her!

There’s something deeply satisfying about watching the liberal media’s narrative crumble—especially when the architect of its destruction is Elon Musk, a man who refuses to bow to their agenda.

This week, Fox News’ resident progressive ideologue, Jessica Tarlov, attempted to ambush Musk with a loaded question designed to paint him as a corrupt crony capitalist. Instead, her “gotcha” moment backfired spectacularly, leaving her floundering while Musk dismantled her weak argument with facts and transparency.

Tarlov, armed with the usual progressive talking points, launched her attack:

“So you’ve been making cuts to a lot of the agencies that have open investigations and regulatory battles with your companies… at the same time you continue to get billions in government contracts. Tesla gets billions in subsidies. How do you explain that to the American people?”

The implication was clear—Musk was supposedly slashing oversight to benefit his own businesses while raking in taxpayer money. It was a narrative straight out of the left-wing playbook: paint the successful entrepreneur as a villain exploiting the system.

Rather than taking the bait, Musk calmly dismantled her argument with a dose of reality: “Every Doge action is listed on the Doge.gov website. If anyone has a concern about any one of those actions, they can raise that… We make mistakes, but we fix them fast.”

Then she went on with the Democrat's false narrative about social security...Elon set her straight on that one too!

Read more...

Doge: Shifting the tide of Political Accountability

BUSTED! Mystery Millions: Government Workers’ Wealth Under Elon’s Radar!

President Trump signed a new executive order, instructing federal agencies to work with DOGE, a move causing quite a stir.

It seems we have a new chapter featuring tech magnate Elon Musk as the lead, aimed squarely at the secrets of government financial dealings. Musk is reportedly teaming up with President Donald Trump, who he visited in the Oval Office. Alongside his son X, Musk seemed to be on more than just a casual visit, with high stakes surrounding their discussions.

Musk didn’t hold back as he questioned the growing net worth of federal government employees who are on a basic salary structure. “We do find it sort of rather odd that there are quite a few people in the bureaucracy who have essentially a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars, but somehow manage to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth while they are in that position,” he noted.

Conservative voices have long expressed skepticism about how certain individuals in the public eye seem to gain significant wealth without any plausible explanation. Musk’s plan to delve deeper using DOGE comes as a welcomed initiative by many supporters of transparency.

“We’re just curious as to where it came from. Whether they have very good investing in which that case we should take their investment advice perhaps,” Musk added with a hint of sarcasm.

Read more...

The integrity of our judicial process demands full transparency

Judge Cannon Grills Jack Smith’s Prosecutor Over Funding For Special Counsel

In a striking courtroom exchange that underscores the delicate balance of power between the judiciary and executive branches, Judge Aileen Cannon confronted the prosecution team led by Special Counsel Jack Smith regarding the funding mechanisms of the Special Counsel’s office.

This rigorous scrutiny emerged as part of ongoing proceedings in the high-profile case against former President Donald Trump, involving classified documents.

The special counsel has not released a financial report since September 2023 which is a violation of the 6-month reporting requirement, investigative reporter Julie Kelly said.

Read about it...

Jan 6 UnSelect Committee Destroyed documents

All DIMS and two RINOS's destroyed evidence!

Nancy Pelosi’s January 6 committee pulled out all the stops to aggressively go after Donald Trump

Now members of the committee are squirming as Republicans demand answers to some pointed questions about what happened to critical evidence.

Back in November, Rep. Kevin McCarthy—who was the incoming speaker—warned January 6 Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, demanding the committee keep all documentation for the new GOP majority to sift through.

The new Republican majority has been busy looking into how the committee worked to weaponize the government in order to take down Donald Trump.

“It is imperative that all information collected be preserved not just for institutional prerogatives but for transparency to the American people,” McCarthy had warned Thompson. “The American people have a right to know that the allegations you have made are supported by the facts.”

But the committee reportedly blew off that directive and could be on the hook for obstructing justice over destroying documents, witness testimony transcripts, and email messages.

Read more...

Now what are the Republicans going to do about this? Have another freaking investigation that goes nowhere?

The Two Tiers of Justice

Grassley Shook The Senate Floor: Slams FBI For Redacting Unclassified Docs To Cover For Biden

Senator Chuck Grassley raised some concerns regarding the investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden’s potential bribery charges. During his address on the Senate floor, Grassley mentioned the FBI document with a FD-1023 title that was presented to the House Oversight Committee last Thursday, which he also had the privilege to review.

As per the FD-1023, it brings to light that the foreign national who may have bribed the Biden family, possess 17 audio recordings. The document states that this foreign national held 15 audio recordings of the phone conversations between him and Hunter Biden, and two of the recordings had the phone conversation between the foreign national and then-Vice President Joe Biden.

As most of the sentences were blocked out while the committee was reviewing it, it appeared to be that the FBI had certain details on the document blocked out to reduce transparency on the case. Grassley raised a good question as to why Special Counsel Jack Smith needed a recording from the former President Trump, while what has been done about the audio recordings related to the Biden family?

Read more about the Redacted Docs

"Sunlight is the Best Disinfectant" - Elon Musk

Links to Obama, Clinton, Soros funding found in leftist advocacy groups urging advertiser boycott of Musk’s Twitter

A collection of leftist organizations recently urged major corporate brands to stage an advertising boycott of Twitter if its prospective new owner, tech billionaire Elon Musk, follows through on his vow to transform the platform into a bastion of protected free speech.

Musk called out those organizations and demanded to know who was funding them, and the unsurprising answer included individuals connected to former President Barack Obama, among many other prominent figures and groups on the left, according to The Conservative Brief.

“Who funds these organizations that want to control your access to information? Let’s investigate …,” Musk wrote, and added, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”

Read about it...

Exposing the Bidens

Hunter Biden’s Shady Business Associates Frequently Visited White House

$5.2 Million for ‘the Big Guy’ Discovered

Hunter Biden’s business ties to his father Joe Biden’s administrations are being further established, as his ‘shady’ associates have been found to have visited the White House on numerous occasions.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden currently has approximately $5.2 million in income that he did not report on government transparency filings, the Daily Mail found in an analysis.

Why aren't Democrats the least bit concerned about this?

Read about it...

Pfizer must be transparent in the release of its Covid documents

After FDA says it can release COVID-19 vaccine data by 2097, federal judge orders all info to be shared this year

Pfizer tried to pull a fast one..their plan was to release all the data in 75 years, but Judge Pittman ordered the FDA to produce 55,000 pages every 30 days which would amount to 8 months.

"Texas ordered the FDA to greatly increase the number of documents it releases each month that pertain to the agency's approval process for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency launched a Freedom of Information Act suit against the FDA in August. The international group consists of "public health professionals, medical professionals, scientists, and journalists," including academics and medical experts from Yale, Harvard Medical School, and UCLA.

"The Court concludes that this FOIA request is of paramount public importance," said Pittman – who was appointed to the bench by former President Donald Trump in 2019.

Read about it...

Is Joe meeting Hunter out of Sunshine?

Who Has Biden Been Secretly Meeting In His Home State Of Delaware?

Press Secretary Jen Psaki confirmed that President Biden will not be releasing the visitor logs from his residences in his home state of Delaware, despite making 17 trips there in less than six months.

The administration decided to keep the logs secret despite its claim to "restore transparency and trust in government" — starting with the reversal of limiting the release of White House visitor logs.

Read about it...

It has to make you wonder if the President is meeting with his son considering all the recent revelations regarding the third laptop.

Chris Wallace interview with Jen Psaki

Chris Wallace Confronts WH Press Sec Jen Psaki – ‘You Are Being Less Transparent Than The Trump Administration’

Coming from Chris Wallace, the Trump hater, that's saying a lot!

And Jen Psaki continues to repeat the false narrative that Trump was ripping little children out of the arms of their parents. These people continue to get away with the lies and nonsense.

Read about it...

Tuesday's Commission Meeting

Now we learn that the public can no longer get the back-up...the city is NOT ADA compliant I am told and therefore they can't include the back-up with the agenda online. What in the hell difference does it make--if they can post an agenda, blind people can't read that either. This makes no sense and frankly the public is left out again. ZERO transparency in this city. The clerk's office will have a print-out of the back-up and we can go to city hall to read it.

Following the swearing in below at 5:30 after Tom Copeland makes his public concession (he already made it to the City Clerk's office so I don't understand the formality), the general meeting will begin with 19 items on the consent Agenda. Now what if someone can't hear this public meeting?  Is that affected by ADA as well?  Is the entire meeting still ADA compliant if people can't hear what is said?

New Business has Michael Bornstein's evaluation for his raise.

It gets more stupid by the day and we still do NOT have live video of the meeting.

Additions/deletions:

The following items have been added to the agenda:

2.      NEW BUSINESS:

B.     Candidate Tom Copeland’s concession

3.      SWEARING IN OF RE-ELECTED OFFICIALS BY THE CITY ATTORNEY:

B.     Commissioner Herman Robinson

4.      COMMENTS BY RE-ELECTED OFFICIALS:

B.     Commissioner Herman Robinson

Quote of the Day - Scott Maxwell

"I think that we need greater transparency for everything we do.  I mean, transparency, transparency, transparency. You can't use that word enough from this dais.

I'm being sarcastic."

~ Commissioner Scott Maxwell

His ending statement after the city attorney explained why they are not live streaming the meetings.

Transparency

WASHINGTON (CBS)– The Obama administration in its final year in office spent a record $36.2 million on legal costs defending its refusal to turn over federal records under the Freedom of Information Act, according to an Associated Press analysis of new U.S. data that also showed poor performance in other categories measuring transparency in government.

Democrats want to overturn two Constitutional rights

"The Democrats’ “blueprint for progress,” believe it or not, is the Constitution of the United States.

That’s right, folks. To them, the Constitution is not a document of inalienable rights, but is just a general suggestion as how to accomplish their liberal progressive goals. If it gets in the way, just modify it. That is very convenient when you want to control the rest of us. I think that the British had a problem with writing laws to enforce their will on the colonists," said Allen West.

Read about it...at the Washington Examiner.

OMG Everyone's acting like Hillary

Comment Up

This isn't Steven Segal in the 1988 movie Above the Law.  This is the real thing and it happens daily in politics--

Thinking they are above the law and that they just don't have to be accountable, I would suspect that many local commissioners hide their e-mails from the public that are on their private e-mail accounts. They don't want to be open and transparent and don't believe they have to be. It takes a lot by the public to ascertain the truth. This, I am sure, happens more times than we know. It's like Lake Worth's Vice Mayor, Scott Maxwell, with four cell phones. Each have a different purpose?

The Martin County Commission just got in lots of trouble for not following the law. "Of those commission members -- a former judge, of all things -- failed to turn over emails regarding public matters to a property owner who requested them. The commissioner held the emails for years without turning them over, despite a legal requirement to do so."

Read about it... at Sunshine News.

The Blame is with Us

Comment Up

It never gets any better.  Money comes in the front door and immediately goes out the back. We pay the PBSO a small fortune and crime escalates. Taxes are raised and some other "need" eats it up.

One can only assume that being left in the dark is how the residents want to be when it comes to actually knowing what is going on in their city. They are all wrapped up in their own lives, their families, their jobs, and have no time to be bothered. They want the "other guy" to be the community watchdog. Bully and developer backed politicians count on them. Voters are taken advantage of but either don't realize it or don't care. The city wants the public to shut the heck up and the Unions to go away and they love playing the blame game.

With 545 pages of back-up in support of everything they will pass tomorrow night, 14 items are on the Consent Agenda. That generally means nothing is pulled for discussion and when discussion is requested by a minority on the dais, the majority refuses to allow it. There is one 2nd Reading changing the Land Development Regulations that passed the first time around on a 3/1 vote.  Guess who the three were. They are going to pass over $1.8 million in expenditures with not the slightest explanation. There is way too much power in politically appointed Boards and this Trio commission.

There is nothing else on the agenda other than two presentations--one will be from Jeff Clemens and Lori Berman. I am sure that they will touch on Sober Homes as they have been contacted by residents about that growing problem within our city.  We are looking for solutions, not banality. The other presentation is about the Genesis Neighborhood that is not even recognized by the Neighborhood Association President's Council and it will be given by its highly controversial and inflammatory president who is allowed by this mayor to say or do what he pleases.

When you have an elected body that ignores the vote of the people, you have a reign of terror. That's what the people voted for...dictatorial leadership in Lake Worth. How disengaged are voters? Special interest politicians and those with Field of Dreams pie in the sky beliefs keep getting elected.  How do we ever expect anything different going forward? In many ways you must blame it on apathy and the lack of involvement from the public at large.  Politicians count on this and virtually can lie their way back into office.

National politics is all affected by attitudes that began at the local level.  It is a trickle up effect. If we in Lake Worth refuse to get involved, find excuses for not making it to city commission meetings, and do not elect a majority of representatives who put the welfare of the people, our home and our assets before the special interests, how can we ever expect anything better on the state and national levels?

The only two elected officials on our dais who continually put the people first are Christopher McVoy and Ryan Maier. The rest just want to get meetings over with so that they can get the heck home or to their favorite watering hole. These two commissioners are constantly bullied and treated disrespectfully by fellow commissioners and their political supporters who do show up for meetings.

Perception is everything - Lake Worth Commission Out of the Sunshine dinners

Comment Up

The Palm Beach Post editorial of April 8 was entitled "Commissioner's shared meals feed suspicions of secrecy."

This was about the fact that before every city commission meeting, they feed their faces BEHIND LOCKED DOORS at city hall. One of our residents wrote to the commission complaining about it and she never heard back from one single commissioner. Anyone surprised? She told them that she would be knocking on the door and joining them for dinner, tape recorder in hand.

The mayor, Pam Triolo, gave a big explanation at a recent commission meeting saying that it started with her baked ziti and next Commissioner Amoroso brought in some homemade meatloaf. They used to have it in the conference room where anyone walking by could see them or enter the room. That was not to their liking and they changed it to the city manager's office, behind locked doors, probably about the time when those secret meetings were being held on giving away our beach complex.

If they had bothered to ask their city attorney, he would have told them that perception is everything in spite of the fact that they weren't talking about city business while they were chowing down.

Oh, and the city manager exaggerated once again when he said that meetings dragged toward midnight giving that as an excuse for these private dinners.  All of these meetings, controlled by this majority commission, end early. Most everything is passed on Consent Agenda with ZERO discussion.

Read about it...

Obama Hypocrisy and Cronyism

Daniel Bongino

29 mins ·

The Obama presidency will leave a lasting stain on America that will take years to wipe clean. Just when you think they've reached the bottom, they continue to set the bar lower for ethics and transparency.

Here's the latest bit of disgusting behavior. As the Wall Street Journal is reporting today, the Obama administration has been waging a 7 year war on for-profit-colleges, such as the University of Phoenix, because the Obama administration both hates capitalism and free markets and, they do not want to lose the control over the higher education system which they've worked hard to get through their takeover of the college student-loan process.

This disgusting example of government abuse and harassment has decimated the stock value of the parent company of the University of Phoenix because they have hemorrhaged students due to the regulatory government assault. So, who magically comes to the rescue to buy the now near-valueless company at a huge discount? Barack Obama's basketball buddy Marty Nesbitt and his private equity firm, which was conveniently founded right after Barack Obama's re-election (BTW, to any congressional staff member reading this, if you check the White House visitor logs and East Wing elevator manifests you'll see Marty Nesbitt is a frequent White House guest. Just a thought if you care to see what's really going on).

As I once said in an interview with the Blaze, "it's worse than you know." The stain of this administration and their war on America will slowly become obvious over time. In addition to the IRS scandal, the Benghazi scandal, the AP/Fox News phone records scandal, the Fast & Furious scandal, the GAO scandal, the EPA email scandal, the FCC Net Neutrality scandal, and the VA scandal, more WILL leak out over time. I promise.

Let nothing keep you from the polls in 2016. Throw this morally corrupt administration, and anyone stained by them, far out of office in 2016. Only then can we start to clean up the mess left behind.

Public Notices and Transparency

Comment Up

Katie asked me if I had read an article in the PBPost regarding public meetings. It is an interesting article by Dominic Calabro of Florida TaxWatch that focuses on government accountability and transparency, something we are always complaining about here in Lake Worth.

The first paragraph reads: "We must continue to fight to protect the public’s right to maintain a vigilant eye on their elected officials. The cornerstone of our constitutional democratic republic is protecting citizens’ right to full and public notice when their elected officials are discussing or making decisions that could affect everyone’s daily lives."

One of the revealing tidbits of important information and something neither Katie nor I knew is that in 2012, the Florida Legislature voted in a law that said newspapers are required to e-mail any new notices free of charge to anyone who has requested that they be notified.

So, with that said, everyone needs to contact the Lake Worth Herald, a news publication that is totally partisan and one that gets all of the city business, and request that your e-mail address be included for all future public meeting notices.