Fiscal Rangers

Small Town California Newspaper gets Pulitzer for Investigation Series on Local School District Corruption

A California school district with only four schools and 6600 students suffered huge fiscal losses due to cronyism and corruption and overpayment of salaries. The local paper published a 10-part investigative series and won a Pulitzer. One of the lessons is the corruption that can occur when contracting firms support elected school board members to get huge school bond issues totaling $200-million and related projects approved. Additionally, the District Superindant was paid $663,000 in salaries, benefits and perks, which was much higher than the Superintendant of the much larger Los Angeles School District. Read more →

SIGTARP Report: April 2015 Quarterly Report to Congress on TARP

SIGTARP Report: April 2015 Quarterly Report to Congress on TARP From: Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2015 9:53 AM To: Subject: SIGTARP Report: April 2015 Quarterly Report to Congress on TARP This morning, SIGTARP issued its April 2015 Quarterly Report to Congress on the Status of TARP. To view the Quarterly Report, click here.Follow SIGTARP on Twitter @SIGTARP, here.SIGTARP HOTLINE: To report allegations of fraud, waste, abuse, mismanagement, or misrepresentations involving the taxpayer-funded Troubled Asset Relief Program, call (877) SIG-2009 or send confidential information to SIGTARP via an online Hotline form. SIGTARP REPORTS:Audit reports and quarterly reports to Congress about the management and transparency of TARP programs are posted here.GENERAL COMMENTS: SIGTARP welcomes comments and suggestions. You may reach us at the phone number and mailing address below: Phone: (202) 927-8940Mail: Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program 1801 L Street NW Washington, DC 20220 Update your subscriptions, modify your password or e-mail address, or stop subscriptions at any time on your Subscriber Preferences Page. You will need to use your email address to log in. If you have questions or problems... Read more →

.Viral Video of black lady "Blackcat" demanding that "real black people need to wake up and come against the ghetto kids causing damage in Ba;timore" (sic)

This YouTube video by a Black lady ranting about the "black bastards" raised by ghetto parents and that black folks need to wake up and take action. This isn't a white problem, it is a black problem she continues. This needs to go viral like the earlier video of the black mom beating her kid for throwing rocks in the Baltimore riots. https://www.facebook.com/ModernRevolution/videos/891070754284593/ She actually is saying that blacks need to take personal responsibility for fixing the problem. Vance Jochim Read more →

Government Internal Audit Ideas: Very interesting Powerpoint from Internal Audit Consultant Protiviti on auditing large contracts and cost savings

Government Internal Audit Ideas: Very interesting Powerpoint from Internal Audit Consultant Protiviti on auditing large contracts and cost savings This was a very good and detailed 57 page presentation given to the Puget Sound (Seattle) area Institute of Internal Auditors. Protiviti is a major international outsourcer of Internal Audit. It is a very good list of items to look for. I found that they also now provide services to outsource contract management. So they are invading a stolid profession. Protiviti is known for being cost savings focused, so that is how they get into firms where existing staff are not doing the same. LOOK at the funny “contractor quality awards” pictures at the end. Some pictures look like reconstruction audit reports in Iraq and Afghanistan. Also notice the “confidential” statement on the bottom, but this was posted on an IIA chapter website hosted by the IIA. Vance Jochim FiscalRangers.com Read more →

Common Core Update: Daily Commercial publishes Common Core article from AP that distorts the truth

Tavares, FL April 18, 2015 This is information the main stream media like the Daily Commercial or Orlando Sentinel will NOT tell you, parents, grandparents or educators. Also read the Facebook groups I have listed at the bottom of the report. The public is going to alternative "news" media like these due to the biased news media articles like the one described below. Saturday, April 18, the Daily Commercial published a front page story "Movement to opt out of Common Core accelerates" by Christina A. Cassidy. However, they did not publish it on their website, so HERE is a longer version published in the online Honolulu Star Observer. By not publishing it, the Daily Commercial also avoids comments submitted by readers. It was somewhat balanced in describing the growing movement by parents and students to "opt-out" of school tests. Some states are seeing up to 70% of students refusing to take required tests. It does bring up the valid point that many parents and students are joining the "opt-out" movement and refusing to take the Common Core based tests in many states. However, a trend I see is that the AP almost always includes canned liberal distortions of facts buried... Read more →

Lake County avoids fraudulent skimmers on Gas station fuel pumps, but other nearby counties DID have them

Lake County, FL avoids fiscal fraud fiasco, but other Florida counties found to have credit card "skimmers" on gas pumps, including Polk County, Marion County, Osceola County and Orange County. This Orlando Sentinel article describes how the Agricultural Dept, which oversees filling stations, performed a "sweep" inspection of 6,000 Florida stations and found 81 of them with skimmers. There is a link to the actual list of specific stations with the skimmers. http://www.orlandosentinel.com/.../os-ap-credit-card-skimmers ... Here is the list of gas stations where skimmers were attached to gas pumps. http://media.trb.com/media/acrobat/2015-04/83370368-23114941.pdf Vance Jochim FiscalRangers.com Read more →

Updated Consumer Alert: Solar Firms Scam Homeowners with Contracts that Result in Home Liens

We updated our earlier article about solar roofing and panel scams to include new Florida resident information and how Arizona and California Solar roofing and panel scams are now moving to Florida after a new 2017 law allows them to grow without Electric Utility interference. Read more →

Lake County School District Workshop today - here is my initial update

Tavares, FL Mon. Aprile 20, 2015 The new agenda for next Monday's Lake County School Board meeting should be on the District's website because the Board's assistant mailed it out to those on here "newsletter" email list. They have a number of policies discussed today at a workshop that will be on the discussion agenda, and they will be re-voting on school boundaries for Lake Minneola High School. At the workshop, Bill Mathias passed out documents to the Board to show his analysis that any choice of optionswill result in the need to install 10 portables at the school anyway. They did not discuss options, which will be saved for the Monday meeting. Today's workshop included discussion of "re-allocating" funds to other departments as a result of a Bill Gates grant. There are two more expensive administrative positions and some other positions being added, but Board member Marc Dodd questioned why they were reducing school counselors to pay for the positions. The answer was the Gates Grant study indicated Lake County had more counselors than other schools, so the recommendation was to reshift some positions to other uses. I will post more later - probably Wednesday. Lots of stuff was... Read more →

Florida Dept. of Ed's favored online test vendor, AIR, botches login systems so students could not take tests today.

To: Lake County Fl legislators including Marlene O'Toole, Chair of FL House Education Committee Legislators need to raise the roof with the Dept. of Education and find why they could not ensure this massive botch up was prevented. Don't let them say "AIR are professionals, we relied on them..." Somebody in the Dept. of Ed needs to be FIRED and AIR needs to be fined heavily to pay for all costs caused to schools to reschedule tests, etc. FYI regarding Florida student testing. Florida came up with a method for everyone to Opt-out. Today, the Florida approved provider of online testing, AIR, (which replaced PARCC) botched the login sessions by making software changes recently and students could not login to take tests today. I was at our Lake County School District workshop meeting and they said this all happened this morning. The FL Dept of Ed had to send out an email to all schools telling them. So that screwed up all the schedules for tests and read about it in tomorrow's papers. Here is one article... http://www.sun-sentinel.com/.../fl-assessment-test-suspended- ... Vance Jochim Read more →

China's Xinjiang Province outlaws many Islamic practices including public prayers

Apr. 20, 2015 This story is from Dec. 2014, but shows how China is getting fed up with Islamic demands in the province where many Muslims live, and so new rules prohibit a number of Islamic practices. READ it here in the Times of India. vj Read more →

Renowned anti-Common Core expert, Dr. Duke Pesta, to speak in the Villages on Friday night at 6:30 pm

Here is the event signup if you decide to go (Free): https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dr-duke-pesta-tickets-16067021895?aff=eac2 Dr. Duke Pesta is probably the best speaker there is on problems with Common Core and if you can go, I recommend it. I have some videos of him at prior events on my YouTube channel at "FiscalRangersFlorida" - this one is from an event in Clermont on Sept. 22, 2015: https://youtu.be/p_4zA_wNdMM Vance Jochim FiscalRangers.com Read more →

Tomorrow's Lake County School Board 2pm daytime meeting - our overview of two agenda items, including the International Baccalaureate program (IB) and rant about lack of videos

This is an overview of the upcoming April 6, 2015 2pm Board Meeting for the Lake County School District. We provide links to Powerpoints on the Gates Foundation grant funded Engage LCS program as well as the staff one sided presentation on the International Baccalaureate (IB) program with out pro and con analysis. Finally, there is a rant about the lack of videos of daytime and some nighttime meetings. Read more →

Obama and Some Main Stream Press Facilitate "Lies and Deception" regarding Obama's "Nucelar Agreement" with Iran - their translated Pashto Iranian version is very different from one Obama gave to the US press

Apparently, Obama is gloating about his Iran deal regarding nuclear weapons. He and some of the US press are gloating about it and using a US tailored version of the agreement. However, a conservative paper translated the original Iranian version of the agreement and it is much more against interests of the US. Thus the Obama administration provided a whitewash version without the true conditions agreed to. I was unable to find any articles in the Daily Commercial or Orlando Sentinel that discussed to original version wording or Obama's lies about it's contents. Read and wonder how Obama or the Democrats in power can lie as much as they do about the much harsher terms in the Iranian version of the agreement. Why aren't more press speaking out about these lies? http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/04/05/world-view-texts-of-ir an-nuclear-deal-differ-in-english-and-farsi-versions/ Since the above link has other articles, here is the full excerpt on Obama's lies: Texts of Iran nuclear deal differ in English and Farsi versions Iran's press has been euphoric and ecstatic over this week's nuclear agreement between Iran and Western negotiators. Many newspapers are devoting entire editors to the agreement. A typical headline is, "Our nation is on the cusp of a great victory." The... Read more →

Downtown Tavares parking is so bad, businesses are asking the City to fix it

Tavares, FL Apr. 3, 2015 Parking in downtown Tavares, FL is so bad that Orlando's ABC affiliate Channel 9 posted a video report. http://www.wftv.com/videos/news/tavares-residents-want-the-city-to-fix-parking/vDMyPR/ Myrt's Channel 9 report caught part of the issue, but skipped the problem where Lake County government employees are using up some of the spaces. The parking garage was justified by saying government employees would use it, but not all do, AND the entire first floor is set aside not for taxpayers, but police and disabled, and most of those spots are vacant. Why should taxpayers be expected to drive up three levels rather than employees? Finally, many spaces are taken by jury members. They should be asked to park on the upper levels and not take over the lower floors. The entire first floor, as well as parking spots on the street should have posted time limits like 2-4 hours. Otherwise, people with short, legitimate needs to visit the County, like paying a Tax Collector bill or getting a building permit can't find parking, and they are "customers" who should have priority on parking. The blue Mustang is parked on Main St. every day. This picture is of a blue Mustang that is parked out... Read more →