Deadbeats feast on tax dollars; Palin’s flak and the President’s car bottom out

    Maybe it looks worse than it is, but a recent Government Accountability Office report about tax deadbeats getting $24 billion (yeah, billion) in stimulus funds won’t help defenders of government spending in the ongoing budget debate.

    From the report:

    “Thousands of Recovery Act contract and grant recipients owe hundreds of millions in federal taxes: At least 3,700 Recovery Act contract and grant recipients–including prime recipients, subrecipients, and vendors–are estimated to owe more than $750 million in known unpaid federal taxes as of September 30, 2009, and received over $24 billion in Recovery Act funds. This represented nearly 5 percent of the approximately 80,000 contractors and grant recipients in the data from Recovery.gov as of July 2010 that we reviewed.”

    A summary and the full report are available at the GAO website.

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    Speaking of wasted money, there’s this cute story from Jan Murphy of the Harrisburg Patriot about how the state Liquor Control Board sends checks to local communities to help with the costs of law enforcement. But more than 400 of the towns getting checks – some as small as $150 – don’t even have police departments.

    And if you need another reminder that you should never write anything in a email you don’t want to see in the newspapers, there’s this story from Politico about embarrassing messages that surfaced from Sarah Palin’s chief spokeswoman.

    She expresses exasperation about the former Alaska guv’s family, and calls a one conservative blogger who attended a Palin rally a “greasy dumb ass with a talent for self-promotion.” Ouch.

    And thanks to our Harrisburg man Scott Detrow for discovering this fun video of President O’bama’s car getting stuck as his motorcade tries to leave a parking lot in Ireland.

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