FBI Takes Money Used to Investigate Health Care Fraud and Uses it Elsewhere
From The Times (let's see, Terrorism funding and the Pentagon amounts to more than we spend on the rest of the government combined; yet they need to divert more money, this type surreptitiously?):
Couple this with another interesting statistic. Remember the Patriot Act? You should, because it helps them monitor everything about you if they choose (and man, do they choose).
Money earmarked by Congress for investigating health care fraud appears to have been shifted improperly to other purposes, like fighting terrorism, Congressional auditors say in a new report.
The report, to be issued this week by the Government Accountability Office, says health care cases got short shrift from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which was supposed to use the money exclusively to investigate fraud against Medicare, Medicaid and other health programs. The money came from an account in the Medicare trust fund.
The bureau was unable to show that it had used the money for the intended purpose, the report said, noting that F.B.I. agents "previously devoted to health care fraud investigations were shifted to counterterrorism activities" in the last three years.
Moreover, it said, the bureau "was unable to track overall costs related to health care fraud investigations." As a result, it said, the bureau and taxpayers had "minimal assurance" that all the money - $114 million a year - was properly spent.
But the Patriot Act's many provisions - provisions even Orwell couldn't have imagined or felt that readers would believe - is used far more often for non-terrorism pursuits than to say... catch a future 9/11 pilot or someone like Osama. Instead, it's used to look at possible pedophiles (I'd heard that the feds, under Patriot, had actually paid some of the funds on the Snedden vendetta watch on Michael Jackson - who may need watching but why our tax dollars?), to stop drugs (including Grandma's Vioxx coming in from Canada because she can't afford it here), to do sneak-and-peeks into the homes of anyone who writes a letter to the editor questioning Mr. Bush, etc.
In other words, it funds goose chases and witch hunts.
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