By: Lloyd Chapman – Small business advocate | The Huffington Post Today, under various federal laws, the term “small business” can define a range of companies, from businesses with less than 50 employees, to publicly traded corporations as large as Lockheed Martin — the federal government’s largest prime contractor. This question of how big a “small business” is, is of critical importance to our national economy. For example, when the House approved the Republican-sponsored “Small Business Tax Cut Act (H.R.9)” last week, legislators neglected to mention that under the bill many hedge funds, investment firms, C-corporations and pass-throughs worth billions  [ Read More ]

Written By Kenneth Schortgen Jr | The Daily Economist There is a new bill in Congress that is expected to pass that would allow the government to suspend your travel outside the country if you own taxes to the IRS. Senate Bill 1813 (Highway trust fund), which was passed by the Senate last week and is now pending in the House of Representatives contains a provision that would allow the IRS to order the State Department to refuse to grant, refuse to renew, revoke or restrict the passport of any US citizen which the IRS certifies owes the IRS $50,000  [ Read More ]

By Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone Politics The bank has defrauded everyone from investors and insurers to homeowners and the unemployed. So why does the government keep bailing it out? At least Bank of America got its name right. The ultimate Too Big to Fail bank really is America, a hypergluttonous ward of the state whose limitless fraud and criminal conspiracies we’ll all be paying for until the end of time. Did you hear about the plot to rig global interest rates? The $137 million fine for bilking needy schools and cities? The ingenious plan to suck multiple fees out  [ Read More ]

Oil is $120, and Europe is Europe, but the evidence of a real recovery is growing. In the last three months of 2011, U.S. economic growth kissed 3% for the first time in two years, according to today’s GDP revisions. Under the hood, the news is still good. Consumer spending is growing faster than we previously thought. Government is still a drag, but that makes the 3% figure all the more impressive. If the public sector had simply continued spending at an even pace, this might have been the best quarter of the recovery. Here’s a look at Reuters’ fantastic  [ Read More ]

How did I Discover the Fraud? Did someone make a false statement to the government for purposes of getting a claim paid, or for purposes of avoiding paying money back to the government? If so, who made the false statement, to whom, when, where, why, and how? What government programs or funds are involved? What is the process that must be followed to obtain the funds? What regulations or documents exist that describe the process? What part of the process did the defendant perform in a knowingly false manner? Much of what makes people angry about government is not actually  [ Read More ]

Mike Scarcella – All Articles  -  Legal Times – Law.com December 19, 2011 The U.S. Justice Department said today it recorded more than $3 billion in settlements and judgments in fraud cases against the government, pushing the total amount covered since January 2009 to $8.7 billion. The bulk of the $3 billion recovered in fiscal year 2011 flowed from the whistleblower provision of the False Claims Act, which allows private citizens to file suits on behalf of the federal government. DOJ officials said $2.4 billion of the money recovered was rooted in fraud committed against federal health care programs, including  [ Read More ]

Whistleblower Act The Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, commonly referred to as the Whistleblower Act, is a United States federal law that protects federal whistleblowers (employees of the government who report agency misconduct). A federal agency violates the Whistleblower Protection Act if it takes or fails to take (or threatens to take) a personnel action with respect to an employee or applicant because of any disclosure of information by the employee or applicant that he or she reasonably believes is evidence of a violation of a rule, law or regulation; gross mismanagement; gross waste of funds; an abuse of authority;  [ Read More ]