Penn State Administrator Who Failed to Report Jerry Sandusky Sex Crimes with Minors Received $330,699 Public Pension
May 10, 2021
In 2001, Gary Schultz was Penn State’s senior vice president for finance and business when he was told that assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky had sexually assaulted a boy in the school’s locker room shower.
But neither he nor any other Penn State administrators who were told about the incident reported it to law enforcement, childcare, or youth services.
Schultz was charged with perjury and failing to report to authorities allegations of sexual contact with a minor. However, he retired from Penn State and collected a $330,699 annual pension.
He plead guilty to endangering the welfare of children in March 2017, was sent to jail and released in September 2017.
Schultz was given a six-to-23-month sentence, with only the first two months in jail and the remainder on house arrest, followed by probation.
While Pennsylvania has a pension forfeiture law that strips pensions from public employees convicted of job-related crimes, Schultz’s crime fell between the cracks, allowing him to continue collecting his $330,669 yearly pension.
Sandusky is serving a 30-60-year prison sentence after his conviction on 45 counts of sexually abusing young boys from 1994 to 2009 through the charity he founded, The Second Mile, to serve Pennsylvania's underprivileged and at-risk youth.
Sandusky “retired” and received a $58,600 public pension – that continues to this day.
United Airlines Received a $7 Billion Bailout and Is Outsourcing Jobs
May 11, 2021
United recently submitted a request for proposals to subcontract as many as 2,500 catering jobs. 21 members of Congress objected to it this week, demanding there be no layoffs.
Senators also sent a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen requesting that she encourage airlines to end any efforts that may outsource jobs and to rescind executive bonuses.
Outsourcing the very jobs the U.S. government gave them billions to support!
California Spent $320 Billion and Refuses to Disclose a Single Transaction
May 12, 2021
It’s been 21 months since we asked California to do what 49 other states, the federal government, and hundreds of America's largest cities do: produce a line-by-line state checkbook of its spending.
California Controller Betty Yee denied the request from our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com for its spending records, claiming she could not “locate” the records.
So we sued the State of California to get the records that are legally required to be made available to anyone who requests them.
Our initial request on Aug. 23, 2019 was ignored, and follow-up letters in October and November were finally acknowledged – 11 weeks after the first request, a violation of state open records law.
Our request was later denied, with Yee saying that they were “unable to locate” the evidence of payments that her office made and that it did not track payments that went through other state offices.
In 2018, Yee’s office paid 49 million bills totaling $320 billion in payments. While she made the payments, she claims she cannot track the payments.
We invited Controller Betty Yee to join the transparency revolution. Sometimes it takes a subpoena and a lawsuit!
$1 Million Study at Cornell University: Where It Hurts the Most to Be Stung by a Bee
May 13, 2021
Throwback Thursday!
If you have ever been stung by a bee, you know it hurts. You do not need a $1 million scientific study to tell you just how much.
But in an April 2014 research paper, then-Cornell University graduate research scientist Michael L. Smith used the $1 million he got from the U.S. National Science Foundation to rank how much it hurt to be stung by honey bees on different parts of his body.
The report, “Honey Bee Sting Pain Index by Body Location,” ranked the three least painful spots as the skull, middle toe and upper arm, while the most painful were the nostril, upper lip and, well, his genitals.
“Stings to the nostril were especially violent, immediately inducing sneezing, tears and a copious flow of mucus,” the report noted.
Smith designed the experiments, and was the experimental subject, rating how much pain he felt when he was stung on each of 25 body locations when he was stung over 38 days, between Aug. 20, 2012 and Sept. 26, 2012.
He then analyzed the data and wrote the paper.
Smith, now a social insect biologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany, investigates how honeybee workers detect and respond to the developmental state of their colony.
Noting that the study had only one subject, it included this disclaimer: “The data should therefore be taken to represent only this person, and not be generalized for the public.”
That is right, this $1 million study is not to be generalized for the public.
3,309 New Earmarks Proposed by 324 Members of Congress Cost Taxpayers $10 Billion
May 14, 2021
Congressional earmarks were banned for a decade.
Last week, however, 3,309 earmarks from 220 Democrats and 104 Republicans were proposed. Pork is back on the table. The total tab for taxpayers is nearly $10 billion. We broke our investigation at Forbes where we also included links to our interactive map – we mapped all earmarks by congressional district.
It’s a reminder of why the practice was banned as the “currency of corruption in Congress.”
Late Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) spearheaded the 2011 ban, calling earmarks “the gateway drug” to corruption and overspending.
Recently, some House Republicans criticized the party’s move to join with Democrats on earmarks. Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) argued that earmarks are “little more than legislative bribery.”
However, 104 Republicans signed onto the Democrat-backed spending measure.
Examples of Republican proposed earmarks include requests from Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) for $2 million for two new YMCAs in Ottawa and Joliet; $1.2 million for a “Canandaigua Trolley” from Rep. Chris Jacobs (R-NY); and $18.6 million to rebuild the fire station in Kodiak, Alaska (Rep. Don Young R-AK).
Examples of Democrat proposed earmarks include a $5,000 request to purchase “Santa gifts” for seniors in Beech Grove (Rep. Andre Carson D-IN); $250,000 to expand the Michelle Obama Library (Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragan D-CA); $300,000 for a new dog park in Montebello (Rep. Linda Sanchez D-CA); and $7.7 million for a Tampa Street Car project (Rep. Kathy Castor D-FL).
The national debt stands at $28 trillion today, and continuing earmarking pet projects will only drive the national debt higher.
Bringing back earmarks is the fiscal equivalent of bringing back the Swine Flu.
The #WasteOfTheDay is presented by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.