Author: danelabonte
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Carvers Gap, TN/NC border
“To make the wheels, artist Sasha Duerr collected local plants from these regions throughout the year to create natural dyes, using various mordants (chemicals used to set dye) to manipulate the colors.”
source (https://botanicalcolors.com/shop/gifts/the-seasonal-color-wheel-by-sasha-duerr)
via (https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/gifts/best-plant-gifts)
“Federal agents arrested two retired Massachusetts State Police supervisors Friday morning on conspiracy, fraud, and theft charges, alleging they oversaw a years-long scheme to steal tens of thousands of dollars in overtime pay, and later destroyed records to cover their tracks.”
“This is a separate and now second case of widespread overtime fraud uncovered by federal authorities in the past three years…”
“Retired State Police lieutenant Daniel J. Griffin, 57, of Belmont, and retired sergeant William W. Robertson, 58, of Westborough, appeared in court Friday on charges including theft of federal funds and wire fraud. Both men pleaded not guilty and were released in lieu of bail.”
“Federal investigators allege Griffin and Robertson and at least three other troopers in the unit they ran collected pay for portions of overtime shifts they never worked, including when they were supposed to have been manning sobriety roadblocks and checkpoints to screen for drunken drivers.”
“In this latest case, State Police investigators overlooked payroll irregularities and red flags within the Traffic Programs Section overseen by Griffin and Robertson, according to internal inspection reports obtained by the Globe. There is no indication the agency acted on the discrepancies. In fact, internal inspectors lauded Griffin for his leadership.”
“Those reports stand in stark contrast to the federal indictment, which outlines a small, rogue unit that operated on State Police headquarters campus and, for at least four years, collected overtime pay for no-show shifts and cut corners.”
“Earlier this fall, upon learning that federal investigators were asking questions amid a grand jury probe, Griffin ordered a trooper: “Don’t tell them [expletive] anything,” according to the indictment.”
“The indictment states Griffin, Robertson, and three other unnamed troopers would regularly arrive late to, and leave early from, overtime shifts. To hide their absences, the group allegedly submitted identical false timesheets and phony traffic citations.”
“The scheme dated at least back to 2015 and continued into 2018, prosecutors said, and the five troopers stole more than $132,000 collectively. Griffin and Robertson allegedly took the biggest hauls of fraudulent overtime pay, $61,022 and $31,753, respectively, prosecutors said.”
“When another overtime scandal first erupted inside the State Police in 2017, members of the Traffic Program Section took steps to avoid detection by shredding and burning records and forms, according to prosecutors. Robertson ordered a trooper to shred a folder that included incriminating records, the indictment said. Another trooper allegedly took a folder of payroll forms to his home and burned them.”
“Amid an inquiry about missing forms, Griffin submitted a memo to his superiors that was designed to mislead them, claiming missing forms were “inadvertently discarded or misplaced” during office moves, according to prosecutors.”
“Griffin and Robertson retired in September and filed for pension payments, which have not yet been issued, state retirement board officials said. Griffin applied for higher than normal pension payouts, claiming he suffered injuries on the job, retirement records show.”
“Griffin faced additional charges for allegedly defrauding a private school, siphoning money from a private security side business that he ran, and filing false tax returns, allegedly hiding over $700,000 from the IRS. The indictment claims Griffin tried to enrich himself in myriad illegal ways.”
“The alleged overtime fraud outlined Friday follows a similar scandal that erupted in early 2018 when 46 troopers from Troop E were found to have collected large sums of taxpayer dollars for hours they never actually worked. Ten troopers have been criminally charged, nine of whom pleaded guilty. The unit, which primarily patrolled the turnpike, was disbanded soon after those allegations surfaced.”
“The overtime funds troopers in the unit allegedly stole came directly from the federal government’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and were intended to improve roadway safety by having police enforce rules around dangerous driving behaviors, such as drunk or distracted driving or people riding in vehicles without wearing a seat belt.”
“In March, the federal transportation department’s Office of Inspector General announced the launch of a nationwide audit of highway safety grant programs that dole out hundreds of millions of federal dollars each year. In announcing the audit, the federal agency referenced the troopers who were convicted on federal charges in the Troop E scandal.”
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The Solar System scale
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Valles Marineris, Mars
“Named Valles Marineris, the grand valley extends over 3,000 kilometers long, spans as much as 600 kilometers across, and delves as much as 8 kilometers deep.
By comparison, the Earth’s Grand Canyon in Arizona, USA is 800 kilometers long, 30 kilometers across, and 1.8 kilometers deep.”
Source (https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_83.html)
Via (https://reddit.com/r/spaceporn/comments/k0mkoy/_/gdjgqw9)
“On Nov. 12, the Department of Public Health reported 21 confirmed coronavirus deaths, bringing the total to 10,015.”
“Massachusetts has been one of the hardest hit states in the country in terms of the deadly impact of the coronavirus pandemic, with only New Jersey suffering more COVID deaths per capita.”
“The death count surged in Massachusetts at the outset of the pandemic, peaking during mid-April when the state averaged more than 170 confirmed coronavirus-related deaths per day, with a record daily high of 221 deaths reported on April 22.”
“Since Labor Day, cases have increased by more than 300 percent in Massachusetts, and hospitalizations have increased by 200 percent”
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PPP Was a Fraudster Free-for-All
“The scandal is what’s legal, not what’s illegal.”
– Former Justice Department prosecutor Tarek Helou on the hurdles to bringing PPP fraud cases
“The federal government is swamped with reports of potential fraud in the Paycheck Protection Program, according to government officials and public data, casting a shadow on one of Washington’s signature responses to the coronavirus pandemic.”
“About $525 billion in loans were distributed to 5.2 million companies between April 3 and Aug. 8.”
“Banks and the government allowed companies to self-certify that they needed the funds, with little vetting.”
“The Small Business Administration’s inspector general, an arm of the agency that administers the PPP, said last month there were “strong indicators of widespread potential abuse and fraud in the PPP.”
“Tens of thousands of companies received PPP loans for which they appear to have been ineligible, such as corporations created after the pandemic began, businesses that exceeded workforce size limits (generally 500 employees or fewer) or those listed in a federal “Do Not Pay” database because they already owe money to taxpayers.”
“Tens of thousands of organizations also appear to have received more money than they should have based on their headcounts and compensation rates.”
“The Treasury Department in September received 2,495 suspicious activity-reports involving business loans from banks and other depository institutions, more than the total for any year dating back to 2014.”
“Several hundred PPP-related investigations have been opened, involving nearly 500 suspects and hundreds of millions of dollars of loans, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“The Justice Department has charged 73 defendants in PPP-related fraud cases, a spokesman said late last month. Many involve allegations of made-up companies or forged documents.”
“The CARES Act, the March law that established the PPP, effectively used the honor system. If a company had fewer than 500 employees and certified “current economic uncertainty makes this loan request necessary to support the ongoing operations,” it was generally approved.”
“At the PPP’s peak, the SBA approved about 514,000 loans on a single day, May 3.”
“Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in July compared payroll data at PPP-eligible companies to ineligible ones and estimated the program had boosted employment by about 2.3 million jobs. At that rate, the PPP would have cost about $224,000 per job supported.”
“It seems that a lot of that cash went to businesses that would have otherwise maintained relatively similar employment levels,” said David Autor, an MIT economics professor and one of the study’s authors.”
(https://www.wsj.com/articles/ppp-was-a-fraudster-free-for-all-investigators-say-11604832072)
“They spent their money on unnecessary overhead, lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous activity by the campaign staff and vanity ads way too early,” said Mike Murphy, a veteran Republican consultant who advised John McCain and Jeb Bush and is an outspoken Trump critic. “You could literally have 10 monkeys with flamethrowers go after the money, and they wouldn’t have burned through it as stupidly.”
(https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/trump-plowed-billion-losing-cash-advantage-73708210)
danelabonte 