TWO EPA BUREAUCRAT PANELS MEET SECRETLY, SPEND BILLIONS: And no, you can’t have the names of the bureaucrats on either panel, minutes of their minutes or records of their spending decisions, reports Ethan Barton of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group.

“Congress appropriates about $1 billion annually for EPA’s Superfund program, and the agency has accumulated nearly $6.8 billion in more than 1,300 slush fund-like accounts since 1990,” according to Barton. “Two committees consisting entirely of EPA officials meet behind closed doors twice annually to decide how the agency spends those funds on highly polluted – and often dangerous – Superfund sites.”

Even though Superfund sites can involve significant risks to the public health, “all reports to and from the groups, as well as the minutes of their meetings and all other details, are kept behind closed doors,” Barton reports.

Secret meetings. Spending without accountability. No public records of who they are. Will Congress – the “First Branch” of the government established by the Constitution – do anything about it?

NEW OBAMA/HOLDER DECEPTIONS EXPOSED: Turns out the Department of Justice under former Attorney General Eric Holder used the power of government to force settlements on Bank of America, Citicorps and other financial industry titans that required them to make millions of dollars in contributions to “community groups,” including many that are political favorites of President Obama and advocates for more government regulation.

Richard Pollock of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group reports on a briefing Friday by the Cause of Action Institute and Rep. Sean Duffy, the Wisconsin Republican who is chairman of the House Financial Services subcommittee on oversight and investigations. It’s bad enough that these big banks routinely collude with the government on regulation; here they are found submitting themselves and their abundant resources to serve the liberal political agenda.

“Among the political activist groups favored favored by the settlements is La Raza, the nation’s largest Hispanic activist organization that routinely supports Democratic candidates and causes. Cecilia Munoz, a La Raza senior vice president, was appointed by Obama in 2012 to head the White House Domestic Policy Council.

“La Raza is flush with money, reporting in 2013 to the IRS assets of $55 million. Janet Murguia, the group’s president and CEO was paid $417,000 that year, according to the group’s IRS tax return. Even so, La Raza is slated to receive at least $1 million from the Bank of America settlement and $500,000 from the Citigroup settlement,” according to Pollock.

There is more here to this story, much, much more, and all of it is worth reading. Just be careful to keep some nitro pills handy in case you have a weak heart because this stuff will make your blood boil. This is a story of liberal politicians using the power of government to divert millions of dollars slated for folks suffering in 2008’s housing meltdown to political groups, all to advance their personal and political agendas.

REVOLVING DOORS ARE SPINNING AT HYPER-SPEED AT THE CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BOARD: Three of the top four executives at the CFPB – the questionably constitutional hybrid agency created by President Obama and Elizabeth Warren – have left the bureau in recent months for lucrative positions in the financial industry, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Richard Pollock.

Obama, Warren and the Democratic Congress in 2010 put CFPB under the Federal Reserve, ostensibly to insure its independence of financial industry special interests, but also effectively insulating it from congressional oversight, As Pollock reports, however, CFPB has instead become “a breeding ground for bureaucrats becoming highly paid executives in the very industry the bureau was created to regulate. The CFPB has an unusually high turnover rate for a government agency as nearly 50 top CFPB officials have abandoned the agency since its creation to take high-paying jobs in the industry.”

‘AUDIT THE FED’ BILL MAKING PROGRESS IN CONGRESS: Federal Reserve officials may yet have to cough up a lot more information about their activities when auditors from the Government Accounting Agency come calling. A measure sponsored by Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky, greatly expands GAO’s auditing authority over the Fed, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Katie Watson.

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has scheduled a mark-up session on Massie’s proposal for Tuesday. Mark-up sessions are the among the last steps before proposals go to the House floor for final votes. A similar measure failed last year in the Senate but Sen. Rand Paul, another Kentucky Republican, introduced it again this year.

BILL AND HILLARY CLINTON GOT AT LEAST $100 MILLION FROM MIDDLE EAST SHEIKS: The Clintons have done something that has never before been done by any U.S. political figures – Using speaking fees, business partnerships, foundation grants and who knows what else made possible by public service to make themselves fabulously wealthy, without apparent regard for who suffered the consequences.

Richard Pollock of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group pored over countless public documents and connected the dots to tell an incredible – and previously unreported – story that raises a multitude of disturbing new questions about a second Clinton presidency. Like how would the American people ever know with any certainty that a decision by President Hillary Clinton was made to advance the best interests of the U.S. or to make the Clintons even richer?

FEDS HIRED A CREDIT CARD FRAUD FELON FRESH OUT OF PRISON, NOW HE RUNS A BIG VA PURCHASING UNIT: Trust me, friends, the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Luke Rosiak did not make up this story that captures pretty much everything that is wrong with the Department of Veterans Affairs (and probably the federal bureaucracy in general as well).

“Almost immediately after Federal Bureau of Prisons Inmate #11109-017 completed a 14-month sentence for using sensitive credit card data on his previous employer’s computer system to steal $70,000, he was hired by the Department of Veterans Affairs in a position that ultimately led to his present job — running an office racked with credit card fraud and bribery problems,” Rosiak writes this morning.

Really, you owe it to yourself this morning to read the whole story, which you can do right here.

IF YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF “TIBET 5100 WATER RESOURCES, LTD,” YOU’RE NOT ALONE: It’s a Chinese firm doing business in Tibet as “Tibet Water.” Secretary of State John Kerry knows about it because a family trust of his wife, Teresa Heinz, is invested in the company that bottles Tibetan glacial water and sells it in Europe as an alternative to Evian and Perrier.

Tibet is the world’s highest land and home to Mt. Everest and Tibetan Bhuddism.  It’s also long been the object of Chinese imperialism and is under Beijing’s heavy-handed rule today. Thanks to the thousands of glaciers in Tibet, the land has lots of water, which is why Tibet Water is there. Tibet Water is closely linked to the Chinese government and to the Communist Party that controls it.

So why is the U.S. Secretary of State’s family invested in a company that is exploiting the natural resources of a poor neighbor, an exploitation, by the way, that could not occur without the approval of the government of China? Good question. The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Richard Pollock, who exclusively reported the investment today, has asked Kerry’s spokesman for an explanation.

PUBLIC HOUSING AUTHORITY EXECS MAY SOON BE THE MOST POWERFUL FEDS IN TOWN: They’re already among the best paid, with 80 of them making more than $200,000 annually and at least 340 getting $150,000 or more every year. And did we mention those sweet bonuses? Four of these lucky guys got bonuses of more than $75,000 and 74 of them received checks for more than $25,000.

But what makes these figures of particular interest is that the feds running America’s 4,000+ public housing authorities may soon be telling the rest of us where we must live and who must be our neighbors. That’s thanks to a 5-4 Supreme Court decision in June 2015 that upheld the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s power to take action against neighborhood discrimination even when there’s zero evidence of it other than demographics.

Julian Castro, President Obama’s HUD Secretary, has the regulatory regime in place to do this in a program called “Affirmatively Affirming Fair Housing.” Castro is prominently mentioned as a potential Clinton running mate. With or without Castro, however, Clinton can be expected to push the AAFH. Remember this next year when the folks from your local public housing authority suddenly show up in your neighborhood. They won’t be bringing welcome baskets.

ONCE AN ANTI-WAR HERO, ALWAYS AN ANTI-WAR HERO? Hundreds of veterans of 1971’s May Day civil disobedience in Washington, D.C. returned to the scene earlier this week for a nostalgic review of an event that saw more than 12,000 arrests, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Richard Pollock. Among the highlights of the conference was a video presentation to the group by the Pentagon Papers’ Daniel Ellsberg.

It seems like a reasonable conjecture to think that former community organizer Barack Obama would have been among the May Day demonstrators had he been around, but now that he’s president and there is a war somewhere in the world involving U.S. troops, he’s an inviting target for anti-war heroes like Ellsberg, who warned that Obama will “furtively” escalate the Iraq conflict, just as Ike, JFK, LBJ and RMN did in Vietnam:

“’Right now, Marines are being furtively being sent into combat in Iraq in a hopeless operation as before,’ he said, adding that like the early days in Vietnam, there will be ‘gradually advisors calling in air support,’” Pollock reported. Somethings never change for the far Left. It’s always all about Vietnam and evil American presidents who can’t wait to send young Americans into combat.

FEDERAL REGULATIONS ADD $1.9 TRILLION TO THE COST OF GOVERNMENT EVERY YEAR: That’s the conclusion of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Wayne Crews in his annual update, “Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State,” according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Ethan Barton.

HERE’S WHY GOVERNMENT HOUSING VOUCHERS CAUSE MORE POVERTY, NOT LESS: Question – Which program does the federal government spend more on each year, public housing vouchers or welfare checks? If you said the former, you must know the Manhattan Institute’s Howard Husock. What he knows about public housing is more valuable than the work of the 10 smartest people on the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s bloated payroll.

“Its incentives are completely skewed,” Husock, vice president for policy research and director of the Social Entrepreneurship Initiative at Manhattan, told The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Katie Watson.

“You’ve ‘hit the lottery’ and you’re set for life. Not only do you hit the lottery and you can sit back and have a housing unit for life, but, remember, your deal is you pay 30 percent of your income in rent, but what it means is for every additional dollar you earn, you pay an addition 30 cents in rent,” he said.

The voucher concept is grounded in common sense, but it somehow got corrupted when HUD applied it to the public housing arena. Husock explains in straightforward terms why the way HUD does vouchers ends up encouraging the very traits most likely to produce poverty in an individual’s life.

IS THIS THE ONLY FEDERALLY SUBSIDIZED HOUSING PROGRAM THAT ACTUALLY WORKS? It’s in Delaware and it turns hundreds of subsidy receivers into independent, working, productive citizens. It’s called “Moving to Work” and Katie Watson of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group found it.

“’Before we started Moving to Work, we had people who were on their third or fourth generation of the same family who were at the same site,’ Rebecca Kauffman, social service senior administrator at the Delaware Housing Authority’s Moving to Work program, told The Daily Caller News Foundation,” Watson reports.

“More than 850 families have completed the program to enter assistance-free living, and 30 percent of program participants became homeowners when they left,” according to Watson. Key to the program’s success is putting a time-limit on how long people can live in subsidized housing, and requiring them to work an increasing number of hours during their tenure.

The Delaware program is one of only 39 pubic housing authorities in the country that doesn’t allow tenants to remain in subsidized housing permanently. There are more than 3,000 pubic housing authorities in the country. Moving to Work was created as an experiment during the Clinton administration. Ya think it might be time to expand it?

EPA STASHING BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN OBSCURE SLUSH FUND-LIKE ACCOUNTS: What happens when federal bureaucrats take billions of dollars collected for one purpose and squirrel them away in hundreds of obscure accounts to spend on whatever they decide? Does this help explain why EPA so often acts like it answers to no one?

The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Ethan Barton confirmed the existence of 1,308 “special accounts” and his next objective is to expose how they have been used during both Republican and Democrat presidential administrations. That won’t be easy, considering it’s been seven years since either GAO or the Inspector General at EPA reviewed the accounts.

“The ‘special accounts’ are financed by legal settlements between the agency and parties responsible for polluting Superfund sites. Funds are deposited and spent without prior congressional approval,” Barton reports. The accounts aren’t technically secret because EPA admits their existence, but the agency makes it all-but-impossible to learn anything about the accounts or how they are used.

Next question: Will Congress do anything about this? If not, the constitutional principles of separate-but-equal branches and separation of powers will be officially dead, to say nothing of congressional oversight. And Congress will have only itself to blame for the bad joke it becomes.

DON’T TELL THAT GUY WHO SAID “FIRST THING WE DO IS KILL ALL THE LAWYERS” ABOUT THIS! Federal taxpayers spent $26.2 billion between 2007 and 2014 on more than 25,000 lawyers working for Uncle Sam, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Ethan Barton.

Barton’s story is based on a new report from Open The Books, the nonprofit watchdog that tracks spending at all levels of government. Open The Books’ founder and report author Adam Andrzejewski said the highest paid lawyer in the federal establishment in 2014 received $266,649. Andrzejewski also found that more than 50 attorneys on the federal payroll got more than $250,000 during the period.

“The lawyers aren’t the problem per se,” the report said. “They simply serve at the pleasure of entrenched politicians and bureaucrats. Federal spending on attorneys both reflects and perpetuates the size, scope, expanse and inertia of today’s federal government.”

JOHN KERRY LAUDS RENEWABLE ENERGY BUT HIS FAMILY TRUSTS INVEST IN FOSSIL FUELS: Dozens of major oil and natural gas firms are recipients of multi-million dollar investments by the family trusts for the Secretary of State and his wife, Heinz heiress Teresa Heinz-Kerry, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Richard Pollock.

“The investments contradict Kerry’s public comments only a week ago at a United Nations’ signing ceremony for the new Paris Agreement on Climate Change, which is designed to reduce the world’s reliance on fossil fuels. At the ceremony, Kerry promised the 175 nations in attendance, ‘we will do our part – we will live up to our responsibility to future generations and together, citizens of the world, we will work to save our planet from ourselves,’” Pollock reports.

Apparently what Kerry meant to say is “we will work to save you from yourselves (but don’t even think about us and divestment!).”

HIRE AN INTERIOR DESIGNER! YEAH, THAT’LL FIX VA’S TOMAH DISASTER: Luke Rosiak of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group is not making this up.

JOHN KERRY APPARENTLY MISSED OBAMA’S MEMO ON THOSE EVIL OFF-SHORE TAX HAVENS: Seems the Secretary of State and his wife, heiress Teresa Heinz, have millions of dollars invested in at least 11 off-shore tax havens, mostly registered in the Cayman Islands, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Richard Pollock. President Obama calls such actions “gaming the system” when Republicans like Mitt Romney do it.

“Well, I say it doesn’t look good by any means,” Susan Harley, deputy director of Congress Watch, the progressive watchdog group founded by Ralph Nader, told Pollock. “There’s always a question of whether it’s tax avoidance or tax evasion. We would expect our government servants to uphold the law. Those folks need to be held to the same standards as everyone else.”

Either Kerry missed the memo or laws are for, you know, the little people. Like you and me. Now, if we were among “the world’s richest and most powerful people have used offshore bank accounts to conceal their wealth and avoid taxes,” as Pollock describes them, perhaps we would have a different view of these financial tools.

PULITZER PRIZE BOSS BOOTS JUDICIAL WATCH OUT OF CONTEST: Judicial Watch, the conservative non-profit government watchdog, has broken multiple major stories in the Hillary Clinton email and Benghazi terrorist attack scandals, but that doesn’t count, according to the administrator of journalism’s most sought-after award.

“Does the Pulitzer Prize have one standard for liberal non-profits that engage in journalism and a different one for conservative non-profits that also engage in journalism?” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton asked Pulitzer Prize Administrator Mike Pride in a March 14, 2016, email obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group.

Pride had claimed Judicial Watch is ineligible for the journalism award because it is a foundation devoted to “advocacy.” He apparently has not heard of groups like Inside Climate News, Pro Publica and Center for Public Integrity, which, like Judicial Watch, are 501(c)(3) foundations doing investigative journalism. Judges for the Pulitzer Prize have previously recognized Pro Publica with the award.

As it happens, Judicial Watch, which will be deposing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and several of her closest aides in the near future, employees Micah Morrison, formerly of the Wall Street Journal, and Lisette Garcia, formerly of the Los Angeles Times. Between them, they’ve been nominated for Pulitzers six times.

There is one huge difference between Judicial Watch and groups like Pro Publica, but it has nothing to do with advocacy. Judicial Watch combines veterans journalists like Morrison and Garcia with an aggressive staff of experienced attorneys who understand how to wield the Freedom of Information Act to force federal officials to cough up documents they would much prefer to keep behind closed doors.

Judging by the results, Judicial Watch may have demonstrated the model for the future of hard-hitting investigative journalism that puts the fear of God in the hearts of government officials who would otherwise continue their nefarious ways.

SUIT CLAIMS FORMER FDA CHIEF HELPED HUBBY’S HEDGE FUND MAKE MILLIONS: Katie Watson of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group reports that former FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg is accused in a suit filed in federal court of using her office to clear the way to approval for Levaquin, a controversial antibiotic in which her husband’s hedge fund just happened to be highly invested.

“Once confirmed as FDA commissioner, Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg acted as the instrumentality that all defendants used to perpetrate their conspiracy and racketeering enterprise by having her act illegally and outside the scope of her authority as FDA commissioner to suppress material information to plaintiffs and the public that Levaquin was inherently dangerous and in fact, deadly,” the complaint alleges, according to Watson.

Alexandra Walsh, an attorney for Hamburg, strongly disputed the suit’s claims, saying “Mr. Klayman’s allegations against Dr. Hamburg are patently false. There is no factual or legal basis for the lawsuit he has filed, and we are confident the court will dismiss his claims in their entirety.” Walsh was referring to Larry Klayman, attorney for the six plaintiffs in the case.

Hamburg was appointed by President Obama in 2009 and served until March 2015.

VA POOBAH LEARNS THE HARD WAY TO NEVER LIE TO CONGRESS: Department of Veterans Affairs Undersecretary David Shulkin assured the House Veterans Affairs Committee Tuesday that an agency employee who participated in an armed robbery during her off-duty hours had been fired.  Committee Chairman Rep. Jeff Miller wasn’t buying it.

The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Luke Rosiak reports what happened next: “But in the final seconds of Tuesday’s hearing, Miller, a Florida Republican, returned from outside the hearing room and announced that ‘I just confirmed with the Caribbean Healthcare System that the individual we were discussing is still on the payroll.’”

As N.Z. Bear once said: “That kind of carelessness might have cut it a few years ago, when somnolent Big Media hacks were satisfied to define reporting as getting quotes from both party’s spokesmen. But times have changed, friends: there isn’t just one new sheriff in town, there’s thousands of us.

“We will fact-check your ass, and we will do it thoroughly and properly, with links and primary sources that let our readers decide where the truth lies. So straighten up and fly right, because we are watching —- and we do this crap for fun.” Apparently, they didn’t get the memo at VA.

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION BLOWS OFF ANOTHER CONGRESSIONAL SUBPOENA FOR OBAMACARE DOCUMENTS: But it’s for our own good, you see, because we don’t need to know why all but a handful of the Obamacare co-ops have or soon will fail.

NOW OBAMA IS USING REGULATORY “DARK MATTER” – THINK BLOG POSTS – TO RUN OUR LIVES: New report out today from the Competitive Enterprise Institute documents yet another disturbing way President Obama and the federal bureaucracy are doing end-runs around democracy.

“Agencies are increasingly using these informal documents to create official regulations with consequences, like recent U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) guidance claiming landlords and home sellers who don’t rent or sell to convicted criminals are violating the Fair Housing Act,” reports Katie Watson of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group.

“These guidance documents are “purportedly not legally binding,” but they still “cajole and intimidate” people and businesses into complying with the agency, CEI said. Most new rules never reach the attention of the media or Congress,” Watson said. Go here for more.

GIVE $300K TO CLINTON FOUNDATION, GET $13M BACK IN STATE DEPARTMENT GRANTS! Not a bad deal, at least for former Nobel Prize winner and long-time Clinton friend Muhammed Yunus. Government panels in Bangladesh and Norway accused him of extensive banking and charitable corruption but that didn’t disqualify Yunus from receiving millions in U.S. tax dollars via loans, grants and contracts from Hillary Clinton’s State Department, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Richard Pollock.

“The awards, totaling $13 million, were issued by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the development arm of the State Department, beginning when Clinton became secretary of state. Another $11 million in federal funds went to organizations allied with Yunus,” Pollock reports.

Yunus “is  a high-profile fixture at most of the Clinton Foundation’s major gatherings. The foundation features him at 37 places on its website,” according to Pollock, who also reports that when he asked for details about the $13 million, “USAID Spokesman Raphael Cook said the agency didn’t have the ‘manpower’ to respond to questions about the transactions.” The agency has nearly 4,000 employees.

EPA POURS TOXIC WASTE INTO RIVER, REFUSES TO PROTECT LOCALS: Remember that yellow river EPA created in Colorado last year? Agency officials dumped an estimated 880,000 pounds of toxic metals waste from a mine into the Animas River, which supplies drinking and working water for millions of people in three states and the Navajo Nation.

Nearly eight months later, reports Ethan Barton of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group, EPA officials concede they essentially have no plan in place in the event storm water runoff swells the river. That’s likely to happen in Spring and Summer and when it does, the swirling water picks up the toxic waste and deposits it further downstream.

“The EPA is also using a recreational standard, which allows 40 times more lead in the river, even though people in three states and the Navajo Nation depend upon it as a primary water source, New Mexico Environmental Secretary Ryan Flynn said in February,” Barton said. In other words, the same bureaucrats who can raise environmental standards to make work for themselves can also lower the standards to avoid work when it suits them.

A FEDERAL COURT MAY SOON RULE THE CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BOARD UNCONSTITUTIONAL: Don’t recognize the name? Despite being President Obama’s biggest gift to Elizabeth Warren, the CFPB has mostly flown under the radar since its creation in 2010. That could change soon because of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which is hearing a constitutional challenge to CFPB’s legitimacy.

“Critics of CFPB have noted it is the only agency not accountable to congressional oversight and therefore violates the separation of powers set down by the Constitution. That principle provides that Congress have checks over the executive branch agencies like CFPB. Those checks do not apply to the agency,” reports Richard Pollock of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group.

Created by a Democratic Congress, CFPB was purposely put under the Federal Reserve to get it out of the reach of congressional oversight. Congress doesn’t even have the power to set the bureau’s budget because it is funded entirely via the Fed. Pollock has been putting an investigative spotlight on the bureau for several years, as seen here, here and here.

If the three-judge appeals court panel rules against CFPB, the bureau will appeal to the full Appeals Court, which has a majority of judges appointed by Presidents Obama and Clinton. Next stop will then the U.S. Supreme Court, so stay tuned.