The new agency was actually created under the more popular theme of conservation, specifically of the nation’s best-known natural resources such as landmark forests, beaches and mountains. The administration made a case for the new initiative as a necessary tool to protect those precious natural resources and reconnect Americans to the great outdoors.

To lay the groundwork, a special report was issued earlier this year outlining how Americans have become increasingly disconnected from our great outdoors and thus the “natural and cultural inheritance that has shaped our lives and history.”  The nation’s natural resources remain central to our economic vitality yet they are under intense pressure from development and fragmentation, unsustainable use, pollution and impacts from a changing climate, the report says.

The solution to ensuring that our natural heritage is passed on to future generations is to engage young Americans in public lands and water restoration, according to recommendations included in the document. This means improving career pathways and reviewing “barriers” to jobs in natural resource conservation and historic and cultural preservation. It also requires establishing a new 21^st Century Conservation Service Corps to engage those young Americans.

Step one was to create a 21st Century Conservation Service Corps Federal Advisory Committee, which happened just a few days ago. This new panel will cost U.S. taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, according to its charter. The investment will be well worth it because the committee will brainstorm about ways to help “low-income, underserved and diverse youth” gain valuable training and work experience.

In fact, when the administration announced this month that the committee is up and running, it stressed the new panel’s key mission; to empower young people—including low-income, underserved and diverse youth—with valuable training and work experience. Of course, all this will happen while also accomplishing important conservation and restoration work for America’s great outdoors, waterways and cultural heritage sites, the announcement says.

The first-of-its-kind app was announced by the agency in May as an innovative electronic timesheet to help employees independently track the hours they work and determine the wages they are owed. Available in English and Spanish, the app was created to “help empower workers to understand and stand up for their rights when employers have denied their hard-earned pay,” according to Obama Labor Secretary Hilda Solis.

In October JW launched a probe into this questionable use of taxpayer dollars by requesting public records from the DOL relating to the smartphone app. The records reveal that the agency awarded a noncompetitive contract— intended for socially and economically disadvantaged businesses—to a former DOL official who owns a profitable company called Cascades Technologies Inc.

The owner of Cascades Technologies, Alfredo Casta, is a former information technology chief at the DOL, according to records obtained by JW. His company has 87 employees and takes in nearly $10 million in revenue. That means it would not qualify for a noncompetitive government contract, which is strictly reserved for firms owned and controlled at least 51% by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals.

The Small Business Administration, which sets the guidelines, says African-American, Hispanic American, Asian Pacific Americans, Native Americans (American Indians, Eskimos, Aleuts, or Native Hawaiians) and Subcontinent Asian Americans are presumed to be socially disadvantaged.

So far Cascades Technologies has billed the DOL $60,896 for 697 hours of work performed on the phone app, according to records obtained by JW. The DOL has apparently paid nearly $50,000 of the contract so far, the records indicate. The agency admits not having any data establishing a need to develop this app. In other words, a politically-connected entrepreneur needed to increase his profits.

The DOL has launched a number of costly and highly questionable programs since Solis, a former California congresswoman, took over the agency. Last year she appointed 1,000 field investigators to operate a program to protect illegal immigrants in the U.S. workforce. This year she has allocated north of $90 million to help low-income juvenile delinquents and “high-risk” adults with “meaningful job training.”

After all, Obama and his top aides—including Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett—were prominently mentioned at both of Blagojevich’s federal trials in Chicago because he was charged with trying to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated when Obama got elected president. For all intents and purposes it was one of the biggest political scandals of modern times.

The nation’s commander-in-chief and his top aides were subpoenaed (only Emanuel testified) as were records associated with the mystery FBI interview, which took place after Blagojevich got criminally indicted. In the end, Blagojevich got convicted of 18 corruption charges and, this week, was sentenced to 14 years in prison, making him the fourth Illinois governor in recent history to serve time.

Throughout the scandal, the White House has insisted the president had nothing to do with Blagojevich. However, in 2009 Judicial Watch obtained documents from the Illinois Governor’s Office that prove Obama and Blagojevich had repeated contact after Obama became president. They include a letter from Obama to Blagojevich less than a week before the crooked governor’s arrest.

Judicial Watch has a long-standing public-records request to access the now famous FBI interviews with Obama, Emanuel and Jarrett relating to Blagojevich’s corruption case. The “most transparent” administration in history has refused to make the information available and has also denied requests to explain the president’s involvement in the Blagojevich scandal or the nature of the FBI interrogations.

What we do know is that court testimony at both trials (the jury hung the first time and Blagojevich was retried) indicates that Obama was embroiled in the scandal. Judicial Watch covered both trials in the same Chicago federal courtroom where witness after witness indicated top-level White House involvement in the Senate-appointment scheme.