Why is Indian graffiti worth preserving when local governments across the nation spend tens of millions of dollars to remove it annually? Because, evidently, this is politically correct graffiti that has a “social significance,” according to a National Park Service official quoted in a San Francisco newspaper. The agency cares for the island and financed the project at the infamous federal penitentiary in San Francisco.

The same official clarified that the National Park Service doesn’t approve of graffiti because “it’s a federal offense,” but this defacement has a history and sends a message. That’s because it involves Indians or Native Americans as the leftist movement likes to say. After the prison closed Indians took over the island and demanded the government convert it into an Indian cultural center or school devoted to native studies. The National Park Service dedicates a portion of its website to the movement.

During their Alcatraz occupation the Indians plastered a large sign—in red letters four and five-feet high—on the island’s huge water tank, which is about the size of a 10-story building. It reads: “PEACE AND FREEDOM WELCOME HOME OF THE FREE INDIAN LAND.” Rehabilitating it cost American taxpayers $1.5 million because the Park Service had to trace the outlines of the original signs and consult with the American Indian Movement and the Indian Treaty Council. It took nearly one year to complete the job.

The feds claim they approved the restoration because the sign honors “an important part of the island’s history.” The graffiti “opens your eyes to the Indian story of the island,” the Park Service official said. It’s not necessarily a positive one, according to the Park Service’s own version. There was “open use of drugs, fighting over authority, and general disarray of leadership,” as well as beatings and assaults. Some Indian occupiers stripped copper wiring and tubing from buildings and a fire destroyed several historic buildings.

 Even those who have never been to the state and have no association with it will contribute because federal lawmakers have essentially agreed to fund the project, which will end up costing a monstrous $68.4 billion to finish and hundreds of millions of dollars annually to operate and maintain. The high-speed rail system will run 520 miles from San Francisco to Los Angeles and is scheduled to be completed by 2028.

The idea is to create an efficient passenger rail system similar to those that for decades have operated in Europe and Asia. Congress passed legislation in 2008 to fund this experiment and other improvements to the nation’s train system. California already got the biggest chunk—$3.5 billion—of money under the law for its high-speed rail project. The cash is coming mostly from President Obama’s fraud-infested $787 billion stimulus that was supposed to jump start the economy and put Americans back to work.

Now the Golden State needs to come up with at least $57 billion, according to a federal audit that determines the project “faces many challenges.” Only $11.5 billion have been secured from a combo of local, private and state investments, which means Uncle Sam must come to the rescue. The problem is that “federal funding is uncertain,” according to the audit, which was conducted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress.

It gets better; the probe also determined that the actual cost of completing the high-speed rail system will actually be even higher than the original estimate. That’s because it will likely fall behind schedule over things like legal challenges associated with environmental reviews and right-of-way acquisitions for construction. Additionally, ridership and revenue forecasts appear to be less than accurate, investigators found.

In short, this wasn’t thought out very well and like most government projects of this magnitude, the public will pay the hefty price for the bad decisions of inept officials. When all is said and done, more than 80% of the rail project’s total funding will come from government entities, the GAO says, and a large chunk will come from the feds. That means all Americans will on some level contribute to this disaster.

This has caused tremendous damage, according to the study, because the mainstream media has given these “fringe organizations” a forum to raise money and build “social networks within elite conservative circles.” So, essentially the public college professor has determined that conservatives and the mainstream media—notorious foes—have joined forces to trash Islam.

This is truly earth-shattering news! The alarming study was conducted by Christopher Bail, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which interestingly is the nation’s first public university. He used plagiarism detection software to track the influence of 1,084 press releases about Muslims from 120 organizations on more than 50,000 newspaper stories and television transcripts produced after the terrorist attacks in 2001 through 2008.

Bail found that organizations with negative messages about Muslims “captivated the mass media” after the 9/11 attacks resulting in the spreading of negative messages that stoke public fears about Muslims. “They are now so much a part of the mainstream that they have been able to recast genuinely mainstream Muslim organizations as radicals,” the professor said in an announcement promoting his study.

Could he be referring to the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a national group that serves as the U.S. front for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas? CAIR bills itself as the nation’s largest Muslim advocacy organization but is described by FBI counterterrorism experts as an entity that promotes and finances terrorism. CAIR has extensive links to foreign and domestic Islamists, was a co-conspirator in a federal terror-finance case involving the Hamas front group Holy Land Foundation and is largely funded by Islamic terrorist-supporting countries. In fact, CAIR was founded in 1994 by three Middle Eastern extremists (Omar Ahmad, Nihad Awad and Rafeeq Jaber) who ran the American propaganda wing of Hamas, known then as the Islamic Association for Palestine.

Judicial Watch has investigated CAIR for its role in the Holy Land Foundation scandal and last year sued the Department of Justice (DOJ) for records related to the agency’s decision not to prosecute the group, likely for political reasons. Special agents of the FBI and federal prosecutors in Texas objected to the Obama DOJ’s decision not to prosecute CAIR, which has been linked by government investigators to Hamas. Press releases provided to the media about this case certainly would be viewed as hostile towards Muslims in the North Carolina professor’s study.

Here’s another one; earlier this year JW sued the FBI for records detailing a secret February 2012 meeting with Director Robert Mueller and a coalition of Islamist organizations that swayed the agency to purge training curricula deemed offensive to Muslims. Some of the organizations that met with Mueller at FBI headquarters have ties to radical terrorist organizations, according to some news reports and Americans have a right to know who they are.  

News of the controversial allocation could not come at a worse time, on the heels of the brutal assassination of an American ambassador and his staff by al-Qaeda terrorists in Benghazi. It marked the first time in three and a half decades that a foreign ambassador got murdered abroad while representing the U.S. government.

The State Department deploys foreign diplomats and is responsible for their safety. In Libya the agency cut corners by hiring an unknown and inexperienced British firm rather than the larger, more reputable companies that are customarily used in overseas danger zones infested with hostile, anti-American Islamists. As a result, Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans on the mission are dead.  

While the State Department saved money on security in Libya, it somehow managed to find $5.6 million in 2011 to support “pressing cultural preservation needs” in dozens of foreign countries. Here are some of the dire projects funded by U.S. tax dollars that perhaps could be better spent on securing U.S. embassies in hostile Arab countries.

Uncle Sam doled out $750,000 to restore a 16^th-century tomb complex in India, $700,000 to conserve ruins in Tanzania, $600,000 for the “temple of the winged lions” in Jordan and $450,000 for the conservation of a 10^th century temple in Cambodia. Those were just the big ticket projects. Hundreds of thousands more went to smaller causes throughout the world.

For instance, the restoration of a 16^th century convent in Guatemala got $119,052 and an aqueduct in Mexico received $115,000 and the following three projects each got $100,000 from the State Department; a program to document endangered musical traditions in Mali, the restoration of a railroad station in Paraguay and a 19^th-century log house museum in Russia. Here is the list of all the allocations for 2011.

This is all part of the administration’s international diplomacy efforts, a cornerstone of the Obama presidency. Just last month the State Department launched a first-of-its-kind Diplomatic Culinary Partnership to “elevate the role of culinary engagement in America’s formal and public diplomacy efforts.” A new American Chef Corps has been created because Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claims that “culinary engagement” can “further intercultural dialogue and strengthen bilateral relationship.”

It would almost be unbelievable if it weren’t documented in a lengthy report (appropriately titled “Waste Book 2012”) released this week by a U.S. Senator who sits on the Finance, Judiciary and Homeland Security committees. While the Obama Administration racks up record debt, many government agencies have embarked on wild spending sprees as Congress sits idly by.

In all, the Waste Book exposes 100 examples that cost more than $18 billion in one year alone. And what were the federal lawmakers elected to represent our interests doing throughout this fiasco? Not much, the probe reveals. In fact this Congress made history for being the most unproductive and unpopular in decades. At the rate it’s going, this Congress could easily have the lowest level of legislative activity since statistics began being tabulated, the report says.

Now back to the frivolous government spending. Here are some of the highlights listed with tremendous detail in the Waste Book; the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), created by President John Kennedy to promote social and economic development in foreign countries, blew $27 million to train Moroccans to create and design pottery that they could sell in domestic and international markets. An American pottery instructor was contracted to run the program.

Earlier this year, Judicial Watch wrote about an equally wasteful $10-million USAID program that trains Filipinos to work in Asian call centers that serve U.S. businesses. It’s called Job Enabling English Proficiency (JEEP) and graduates get placed with outsourcing vendors that provide U.S. companies with profitable offshore perks, including Asia’s cheap labor costs. The U.S. program includes 400 hours of training over two years and 23,000 students are currently enrolled in the Philippines.

Now back to the Waste Book. Here is another good one; the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) doled out $4.5 billion in improper food stamp payments—including to an exotic dancer who earns north of $85,000 a year in tips—and the National Science Foundation (NSF) gave a New York theater company $700,000 to produce a musical about climate change.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) squanders nearly $1 million annually to develop a “Mars menu” of foods that humans can someday consume on Mars and has spent $1.6 million so far to develop mobile device applications, video games and entertainment programs. The Mars menu is part of NASA’s Advanced Food Technology Project and it’s already developed a recipe for pizza and about 100 other foods that humans can eat on Mars.

Other examples listed in the Waste Book include $325,000 for the development of “Robosquirrel,” a robotic rodent designed to test the interaction between rattlesnakes and squirrels; an unused Oklahoma airport that costs $450,000 a year to keep open, $300,000 for the USDA to promote caviar and nearly $50,000 on balloons for a U.S. Forest Service tribute.

For more fully documented facts on the Solyndra debacle, Obama’s Watergate: Operation Fast and Furious, the Obama administration’s $20 billion extortion scheme and more order the New York Times best selling book The Corruption Chronicles by Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton here.

View the trailer for Judicial Watch’s upcoming blockbuster documentary The District of Corruption here. 

How do you lose $475 million worth of oil? That is the question posed to the Department of Defense (DOD) by the Special Investigator General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). It will likely never be answered because the DOD has improperly shredded records that could solve the mystery, according to the SIGAR. Those that were spared from the shredder are so poorly kept that little can be made of them.

Here is what the special Afghan reconstruction watchdog concludes in a report issued earlier this month; that the DOD agency in charge of tracking the lost oil “does not have accurate or supportable information on how much U.S. funds are needed for [Army] fuel, where and how the fuel is actually used, or how much fuel has been lost or stolen.”

Run out of Kabul, the Afghan fuel program has received north of $1 billion since 2007 and most of the cash has been provided by Uncle Sam. In 2012 alone $429 million went to the program and by 2014 funding is scheduled to be raised to a whopping $555 million, the SIGAR reveals. At the very least the investigator general suggests freezing current funding levels until the Pentagon makes improvements in its inept accounting and fuel-tracking system.

The DOD has promised to implement a new fuel database and to track invoices better, though the improper destruction of records was not addressed. This is a big joke considering the ongoing and well-documented corruption that has plagued the U.S. reconstruction effort in Afghanistan. Just a few months ago, in its quarterly report to Congress, SIGAR warns about stolen money and fuel, writing that “corruption remains a major threat to the reconstruction effort.”

Iraq is a similar story. Audit after audit has exposed that America’s costly Iraq reconstruction projects are rife with waste, fraud and abuse. The spending is so out of control, that the government has lost track of a large portion of the money, according to the special watchdog assigned to keep track of the never-ending scandal, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR).

In its latest audit over the summer, the SIGIR reveals that at least $6 to $8 billion, earmarked for Iraq reconstruction, has been lost to fraud and waste. In all, Congress appropriated a whopping $51.4 billion to help the country recover from the war by, among other things, training local police, building schools, hospitals and transportation systems, but much of the money has literally vanished.

The funds were allocated to the DOD, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Tens of billions of dollars have been spent so far and there seems to be no end in sight to the rampant abuse of taxpayer money. There have been lucrative contracts that never got finished, weapons and sophisticated communication equipment that can’t be accounted for and an unused police housing camp with an Olympic-sized pool and lavish trailers, among other things.

 The information comes straight from government records gathered in the course of a lengthy JW investigation into the administration’s tight relationship with the nation’s powerful labor movement. Since Obama moved to the White House federal funding for big labor has skyrocketed to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.

A chunk of the money is being funneled to unions so they can increase labor organization around the globe, the records show. In most cases the American taxpayer dollars are going to leftist groups in the developing world. For instance, the American Center for International Labor Solidarity has received nearly $3 million to strengthen labor unions in Iraq. The group is the international arm of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), the nation’s largest federation of unions representing 12 million workers.

 The AFL-CIO offshoot also got a chunk of change from Uncle Sam for various other causes. For example, it raked in an additional $2.5 million for “labor outreach” last year and $1.2 million from the State Department to combat human trafficking in Asia. Earlier this year the group got an additional $721,310 for more labor outreach. This brings the total amount of federal grants awarded to the Solidary Center to $71,652,403, the records show. JW compiled a spreadsheet of all the transactions.

The Solidarity Center is run by politically-connected figures in the labor movement. Former AFL-CIO President John Sweeny is chairman of the board, former AFL-CIO executive councilman William Lucy is vice chairman and current AFL-CIO President Dick Trumka is the secretary and treasurer. The center was founded in 1997, but didn’t receive federal assistance till a decade later.

Under Obama the government cash has flowed generously with most of the money coming from the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), created by President John Kennedy in 1961 to provide humanitarian assistance around the world. In fiscal year 2011 (the latest available stats) the Solidarity Center got north of $14 million, which is roughly half of its annual budget in 2009 and 2010. All the grants were rewarded to help increase labor organizations around the world.

Additionally, JW found that the National Labor College, which bills itself as “the nation’s only accredited higher education institution devoted exclusively to educating union members, leaders and staff,” has received nearly $3 million in federal grants since 2009. This includes a $1.1 million emergency preparedness grant from the Department of Transportation earlier this year. Of interesting note is that AFL-CIO President Dick Trumka, who serves as secretary and treasurer of the Solidarity Center, is the chairman of the college’s board of directors.

Big labor’s boost in federal funding is strangely similar to the surge experienced by the open borders movement under Obama. The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) has also seen its federal funding soar since one of its top officials, senior vice president Cecilia Muñoz, got a job in the Obama White House. Last year a JW investigation uncovered documents that show the government cash more than doubled the year Muñoz joined the White House, from $4.1 million to $11 million.

The new State Department initiative “will elevate the role of culinary engagement in America’s formal and public diplomacy efforts,” according to an agency announcement. This is taking international diplomacy efforts, a cornerstone of the Obama presidency, where they have never gone before; the kitchen.

In fact, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton acknowledged this week that food isn’t traditionally thought of as a diplomatic tool, though she pointed out that “sharing a meal can help people transcend boundaries and build bridges in a way that nothing else can.”  Then Clinton said that “culinary engagement” can “further intercultural dialogue and strengthen bilateral relationship.”

That’s why her agency created this innovative new tool. Chefs from across the country will be selected to participate in public diplomacy programs that engage foreign audiences abroad as well as those visiting the U.S. To accomplish this mission the State Department has created a new American Chef Corps that will compile a roster of cooks who will contribute their time and unique talents, not to mention their culturally diverse dishes.

This may seem like a bit much, even for a president who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Who could forget when Obama proudly presented the United Nations with his new international diplomacy model for the 21^st century?  

Then again, the president and his wife also seem to be obsessed with food. In 2010 Obama named the family’s personal Chicago cook, Sam Kass, “Senior Policy Adviser for Healthy Food Initiatives.” That means Kass, an expert in healthy cuisine, is the White House food czar. First Lady Michelle Obama refers to Kass as a “partner in crime.”

The president has also spent record amounts of taxpayer dollars to eradicate “food insecure households” by promoting food stamps and getting a record number of people—46 million and growing—to depend on them. The commander-in-chief also signed his wife’s $4.5 billion signature law to control the American diet under the auspice of ending childhood hunger in low-income neighborhoods.

The worst part is that this madness is funded by Americans to the tune of 7-plus billion dollars a year. The American cash keeps pouring in even though the U.N. is pillar of corruption, fraud and mismanagement. Its so-called human rights council is a huge joke with members that are famous for oppressing their citizens and, in many cases, committing atrocious human rights violations. Cuba, Iran and Venezuela are among the offenders.

Now the U.N. is allowing Sudan’s Omar Al-Bashir, the last person on earth you would go to for anything related to human rights, have a seat on its human rights council. Here is a little background on the ruthless African dictator; He has been charged by the International Criminal Court of war crimes in Darfur and is responsible for killing thousands of his own citizens.

A renowned international human rights organization reminds that the Sudanese government has violently dispersed youth-led protests and that security forces have arrested and detained scores of perceived opponents. The Al-Bashir regime mistreats and tortures detainees and censors the media, the group, Human Rights Watch, writes in its assessment of the north African country. Additionally, Sudan’s indiscriminate bombing in civilian-populated areas has displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

Letting Sudan’s genocidal dictator take a spot on the human rights panel is like putting “Jack the Ripper in charge of a women’s shelter,” according to a Geneva-based human rights advocate quoted by a national news outlet. The same story quotes a spokesman for the United States Mission to the United Nations saying that “Sudan, a consistent human rights violator, does not meet the Council’s own standards for membership.”

So why are Americans forced by their government to keep funding this pathetic world body? The U.S. gives the U.N. significantly more than any other nation—nearly $8 billion in 2010 alone—and there is no transparency, accountability or follow-up of any sort on how the cash is spent. U.S. tax dollars just keep pouring into the U.N. coffers, even though the world body is rife with fraud and corruption.

Who could forget the U.N.’s shameful oil-for-food program with Iraq? It was supposed to help the Iraqi people by allowing Saddam Hussein to sell oil on the world market in exchange for humanitarian goods, such as food and medicine. Instead, Hussein exploited the $64 billion program as thousands of companies paid the dictator illegal surcharges and kickbacks while the U.N. stood by. Read all about that from the independent committee assigned to investigate the oil-for-food scandal.

The U.N.’s fraud-infested contract division has also made headlines over the years for its shady deals. In fact, a few years ago the U.N. chief (Sanjaya Bahel of India) responsible for awarding billions of dollars in contracts to companies around the world, was sentenced to eight years in prison for accepting cash, real estate, wild parties and hookers as bribes.

At least one lawmaker, Florida Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, is trying to set limits on the U.N’s cash cow. Last year Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, introduced legislation (United Nations Transparency Accountability and Reform Act) that seems like a common-sense approach to the U.N. fiasco but has met powerful resistance from Democrats.

The measure calls for transparency and accountability relating to United States contributions to the United Nations and budget justification rather than automatically doling out billions. It also calls for independent and objective audits and investigations relating to the U.S. contributions and annual reports that reveal what the money is being used for. The U.N. would also have to provide annual financial disclosures if it wants to continue getting American dollars.

Rewarding Sudan with a seat on the human rights council is a new low that, once again, illustrates the need for reform, according to Ros-Lehtinen. “Allowing this genocidal dictatorship, which has killed thousands of its citizens, to serve on such a body is beyond hypocrisy, it is callous, dangerous, and tragic,” the congresswoman says in a written statement, adding that “it is beyond apparent that the UN is broken.”

Photos of the 74-year-old state senator, Shirley Huntley, being hauled away in handcuffs are downright shameful. Dressed in a powder-blue skirt suit with a white shirt, the accused legislator blurted out that it was a “great day,” according to a local newspaper report. This is the same publication that actually inspired the state to investigate the Democrat from Queens by first poking into the corrupt operation.  

It turns out that Huntley steered nearly $30,000 in taxpayer money to the fake nonprofit called Parent Workshop, according to the New York Attorney General’s office, which issued the 20-count indictment this week. The fake charity claimed to help low-income folks deal with the city’s huge and complicated public school system. Instead, authorities say, the money was pocketed by Huntley’s niece, who served as the group’s treasurer, and another man, who is listed as president.  

When authorities started snooping around, the senator falsified documents to cover up the corruption. She “personally wrote a template for a false, backdated letter designed to fool investigators into believing that the Parent Workshop had conducted workshops that never took place,” according to the Attorney General. Then the senator submitted it to the Attorney General’s office in response to a subpoena.

A local newspaper editorial points out that a number of other public officials have been charged with corruption lately in New York, but Huntley sticks out for the “sheer brazenness” of the way she is accused of acting in the pursuit of money. “This was almost entirely about her greed,” the piece says, adding that, it could constitute the most offensive example yet of legislators betraying the people they’re supposed to serve.

Huntley joins a disgraceful club of New York Democrats under fire for their recent transgressions. This month alone, several state agencies announced that Assemblywoman Naomi Rivera is being investigated for putting her lovers on the public payroll and a state ethics panel charged Assemblyman Vito Lopez with sexually harassing female aides.

A few months ago another state senator, Carl Kruger, received a seven-year sentence for bribery and his colleague, Pedro Espada, got convicted for stealing tax dollars earmarked to fund healthcare for the poor. The Espada probe dates back to 2010 and exposed how the crooked lawmaker funneled money from his network of nonprofit health clinics to a for-profit business that enriched him and financed his political campaign.