ACORN may have filed for bankruptcy last month, but its name continues to surface: A newly released audit finds that the Federal Emergency Management Agency skirted the rules to award an ACORN affiliate $450,484 in fire prevention and safety funds. The idea behind the fiscal 2007 grant was to let the ACORN Institute develop best practices for community organizations to canvass high-risk neighborhoods and install smoke detectors and other safety equipment, according to the audit by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general. In its grant application, the ACORN Institute claimed to have plenty of experience in that line via…
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For anyone who’s wondering, the U.S. Postal Service and its largest union are still talking. “We are pursuing our goals,” American Postal Workers Union President Cliff Guffey said in a contract negotiations update posted Thursday on the union’s web. Besides seeking job security, Guffey said, “we want to lessen the disruption our members suffer as a result of excessing.” Also under discussion are wages, benefits and “work structure” issues. A Postal Service spokesman confirmed Friday that negotiations are still under way, but had no other comment. The APWU’s four-year contract with the Postal Service expired Nov. 20, but its terms…
A recently launched six-month pilot at the Veterans Affairs Department is intended to reduce the time it takes to collect veterans’ health records from private physicians. VA awarded Virginia-based DOMA Technologies, LLC a six-month, $384,000 contract to aid in collecting records needed to process veterans’ claims for disability benefits. “We are committed to harnessing the best technology and the brightest minds in the government and private sector to ensure veterans receive the benefits they have earned,” VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, said in a news release. Wayne Zinn, DOMA’s chief operating officer, said the pilot is off to a strong start. More…
The Washington Post has an advance peek at the big announcement NASA has scheduled for later today. It’s not aliens, but it is pretty interesting nonetheless — researchers have found a bacterium that relies on arsenic, not phosphorus, as one of its six essential components. The Post said this doesn’t prove that some forms of life on Earth evolved from a different common ancestor than the rest of us — the so-called “second genesis.” “But the discovery very much opens the door to that possibility, and to the related existence of a theorized ‘shadow biosphere’ on earth.” The Mono Lake…
Congressional hearings on the U.S. Postal Service usually fall somewhat short of spine-tingling, but here’s a fascinating tidbit from this morning’s session before a Senate subcommittee: There are 132 postal workers aged 90 or older currently receiving workers’ compensation, three of whom are 98. That’s according to Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the top Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “These individuals should be switched to the retirement system; they’re never going to return to work over age 90,” Collins said at the hearing by the panel’s federal financial management subcommittee. According to Collins, employees on…
A week-and-a-half after their old contract officially ended, the U.S. Postal Service and its largest union will keep talking a while longer in hopes of agreeing to a new one. “We will be working late tonight and early tomorrow,” American Postal Workers Union President Cliff Guffey said in a web release this afternoon. The two sides will continue negotiations until they either reach an agreement or decide that a deal is not possible, the release adds. In an e-mail, USPS spokesman Mark Saunders said only that “both parties have agreed to negotiate beyond today.” This is the third extension of…
As if the pay freeze news wasn’t enough excitement for one week, now NASA has scheduled a press conference for Thursday afternoon to discuss something “that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life.” There’s only one thing this could mean: NASA has aliens. Now let’s just hope they’re the friendly, ET-kind of visitors, and not the warlike Klingon types. Seriously, though, probably not. The press conference is to discuss astrobiology (the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe), and its participants are experts in molecular evolution and evolutionary ecology. And if Hollywood…
On Nov. 19, the Obama administration proclaimed a new path for government information technology procurement. But an overview of one agency’s travails suggests that a steep climb lies ahead. The agency is the Housing and Urban Development Department; the newly released Government Accountability Office review finds that HUD officials had a hard time just coming up with a congressionally mandated plan to lay out its IT buying strategy. That document is required by a spending bill approved last December. Under its terms, HUD can’t obligate more than 25 percent of available money for IT modernization until the House and Senate…
As it appeals the denial of an “exigent” rate increase request, the U.S. Postal Service is arguing that the Postal Regulatory Commission’s turndown was “arbitrary and capricious,” according to a brief filed late this afternoon with the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Among other points, USPS lawyers contend that the five-member commission established “new requirements that were not shared with or explained to the Postal Service,” according to an agency summary. “Instead, the PRC simply denied the request as a whole and punted the Postal Service’s entire financial crisis to Congress,” the brief concludes. The…
This one falls in the “laugh so you don’t cry” category. The Afghan government and NATO has been negotiating for months with someone they thought was Taliban second-in-command Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, hoping to find a way to end the nine-year war. But it turns out — whoops! — this supposed militia leader was an imposter. In reality, he was just a shopkeeper from Quetta, Pakistan, who was running a scam. And according to the New York Times, it worked: “It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot…