Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), senior Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, said that provisions in the new financial regulatory bill violate privacy rights by allowing the government to collect any financial information it wants from any financial institution it wants.

Privacy concerns stem from the new information-gathering authorities the bill would give to the federal government, allowing it collect any information, including records from Automatic Teller Machines (ATM) and the addresses of depositors, from any financial institution at any time.

One such entity, the Office of Financial Research, is empowered to collect “any data or information” from any financial organization or federal regulator. One of those regulators, Shelby pointed out, would be the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (BCFP), which is empowered to collect a person’s ATM receipts and the addresses of depositors.

“The Democrats’ new bureaucracy poses a threat to our privacy,” Shelby said, “Under section 1022 of their bill, the new bureau would collect any information it chooses from businesses and consumers including personal characteristics and financial information.

Full Report – CNS News

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With a flooded Tennessee becoming the latest disaster to strike the United States, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is confronting its own emergency as its relief funds run perilously low.

Last month, FEMA Director W. Craig Fugate wrote a letter to Congress warning that its relief fund had fallen to $693 million as of April 7 but the agency owed $645 million to 47 states for past disasters.

That doesn’t include the $1.7 billion settlement the agency owes to the Gulf Coast state and city governments for Hurricane Katrina.

Full report – FOX News

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As the country was sinking into its worst financial crisis in more than 70 years, Security and Exchange Commission employees and contractors cruised porn sites and viewed sexually explicit pictures using government computers, according to an agency report obtained by CNN.

“During the past five years, the SEC OIG (Office of Inspector General) substantiated that 33 SEC employees and or contractors violated Commission rules and policies, as well as the government-wide Standards of Ethical Conduct, by viewing pornographic, sexually explicit or sexually suggestive images using government computer resources and official time,” said a summary of the investigation by the inspector general’s office.

More than half of the workers made between $99,000 and $223,000 salary per year. All the cases took place over the past five years.
The inspector general’s report includes specific examples of misuse by employees.

CNN

So in other words, these GOVERNMENT employees were pulling in a salary equal to that of highly skilled engineers, technicians, pharmacists, etc. to watch porn. Now if that were to happen in the private sector, they would have been immediately FIRED.

Nice. Your tax dollars at work.
Hey… here’s a great idea. Let’s EXPAND government!

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Officials from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the United States Secret Service today unveiled the new design for the $100 note.

There are a number of security features in the redesigned $100 note, including two new features, the 3-D Security Ribbon and the Bell in the Inkwell. These security features are easy for consumers and merchants to use to authenticate their currency.

The blue 3-D Security Ribbon on the front of the new $100 note contains images of bells and 100s that move and change from one to the other as you tilt the note. The Bell in the Inkwell on the front of the note is another new security feature. The bell changes color from copper to green when the note is tilted, an effect that makes it seem to appear and disappear within the copper inkwell.

“The new security features announced today come after more than a decade of research and development to protect our currency from counterfeiting. To ensure a seamless introduction of the new $100 note into the financial system, we will conduct a global public education program to ensure that users of U.S. currency are aware of the new security features,” said Treasurer of the United States Rosie Rios.

For a more detailed description of the redesigned $100 note and its features, visit www.newmoney.gov where you can watch an animated video, click through an interactive note or browse through the multimedia resources for images.

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Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius said Thursday that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is developing a new regulation that would require food manufacturers to display nutritional information on the front of packages.

This would mean that the front of a Wheaties box, for example, would display not only the smiling face of a famous athlete but also declare how many calories from fat are in each serving.

“Busy shoppers will be able to go into grocery stores and have some easy to understand information on the front of packages giving them quick data on what is a healthier choice,” said Sebelius at the U.S. Capitol.

“The Food and Drug Administration right now is working with food manufacturers to not only update the nutritional labeling on the back of packages, which right now is written in small bar codes and pretty indecipherable and hasn’t been updated in 20 years, but to move to a front-of-package labeling strategy,” said Sebelius.

CNS News

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