When the Census Bureau was told in 2010 that a data collector named Julius Buckmon was falsifying information that went into the nation’s monthly unemployment report, according to a source who knows the case, it halfheartedly assigned the probe to one of its investigators .
That investigator, Rachel Ondrik, has since been charged with and convicted of fraud by the US Attorney in Maryland. She was sentenced last year to eight months in jail.
Ondrik is appealing.
You already know most of this story. Buckmon, who worked out of the Philadelphia Census office, each month falsified household surveys that could have impacted the results of the all-important jobless figures.
Buckmon claims that higher-ups told him to do so — and I’m trying to find out just how high this conspiracy went.
Buckmon left Census in 2010, but I’ve been told that the practice of manipulating the unemployment data went on for years. All of this is now being investigated by a bunch of people in Washington.
The Ondrik piece of this puzzle is intriguing.
She and her Census partner, a guy named Kirk Yamatani, pleaded guilty last year to submitting false claims to Census for relocation expenses and putting in false time cards.
Petty fraud, yes. But Ondrik’s name has come up in the Buckmon probe, I’m told, and this could be a much more serious matter.
Ondrik and Yamatani quit their government jobs a year ago when they pleaded guilty. Their deals required them to pay $28,000 in restitution and get probation.
Commerce Inspector General Todd Zinser, upon the pleas, thought the case was great.
“Today’s announcement is the result of significant efforts by the US Attorney’s Office, the FBI and my office to hold law enforcement agents accountable for years of criminal misconduct,” Zinser said.
Unfortunately for all of them the judge assigned to the case, Charles B. Day of the US District Court in Maryland, didn’t like the deal. He sentenced Ondrik and Yamatani to eight months in jail and ordered that they immediately be taken into custody.
Did Ondrik really investigate Buckmon? I’m told she did have some conversations with people who knew about the data falsification. But those meetings didn’t take place in the Philadelphia Census office like Ondrik’s paperwork said they did.
I called Ondrik’s lawyer and Zinser’s office. Neither would comment. Put this on the list of things Congress and prosecutors need to investigate.
An update: I have submitted about a dozen Freedom of Information Act requests for information in the Buckmon case — some a month ago — and I haven’t received even one piece of paper yet.
My requests include various Census Bureau workers’ email, the results of lie detector tests I believe were conducted on workers and copies of one guy’s papers for a sudden retirement.
I am sorry to say that one of my theories seems to be coming true.
I have said in a number of columns that I thought tax revenue to the government would be weak this year because a lot of people accelerated income into 2012. They were worried about the so-called Fiscal Cliff that Washington had steered us toward.
Since they rightly believed taxes would be increasing in 2013, rich taxpayers preferred to take income a year earlier at the lower rates.
The Rockefeller Institute explains it all in a March 11 release titled: “State Tax Revenues Slip Back to Slower Growth. Disappearing Temporary Effects of the Fiscal Cliff Appear to Cause Weakest Growth in Personal income Tax Collections since 2010.”
The institute says that, at the state level, personal income-tax growth slowed to 1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2013.
It had been growing at 5.3 percent in the third quarter and 15.9 percent in the three quarters before that.
The federal government should start to see this slower growth when Americans file tax returns in April. And that means all those rosy budget-deficit projections from so-called experts can be thrown in the trash.
A new restaurant in Manhattan called Beer & Buns has a $250 Kobe burger on the menu.
It’s topped with foie gras, white truffles, Beluga caviar, and best of all, a homemade bun. Fries, at a modest $5 a serving, are extra.
Which one of you lucky stock market investors is treating? I’m free any Thursday.
On second thought, forget it. I’m allergic to stupidity.
That brings me to a Bloomberg National Poll released this week that says barely one in five people who responded said the stock market’s gains made them feel more financially secure.
(No Kobe burgers for them!)
In my opinion, that’s not the only problem.
Most of those stock gains came in retirement plans.
And that is considered by most people to be tomorrow’s money, not to be used on today’s expenses.
That’s why the stock market’s boom isn’t translating into a good economy.