Illinois Government Scandal

Democratic Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested for corruption charges.

Apparently, being a governor just does not pay enough, have the right amount of benefits or have a good enough retirement plan.

nice article from the Wall Street Journal. you know how i roll.

Highlights of the Blagojevich Corruption Charges

Susan Davis reports on politics.

Democratic Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris, were arrested today in Chicago amid charges of political corruption. The two were charged with conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and solicitation of bribery. According to the Justice Department, the two men allegedly engaged in “ongoing criminal activity” including:

–Conspiring to obtain personal financial gain through the appointment to fill President-elect Barack Obama’s U.S. Senate seat. According to the indictment, Blagojevich sought a highly paid job at either a nonprofit foundation or labor organization, as well as a job for his wife on a corporate board where she would earn at least $150,000 a year.

well i found this nice article that tells me Rod was pulling in about $155,000 in 05/07 and was ranked 7th highest paid. Arnold is #1, but he gives his check back to the state.

Govs' salaries range from $1 to $206,500
By Andrew Knapp, Special to Stateline.org

"“It’s a good political ploy to (not accept a salary),” said Thad Beyle, a University of North Carolina professor who studies U.S. governors. He said politicians run for the top state job not for the money, but sometimes to parlay the post into higher office, including the presidency. Four of the last five U.S. presidents served in the governor’s office before the Oval Office. “It’s just the next step to bigger things,” Beyle said."

this is a good article, but knowing what we know now a year later and the trouble going on.

check it out the Disgraced NY Gov. Eliot Spitzer made the article.

"A list of 2007 gubernatorial salaries compiled by the Council of State Governments shows the largest at $206,500 in California, though the governor doesn’t accept it, and the smallest at $70,000 in Maine, where the governor hasn’t gotten a raise in 20 years. At $179,000, New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) draws the largest salary among governors who actually accept one."

Well, we know where some of his wages went.

All I can do is shake my head.
Live in a mansion. State pays all the household bills.
24 armored guard.
sign bills in State Law.
pardon people.
Set policy.
create jobs.
enact programs that spend millions of dollars.
command the national guard.
people listen to what you have to say.
people love you.
people hate you.

Well anyway. I can only say that Illinois has a major headache because of this.

UPDATE

The Illionis state house voted to impeach. of course he is fighting to the finish.

2-17-09

The former governor has not been heard from since...,but the governor's selection for US Senator has made some news... Apparently, Mr. Burris was not entirely truthful as to his dealings with the disgraced former governor.

Per this nice story :

Burris Admits to Fundraising Attempt
Senator Now Says He Tried to Solicit Money for Blagojevich
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 18, 2009; Page A03

said that he tried to start something, but nobody was helping so he quit helping.

"In the latest in a series of shifting accounts of his conduct, Sen. Roland W. Burris (D-Ill.) told reporters that he tried to raise money for then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich at the same time he was asking Blagojevich to appoint him to the Senate.

Burris said he contacted "some people" about holding a fundraiser at the request of Blagojevich's brother, Robert, only to learn that no one was willing to help the governor. He said he later changed his mind, raised no money and contributed none.

The account to reporters in Peoria, Ill., was Burris's fifth version of his contacts with close associates of Blagojevich and the first time he acknowledged trying to raise money for the former governor, who was arrested and forced from office on corruption charges. "

Damn It!

that is all I got for now on this.

Auto Industry Bail-Out

Ok. Hmmm. No.

I am going to have deny the request.

2 of the 3 are being run by a chief executives that are "new" the the auto business. It is painfully obvious that these guys have no clue how to sell cars to the American buying public. Obviously, it is much different than just being a dominate manufacture in an transportation industury (Boeing) or selling multiple and/or bulk units of identical products to the general public at low margin (Home Depot). Apparrently, the actual experience of overcoming the objections of the customer to the sale of your vehicle could have helped guide you to learn how to sell your vehicle to your customer.

Then this gimmick ploy I read somewhere that Chrysler said its chief executive annual pay is $1.

Well, guess what.

When you work on a car lot and you do not sell many cars your pay check not much more than that.
Not like he needed the money anyway ... i found this

Seeing Red Over a Golden Parachute
Home Depot's CEO Resigns, And His Hefty Payout Raises Ire

By Ylan Q. Mui
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 4, 2007; Page D01

Robert L. Nardelli has abruptly resigned as chairman and chief executive of Home Depot, pocketing a lavish severance package and leaving shareholders with a stock that has languished even as sales have nearly doubled during his six-year tenure.

In a statement released yesterday, Home Depot's board of directors and Nardelli said they "mutually agreed" to the resignation, which took effect Tuesday. Under the terms of a separation agreement negotiated when he joined the company in 2000, Nardelli, 58, is to receive about $210 million in cash and stock options, including a $20 million severance payment and retirement benefits of $32 million.

then in a different article

Robert Nardelli named CEO of Chrysler
Under the terms of the deal for Cerberus to buy Chrysler, the ex-Home Depot chief took the helm at the struggling carmaker.
FORTUNE Magazine
By Katie Benner, Fortune reporter
August 6 2007: 12:37 AM EDT

(Fortune) -- As the deal to sell Chrysler to Cerberus Capital Management finally came to a close on Friday, there was one rather salient fact that slipped under the radar. Robert Nardelli was appointed Chrysler's chairman and chief executive officer upon the deal's completion.
Chrysler is American again

That's right. Ceberus has confirmed that the disgraced former CEO of Home Depot (Charts, Fortune 500), who became the poster child for excessive CEO compensation, has taken the reigns at Chrysler. On the day the deal was finalized, August 3, Nardelli was elected to the Chrysler board. Soon after, the directors appointed him chairman and chief executive.

This is just me cutting and pasting articles, but from respected published sources. Because that is how I roll.

Main Entry: disgraced
Part of Speech: adjective
Definition: discredited
Synonyms: in disgrace, dishonored, degraded, demoted, shamed, downtrodden,
humiliated, discharged, defrocked, mocked, abject,
down and out, tarred and feathered

http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/disgraced

If the editors at FORTUNE Magazine approved the use of this adjective what are you to think?

Now on to Ford's CEO

well according to this web page

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/12/lead_bestbosses08_Alan-R-Mulally_N5DJ.html

a million dollars a month. 2nd year on the job. wow Mr. Wizard what have you brought to the table as a success? Do you have a clue how many commission vouchers would have to be earned to generate $1,000,000.00? per month, but to add to the difficultly you have to sell the Ford product to do it. Let's just say a car salesman earns $333 average for every new Ford Product he sold. Well lets see... 3003 new cars each month.

I really have lost interest in beating on this guy.

Ok this is how it should go down. GM gets the loan it wants. Ford said it did not need any money and Chrysler gets nothing.

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. thinks Chrysler is just trying to get the loan to stay in business long enough to be bought by another automaker and I agree.

Update:

WSJ reports that this bailout may come in the form of ownership positions that Rich Uncle Sam would get in the auto industry for the billions invested. I like this idea better than just handing billions of dollars to management with this track record. I can see the high fuel efficient cars being made. This battery challenge that is stumping the progress of electric cars would be solved soon. This new power source/container is very important to the world's future.

Update: 2/17/09

Hot off the press..
GM, Chrysler seek more gov't aid, to cut more jobs

By TOM KRISHER and KEN THOMAS – 40 minutes ago

DETROIT (AP) — "General Motors and Chrysler said Tuesday their request for federal aid ballooned to a staggering $39 billion — only months after receiving billions in loans — in new plans that envision massive job losses and intense restructuring to survive a deepening recession."

"General Motors Corp. presented a survival plan that calls for cutting a total of 47,000 jobs globally and closing five more U.S. factories, a move that represents the largest work force reduction announced by a U.S. company in the economic meltdown. Chrysler LLC said it will cut 3,000 more jobs and stop producing three vehicle models."

Now the best thing to do is let these 2 companies break up and reform again under a new name. These companies are too big to be managed. It might have been possible to save these two companies with "car guys" leading the charge, but all they have are suits.
Sales have not improved. They want to fire/lay-off 40,000 anyway. Obviously, this is too much. I envision separate companies. Each would grow on its own merits.

Update
3/16/09

Chrysler is asking for another $5,000 million on top of the $4,000 million it received recently. So Cerrius this management company is basically asking for same amount it invested to save this wreck. I say total it. Good Bye... and where is my $4 billion dollars? This is what you get when you want to play car dealer.

The management team may be good at selling something, but it is not good at selling cars.

Update 3/31/09

O.K. Rick Wagoner resigned. Now GM has 60 days to come up with a better plan. Chrysler has 30 days to forge a deal with Fiat. The US government is backing the warranties of these companies.

People in Michigan are upset that GM's CEO got fired and Chrysler has 30 days. Well, let me clue you in on something. Chrysler was doomed a long time ago. If the government would not have came in saved it a 2d time it would have died in couple of months ago. The management of Chrysler has 30 days to get it's money out. As for the firing. The CEO of failed company always loses his job. Just like the 40,000 he laid off recently. He too knows how it feels and what it is like to be jobless.

I told you so.

Update 4/26/09

Back in February I asked Why are not these car companies broken up?

Apparently, there must be legal issues, but when the very government is so heavily invested in the companies would they even have to change the law? I mean really, the government, being the largest shareholder or majority owner just "tink" break it up. At least there would be more administrative positions opening up. Each brand would need it's own independent administration, design and marketing teams. I heard there are enough idle factories that could be tapped if needed.

Now what this does is risky, but isn't selling a brand the same as spinning it off?
Where is the money? Well, they are bank rolling it now. New term for me... Cash Burn It is funny because this definition I found make references to "start-up" companies.

Burn rate
"Used in venture capital financing to refer to the rate at which a startup company expends capital to finance overhead costs prior to the generation of positive cash flow." thefreedictionary.com

If Saturn, Saab, Hummer and Pontiac could not survive on there own then they die. Oh Cadillac and the rest all go solo too plus R&D now solo. Bell/Lucent Labs anyone?
Sure it can charge a flat rate for services each company can invest what it needs.

Well the union debt will have to backed up by the productivity of the current worker. The union will have a ownership position in the companies of it choice or each...whatever details,
but the point is...

Yesterday's worker is directly dependent on today's worker.

What the irony of it all is... the workers become the owners and now the workers become thier own proplem. At least that is what I get when you hear the current management access this problem they are experience.

Then, I guess this question could be directed at the union.

Are you ready to invest in yourself?

Update: 06/23/09

Well, both companies declare bankruptcy. The dealership network was "trimmed" back on both companies.
China buys Hummer, Some high-end European automaker buys SAAB, Saturn got sold to the Penske Organization, Pontiac just goes away and dies ... I think... The US government has a majority ownership in GM. the unions own most of Chrysler with Fiat getting a 20-30% cut.
Ford just received a 5,800 million dollar loan for new car technology. Nissan got a loan and so did Tesla.

China approves $600 billion economic stimulus

Well of the that would be a little bit more than 4 trillion yuan or 4,000,000,000,000.00 or $600,000,000,000.00 kinda the same thing. Big is not really the verb to use here... almost comprehensible amount of money moving around.
What is so interesting about this is ... just recently China just completed a bridge.
I will just cut out the meat of this article China opens longest sea bridge by Riazat Butt, religious affairs correspondent The Guardian, Friday May 2 2008

The world's longest sea bridge was formally opened yesterday linking Shanghai to the industrial city of Ningbo across Hangzhou Bay in China.

The 22-mile bridge

The bridge is a cable-stayed structure built at a cost of 11.8bn yuan (£500m),

Construction started in November 2003.

The bridge is designed to last 100 years.

Now...4000/11 is 363.636 $1.65 billion dollar projects.

What is most interesting is this...

Daily Journal of Commerce (Portland, OR), Nov 29, 2007 by Alison Ryan

I-5 bridge fix in Oregon could cost at least $3.1B

Estimated construction costs for alternatives for the Columbia River Crossing bridge, transit and highway improvement project range between $3.1 and $4.2 billion. Estimates include components like I- 5 related costs: interchanges, adding high capacity transit or new bridges.

I stopped reading ...because I immediately recalled my Sea Bridge in China that is 22 miles long was $1.6bn going to last 100 years.

The Interstate bridge is not measured in miles like the one in China. It is measured in feet 3538 feet or 2/3 of a mile. It does not cross the ocean it crosses the river.

Estimated to cost at least twice as much to get 1/33 the length hummm...

Now of course Oregon Washington has special needs unique to the function of the bridge, but the money and the numbers make this look ... funny.

Hundred-Fiddy Billion.

Oh my!

Uncle Sam has committed $150,000,000,000.01 to AIG. When I say Uncle Sam I mean every American Tax payer.
put very plainly by

By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
Published: November 10, 2008
NY Times.

"At the heart of A.I.G.’s troubles are a type of derivative called credit-default swaps. They are essentially a kind of insurance that A.I.G. wrote on complex securities, known as collateralized debt obligations, sold in recent years to financial institutions. By issuing the swaps, A.I.G. was promising to pay these institutions — A.I.G.’s counterparties — if the debt securities defaulted.

A.I.G. wrote a large book of business on the thinking that such defaults were unlikely. As the economy has soured, though, some of the securities have weakened and shown signs of failure.

The insurance contracts have also proved crushingly expensive for A.I.G. because they included provisions requiring it to post collateral under certain circumstances, showing that it could afford to keep its promises."

Well, apparently AIG can really keep it promises now. It is just really ...
unfair that my rich Uncle Sam has to back the deal. There should be a fiduciary law about binds management to be personally financially liable for such losses. RICO act thing ... frequently, management gives out stock bonuses and incentives in addition to salaries to themselves for these "profits" that happen in one quarter and turn out to be a big loss a couple of quarters later, but by then that commission voucher has been paid and spent a long time ago.

Drive the stock up with artificial reports of success, sell your "bonuses" as the price goes up. You know the game.

Update
03/16/09

Just when you thought OK ...You MF'er's one hundred fifty (F#ck F#ck F#ck) Billion Dollars... that would take care of the mess. NOOOOOOO!!! These people believe they are entitled to bonuses to the tune of almost $200 million dollars and they are contractually guaranteed blah blah blah and the checks are going to be signed and sent soon or if it has not already been put in the mail.

I'll say it again. Let this firm fail. Just for the principle of it. Government can come in after the collapse and operate the salvage and disposal mission.

Update 03/25/09

Oh man, let me get a towel and wipe this spit off me. You better a towel too cause this was in the WSJ... you know how i roll.

"Wednesday, EMPLOYEES (or should it say OUR employees?)at the insurer (GAVE A STANDING OVATION) for Jake DeSantis, an executive in AIG's financial-products division, who was the first to publicly refuse to return his retention bonus despite an outcry over the payments."

you wanna know what this (add your own adjective) said..."Mr. DeSantis said he would donate his after-tax proceeds of $742,000 to charity."

oh and of course...

"Mr. DeSantis resigned Tuesday(3/24/09), arguing in a New York Times op-ed piece Wednesday that AIG employees are being "unfairly persecuted.""

Mr. DeSantis what did AIG retain in that bonus that you received by quitting? Is this a unearned bonus? Oh and the part about giving to charity...What?... Yeah. and OJ looked for the real killers. You want to spit on me again and use your (US Taxpayer) contribution to off-set your taxes right?

Add another name to the wall of shame. DeSantis, Milken, Boski, Lay, Madoff, Baker, this list will go on and on... you get my drift?

Bail Out

The $700 Billion package that "must be done" is wrong.

The first time I heard it I was floored. I do not want to use tax payer money to cure the ills of the private sector. There is more than enough money out there to correct this market position. These companies that fail are quickly carved up and sold off efficiently enough. Even the banks that have failed and have been closed by the FDIC are opening the next business under the name of another bank.

Goldman Sach received $5 billion from a private investor and got another $5 billion through the market. Where is the problem here?

Did you know?
There are 446 billionaires in the United States according to Forbes magazine and of course many more millionaires.

With all this money that is obviously around no government assistance in necessary. What is going to have to happen is the people that actually run a company will have to have a financial stake in it as well. I am not referring to stock options that are given to them, but actual money invested in.

Just recently for example.

Washington Mutual gets seized by the FDIC. The bank was immediately sold, but the CEO of 3 weeks gets his signing bonus and severance pay to the tune of $13 million. He has not even gone through 2 bi-weekly pay cycles yet.

Now there are other instances where this CEO pay is out of hand, but this is so disgusting it is hard not to be upset and it is not even my money at stake!
Now am I the only one that thinks that there is something wrong here?

Think of it this way.

At the share value between $2 and $3* a share for "WaMu" that is between 4.3 to 6.5 million shares. You would think that this guy worked there his whole life, invested in the bank and bled "WaMu" blue.

Not a guy that just 1 month earlier was either looking for a job or working somewhere else.

No wonder the FDIC seized "WaMu" quite obviously the Board of Directors making more bad decisions.

*the value of the shares could have been lower but it was not above $3 at time of seizure.

So the value of this is- There is going to be more accountability and honesty in the financial sector. There will be a "Cleaning House" and several people will lose jobs, some firms will be eliminated, but there will always be investment and stock market.

I predict the Wall Street sector will be smaller, more humble and more ethics considerate. Well, I hope and I also hope more employee owned, so it is not others people's or more importantly tax payer money at stake.


Update 01/14/2009

Well... I will have to alter my prediction a little bit... I was thinking the federal government would stay out and observe, but I was not expecting the treasury and the federal reserve bank "hang around" at this party so long that they pick up the check.

How many "private" companies does the government have to invest in to solve this problem? How many thousand millions of dollars more? It is like Billion is the new Million.

But when you look at it this way ...

700,000 million is 700 billion.
I feel you can get a better perspective of a Billion.

Jan. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp., the biggest U.S. bank by assets, may get more aid from the government to help absorb losses tied to this month’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co.

the article goes on to say...

Bank of America...told regulators in December the takeover might be abandoned because of Merrill’s worse-than-expected results..
The government insisted the transaction go forward because its collapse would create new turmoil in the financial system.

Now this part kinda confuses me...Was BofA forced to buy this company? Or was this another carpetbagger opportunity? I remember Countrywide being bought and worked out in like a 20 minutes. Kinda like the Lehman Bros deal for JP Morgan.

the article goes on...

Bank of America on Sept. 15 agreed to buy Merrill Lynch, the world’s largest securities firm, after a weekend of negotiations between Lewis and Merrill CEO John Thain. The $19.4 billion transaction came as Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. sank into bankruptcy, crippled by the frozen credit markets.

Ok...I am not on the inside and do not know all the details, but apperently this CEO of BoA did not get all the details either. I can only guess the CEO of Merrill Lynch lied...opps I mean to say ... "sold the sizzle" and closed the deal.

How come I am thinking 5000 million would just about cover this hiccup.

It hurts my brain to think about what is happening to 95% of American taxpayers. The ones who make less than .25 million dollars per year. Oh my goodness, it hurts so bad.

Here comes the check...

1,000,000 million dollar deficit. What a party... 1 trillion, a number so large it is written as an exponent. 10 to the 12th power. I have to stop now.

Minimum Wage Increase

OK, let me just say this right away, any increase in the minimum wage is a good thing.

Granted, obviously, that the cost to run the business has now increased which cuts into profits and could force smaller businesses to cut back on hiring and/or go out of business.
I hear this argument every time the minimum wage increases. I can not believe nobody sees right thru this argument.
1. If the business is going out of business over spending 80 cents or less more per hour per minimum wage employee then this business will fail with or without the increase. Come on...that would mean that nobody could ever get a raise. So, the skilled worker making more than minimum could not get a typical annual raise? Money is money. costs are cost.
2. Any company that relies on minimum wage employees over skilled employees will fail anyway. Minimum wage is not a living wage. The minimum wage employee will naturally never develop any sense of ownership on the job, but instead be looking for higher paying opportunities.
There could be more to say, but really...gonna stop here.

What did you say fmr. Gov. Rommney?

I recently heard Mitt Romney state that Senator Obama purposes $100's of billions in new government spending. I quickly thought, gee... I hope so...our republician president purposed at least a half of a trillion dollars in new spending over the last 8 years... and you know most of that money went to non-citizens who now want U.S. out of the country immediately , if not sooner.
So... if we divert this war money to social spending on US citizens I say that would be a good thing. There have been budgets that included $100's of billions of unexpected costs absorbed, so we could invest that in United States infrastructure. There could be educational grants that encourage education completion to under-graduate degree. There are so many goods and services that could do everyone and everything some good, if the money was there to do it. Of course new jobs would develope during this influx of investment. Just improving the roads, bridges and tunnels across this country would stimulate 1,000's of jobs. Making public colleges free with subisidies would generate thousands of new instructors positions. Right now the war money is creating jobs but only fraction of what 100% application of funds into the United States economy would create. Right now we are creating technologies that have little to no public use. How often am I going to need a light wieght body armor and bomb resistant vehicles in the United States of America? If we can make a missile direct itself to a pin point target with GPS naviagation don't you think we can make make a car that can drive itself?
We are already spending the money. We , as United States citizens, need to demand that our tax money is to be spent on US first.

Three years later....

Mitt, Mitt, Mitt, a fence? really? ah no, but no thanks. and then I remember Gov. Perry stating that he could secure the boarder, without a fence, he would need "boots on the ground" to do it. Then in what I found completely ironic is he said he need 1000 and upto 3000 "boots" Now i am assuming that it is 2 boots to 1 guy with a gun and really nice gear to protect me or the consitution from them. What I found ironic thou was ... would that not be growing government by upto 3000 employees? I understood that is how he grew employment in Texas.

Falling Prices of Oil

Well, what do you know the price of gas has come down some. I mean can you believe it. It has lost 20% since the high (but still at 100% above 8 years ago). Going down in the face of Hurricanes, Mid East Terror, Presidential Election, and my personal favorite, 3rd world countries competing for the oil. It will take at least 120 days for the market to correct completely from this artificial run-up. Oops, did I say artificial run-up? I am sorry what I should have said was fraudulent manipulatation of oil prices and conditioning to higher fuel prices.

Did anyone have to wait in long lines to get gas? With the rise in gas prices to the levels that where reached you would have thought there would

Update 11/25/08

National gas price average plummets to $1.88
news article katu.com November 25, 2008

$47.32 price of a barrel of crude 12/04/08.

Oil Company Profits

At least $1500 x 60 seconds x 60 minutes x 24 hours x 90 days
or for those who don't do story problems.
((((1500)60)60)24)90)

That was one, the big one, company's profit take!
Congratulations! A company that can have back-to-back world records for profits by a corporation. I mean, they broke their own record... what an achievement.
So to expand out a bit ... $1350X60X60X24X180
It's been a OK year, so far.

Put together with the federal tax breaks and the reversal of the Alaskan incident damage award. Wow, a very good year.

Update 03/25/09

"Under pressure to narrow projected deficits, President Barack Obama's 2010 budget proposal calls for raising more than $31 billion over the next decade by eliminating the oil and gas industry's eligibility for various tax breaks."

ah WSJ "Obama Administration Revives Tax Battle With Oil Industry"

well, it was going to happen. And of course the oil industry is crying people will lose jobs... whatever. One thing I do know. Once you get accustomed to a certain income level you work to stay at it ...but see the oil companies just where able to take advantage the last year of the Bush term. and huge.

"A report by the Congressional Research Service last year said the top five major integrated companies -- Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell PLC, BP PLC, Chevron and ConocoPhillips -- generated more than $100 billion in profits on nearly $1.5 trillion of revenue in 2007."

writing this it appears like George W. Bush either worked to enable certain industries to just rake in the cash. Back to Back to Back Record Oil Profits and the massive bailout for supposedly wealthy firms per his pal Paulson. OR he really was a cowboy and could not recognize major problems in a line-up.

Update:
Opps! Did it again. what are the odds of 3 times in a row? ...run up the largest profits ever by a corporation 3x in a row.. They just got better again ... I mean when the profits came out 6 months ago. Those where "wow", then 3 months ago it was like "Whoa" and then again it is like. Is there any money left in the world? cause you got a profane amount of it.

Good Job! You did what every American company is set up to do. Now put the money to good use, so we don't have to offer you corporate welfare anymore.

Oops, did I say corporate welfare? Oh, I am sorry I am just kinda jealous of your success. I look at it like the oil industries just won the lottery. They got money now. $54 Billion in profits in their sector for the last 90 days. I can imagine seeing all the smiling faces of oil companies holding this big check for $54,000,000,000. I can imagine a group of people, who receive public assistance, pooling their resources to buy lottery tickets. Not a good idea, but it happens and this time they win.

Now they would be off the public payrolls. The government is not going to ask for the assistance back. Just go on with life and wish them good luck.

Well, Mr. Oilman, time to use your own money. Voluntarily give back your government benefits. Don't worry we will be here to hand you another welfare check in the future, should you need it. Just like my fictional lottery winners, you know at least one of them will be back on public assistance.