Agencies

WASHINGTON - President Obama said Friday he wanted to put more Americans to work by slashing the amount of time it takes to grant federal approval for big job-creating projects. But Obama's choice of venue for his remarks - a Baltimore company that makes mining and pumping equipment - provided fodder for Republicans. They noted that the company president had, just the day before, testified on Capitol Hill in support of the Keystone XL pipeline, which the Obama administration has delayed for years over environmental concerns.

The numbers on United Talent Agency's new 130,000-square-foot Beverly Hills digs are notable. The Civic Center Drive property includes a 158-piece art collection, 11 conference rooms and a private plaza that can accommodate as many as 500 people. But the standout figure is 275. That's the number of screenings UTA has held at its new screening room since the company's new headquarters opened last September. The new theater was christened with a showing of longtime client Judd Apatow's "This Is 40," which was screened for the filmmaker's friends and family, along with UTA agents.

For more than a quarter of a century, the advertising agency Rubin Postaer & Associates of Santa Monica controlled the business of American Honda Motor Co. On Monday, Honda shifted gears by announcing that it was splitting its huge advertising account among three agencies, ending one of the most closely watched reviews in the advertising industry. RPA, which opened in 1986 to handle the Honda account, survived a brush with potential ruin by retaining responsibility to create advertisements for the nation's fifth-largest auto company.

Bucking longstanding patterns in the United States, more poor people now live in the nation's suburbs than in urban areas, according to a new analysis. As poverty mounted throughout the nation over the past decade, the number of poor people living in suburbs surged 67% between 2000 and 2011 - a much bigger jump than in cities, researchers for the Brookings Institution said in a book published today. Suburbs still have a smaller percentage of their population living in poverty than cities do, but the sheer number of poor people scattered in the suburbs has jumped beyond that of cities.

At Royal Staffing Services Inc., an employment agency in Westlake Village, more requests are coming in for temporary workers. And the agency has no trouble finding people to fill the jobs. On a recent morning, agency Chief Executive Joe Cummings got a phone call requesting two $14-an-hour customer service representatives with good computer skills. The client wanted temp workers who could be hired permanently if they worked out. "Within 20 minutes they had two resumes, and 10 minutes after that we had two interviews scheduled," Cummings said.

President Obama this morning will ask Congress to give him authority to significantly shrink the federal government by merging six agencies dealing with trade and commerce, a senior administration official said. Obama is seeking power to propose a sweeping consolidation of agencies with overlapping duties with an eye toward saving money and improving performance, the official said. The president is asking Congress to grant him authority held by no president since Ronald Reagan.

The angst-ridden process of merging the two federal agencies that govern research and education on substance-abuse problems will drag on for another two years. Officials at the National Institute on Drug Abuse said Sunday that the opening of a new agency that will take the place of both the NIDA and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, will likely occur in October 2013 instead of 2012. The merger was discussed Sunday at a meeting of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence.

California legislators voted to open an official inquiry into two state agencies that channel money earned from issuing municipal bonds to private companies. Assemblyman Mike Feuer (D-Los Angeles) in May requested the audit of the California Statewide Communities Development Authority (CSCDA) and the California Municipal Financial Authority (CMFA). The Joint Legislative Audit Committee approved the request on an 8-3 vote Wednesday and will now conduct a full review of both agencies.

A widespread and unusually resilient computer attack that began July 4 knocked out the websites of several government agencies, including some that are responsible for fighting cyber crime, the Associated Press has learned. The Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and Transportation Department websites were all down at varying points over the holiday weekend and into this week, according to officials inside and outside the government.

Perhaps a name change is in order for some agencies under the U.S. Interior Department umbrella. These days at least two of them would more accurately be referred to as the Minerals Mismanagement Service and the Bureau of Land Mismanagement. The Minerals Management Service is charged with overseeing offshore oil and gas leases; it's the agency that failed to require a realistic emergency response plan from BP before giving its Deepwater Horizon rig permission to drill. It has also been at the center of assorted scandals involving employees who accepted gifts or solicited jobs from the oil companies they were supposed to regulate.

WASHINGTON - The ousted head of the Internal Revenue Service apologized Friday for the agency's "foolish mistakes" in singling out conservative groups for intrusive and time-consuming scrutiny, but said that the effort was not driven by partisan motives. Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, whose tenure will end Wednesday after he resigned under pressure this week, said the agency staff's attempts to identify groups with political aims was not "targeting," as it was termed in an inspector general's audit.

This story starts at a point in time that most observers predicted it would end. The year was 2002. The Internet party was long over. Pets.com and other high-flying digital darlings were defunct. It was the dark days for the few survivors of the dot-com bubble, and Razorfish was barely hanging on. The brash online ad agency that had come to symbolize the arrogance and frivolity of the era had slashed its staff from 1,800 employees to just 230. The company was sold for $8.2 million - a minuscule fraction of its $4.2-billion market value just two years before.

WASHINGTON - The head of the FBI said Thursday that there were lapses in tracking accused Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev's visit to Russia last year, saying that U.S. security officials failed to act on "text" alerts to a U.S. Customs agent about his trip. The inaction came after U.S. officials interviewed Tsarnaev and his parents about Russian concerns that he was traveling there "intent on returning and perhaps participating in jihad," FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said. Mueller told a Senate appropriations subcommittee that in March 2011, Russian authorities asked the U.S. for a background assessment on Tsarnaev and his mother.

WASHINGTON - Career CIA officers were responsible for administration claims that the armed attack in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead last fall grew out of a protest of an anti-Islamic video, an incorrect assertion that became a flash point for critics who say the Obama administration deliberately misled the public for political reasons, according to emails released by the White House on Wednesday. The 99 pages of emails from the two days after the Sept. 11, 2012, attack reveal confused and occasionally sharp negotiations among officials at the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI, the White House and the State Department as they scrambled to craft so-called talking points about a nightlong assault that was still little understood.

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department began a criminal investigation Tuesday into overzealous scrutiny by the IRS of applications for tax exemptions by conservative groups, an improper targeting that an inspector general's report blamed on a confused staff and lax oversight. The improper activities "were not influenced by any individual or organization outside the IRS," the auditors said they were told by Internal Revenue Service officials. Instead, the report painted a picture of an IRS unit based in Cincinnati that used "inappropriate criteria" for deciding which applications to examine, without any review by senior managers.

Responding to new allegations of financial malfeasance and abuse, Los Angeles County officials have decided to stop sending children to a private foster care agency that has been responsible for more than 1,100 youths in recent years. The action was taken after an examination of Teens Happy Homes, published in The Times last month, revealed questionable spending and repeated instances of abuse. Fresh allegations surfaced in an ongoing audit obtained by The Times that found at least $100,000 in suspect payments: Nearly $30,000 went toward chief executive Beautina "Tina" Robinson's personal expenses, including her car and credit card bills.

A group of online hackers says it has gained access to more than 70 law enforcement agency websites in the United States, obtaining emails, credit card information and other sensitive data in retaliation for the arrests of alleged members in the U.S. and England. The group, called AntiSec, said Saturday that it had breached 10 gigabytes of sensitive data from the agencies. AntiSec is composed of members from two separate hacking groups, Anonymous and LulzSec. AntiSec said its cyber-attack affected agencies in Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri and Mississippi.

What a joy to read that due to the projected state budget deficit, most state agency funding will be reduced by 15% or more ("State Deficit May Reach $14 Billion, Davis Says," Oct. 25). Most government agencies and programs are riddled with waste. As anyone who interacts regularly with these agencies knows, often the employees of these agencies are arrogant, unresponsive and apathetic. Larger government has time and time again demonstrated that its agencies and its employees must "justify their existence," which means making things as difficult, time-consuming and complicated as possible for the average user of the government services.

SACRAMENTO - In the last century, Californians have said yes to every request for money to help veterans buy homes. Since 2000, they have signed off on $1.4 billion in bonds for that purpose. But most of that money remains untapped. In fact, the state's home loan program for veterans, run by the agency known as Cal-Vet, is doing less and less each year to help servicemen and women returning from Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Yet there's more money available for the program than in the agency's annual operating budget.

WASHINGTON - The Internal Revenue Service improperly singled out conservative groups for extra scrutiny of their applications for nonprofit status, a top agency official said Friday, setting off calls for investigations into an organization already under fire for its handling of secret political spending by nonprofits. Employees at the agency's Cincinnati nonprofits office, while screening a flood of applications from so-called social welfare groups last year, set aside about 75 containing the words "tea party" and "patriot" for more detailed review, said Lois Lerner, IRS director of exempt organizations.