This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Author: Hondo

  • Lost Government Email: It’s Not Just for the IRS Any More

    Well, it looks like another Federal agency has been ordered to produce email from a former employee and can’t. And like the IRS, this one is also being blamed on, “My hard drive ate my email.”

    Back in 2009, a former EPA employee, Phillip North, “arranged” (some might say, “conspired”) with a number of his colleagues to veto a proposed mine – the Pebble Mine – before the EPA even started evaluating its potential environmental impact. This is obviously not “according to Hoyle”.

    The House Oversight Committee has been investigating the matter for some time. However, there’s a problem: North fled to New Zealand, and is not cooperating with Congressional investigators.

    The House requested the EPA’s help in getting data concerning North and the Pebble Mine issue. The EPA Administrator, Gina McCarthy, has now notified the House that – you guessed it – they are “unable to provide lawmakers all of the documents they have requested on the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska, because of a 2010 computer crash.”

    Sounds kinda familiar, doesn’t it? Hey, it seems to be working for the IRS. Why not?

    Oh, and regarding the IRS/Lerner scandal – there’s a bit more, um, “interesting news” about Lerner and her missing email. It seems as if the IRS told the White House about Lerner’s missing email at least a month before it told Congress. And it also seems that Lerner sought to start a IRS investigation of some sort of a sitting US Senator over what a reasonable person might conclude could have been nothing more than pique – specifically, an invitation to a political fund raiser mistakenly sent to her from a political foe.

    Oh, and in case you’re wondering why current IRS Commissioner John Kosiken is receiving such a warm (some would say “fawning”) reception from one party in Congress: this might explain it. It seems Kosiken has consistently donated to one political party over the years – to the tune of around $85,000.

    Nothing to see here, folks. Just more business as usual for “the most transparent Administration in history”.

    Or maybe that should read “getting ‘the business’ transparently from a historically-bad Administration.”

  • So, Progressives Are the “Friends of the Little Guy”, Eh?

    The    Communist     Socialist     Leftist     “Progressive” end of the political spectrum likes to advertise itself as being the champions of the “little guy”. Progressive politicians love to make a big deal of their “regular guy” roots, and how much their policies supposedly “help” the middle class and below.

    So, the recent Administration ‘s policies – nothing if not “Progressive” – must have really helped the “little guy” over the past 5+ years, right? I mean, that’s what they’re supposedly all about:  helping the little guy get a “fair deal”.

    Turns out that simply doesn’t seem to be the case.  In fact, hard data shows that the policies of the current “Progressive” regime has benefited the wealthy to the exclusion of most others – as has been documented by a study conducted by the University of Michigan.

    In 2007, the top 5% averaged 16.5 times the wealth of the US median household. So after 5 years of our current regime’s “Progressive” policies, that gap should have narrowed somewhat.

    Well, not exactly. Today, the top 5% now have on average 24 times the wealth of the US median household.

    It’s even better. Home ownership is down by nearly 6.4%. Over one third of homeowners now cannot afford to sell their home if they want to – either because they owe more than it’s worth, or because they have so little equity it won’t cover closing and a down payment on another home.

    The “Great Recession” hurt all Americans. But under the current Progressive Regime, only the wealthy have really recovered. Everyone else is still sucking wind today – bigtime.

    So much for “Progressive” claims that the other party is the “party of the rich”.  The “Progressives” have finally embraced the theory of “trickle down”.

    Except today they’re doing it on our legs, and what’s “trickling down” to our shoes and socks isn’t rain.

  • And In the VA News Department . . .

    . . . here are three more items.  And, unfortunately, they’re not “good news” stories.

    • Two more senior VA officials have resigned. The current VA Undersecretary for Health, Dr. Robert Jesse, and the VA General Counsel, Will Gunn, have resigned. This means that the VA Secretary, five of the VA’s Assistant Secretaries, and 2 of the VA’s Undersecretaries have resigned recently. It won’t fix the problems in that agency – but maybe it’s a start.
    • I say maybe because the VA still seems to be in denial regarding the seriousness of its internal problems. The Office of Special Counsel released a report two days ago that, in essence, says the VA still doesn’t realize how serious its problems are. According to the OSC, VA senior leadership continues to use the “harmless error” excuse in ways that defy logic and which ignore “the severity of systemic and longstanding problems.” The OSC also indicated that it has “50 pending disclosure cases alleging threats to VA patient health and safety, and another 60 cases of alleged retaliation against whistleblowers in the department.
    • And, finally:  another whistleblower has come forward from the Phoenix VAMC. Along with corroborating previous whistleblower reports, this individual alleges personal knowledge that at least 7 veterans died while awaiting care on the Phoenix VAMC’s “secret waiting list”.  She further alleges that there was a management-directed effort to hide excessive waiting times, as well as a concerted effort to manipulate records to cover up the fact that people had died while awaiting care.

    I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: resources are NOT the underlying problem at the VA. Leadership and priorities are the problem, along with a poor organizational culture.

    The former can be fixed relatively easily. The latter, unfortunately, will IMO likely take at least a decade to change.

     

    Hat tip to the Army Times for the above links.

  • “Lie” Is Such A Harsh Word . . .

    . . . but sometimes, it’s apropos.

    Time for a quick trip in the Wayback Machine – to 1987.

    Remember our current Vice President? You know, the candidate who was forced to drop out of the 1988 Presidential Campaign after being exposed as a serial plagiarizer?

    Well, it looks like he’s at it again. But this time, it appears he’s taking direct liberties with the truth vice appropriating others’ words and work.

    Like, well, something that looks a helluva lot like baldfaced lying.

    Here’s a direct quote from the man:  “I don’t own a single stock or bond.  I have no savings account.”

    Really, Mr. Vice-President? That’s not what the official Executive Branch Personnel Public Financial Disclosure Report you signed says.  It indicates you and your wife have a joint savings account.

    Here, “joint” means you own it too, Mr. Vice-President.

    Your disclosure form also shows you and she have some other accounts and investments as well.  Though to be fair, none of those accounts are formally called a “savings” account, or are an individual stock or bond.  Instead, they’re other forms of bank accounts and/or stock/bond funds.  And most do seem to be in your wife’s name.

    I guess we know which one in that couple is interested in – and capable of – planning for their future.

    Still:  look for someone to start asking “What difference does it make?” real soon now. Like maybe someone with a net worth of around $100M who claims to be “not truly well off”.   Or perhaps Senator Fauxahontas, who publicly stated that no one in Congress should own stock – while at the time living in a $5M house and owning a stock portfolio worth around $8M.

    But remember:  those claims concern money, and those claims are coming from liberals.  Their claims must be the truth, and can’t be motivated by greed. They have no interest in money, and only want to “do what’s best for society”, right?

    Yeah.  Right.

  • More About That “Rousing Success” Called ObamaCare

    Time to take another look at our good POTUS’s signature accomplishment, ObamaCare. We all know it’s working out just so splendidly, right?

    Well, it is until you ignore the     baldfaced lies     propaganda     pure spin     smoke and mirrors     somewhat misleading numbers quoted by the current Administration. When you look at the actual numbers, and compare them against past estimates . . . the situation seems decidedly less than rosy.

    Here’s an example. The Administration recently noted that ObamaCare “exceeded expectations” by getting it’s 8-millionth person signed up – when its enrollee target was 7 million. This was touted to the press as a “victory” – and proof of how well ObamaCare is “working”.

    However, “ground truth” is a bit different.

    At the time of the announcement, somewhere between 15% and 20% of signups hadn’t yet paid their first insurance premium. Until they do, they’re not yet an “enrollee” – because they don’t have any insurance until they’ve paid that first premium. A fair number likely never will pay up.

    That means the actual number of ObamaCare enrollees was actually somewhere between 6.4 and 6.8 million – not the 8 million the Administration touted.

    A more detailed examination yields some other rather damning information.  At its beginning in 2009, 38 million people were estimated to be eligible for ObamaCare but uninsured. By this point in time CBO had estimated 19 million would be newly covered; CMS had estimated 26 million would be newly insured. So, how many who previously had no health insurance actually are now insured?

    The answer is somewhere between 3.4 and 3.6 million. That’s a bit over 15% of the number of previously-uninsured people that CMS estimated would be covered by ObamaCare by this point in time.

    Why so low? Two reasons.

    First: far fewer signed up under ObamaCare than CMS (or CBO) had anticipated would have signed up by now. And second: because about half of the ObamaCare signups previously had insurance, but lost their insurance because it “didn’t qualify” under new ObamaCare mandates – regardless of whether or not it previously met their needs.

    The Daily Signal has a great article on the snake oil the Administration’s selling regarding ObamaCare.  It’s worth reading – but here’s the “money chart” from the article:


    Yeah, that ObamaCare is truly wonderful – ain’t it? It’s just been a complete “success” so far.

    We need to kill it with fire, and bury the ashes in quicklime. Now.

  • In Case You Needed More Proof That Acadamia Is Biased Against the Military . . .

    . . . look no further than this little “gem” from Bronx Community College. The linked article discusses a take-home final exam for an English course at BCC, worth 40% of the course grade.

    Fair warning: reading the linked article will likely p!ss you off bigtime. It certainly did me – although it didn’t much surprise me.

    Just in case anyone was wondering:  the best I can determine, the text “Namaste! Asalaamu Aleicum!” which appears at the bottom of the take-home exam is apparently the Hindi and Arabic equivalents of “Good-day!”  Not sure just how that fits into an English course at a college in the Bronx, exactly, but there it is.

    Oh, and if the name “Bronx Community College” seems to ring a bell in the anti-military context . . . it should.  Michelle Malkin documented groups of students from that particular college harassing military recruiters multiple times during March-April 2005 here.

    I’m guessing they still let vets use their GI Bill to attend, though.  After all:  money is money – and we all know how Academia steadfastly sticks to its principles whenever a dollar can be had.

     

    Hat-tip to Havoc13 and RangerUp for the original story.

  • RIP, Stephanie Kwolek

    Stephanie Kwolek died last week. She was 90.

    Her passing was not widely highlighted in the press.  Unless you saw one of the relatively small number of stories in the media, you probably didn’t hear she’d died.

    Yet the lady is responsible for literally thousands of persons being alive today who would doubtless be dead otherwise. And many if not most of those are military personnel.

    Why? One word: Kevlar. Kwolek invented it as a DuPont researcher in 1965.

    Rest in peace, dear lady. You did your part for humanity.

    Thousands thank you every day.

     

    Hat tip to one of our readers for alerting us to Ms. Kwolek’s passing.

  • VA: Green Energy Is A Priority; Healthcare, Not So Much.

    We’ve all heard about the ongoing VA health care problems at multiple VA Medical Centers. At least 40 vets appear to have died at the Phoenix VA medical center alone while awaiting medical appointments. God only knows what the total is this year nationwide.

    Want to guess what the VA has been doing with literally millions instead of providing health care? Let me warn you: you really don’t want to know.

    I’ll tell you anyway.  They’re spending millions of dollars on green energy technology. Seriously.

    The Washington Times has a short article on the subject. I’m guessing it will turn your stomach when you read it.

    The VA doesn’t have a resource problem. It has leadership and priorities problems.

    And those leadership and priorities problems are costing some vets their lives.