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

Category: Dumbass Bullshit

  • So, AboutThat “Model Telework” Program the Administration Touts as a “Success Story” . . . .

    To be blunt: in reality, it . . . sucks.

    The current administration has touted the US Patent and Trademark Office’s telework as a “model program” for the Federal government. So, it must be well-run; have few problems; and very little abuse, right?

    Yeah, right. Just like I’m the freaking rightful Emperor of China.

    It seems that the PTO’s telework program is, in reality, not a good model at all.  Except maybe of how to run a proverbial “gravy train” for people wanting something for nothing.

    Abuse is rife. Repeat offenders remain unfired. Managers have difficulty in getting computer records to check work-from-home claims.

    Or, more succinctly:  it sucks – from the perspective of the US taxpayer, anyway.  For those “ridin’ the gravy train”, it’s indeed a sweet deal.

    So, what’s going on, you ask?  Well, in one particularly egregious case, a  PTO employee was paid for 304 hours one calendar year that the individual never worked.  (That’s somewhat over 1 hour in 7.)   That individual was caught – and was warned about their behavior.  The same individual was later caught again falsely claiming to have worked when they did not.

    The individual was not fired.

    In another case, a different worker was caught having falsely claimed to have worked 266 hours,.  However, that individual was not charged with fraud.  Why?  Because the individual’s supervisor couldn’t seem to get the computer records needed to substantiate fraud. (The individual did get disciplined for failing to contact their supervisor in a timely manner when requested to do so.)

    The second individual was reportedly never required to pay back Uncle Sam the $12+k in salary received for those 266 hours, either.

    Why all the problems? Apparently because of negotiated union work rules – as well as “other issues”.  Like maybe possible attempts by senior management to hide or downplay the severity of the problem.

    It seems the Commerce Department’s IG investigated the PTO’s telework program problems when the matter was referred to them by PTO management after an internal review.  But the internal review report given to the Commerce IG as their starting point was a far cry from the original report prepared by the group doing the initial review. Many of the worst abuses were for some reason missing from the revised internal review report given to the Commerce Department IG.

    You know, to me that almost looks like maybe someone was trying to downplay the seriousness of the matter and/or hide the true scope of the problem from the IG.  But what do I know?  And besides, people never try to hide things from the IG, right?

    The Washington Post has a moderately long article on the subject with more details. Read it if you want to get p!ssed – but maybe not right after eating.

    Oh, and if you’re thinking to yourself that you remember hearing something else fishy about the PTO recently:  you’d be correct.  That’s the same Federal agency that recently was found to have a sh!tload of paralegals sitting at home getting paid for doing nothing (they had been hired, but because of a lack of Admin Law judges there was no legitimate work for them to do.)

    Sheesh.  I guess the management and employees at the PTO must all own stock in Purina.  (That’s the company that makes “Gravy Train” dog food.)

    . . .

    “Most transparent administration in history?” Well yeah – if you’re talking about the most transparently incompetent one.

  • Amnesty International’s poor timing

    The Associated Press reports that Amnesty International, that watchdog group which ignores every single atrocity on the planet that doesn’t involve US troops somehow, filed a report with NATO in regards to a few civilian deaths in Afghanistan which, of course, involved US troops;

    A toughly-worded report by the group focused on 10 incidents between 2009 and 2013 that it said saw 140 civilians killed during U.S. military operations. Amnesty said the vast majority of family members it interviewed said they had never been interviewed by U.S. military investigators.

    Most of the incidents involved airstrikes and night raids carried out by U.S. forces. Both tactics have sparked heated criticism from Afghan civilians and the government who say the U.S. doesn’t take enough care to prevent civilian deaths.

    […]

    However, the U.N. found that Taliban fighters and other militants have been responsible for the majority of the civilian killings. Insurgents were responsible for 74 percent of the casualties, the U.N. said, while pro-government forces were responsible for 9 percent, government forces 8 percent and foreign troops just 1 percent. The rest could not be attributed to any group.

    These are the people that we’re trying to appease when our Defense Department writes a useless set of rules of engagement. This weekend, we get news from Iraq that real terrorists are really terrorizing people – you know things like burying people alive, raping and beheading children, filling mass graves. There’s a picture of someone’s child triumphantly holding up a severed head of his father’s enemy making the rounds today, for Pete’s sake.

    But, see Amnesty International would have no impact if they filed reports about that kinds of stuff. So they bully our politicians with crap like this report – focusing on one percent of the casualties instead of the atrocities committed by the enemies of Peace.

  • Danon Edwards in court

    Danon Edwards in court

    Danon Edwards

    MCPO Ret. In TN sends us an update on Danon Edwards, the Marine Corps’ most dangerous food service worker who we wrote about last month. You might remember that he assaulted a Syracuse police officer and blamed his PTS from being a food service worker who never deployed while he was in the Corps. According to Syracuse.com, his lawyer is still rocking that BS;

    Edwards developed schizophrenia while in the Marines, but it was not related to serving during wartime, his family said today.

    Well, that makes sense because he never served in a war or even during a war. I’m thinking that any “schizophrenia” he suffers developed before his military service. Regardless, the court decided that he’s not competent to stand trial and they locked him in a rubber room;

    Two doctors ruled that Danon Edwards, 33, was not mentally able to understand the legal proceedings against him. He faces assault charges related to the unprovoked attack on Officer Robert Florian.

    […]

    Today, County Court Judge Anthony Aloi ordered Edwards be held in a secure psychiatric hospital. Edwards could remain there for two-thirds of his potential seven-year sentence. But if he’s still not deemed competent at that point, he could be confined civilly indefinitely.

  • Limousine Liberal Sightings

    Liberals are “friends of the little guy”, right? I mean, they’re always speaking out against the rich as being “greedy, evil bastards”.

    Well, let’s look at one such guy.

    Law Prof Who Specializes in Poverty Makes $205,400 – Teaching One Class Per Semester

    A couple of comments. First: the guy consistently blames one political party (I’ll let you guess which) for waging an “unforgivable war on poor people”. But he does this while making more than $200k annually, and owning real estate worth around $1.5M. And while married to a lady who pulls down over $400k annually in salary.   I’d love to know how much he gives to charity annually – you know, to “help the poor”.

    And second: the guy (and his wife) both “work” in academia – at state-supported public universities, so tax dollars pay their salaries.  But he’s so liberal (and so controversially outspoken in support of liberal causes) that his employer reportedly asks that any op-eds he publishes include the disclaimer that “He doesn’t speak for (name of university)”.

    But the tool above is not alone. After all: who could forget Robert Reich, that “good   Marxist   liberal” and former Labor Secretary currently teaching one class at UC-Berkeley – at a salary of about $240k a year.

    The subject of his classes? Income inequality.

    I sh!t you not.

    Freaking hypocrites.

  • Inter-service argument leads to homicide

    Inter-service argument leads to homicide

    According to the Washington Times, William Earl Cunningham, 63, of Laurel, Montana and Nathan Horn, 40, of Billings got into an argument about which was the better service, the Army or the Marines – the argument ended with Cunningham getting charged with murder;

    “I cut him. He’s dead,” Cunningham told police, according to charging documents, AP reported. “The knife’s on the table.”

    From KRTV;

    The men had previously argued about the military service, because Horn served in the Marines and Cunningham served in the Army, court records state.

    During the conversation late Saturday, the men argued again and Cunningham said Horn “jumped up and took a swing” at him.

    Cunningham pushed Horn back, court records state.

    “Then I cut him,” Cunningham allegedly said. “I did what the Army taught me to do.”

    According to police, Cunningham’s blood/alcohol was three times the legal limit for driving. The Washington Times reports that it wasn’t clear if either fellow had actually served.

  • That terror study group thing about terrorists

    Crooks and Liars are jumping up and down with joy and Hot Air is building bunkers over a new report from some group of pointy-headed profs at the University of Maryland which claims that their poll of law enforcement officers indicates that “sovereign citizens” are those LEOs’ main focus for fighting terror in this country.

    Everyone is comparing this to the Homeland Security Department’s 2009 report that warned the law enforcement community about war-addled veterans and right wing loons. That report might have a little to do with this one – but this one is nothing more than a poll of law enforcement officers’ opinions – it’s not calling sovereign the greatest threat to our national security.

    Crooks & Liars in their unbridled joy, fails to mention that jihadists come in at #2. Of course, I’m thinking that the cops probably have reason to worry about sovereign citizens what with all of the anti-cop chatter around the internet and the Open Carry folks flaunting their hardware in public. But the police don’t help themselves much when they buy armored vehicles for their quiet little one-horse towns.

    But right wing nuts are generally better behaved than some of the other choices – the Bundy Ranch are a good example. They were a little on the crank side of things, but no one got hurt. Just like the right wingers flocking to the Mexico border these days. They’re more law abiding than those criminals flocking across the border. And less of a security threat.

    But here’s the report of the poll (in .pdf) that the study group START_UnderstandingLawEnforcementIntelligenceProcesses_July2014 wrote while they were cloistered in their little world at the University of Maryland. Just keep in mind, that it doesn’t proclaim sovereign citizens a threat, it says that’s the opinion of some LEOs.

  • Colonel Darron Wright; pride goes before the fall

    The News Tribune reports on the investigation of the death of Colonel Darron Wright when he was making a parachute jump in North Carolina last September.

    Apparently, Wright had just rejoined the XVIIIth Airborne Corps after a tour with a Stryker Brigade at Joint Base Lewis McCord. They say that he had more than 60 jumps under his belt. But, he was jumping the MC-6 parachute that he had never used before. When he arrived two hours late for pre-jump training, the jump master just assumed that him and his officer-mates didn’t need to go through pre-jump. For the uninitiated, pre-jump is a quick refresher on exiting the aircraft, parachute landing falls and safety procedures for things that might happen in the air.

    I’ve never used (or even heard of until today) the MC-6 parachute, but I guess a trooper needs to jump from 1200 feet for it to open safely, but no one bothered to tell the pilot who put the troops out at 1000 feet. That along with a series of other events, including skipping pre-jump led to the colonel’s death;

    [Accident investigator Brigadier General Christopher] Cavoli wrote that Wright “should not have been able to get on the manifest” for the jump because his certification from his refresher courses had expired.

    He also found that none of the soldiers should have been able to use the MC-6 parachutes without written permission from a general officer. They did not get it, but no one questioned them.

    “It is evident that the existing culture in XVIII Airborne Corps accepts that high-ranking individuals may skip institutionalized procedures with which the rest of the airborne population complies,” Cavoli wrote.

    His report recommends 25 policy changes that affect planning for airborne missions, medical support at paratrooper drop zones and the organization of the notoriously overworked 11th Quartermaster Company.

    So, what happened was that Wright had a weak exit and hit the door of the aircraft on his way out which sent him into a spin and wrapped him up in the suspension lines. He wasn’t able to open his reserve until he was only 40 feet from the ground, which, of course, was too late.

    The bottom line;

    Wright’s tragic fall from an Air Force C-130 plane flying 1,000 feet above the ground in North Carolina was made possible by a string of administrative oversights, according to the investigation. It was also enabled by a “VIP culture” at Fort Bragg, the Army’s largest post, that allowed senior officers to make late demands on their subordinates and skip the basic safety briefings junior soldiers must attend.

    “This VIP crap stops now,” Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson, commander of the Army’s XVIII Airborne Corps, fumed when he read the report on how one of his highest-ranking officers died in a preventable accident, according to an officer who was present.

    The military must be running out of O-6s about now.

  • Ellison: End Gaza blockade for peace

    The Washington Post has an opinion piece from Keith Ellison, the Muslim congressman, in which he tries to push the lie that if only Israel would lift the blockade of Gaza, the world would be peaceful, birds would sing and Skittle-shitting unicorns would run the Earth;

    I have traveled to Gaza three times since 2009 and have visited hospitals and schools there. As I have talked with ordinary Gazans, I have not encountered anyone representing Hamas. During one visit, I had the opportunity to meet Scott Anderson, deputy director of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Anderson, a 21-year veteran of the U.S. Army, said it best when I spoke to him again this week: “Unless there is material change to the status quo, you’re just resetting the clock for another cycle of violence.” Continuing to block goods and services to and from Gaza keeps the keys to opportunity away from the people who just want to live, work and travel.

    I’d suggest that Ellison take up his rosy view for the future with Hamas. The blockade of Gaza only keeps out weapons and thing that Hamas can use against the Israelis, their geographic neighbors. And, oh yeah, everything that Hamas gets their hands on goes towards building tunnels to feed their obsession of killing Jews. They could use building material for schools and mosques, they could use labor for improving their infrastructure, but instead it all goes into the ground. Like I said yesterday, Egypt has destroyed more than 1600 tunnels along the Gaza-Sinai frontier through which Hamas smuggles war-making materials.

    Did I mention that Israel uncovered another arsenal of rockets hidden in a school in Gaza? Well they did. And did you know that Hamas’ command center is under a hospital. Well, yes it is. And apparently the media knows it, but they don’t think that you should know. You’d think that Ellison would think that it would be important to make Hamas to quit hiding their missiles in UN schools and not hide their commanders underneath a hospital.

    Hamas is only content when they’re killing Jews and nothing else matters. So the blockade continues for a measure of relative peace in Israel. But, Ellison, a Hamas-hugger, thinks that all of the violence will end when the blockade ends – just like he used to tell us that the violence in Iraq would end if only we’d pull the US troops out.

    There was violence before the blockade and there would be violence after the blockade ends. Just because Ellison didn’t see any Hamas when he went to Gaza (like I believe that) doesn’t mean they don’t exist.