Friday, May 16, 2014

Current Events - May 16, 2014

VA official resigns in scandal

By Ed Morrissey
The first head has rolled in the expanding wait-list fraud scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Ironically, it belongs to the man who testified in the Senate that he wasn’t sure wait-list fraud was a firing offense:
Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki said he accepted the resignation of his top health official on Friday, a day after the two testified before Congress about a growing scandal over deadly healthcare delays for veterans.
“Today, I accepted the resignation of Dr. Robert Petzel, undersecretary for health in the Department of Veterans Affairs,” Shinseki said in a statement.
In part, this may have been because Petzel wasn’t terribly good at his job:
Dr. Petzel testified before Congress last month that he had found no sign of the alleged list in the early stages of the investigation.
“To date, we found no evidence of a secret list and we have found no patients who have died because they’ve been on a wait list,” he said at a Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hearing on April 30. “If the allegations are true, they’re absolutely unacceptable.”
Since then, investigators have found evidence that the VA was made aware of the problem in March 2013, and again last November. That leaves Petzel in danger of an obstruction charge, especially since dozens of veterans have died waiting for service in at least one of these offices. As Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) asked at the time NBC reported the new timeline, it also raises the question of whether Shinseki knew about it and lied to Congress in his testimony — or was so incompetent that he missed the signs twice.
On the other hand, we now have more accountability at the VA than we did at State with Benghazi, or at Treasury with the IRS scandal. I’d guess that some administration officials are getting very worried about this particular probe.
Update: Worth noting, too, is that Petzel was already scheduled to retire later this year. (PK'S NOTE: Read this as being the politically expedient and convenient guy to go)

PK'S NOTE: So if you have (possible) views that are not with the party in power then they will destroy every avenue of livelihood you have. 

SunTrust Cuts Business Ties With Benham Brothers After Conservative Views Attacked

By Alex Pappas
First they lost their television show. Now the Benham brothers say they are losing their business.
SunTrust Banks is cutting ties with would-be reality stars David and Jason Benham after liberal activists attacked them for their conservative views on abortion and gay marriage, The Daily Caller has learned.
In a statement provided first to TheDC on Friday, the Benham brothers confirmed that SunTrust Banks has pulled all of its listed properties with the Benham brothers’ bank-owned property business, which includes several franchisees across four states.
The move comes just a week after HGTV announced it was canceling a planned home renovation show hosted by the brothers.
“If our faith costs us our HGTV show and our business, then so be it,” said Jason Benham on Friday.
“We were caught off-guard with this one,” David Benham said of SunTrust’s actions. “Keeping us off television wasn’t enough, now this agenda to silence wants us out of the marketplace.”
The Benhams, in their statement, said the news came “without warning or explanation from SunTrust and took place over a 15 minute period” on Thursday. The Brothers said they have had a “mutually productive working relationship with SunTrust for many years” and hold a ”preferred broker” status with the bank.
The brothers said they contacted SunTrust, but bank employees declined to explain the reasoning for what happened.
By Susan Crabtree
The executive branch's internal oversight system is broken and Congress needs to fix it as soon as possible, several ethics experts say.
Attorneys who specialize in government ethics say the case of the Department of Homeland Security's former acting inspector general, Charles Edwards, shows the government's own watchdogs are too influenced by political considerations.
Edwards is being investigated on multiple allegations of playing politics with his investigations and altering his reports to benefit senior executive branch officials. In addition, the Washington Examiner has learned that earlier reports of possible misconduct were brushed aside.
....nspectors general are important because they function as a first line of defense against corruption and mismanagement within the government. Each executive branch department and military agency has an Office of Inspector General, an investigative arm whose mission is to root out ethical breaches or general dysfunction. There are 73 such offices, which were created by a 1978 law. 

Government ethics attorneys say Obama's IG system is broken


By Rick Moran
...Beyond politicized IG's, there is also the matter of Obama's failure to name and get confirmed permanent Inspector Generals. Nine major departments. including State, do not have permanent IG's. There is also the war on inspector generals that the administration continues to wage.
The case of Gerald Walpin, IG for Americorps, is instructive:
At the time, ABC News reported that a “source familiar with the president’s thinking” said that Mr. Obama wanted to replace Mr. Walpin with “someone who could effectively provide the kind of independent oversight that the president values.” The best way to assure “independent oversight” is to remind all inspectors general that they will be axed if they embarrass the White House. A joint House-Senate investigation concluded that firing Mr. Walpin “undermines the Inspectors General Act.”
In the same month Mr. Walpin was fired, the administration unsuccessfully sought to obliterate the independence of the special inspector general for TARP, Neil Barofsky. Some IGs who have not been fired have instead come under withering pressure. Russell George, the IG who exposed the IRS’ targeting of conservative nonprofit groups, has been hammered by Mr. Obama’s congressional allies for almost a year. The special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, John Sopko, has been harshly criticized by bureaucrats and political appointees for his forthright reports on Afghan debacles.
...After more than 5 years, it's clear that the president prefers a certain kind of IG - pliant, and understanding of the administration's political necessities. You wonder what other investigations have been squealched or otherwise hampered by politicized inspector generals.

Harry’s Dirty Amendment 

By Charles C W Cooke
...Rambling in the general direction of a BuzzFeed reporter earlier this week, Reid inadvertently revealed something about his motivations. His reelection to the Senate in 1998, he griped, “was awful”: “I won it, but just barely. I felt it was corrupting, all this corporate money.” Translation: I almost lost my seat once, so I need the supreme law to protect me. Corruption, schmorruption. This is about power

The Emerging Junta

The IRS’s illegal actions — and its efforts at cover-up — undermine the foundations of our government. 

By Kevin D Williamson
....Context is again here important. The IRS scandal is not a standalone issue but comes at a time when the Democratic party is seeking to radically expand the power of the federal government to regulate political speech; we can safely assume that the same people who were using the IRS’s political-speech regulations for political ends will have precisely the same motives and precisely the same opportunity to use other political-speech regulations for precisely the same political ends: to benefit their allies and persecute their enemies. So committed are the Democrats to keeping their critics under the thumb of federal police powers that they have introduced an amendment in the Senate that would effectively repeal the free-speech provisions of the First Amendment, those having proved inconvenient to Democrats in Supreme Court rulings such as McCutcheon and Citizens United, the latter case involving a federal attempt to make it a crime to show a film critical of a political figure under unapproved circumstances.
The most important question that must be answered in this matter does not involve the misbehavior of IRS officials and Democratic officeholders, though those are important. Nor is it the question of free speech, vital and fundamental as that is. The question here is nothing less than the legitimacy of the United States government. When law-enforcement agencies and federal regulators with extraordinary coercive powers are subordinated to political interests rather than their official obligations — to the Party rather than to the law — then the law itself becomes meaningless, and the delicate constitutional order we have enjoyed for more than two centuries is reduced to a brutal might-makes-right proposition. Elected officials and public servants of both parties take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and to faithfully discharge the duties of their office. That oath is now being tested. The IRS investigation is no mere partisan scandal, but a moral challenge for the men and women who compose the government of this country. Whether they are sufficient to meet that challenge is far from obvious, but the evidence so far is not encouraging.

Dept. of Agriculture Orders Ballistic Body Armor

 By Awr HawkinsA May 7th solicitation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture seeks "the commercial acquisition of ballistic vests, compliant with NIJ 0101.06 for Level IIIA Ballistic Resistance of body armor."
According to the solicitation, "The U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Inspector General," seeks "Body Armor [that] is gender specific, lightweight, [having] trauma plate/pad (hard or soft), [and] concealable carrier." The order includes "tactical vest, undergarment (white), identification patches, accessories (6 pouches), body armor carry bag, and professional measurements."
"All responsible and/or interested sources may submit their company name, point of contact, and telephone number." The solicitation says those sources received in a "timely" manner "shall be considered by the agency for contact."
On May 15th Breitbart News reported on a Dept. of Agriculture solicitation for "the commercial acquisition of submachine guns" with 30-round magazines.

New Bill Would Make States Pay Back Funds for Busted Obamacare Exchanges

By Wynton Hall
Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and John Barrasso (R-WY) introduced a bill on Wednesday that would require states who ditch their busted Obamacare exchanges and join the federal HealthCare.gov to pay back the money they wasted.
The bill, known as the State Exchange Accountability Act, would make states repay 10% of the federal grant money they received each year for a period of 10 years. 
"Hard-working American taxpayers should not be forced to foot the bill for what has already turned into an almost $550 million dollar boondoggle," said Hatch in a statement. 
"Enough is enough," said Barrasso in a statement. "States that scrap their state-run Obamacare exchanges are admitting they've wasted millions of dollars in federal grants. It's only fair that states have to pay American taxpayers and the federal government back for their total incompetence."
Joining Hatch and Barrasso as co-sponsors are Sens. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Mike Enzi (R-WY), and John McCain (R-AZ). 
Fourteen states presently run their own Obamacare exchanges. Oregon, Maryland, Hawaii, Nevada, and Massachusetts have all experienced disastrous problems with their exchanges that have caused state officials to consider scrapping their state exchanges to join the federal HealthCare.gov exchange.
"Taxpayers shouldn't have to pay twice for the mistakes of incompetent state bureaucrats who couldn't set up a working health care exchange," said Barrasso.

Senate Dems Push ‘National School Board’ for Preschoolers

By Bridget Johnson
The senior Republican on the Senate committee that oversees education charged that an early education proposal by HELP committee Democrats would essentially create a national school board for preschoolers.
The Democrats’ early education plan would put decisions for states on such details as teacher salaries, class sizes, staff qualifications and length of the school day in federal hands, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said. States would then be required to pay half of the program’s cost after 8 years.
“The Democrat bill that’s being proposed today would, in effect, create a national school board for 3- and 4-year-olds. It would spend $27 billion in new funding over 5 years with Washington making the decisions about how states should run their preschool programs. It includes requirements I don’t think the federal government has ever even attempted with elementary and secondary education,” Alexander said.
“Never before, not even in No Child Left Behind, has the federal government told school districts from Maryville to Memphis how to run their schools in such detail,” he added.

The VA's Deadly Bureaucratic Drones

By Michelle Malkin
At least 40 American veterans are dead thanks to bureaucratic delays at Veterans Affairs clinics. But you wouldn't know it from VA Secretary Gen. Eric Shinseki's bland and bloodless demeanor at a Senate hearing Thursday. He droned on like an apathetic office manager fielding complaints about the copier being jammed.
Shinseki told the Senate panel he "can't remember" getting warnings from federal watchdogs last fall about ghost clinics and double-scheduling schemes. He said he was "not aware" of explosive book-cooking allegations like the ones at a Fort Collins, Colo., VA facility, where employees were ordered to make their records show that veterans got appointments within 14 days of the day requested, whether or not it was true.
In response to bipartisan disgust with the VA's serial incompetence and fatally long wait times, oblivious Shinseki blathered about "customer satisfaction surveys." And when it came time to deliver his calculated sound bite about being "mad as hell" at mounting allegations of criminal fraud and neglect, Shinseki's perfunctory tone echoed a jaded 411 operator: "City and state, please?"
Asked whether VA employees who alter records should be fired, Shinseki's deputy Robert Petzel said he didn't know "whether that's the appropriate level of punishment." Shinseki interjected that a whopping 3,000 VA workers, including senior managers, had been "involuntarily removed" for misconduct last year -- only to admit that an unknown number of those had simply been reassigned or allowed to retire.
In true paper-pusher form, the VA's top brass have ordered yet another study to assess how and why the VA ignored years of other studies, reports and audits of the department's waste, fraud and abuse. Showing even more tone-deafness, Shinseki bragged openly about his close friendship with top White House aide Rob Nabors, who is now overseeing the kabuki "review" of his department's failures.
Can you spell crony whitewash? 
Pressed on why he hadn't reported illegal data falsification to the FBI, Shinseki demurred that it was the inspector general's call, not his.
In other words: The buck stops somewhere else.
Attorney General Eric Holder hid behind the VA inspector general, too. There are no plans for a DoJ probe into the secret waiting lists at the Phoenix VA hospital, where scores of sick vets languished for months before perishing. Question: Why is activist zealot Holder so content to wait for the IG?
Given this administration's shady record of crushing whistleblowers, railroading IGs and replacing them with dirty lapdogs, Shinseki's vow to "get to the bottom" of this latest deadly scandal while Holder and the FBI sit on the sidelines stinks to high hell.

PK'S NOTE: In the category of "you can't make this stuff up" because no one would believe the stupidity:

'Hump Day' Event Canceled After College Students Protest

By Charlie Spiering A “Hump Day” event featuring a live camel at a college campus in Minnesota was canceled after students launched a protest on Facebook complaining that it was culturally disparaging, inhumane, and bad for the environment.
According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the event was organized by a student social committee before finals at the University of St. Thomas, offering students the chance to meet the animal and take pictures.
Event organizers told the Star-Tribute that angry students protested the event in the comment section, suggesting that it was disparaging to Middle Eastern cultures, an example of animal cruelty, and environmentally unfriendly.
The Facebook Group called “Protest Hump DAAAAAAY!” was deleted after the event was canceled, but a copy of the description of the page still exists on Feest.
Read the description below:
DO NOT take pictures with a REAL Camel on Hump Day. Here is why:
This event is not in line with the UST mission and, frankly, is completely asinine.
We do not need to be spending our money on events like this, especially in light of tuition increases. Can we not have community events without abusing an animal with no agency? 
Is the camel and transportation going to be calculated in the carbon footprint for the university? 
The animal's owner says it treats the animals in a humane way, but is it humane to have a bunch of students come gawk at this poor creature? Or the fact that this animal has been taken from its natural environment so privileged students can take pictures with the exotic animal from Africa. It is time we started using our brains in a more critical way.
Let's ask ourselves a question: what would Jane Goodall say?
This event is only one of the MANY events that RHA and STAR put on that are a complete waste of money and make Saint Thomas look like a joke. For those who are ACTUALLY concerned for the Camel:
We don’t care what wildlife park they are working with. The owners of this park have exploited animals for 20+ years. They made these animals travel far away from their natural habitats. We know what they are doing is wrong.
They don’t care for the animals, and do everything they can to assure they get a paycheck at the end of the day regardless of how the animals are being treated.
POSTER MAKING FOR PROTESTING WILL OCCUR THIS COMING SUNDAY IN THE PR ROOM ON CAMPUS. IT'S LOCATED IN THE LEADERSHIP CENTER WHICH IS IN ASC. WE'LL BE IN THERE MAKING POSTERS FROM 6 TO WHENEVER NEED BE!! BE THERE!

No comments: