What’s interesting in the news today?
Open Thread, you decide.
Here’s a few to start off with.
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Another day, more govt. incompetence, as well as waste, fraud, and abuse.
First we go to NASA. Chinese hackers aren’t the only intruders into our govt’s secrets.
“Officials at NASA’s Langley Research Center permitted a contractor to hire a Chinese national affiliated with an organization designated by U.S. national security agencies as an “entity of concern,” and then allowed the individual access to classified information, according to Rep. Frank Wolf.
The as-yet unidentified individual was permitted to take that information back home to China, according to Wolf, the Virginia Republican who is chairman of a House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees NASA.
Wolf said during a Capitol Hill news conference today that “at least several dozen other Chinese nationals,” are employed at Langley, and he charged that they are employed in a manner to “circumvent” congressional bans on Chinese involvement at NASA facilities.”
Meanwhile, the TSA has embarrassed itself again. Funny too, for once they didn’t thoroughly grope someone, and this time they actually should have. They were probably too busy with old ladies and handicapped people.
From TheNYPost
“An undercover TSA inspector with an improvised explosive device stuffed in his pants got past two security screenings at Newark Airport — including a pat-down — and was cleared to get on board a commercial flight, sources told The Post yesterday.
The breach took place Feb. 25, when the Transportation Security Administration’s special operations team — the agency’s version of internal affairs — staged a mock intrusion at the airport.
“This episode once again demonstrates how Newark Airport is the Ground Zero of TSA failures,” a source said.”
And govt. employed tax delinquents have increased 11.5%. These are the 2011 numbers, the most current available.
From Bloomberg
“The number of tax-delinquent federal workers and retirees increased by 11.5 percent in 2011, according to Internal Revenue Service data.
The delinquency rate rose to 3.2 percent from 2.9 percent the previous year. The 311,566 delinquent taxpayers owe a total of $3.5 billion in federal taxes, according to the IRS data released today.”
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Our govt. loves to say they support the troops. Their treatment of vets says otherwise. They deserve better. And they deserve a country that honors the commitments and benefits promised to them. First the news of the Tri-Care changes coming to military retirees and their families October 1st.
““If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.” That was the promise Barack Obama made in 2009, selling his health reform plan that became the Affordable Care Act.
It turns out that’s not even true for federal TRICARE beneficiaries.
If you live more than 40 miles from a military installation, chances are you are no longer welcome with TRICARE Prime. Pentagon officials have announced that most of these retired and surviving widow(ers) will be booted from TRICARE Prime as of October 1.”
More from ArmyTimes
Now we find out the Army is eliminating tuition assistance as well.
From Stripes.com
“The Army announced Friday it is suspending its tuition assistance program for soldiers newly enrolling in classes due to sequestration and other budgetary pressures.
“This suspension is necessary given the significant budget execution challenges caused by the combined effects of a possible year-long continuing resolution and sequestration,” Paul Prince, an army personnel spokesman at the Pentagon, wrote in an email to Stars and Stripes. “The Army understands the impacts of this action and will re-evaluate should the budgetary situation improve.”
The Army’s announcement follows a similar move by the Marine Corps.”
But probably the lowest of all, the disrespect from our elected officials, ‘cuz you know, they might have PTSD or something. I cannot express my displeasure with this woman strongly enough.
From RealClearPolitics
“SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: If I understand this, this adds an exemption of retired military. As I understand our bill, no issue has arose in this regard during the 10 years the expired ban was in effect and what we did in the other bill was exempt possession by the United States or a department or agency of the United States. So that included active military.
The problem with expanding this is that, you know, with the advent of PTSD, which I think is a new phenomenon as a product of the Iraq War, it’s not clear how the seller or transferrer of a firearm covered by this bill would verify that an individual was a member, or a veteran, and that there was no impairment of that individual with respect to having a weapon like this.
So, you know, I would be happy to sit down with you again and see if we could work something out but I think we have to– if you’re going to do this, find a way that veterans who are incapacitated for one reason or another mentally don’t have access to this kind of weapon.”
And in other military news, the Air Force has scrubbed their drone numbers.
From TheAirForceTimes
“As scrutiny and debate over the use of remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) by the American military increased last month, the Air Force reversed a policy of sharing the number of airstrikes launched from RPAs in Afghanistan and quietly scrubbed those statistics from previous releases kept on their website.”
“The Air Force maintained that policy for the statistics reports for November, December and January. But the February numbers, released March 7, contained empty space where the box of RPA statistics had previously been.”
“Additionally, monthly reports hosted on the Air Force website have had the RPA data removed — and recently.”
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Wandering Views 
Found this on yesterday’s e-mail about the Scouts:http://www.bpnews.net/BPnews.asp?ID=39846
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The shame of sequestration, which would otherwise have been a GREAT idea IMHO, is that they have dictated cuts in areas that are ridiculous but painful for the little guy (ref: Roy’s wife and WH tours). I can’t say too much, but I was just telling my son this morning that as a contracted project manager of a DoD contract last year, I was accused by the gov’t rep of “mismanaging the contract” because we underspent it by about $800,000. (it was actually his fault because the only work we were authorized to do was at his specific direction and he’d approved our budget report every month; my company backed me 100% but we ended up bringing in three temps and spending the last two months of the contract BURNING $500,000 on worthless deliverables to cover his butt)
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Linda,
I have to agree. They’ve orchestrated these “cuts”, (which in reality aren’t, just less of an increase than they wanted) to have the an adverse effect on the little guy rather than cut the waste, fraud, and abuse that is rampant throughout govt. It’s disgusting.
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I find it a little ironic that you can decry gov’t waste and incompetence yet accuse the gov’t of a grand conspiracy to hurt the little guy. The fact labour cost is the easy target since it something that can be done quickly and simply — just cut wages/hours etc., whereas finding savings through program change is more difficult and is delayed.
Gov’t waste, inefficiencies, and incompetence are often over stated. Since our tax dollars fund it, we hold it to higher standards and demand more information on its performance than private corporations even though many of us have mutual and pension funds invested in the latter. However, gov’t is more efficient and frequently does more with less. Medicare is probably the best example —- it spends far less on bureaucracy than private insurers.
Spending to the budget occurs in both private or public institutions, its simple human nature — we know our budget will get cut in the future if we underspend so we spend the max.
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😦
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/03/christians-homes-burned-in-pakistan.php
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HRW: LOL – maybe in Canada . . .
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hwessli,
Have you forgotten the cost of pensions for Government workers?
I wonder, will any government be giving any government workers 30 hours or less so they won’t be covered by ObamaCare?
As for cutting wages and hours of government workers, do you suppose any government entity planned for any of the sequester cuts? It should not have been a surprise.
I do not think people who work for the government are any better or worse than people who work in private industry.
I do not like Representation without Taxation though.
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Administrative cost do include pensions which are considered deferred compensation. Even so, medicare admin costs are significantly lower than private health insurers, depending on the source its 2-3% for medicare vs 13 to 20% for private insurers. From the cited article
administrative costs in Medicare are only about 2 percent of operating expenditures. Defenders of the insurance industry estimate administrative costs as 17 percent of revenue. Insurance industry-funded studies exclude private plans’ marketing costs and profits from their calculation of administrative costs. Even so, Medicare’s overhead is dramatically lower. Medicare administrative cost figures include the collection of Medicare taxes, fraud and abuse controls, and building costs.
Not only that medicare is overall more efficient
http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2011/09/20/medicare-is-more-efficient-than-private-insurance/
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As for evading HCA by switching to PT workers, the practice will gradually end as employers will experience greater admin costs and turnover making the practise a losing proposition not to mention gov’t polices will probably make it more difficult in the future.
In comparing health insurers to medicare, evasion attempts are a moot point as private health insurers rely mostly on salaried employees.
As for gov’t cuts: Its commonplace in the private sector to go after labour costs simply because its usually the highest non-capital cost and the easiest immediate cut. The gov’t is merely imitating the private sector.
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hwesseli,
You almost sound like you know what you are talking about. But then you are Canadian. Why when CA is still borrowing, illegally I might add, has the number of state workers grown by over 5,000? At the same time, State, county and non-credentialed workers are still having furlough days. The Senate hasn’t had a budget for 4 years and Obama won’t allow the XL pipeline.
And just how long did it take for the most liberal member of the Senate to change his mind about Gay marriage? (Who believes he wasn’t for Gay marriage from the git go?)
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gay marriage is a social policy with barely any financial implications (benefit sharing exempted) which actually might benefit the US as it will stem the tide of emigrating highly educated tax paying gay professionals to Canada and elsewhere.
Austerity doesn’t work as Cameron’s policies in the UK have demonstrated as they suffer from triple-dip recession. You don’t necessarily hire new gov’t workers but you do maintain the same level of employment ie you need to hire new workers to replace workers lost through attrition (retirement, etc). The present sequester will have an ill-effect if not resolved.
The House and Senate are both responsible for a lack of a budget. The problem with the US gov’t is its not set up for party based politics and is only designed to work well enough but not too well. With two legislatures responsible for budgeting, its been too easy to beg of responsibility and blame the other party and in fact party politics may encourage “sandbagging” any progress.
From what I understand a deal can be made if Republicans will allow tax loopholes to be closed. By generating additional revenue and stopping the flow of money to off-shore, spending cuts will be smaller and will not be as detrimental to the economy as money remains in the domestic economy.
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How can you say the house bears part of the responsibility for the lack of budget when the Senate won’t even bring one to the floor? The house has passed several budgets
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Every time the Republicans move toward the center, the president and the Senate move the bar.
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The House’s new budget proposal includes a repeal of the ACA. That’s not a move toward the center thats entrenchment and deliberate intransigence. The House can pass any budget but if its not going to meet Senate approval its nothing but public relations. As for the Senate, they’ve made proposals but negative feedback from the House and Senate Republicans leaves me with the impression they didn’t bother bringing it to the floor. Why bother when the other legislature will vote it down anyway. Instead of passing budgets that go nowhere the House and Senate need to banter back and forth with proposals and counter-proposals instead of passing budgets as exercises in public relations. I goggled and found Obama’s budget proposal in seconds, and he’s not even responsible for writing a budget. So all three have proposals on the floor so its give and take time. Proposing to repeal the ACA demonstrates the House isn’t serious in this exercise.
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t least the House brought something to the floor. I guess sitting on your hands and doing absolutely nothing productive is best, right? At least if the Senate brought something to the floor it would look like they’re doing something. The house is trying to do what the majority of Americans want. They are trying to get rid of the Obamatax that’s been forcibly shoved down our throats We don’t want Canada’s socialized medicine, thanks, but no thanks..
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