EPA scandal

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News/Politics 10-9-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Fuzzy Math.

Or if you prefer an alternate headline, Census Helping Cook the Unemployment Books.

From TheNTPost  “A field supervisor in the Census Bureau’s Denver region has informed her organization’s higher-ups, the head of the Commerce Department and congressional investigators that she believes economic data collected by her office is being falsified.

And this whistleblower — who asked that I not identify her — said her bosses in Denver ignored her warnings even after she provided details of wrongdoing by three different survey takers. The three continued to collect data even after she reported them.

When I spoke with this whistleblower earlier this year as part of my investigation of Census, she told me that hundreds of interviews that go into the Labor Department’s unemployment rate and inflation surveys would miraculously be completed just hours before deadline.”

“The Denver whistleblower also provided to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform the names of other Census workers who can spill the beans about data fraud in other regions.”

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2. An update on the story from the other day about the electronic records problems in the Texas Ebola case. Another flawed product from another Obama donor and bundler, just like with ObamaCare’s website.

From NationalReview  “Here’s what I can tell you for sure: Texas Health contracts with Epic Systems for its electronic-medical-records system — and the Dallas hospital isn’t the only client that has complained about its costly information-sharing flaws and interoperability failures.

Epic was founded by billionaire Judy Faulkner, a top Obama donor whose company is the dominant EMR player in the U.S. health-care market. As I reported last year, Epic employees donated nearly $1 million to political parties and candidates between 1995 and 2012 — 82 percent of it to Democrats. The company’s top ten PAC recipients are all Democratic or left-wing outfits, from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (nearly $230,000) to the DNC Services Corporation (nearly $175,000) and the America’s Families First Action Fund super PAC ($150,000).

Faulkner, an influential Obama campaign-finance bundler, served as an adviser to David Blumenthal. He’s the White House health-information-technology guru in charge of dispensing the federal electronic-medical-records subsidies that Faulkner pushed President Obama to adopt. Faulkner also served on the same committee Blumenthal chaired.”

“Epic and other large firms lobbied aggressively for nearly $30 billion in federal subsidies for their companies under the 2009 Obama stimulus package. The law penalizes medical providers that fail to comply with the one-size-fits-all mandate. Obama claimed that the new rules would cut costs and reduce errors. But health-care analysts at the RAND Corporation admitted last year that their cost-savings predictions of $81 billion a year were vastly inflated.

Epic has been the subject of rising industry and provider complaints about its antiquated closed-end system — so much so that when Texas Health released its first statement about the software glitch in the Ebola case, Jack Shaffer, a health-care IT guru and top official at KRM Associates, immediately snarked on Twitter: “Guess Epic can’t share data even with itself!”

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3. And since we’re on the subject of Obama’s billionaire buddies…

Only someone completely tone-deaf, or a serial liar, can pull this off with a straight face while in the home of a billionaire named Rich Richman. I kid you not. 😆

From TheDailyMail  “President Barack Obama chided the Republican Party for catering to the ‘interests of billionaires’ in an email to supporters on Tuesday, then attended a series of high-dollar fundraisers, including one at real estate mogul Rich Richman’s house.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee fundraiser at Richman’s house in Greenwich, Connecticut, cost as much as $32,400 a person, according to the White House. 

The other two events, held in New York and sponsored by the Democratic National Committee, cost between $1,000 and $32,400 to attend.”

“As Obama was yucking it up with wealthy Democratic donors, he sent out a fundraising email slamming the GOP for being in the pocket of billionaires, the Washington Times reports.

‘If the Republicans win, we know who they’ll be fighting for,’ Obama allegedly wrote. ‘Once again, the interests of billionaires will come before the needs of the middle class.'”

They must think their supporters are total morons.

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4. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before….

From TheWashingtonTimes  “The EPA is poised to “do an IRS” — similar to what the tax agency had to do with dismissed top official Lois G. Lerner — and officially notify the National Archives that it may have lost key electronic records, according to a think tank that’s suing to get text messages under an open-records request.

Justice Department lawyers told a federal court on Tuesday that the alert will be coming soon, in a case that’s shaping up as a significant battle over whether government agencies are required to keep cellphone text messages as “official” records.

An EPA spokeswoman said agency officials have acknowledged to the court and to the National Archives that the agency doesn’t have the text messages, but they contend the messages never had to be stored in the first place, since they were personal in nature and aren’t required to be preserved under open-records laws, nor turned over under the Freedom of Information Act.

“EPA is not aware of any evidence that federal records have been unlawfully destroyed,” said Liz Purchia, the EPA spokeswoman.”

Nothin’ to see here folks. Again.

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5. Thoughts?

From HotAir  “Putting the paddles on the chest of a divisive issue with absolutely no hope of the outcome he promises is a hallmark of Ted Cruz,” says GOP consultant Rick Wilson acidly, the memory of last year’s doomed “defund” effort firmly in mind. Okay, but the fine print on what Cruz wants to do is interesting. Typically when social conservatives start talking up amendments aimed at gay marriage, they’re thinking of a substantive change — namely, a new law of the land that says marriage involves one man and one woman and no other combination. Once that’s in the Constitution, even courts can’t mess with it. (I think!) As The Atlantic notes, though, Cruz’s proposed amendment isn’t substantive. It’s procedural.

“It is beyond dispute that when the 14th Amendment was adopted 146 years ago, as a necessary post-Civil War era reform, it was not imagined to also mandate same-sex marriage, but that is what the Supreme Court is implying today. The Court is making the preposterous assumption that the People of the United States somehow silently redefined marriage in 1868 when they ratified the 14th Amendment.

“Nothing in the text, logic, structure, or original understanding of the 14th Amendment or any other constitutional provision authorizes judges to redefine marriage for the Nation. It is for the elected representatives of the People to make the laws of marriage, acting on the basis of their own constitutional authority, and protecting it, if necessary, from usurpation by the courts.

“Marriage is a question for the States. That is why I have introduced legislation, S. 2024, to protect the authority of state legislatures to define marriage. And that is why, when Congress returns to session, I will be introducing a constitutional amendment to prevent the federal government or the courts from attacking or striking down state marriage laws.”

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6. How tolerant… 🙄

From FoxNews  “The Human Rights Commission in Lexington, Kentucky has a chilling message for Christian business owners who refuse service to LGBT organizations: leave your religion at home.”

“On Tuesday, a Lexington Human Rights Commission hearing examiner issued a recommended ruling that the owner of a T-shirt company violated a local ordinance against sexual-orientation discrimination.”

The hearing examiner recommended the following punishment:

First, Hands On Originals cannot discriminate against individuals because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. In other words, the T-shirt company must service LGBT customers – no questions asked. The examiner also ordered Adamson to attend “diversity training” conducted by – wait for it – the Lexington Human Rights Commission.

“Take just a moment and let that sink in – a Christian business owner is being ordered to attend diversity training – because of his religious beliefs. That’s a pretty frightening concept and a mighty dangerous precedent.”

And I must say, I’m impressed with the updated terminology used. After all, “diversity training” sounds so much nicer than “re-education camp.”

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7. Reason number 6,453,627 not to use the public school system. PC stupidity run amok.

From NationalReview  “A Nebraska school district has instructed its teachers to stop referring to students by “gendered expressions” such as “boys and girls,” and use “gender inclusive” ones such as “purple penguins” instead.

“Don’t use phrases such as ‘boys and girls,’ ‘you guys,’ ‘ladies and gentlemen,’ and similarly gendered expressions to get kids’ attention,” instructs a training document given to middle-school teachers at the Lincoln Public Schools.

“Create classroom names and then ask all of the ‘purple penguins’ to meet on the rug,” it advises.

The document also warns against asking students to “line up as boys or girls,” and suggests asking them to line up by whether they prefer “skateboards or bikes/milk or juice/dogs or cats/summer or winter/talking or listening.”

“Always ask yourself . . . ‘Will this configuration create a gendered space?’” the document says.”

A better question for parents is to always ask yourself, “Do I want a wussified kid, that’s totally confused about gender and the differences between boys and girls, because everyone is treated as unisex now?” And if the answer is no, you don’t, then maybe you should find a better schooling option.

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by

News/Politics 6-26-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Nope, not even a “hint of scandal.” 🙄

From WaysAndMeansHouse.gov  “Washington, DC – Today, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) announced the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) targeting of conservative individuals includes a sitting United States Senator.  According to emails reviewed by the Committee under its Section 6103 authority, which allows the Committee to review confidential taxpayer information, Lois Lerner sought to have Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) referred for IRS examination.

“We have seen a lot of unbelievable things in this investigation, but the fact that Lois Lerner attempted to initiate an apparently baseless IRS examination against a sitting Republican United States Senator is shocking,” said Camp.  “At every turn, Lerner was using the IRS as a tool for political purposes in defiance of taxpayer rights.  We may never know the full extent of the abuse since the IRS conveniently lost two years of Lerner emails, not to mention those of other key figures in this scandal.  The fact that DOJ refuses to investigate the IRS’s abuses or appoint a special counsel demonstrates, yet again, this Administration’s unwillingness to uphold the rule of law.”

And now we’re starting to see why Lois took the 5th.

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2. Destroying evidence is a criminal offense too. Anyone else noticing a pattern?

From TheHill  “The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the IRS share a problem: officials say they cannot provide the emails a congressional committee has requested because an employee’s hard drive crashed.

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy confirmed to the House Oversight Committee Wednesday that her staff is unable to provide lawmakers all of the documents they have requested on the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska, because of a 2010 computer crash.

“We’re having trouble getting the data off of it and we’re trying other sources to actually supplement that,” McCarthy said. “We’re challenged in figuring out where those small failures might have occurred and what caused them occur, but we’ve produced a lot of information.”

I’m sure they did, just nothing incriminating.

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3. Boehner is finally doing something about Obama’s many abuses of power.

From FoxNews  “House Speaker John Boehner announced Wednesday he plans to file suit against President Obama over his alleged abuse of executive power. 

“This is not about impeachment — it’s about him faithfully executing the laws of this country,” Boehner said. 

The speaker alleged that the president not only has ignored the law but “brags about it,” decrying what he described as “arrogance and incompetence.” 

Boehner had been weighing such a lawsuit in recent days, over concerns that Obama exceeded his constitutional authority with executive actions. Republicans have voiced frustration with Obama’s second-term “pen and phone” strategy of pursuing policy changes without Congress — particularly environmental rules via the Environmental Protection Agency. Republicans also complained about numerous unilateral changes to the implementation of ObamaCare. “

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4. As is always the case with this administrations numbers, they’re worse than first reported. And as always, NBC does it’s best to put on a good face for the admin.

From CNBC  “The U.S. economy contracted at a much steeper pace than previously estimated in the first quarter, but there are indications that growth has since rebounded strongly.

The Commerce Department said on Wednesday gross domestic product fell at a 2.9 percent annual rate, the economy’s worst performance in five years, instead of the 1.0 percent pace it had reported last month.

While the economy’s woes have been largely blamed on an unusually cold winter, the magnitude of the revisions suggest other factors at play beyond the weather. Growth has now been revised down by a total of 3.0 percentage points since the government’s first estimate was published in April, which had the economy expanding at a 0.1 percent rate.

The difference between the second and third estimates was the largest on records going back to 1976, the Commerce Department said. Economists had expected growth to be revised to show it contracting at a 1.7 percent rate. Sharp revisions to GDP numbers are not unusual as the government does not have complete data when it makes its initial and preliminary estimates.”

The only ones blaming the weather are those looking to provide cover for the admin. Only the sycophants at NBC could claim these horrible numbers are a sign of a rebounding economy.

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5. The Supreme Court has banned warrantless cell phone searches by police.

From TheWashingtonTimes  “The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that police must obtain warrants before snooping through people’s cellphones, delivering a unanimous decision that begins to update legal understanding of privacy rules to accommodate 21st-century technology.

Police agencies argued that searching through data on cellphones was no different from asking someone to turn out his pockets, but the justices rejected that, saying a cellphone holds the most personal and intimate details of someone’s life and falls squarely within the Fourth Amendment’s privacy protections.

“The fact that technology now allows an individual to carry such information in his hand does not make the information any less worthy of the protection for which the Founders fought,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in the unanimous opinion. “Our answer to the question of what police must do before searching a cell phone seized incident to an arrest is accordingly simple — get a warrant.”

The justices even said police cannot check a cellphone’s call log because it could contain more information than phone numbers, and perusing the call log is a violation of privacy that can be justified only with a court-issued warrant.”

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by

News/Politics 5-7-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread, with a few from me to start off.

1. Sounds like another Summer of Recovery….. 🙄

From TheWashPost  “The American economy is less entrepreneurial now than at any point in the last three decades. That’s the conclusion of a new study out from the Brookings Institution, which looks at the rates of new business creation and destruction since 1978.

Not only that, but during the most recent three years of the study — 2009, 2010 and 2011 — businesses were collapsing faster than they were being formed, a first. Overall, new businesses creation (measured as the share of all businesses less than one year old) declined by about half from 1978 to 2011.”

“The authors don’t mince words about the stakes here: If the decline persists, “it implies a continuation of slow growth for the indefinite future.” This lack of economic dynamism, particularly the steep drop since 2006, may be one reason why our current recovery has felt like much less than a recovery. As Matt O’Brien noted on Wonkblog last week, annual job growth rates have stubbornly refused to budge above 2 percent for the duration of the recovery.”

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2. The Obama admin isn’t just obstructing Congressional investigations. Looks like Inspector Generals are being obstructed as well.

From HotAir  “Remember the bizarre case of John C. Beale? Last year, it was finally revealed that the former high-level Environmental Protection Agency employee managed to defraud the federal government of almost a million dollars over the course of twelve years while doing almost no work, and then excusing his many absences by claiming that he was jetting off on secret climate-change-related business in conjunction with the CIA, followed by a fake retirement party. Much to the EPA’s chagrin, federal watchdogs were not filled with confidence in either our sprawling bureaucracy generally or the EPA’s power-grabbing/obfuscating tendencies specifically, and began an investigation into the lack of internal controls that allowed the guy to fly under the radar for so long; then in February, the EPA inspector general wrote a letter to Sen. David Vitter informing him that several EPA employees were actively getting in the way of the IG’s investigations thereof. This afternoon, the Associated Press just dropped another bomb on those inauspicious EPA activities:

A unit run by President Barack Obama’s political staff inside the Environmental Protection Agency operates illegally as a “rogue law enforcement agency” that has blocked independent investigations by the EPA’s inspector general for years, a top investigator says.

The assistant EPA inspector general for investigations, Patrick Sullivan, was expected to testify Wednesday before a House oversight committee about the activities of the EPA’s little-known Office of Homeland Security. The office is overseen by EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy’s chief of staff, and the inspector general’s office is accusing it of impeding independent investigations into employee misconduct, computer security and external threats, including compelling employees involved in cases to sign non-disclosure agreements.

“Under the heavy cloak of `national security,’ the Office of Homeland Security has repeatedly rebuffed and refused to cooperate with the OIG’s ongoing requests for information or cooperation,” Sullivan wrote in prepared testimony obtained by The Associated Press. “This block unquestionably has hamstrung the Office of Inspector General’s ability to carry out its statutory mandate to investigate wrongdoing of EPA employees.” …

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3. What Floyd Mayweather tells us about manhood and abortion.

From TheFederalist  “Recently Floyd Mayweather publicly broadcast his sadness that his ex-fiancé had aborted his unborn twins. While I know little of the back-and-forth gossip going on here, my heart broke for this man. There was something about a man whom I only knew as a boxer, speaking out in defense of his children, that got to me. Was it personal business? Yes. Was airing it in public not the best option? Probably true. Is it right not to involve a man in a decision like this? No.

A boxer standing in opposition to “killing babies” is an apt metaphor. Men, while capable of brutish violence, channel that effort best into protection of others. Men at their most heroic save lives, fight wars, die for their country, or even patiently smile through tea parties with their daughters. The boy inside the man has always wanted to do right. That is, until women told them that they don’t need their help, their opinion, their love, their care, or protection.   From “don’t hold that door” to “don’t think you deserve to be a part of your child’s life,” the message is clear. Go away.

Women lament very often that men have changed, wondering, “Where have all the good men gone?” They falsely attribute it to women outpacing men in education or moving into the workplace. Notice, despite a long period of economic success by men, there never once was a movement to tell women they weren’t needed. Even when they joke, men realize they know better.“

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by

News/Politics 2-28-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open thread, with a few from me to start things off.

1. Talk about overreach.

From TheGuardian  “Britain’s surveillance agency GCHQ, with aid from the US National Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal.

GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicitly state that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still images of Yahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases, regardless of whether individual users were an intelligence target or not.

In one six-month period in 2008 alone, the agency collected webcam imagery – including substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications – from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts globally.

Yahoo reacted furiously to the webcam interception when approached by the Guardian. The company denied any prior knowledge of the program, accusing the agencies of “a whole new level of violation of our users’ privacy“.”

2. And on a related note….

From PersonalLiberty.com  “The Internet has provided a forum for average people throughout the world to disseminate, share and debate information unattenuated by gatekeepers in the mainstream media and their politically connected friends. New media outlets like Personal Liberty Digest™ have, for years, been warning readers that the well-connected and ruling elite, displeased by this newfound proletariat freedom, have been prolific in attempts to undermine and marginalize information provided by any media outlet unwilling to obey the same unspoken rules that govern the content choices of major media outlets.

Now, thanks to the efforts of National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden and journalist Glenn Greenwald, readers no longer have to take the word of “paranoid” bloggers who relate tales of paid government trolls lurking in comment sections and other concentrated top-down efforts to muddy the information provided by alternative media.”

“The documents deal largely with the goals of GCHQ’s previously secret Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG), an apparatus whose mission Greenwald describes thusly: “Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable.””

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3. Give it to her, and then let’s hear what she has to say. After all, there’s nothing to lose here, she’s already retired, with her pension, and won’t be charged. At least this way you get her under oath and maybe find out who orchestrated it. 

From USAToday  “Former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner will testify about the IRS handling of Tea Party cases only in exchange for an immunity agreement, her lawyer told a congressional committee Wednesday.

Until then, Lerner will not answer questions unless  ordered to do so by a federal judge, her attorney said.

The response from attorney William Taylor came the day after the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee ordered Lerner to reappear at a hearing next week.  When Lerner appeared before the committee last May, she asserted her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.”

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4. Not shocking. It’s how things are done in this administration.

From TheFreeBeacon  “Several Environmental Protection Agency employees obstructed an investigation into the mismanagement that allowed a senior EPA official to bilk taxpayers for nearly $900,000, the EPA Inspector General said in a letter to Sen. David Vitter (R., La.) released Wednesday.

EPA employees threatened Inspector General investigators, refused to cooperate, and handed out non-disclosure agreements to other employees to keep them from being interviewed, EPA Inspector General Arthur Elkins Jr. wrote in response to a request for information by Vitter on the case.

“Over the past 12 months, there have been several EPA officials who have taken action to prevent [the Office of Investigations] OI from conducting investigations or have attempted to obstruct investigations through intimidation,” Elkins wrote.”

““We are starting to see proof of what we had already suspected: John Beale’s time and attendance fraud was the tip of the iceberg at the EPA,” Vitter said in a statement to the Free Beacon. “The whole agency seems to be in complete disarray, which is exactly why we need to have a full [Environment and Public Works] Committee hearing on the fraud surrounding this case and other prevalent problems.””

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5. Boko Haram continues it’s bloody rampage. This brings the victim count to around 240 in the last 10 days alone.

From Google/AFP  “Suspected Boko Haram gunmen killed at least 37 people in three separate attacks in northeast Nigeria, including at a theological college, a local government official and residents said on Thursday.

The coordinated attacks in Adamawa state late on Wednesday came just a day after Islamist militant fighters were blamed for killing 43 people, most of them students, as they slept at a boarding school in Yobe state.”

“He had earlier put the death toll in Shuwa, part of Madagali local government area, at 17. But he later told AFP that eight more bodies were recovered in the village, including three from a Christian college, confirming the account of a resident about the three burnt corpse found in the seminary.

“The death toll in the Shuwa attack now stands at 25 after eight more bodies were recovered, including three discovered under the burnt debris of the theological school,” Ularamu said.

In Shuwa, several buildings were burnt, including a Christian theological college and a section of a secondary school.”

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6. Planned Parenthood has achieved a new low in what passes for sex education.

With a CONTENT WARNING!!!! for adult subject matter.

From CNSNews  “has produced and posted online a video specifically aimed at teenagers that promotes bondage and sadomasochism (BDSM) and proposes “rules” to follow when engaging in these activities.

“People sometimes think that those who practice BDSM are emotionally  scarred or were once abused—not true, it’s a total myth,” the host of the  video, Laci Green, informs its intended audience of teens. “

“”BDSM relies upon and creates trust,” she says.”

“We are dedicated to protecting the sexual health of teens by providing  accurate information, opportunities to explore and  establish beliefs  and attitudes, and the skills to communicate their  needs,” says PPNNE’s “For Teens” page.”