VA scandal

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News/Politics 7-16-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Well I’m sure the world will be happy to hear this…..

🙄

From CNSNews  “White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Monday the Obama administration’s foreign policies in a number of areas have enhanced the world’s “tranquility” – a word that raised eyebrows as reporters pointed to situations in Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Ukraine and the South China Sea.

More than one reporter during Monday’s press briefing referred to a front-page Wall Street Journal article highlighting some of those crises, and citing security strategists as saying “the breadth of global instability now unfolding hasn’t been seen since the late 1970s.”

“How does the White House react to the notion that the president is a bystander to all these crises?” asked Fox News’ Ed Henry, citing the widening gaps between the sides in the Iranian nuclear talks, the conflict in and around Gaza, and the Syrian civil war.

“I think that there have been a number of situations in which you’ve seen this administration intervene in a meaningful way, that has substantially furthered American interests and substantially improved the, uh, you know, the – the tranquility of the global community,” Earnest replied.”

Uh, you know, places like Syria, Egypt, Libya, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa, the Mexican border, etc., etc.,…. The places where Obama’s intervened in a meaningful way. 🙄

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2. Good. And while it’s bad that they may not be able to catch all the cheats, it’s still better than giving them the resources if they’re going to misuse them on political witch hunts anyway.

From TheAP  “The GOP-controlled House has voted to slash the budget for the Internal Revenue Service’s tax enforcement division by $1.2 billion, a 25 percent cut that would mean fewer audits of taxpayers and make it more likely that people who cheat on their taxes will get away with it.

The House approved the cuts by voice vote after little debate Monday night as it took up a $21 billion spending bill that sets the IRS budget.

The cuts reflect GOP outrage over the agency’s scrutiny of tea party groups seeking tax-exempt status and frustration over the agency’s failure to produce thousands of emails by Lois Lerner, the official formerly in charge of the IRS division that processes applications for tax-exempt status.

“The use of a government agency to harass, target, intimidate and threaten lawful, honest citizens was the worst form of authoritarianism,” said Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., author of an amendment to cut the IRS tax enforcement budget by $353 million. Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich., followed up with an amendment to cut $788 million more. The underlying bill already contained a $72 million cut from last year’s $5 billion enforcement budget, bringing the total cut to $1.2 billion.”

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3. Gee, maybe this is why they stopped touting their bogus enrollees number.

From TheWeeklyStandard  “In March 2010, Obamacare was about to be voted upon by the House of Representatives, and the Democrats were in the process of deciding whether to ignore public opinion at their peril.  At that time, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that Obamacare would cost $938 billion over a decade and would reduce the number of uninsured people by 19 million as of 2014 (with a reduction of 1 million prior to 2014 and 18 million in 2014 alone).  Unimpressed, the American people overwhelmingly opposed the intrusive overhaul — with 20 of 21 polls taken that month showing it to be unpopular, most of them by double digits. The Democrats willfully passed Obamacare anyway and lost 63 House seats that November.

Two years later, the Supreme Court declared Obamacare’s coercive Medicaid expansion to be unconstitutional as written, and the CBO adjusted its projection for the number of uninsured accordingly.  It projected that Obamacare would reduce the number of uninsured by 14 million as of 2014 (2 million before 2014 and 12 million in 2014 alone), at a 10-year cost of $1.677 trillion — or $739 billion more than the 2010 projection.  (This February, the CBO projected that Obamacare’s 10-year cost would eclipse $2 trillion.)

n February of this year, the CBO projected that Obamacare would reduce the number of uninsured by 13 million as of 2014.  In April, the CBO had seen enough of the Obama administration’s skillful rollout of Obamacare to reduce that estimate to 12 million.

Now the Urban Institute finds that Obamacare has actually reduced the number of uninsured adults by 8 million since the rollout began last fall.  (Gallup shows a similar number.)  That’s far short of the number of newly insured that the CBO projected in April of this year, in February of this year, or in 2012 — and it’s less than half the tally the American people were told Obamacare would hit when they opposed it in 2010. “

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4. The problems at the VA continue.

From TheWashingtonTimes  “The VA’s rush to cut a huge backlog of claims from disabled veterans has forced it to cut corners elsewhere, and yet the department is still botching about one out of every 10 claims decisions, top officials and whistleblowers testified to Congress on Monday, signaling that the problems go far beyond the hospital wait times that have plagued it.

The very program the Obama administration started to years ago to cut the backlog has resulted in bad decisions that have forced many veterans into a lengthy appeals process, and created backlogs in other claims such as dependents’ benefits, members of the House Veterans Affairs Committee concluded.”

“These are veterans. I mean, somebody would be asleep at the wheel not to realize these things were going up,” said Ronald Robinson, a senior veterans service representative, former Army first sergeant, and one of three whistleblowers to testify.

In one dramatic moment, committee Chairman Jeff Miller, Florida Republican, posted a handwritten note one of his staffers had seen on a site visit to Philadelphia in which a top regional VA executive had written that committee investigators were to be ignored, and that singled out known whistleblowers.”

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5. I have no problem with charges of vandalism and destruction of public property charges for the perps. But a hate crime? Really? Now they’re just being stupid. 🙄

From CarrollCountyTimes  “Maryland State Police have classified anti-immigration graffiti spray painted on the former Army Reserve Center in Westminster as a hate crime. The graffiti was sprayed sometime Saturday night or early Sunday morning, according to Lt. Patrick McCrory, commander of the state police Westminster barracks.

The graffiti said “NO ILLEAGLES [sic] HERE NO UNDOCUMENTED DEMOCRATS.”

It was spray-painted on the front of the Army Reserve Center, which recently became embroiled in controversy when the Obama administration considered using the facility to house immigrant children caught crossing the US-Mexico border illegally.

The Carroll County Board of Commissioners spoke out against the federal government’s plan on Friday during an emergency cabinet meeting. Commissioners attending the meeting pledged not to provide any assistance to federal agencies if or when they moved the children to the facility. “

Who’s the genius leading the investigation, Joe Biden? 🙄

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by

News/Politics 7-7-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Did ObamaCare make matters worse at the VA and contribute to the backlog in processing VA claims? Sure sounds like it.

From TruthRevolt   “A Veterans Affairs whistleblower from Atlanta will testify before Congress next Tuesday about widespread destruction of applications, retaliation against whistleblowers, and people being shifted from processing VA applications last summer to working on Obamacare enrollment.

Scott Davis is a program specialist at the VA’s national Health Eligibility Center in DeKalb County, Georgia. His story was published in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution this past Sunday and appeared on the Neil Cavuto program on Fox News Wednesday.  As opposed to previous whistleblower reports, which focus VA hospitals and getting to see doctors, Davis’ revelations are about the processing of applications by VA offices.  

Davis told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that health benefit applications for more than 10,000 veterans may have been improperly purged from the Health Eligibility Center’s national data system. He began filing complaints in January 2014, revealing that managers were focused more on meeting goals linked to the Affordable Care Act to meet their bonus targets than processing VA applications.

We don’t discuss veterans. We do not work for veterans. That is something that I learned after working there. Our customer is the VA central office, the White House and the Congress. The veterans are not our priority. So whatever the initiatives are or the big ticket items, that is what we focus on.”

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2. And as always, the Obama admin has retaliated against the whistleblower. That’s easier than fixing the problems they’re pointing out.

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3. Don’t you just love bi-partisan acts by Congress? It’s so nice when the parties both agree……

to quietly change the rules for reporting freebies they receive from lobbyists. 🙄

From IJReview  “A member of Congress used to have to specifically report the details if they traveled on someone else’s dime. As of last week, that rule was lifted with no public announcement. National Journal reports:

The move, made behind closed doors and without a public announcement by the House Ethics Committee, reverses more than three decades of precedent. Gifts of free travel to lawmakers have appeared on the yearly financial form dating back its creation in the late 1970s, after the Watergate scandal. National Journal uncovered the deleted disclosure requirement when analyzing the most recent batch of yearly filings.

For a group of officials that considers an adjustment to their burrito order worthy of a press release and a television appearance, that this change was made literally behind closed doors tells us everything we need to know about it. Members of both parties reached across the aisle and kept their mouths shut about it.

These trips still must be reported to the Office of the Clerk and disclosed there, but the decades-old requirement for individual members to also disclose their particular activities on their annual financial forms is now gone.”

They still report it, but now it’s in an area where no one would look. Now that’s transparency.

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4. The Obama EPA continues to expand it’s illegal power grabs. Control the water, you control the people. Just ask California.

Also From TheIJReview  “The Environmental Protection Agency is planning to expand its jurisdiction over the nation’s waterways under the Clean Water Act to include ditches, small streams, ponds, and other purely local waterways.

Nearly 204,000 comments have been received since the rule was proposed on April 21, 2014, mostly from Americans opposed to it. Ten U.S. senators also sent a letter to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy expressing their concerns about the proposed rule changes.

Among the examples of potential overreach the senators cite are attempts by environmentalists to ban fireworks at Lake Tahoe along the border of California and Nevada. The senators fear the expanded EPA jurisdiction could led to similar lawsuits in other places.”

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

Less people working, plus a lowering unemployment number, equals fuzzy math. Again.

From CNSNews  “The number of Americans 16 and older who did not participate in the labor force climbed to a record high of 92,120,000 in June, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

This means that there were 92,120,000 Americans 16 and older who not only did not have a job, but did not actively seek one in the last four weeks.

That is up 111,000 from the 92,009,000 Americans who were not participating in the labor force in April.”

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by

News/Politics 6-25-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. In testimony before Congress the National Archives head says the IRS did not follow the law.

More here from FoxNews  “Archivist of the U.S. David Ferriero, speaking before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, made clear that federal agencies are supposed to report whenever their records are destroyed or even accidentally deleted. But he said that after emails from embattled IRS official Lois Lerner vanished after a computer failure in 2011, nobody told the National Archives.  “They did not follow the law,” Ferriero said. 

The testimony comes as lawmakers dig for answers as to how Lerner’s emails disappeared and why they only found out about it earlier this month. Lerner herself twice has refused to answer questions before Congress, leaving lawmakers seeking answers from other officials who interacted with her or were involved in reviewing her documents. 

Also on the witness panel was White House attorney Jennifer O’Connor, whom Chairman Darrell Issa compelled to testify via subpoena. 

Republican lawmakers, though, struggled to get answers from O’Connor, who previously worked at the IRS, about the emails. She said she only found out the “week before last” that emails were gone. “

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2. The IRS has admitted their guilt in releasing private taxpayer information to the a gay rights group fighting Prop 8.

From TheFreeBeacon   “The IRS has agreed to pay $50,000 in damages to the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) for unlawfully releasing its private information to a gay rights group that is a political rival, the Daily Signal has learned.

NOM expressed relief at the settlement agreement.

“Congress made the disclosure of confidential tax return information a serious matter for a reason,” NOM chairman John D. Eastman told The Daily Signal. “We’re delighted that the IRS has now been held accountable for the illegal disclosure of our list of major donors from our tax return.”

In 2012, the Human Rights Campaign posted on its website private information from the National Organization for Marriage that revealed private information including the identities and contact information for its donors. Then information was then published by multiple media outlets, according to the Daily Signal.”

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 3. This was obvious from his snarky testimony. He clearly acted like a partisan Democrat. Just another flunky who bought his position.

From PJMedia  “IRS Commissioner John Koskinen looks like he got the job atop the taxman agency the old fashioned way: He bought it.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, Koskinen has donated about $100,000 to Democrat candidates and committees since his first donation in 1979. His donor recipients include Gary Hart, the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic nominee in each presidential campaign since 1980 (which would even include Walter Mondale, who stood no chance of beating President Ronald Reagan in 1984), the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Hillary Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s campaigns. He most recently donated $2,500 to Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) in 2013.”

“He has given no money to Republicans. The taxman is a partisan Democrat.”

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4. The number of veterans that we know died awaiting care has grown greatly.

From TheWashingtonTimes  “The problems at Veterans Affairs extend well beyond long wait lists, with a report Tuesday showing the department is plagued with poor care that has cost up to 1,000 veterans their lives and left taxpayers on the hook for nearly $1 billion in malpractice settlements since the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Some of the problems detailed in the report by Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma are downright ghoulish. They include the case of a former security chief at a New York Veterans Affairs medical center whom the FBI arrested on charges of plotting to kidnap, rape and murder women and children.

The VA has come under fire in recent months over reports that dozens of veterans died while stuck on secret waiting lists at a VA facility in Phoenix. Since then, an inspector general’s investigation has found widespread misuse of secret wait lists in a number of facilities. The department’s secretary has resigned.

But Mr. Coburn’s report, titled “Friendly Fire: Death, Delay and Dismay at the VA,” argues that problems go back well before the Phoenix scandal and run deeper than bogus wait lists and scheduling practices designed to help managers show that they are meeting performance goals.”

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5. The White House and ICE continue to release illegal immigrants into the US. Not surprisingly, they refuse to say how many.

From YahooNews  “The Obama administration has released into the U.S. an untold number of immigrant families caught traveling illegally from Central America in recent months — and although the government knows how many it’s released, it won’t say publicly.

Senior U.S. officials directly familiar with the issue, including at the Homeland Security Department and White House, have so far dodged the answer on at least seven occasions over two weeks, alternately saying that they did not know the figure or didn’t have it immediately at hand. “We will get back to you,” the Homeland Security deputy secretary said Friday.

The figure is widely believed to exceed 40,000 since October. It’s believed to be slightly below the roughly 52,000 children caught traveling illegally from Central America over the same period, an extraordinary increase since last year that is driving a humanitarian crisis at the border.

Despite promises to the contrary, this is how it looks when the image-conscious Obama administration doesn’t want to reveal politically sensitive information that could influence an important policy debate. The mystery figure is significant because the number of families caught crossing from Central America represents a large share of new immigration cases that will further strain the overwhelmed U.S. immigration courts system. It also affects federal enforcement strategy, such as where to deploy the border patrol, and political calculations about whether Congress or the White House will relax American immigration laws or regulations before upcoming congressional elections in November.”

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6. And now we know that the Obama admin ignored warnings about the ISIS offensive in Iraq.

From TheDailyBeast  “For months before the fall of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, Washington and London were getting detailed warnings about jihadist plans to exploit Sunni resentment toward Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and launch an ambitious takeover of northern and western Iraq.

Kurdish military sources say the strategy of the ultra-radical Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) was telegraphed long in advance. The Kurds, who have their own autonomous region in northern Iraq and their own armed forces, monitored developing ties between the jihadists and tribal leaders as well as growing contacts with former Iraqi military officers.

The prime minister of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, Nechirvan Barzani, says he warned Baghdad and the United States months ago about the threat ISIS posed to Iraq and the group’s plan to launch an insurgency across Iraq. The Kurds even offered to participate in a joint military operation with Baghdad against the jihadists.

Washington didn’t respond—a claim that will fuel Republican charges that the Obama administration has been dangerously disengaged from the Middle East. Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki dismissed the warnings, saying everything was under control.”

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by

News/Politics 6-19-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. About time. Now things will get interesting.

From CNSNews  “Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is asking President Obama to “ensure accountability” in the ongoing IRS investigation by providing his committee with “all communications between Lois Lerner and any persons within the Executive Office of President for the period between January 1, 2009 and May 1, 2011.”

The IRS informed Congress on Friday that an untold number of Lerner’s emails to outside agencies, including the White House, were lost during the 2009-2011 time frame due to a “computer crash.”

Ways and Means is one of three congressional committees investigating the way the IRS, during Lerner’s tenure, handled groups seeking tax-exempt status. The IRS admits that conservative groups were singled out for inappropriate scrutiny and delay before the 2010 midterm election.”

Or is it time for more computer crashes?

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2. Looks like they broke another law in the IRS scandal too.

From TheDailyCaller  “The Internal Revenue Service is required by federal law to keep records of all agency emails and to print out hard copies of the emails to make sure they get saved in the event of a computer glitch.

The IRS recently claimed that it lost 24,000 of 67,000 emails that ex-official Lois Lerner sent between 2009 and 2011, due to a computer crash. The IRS, which agreed to turn over all of Lerner’s emails to the House Committee on Ways and Means, specifically lost emails Lerner sent to other Obama administration agencies and the White House. Lerner is a major figure in the targeting scandal that has hit the IRS.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama’s press secretary, Josh Earnest, backed up the IRS’s claim of a computer crash. The IRS claimed that it is currently working to retrieve the emails by working with the other agencies, which are not obligated by the IRS’s agreement with the Ways and Means Committee to cooperate.

“The [Federal Records Act] requires agencies to make and preserve records of agency decisions, policies, and essential transactions, and to take steps to safeguard against the loss of agency records,” said House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, who subpoenaed IRS Commissioner John Koskinen Monday.”

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3. Meanwhile, their breaking the law by destroying evidence in the VA scandal as well.

From HotAir  “Judicial Watch has found documentation that shows a deliberate effort to destroy documentation relating to massive cancellations of appointments at the VA in order to falsify wait times. In a press release this morning (not yet up on its site), the watchdog group lays out the findings from documents accessed through FOIA demands that vindicate one whistleblower and expose the wider fraud effort that went far beyond scheduling. In this case, the Office of Inspector General might have some questions to answer, too:

Judicial Watch announced today that in March 2014 it obtained internal Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) documents revealing that on November 25, 2009, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) was informed that top VA officials had ordered a nationwide purge of “all outstanding [MRI] imaging orders for studies older than 6 months.” Seven days later, on December 2, 2009, the OIG closed its investigation without taking further action.

The documents obtained by Judicial Watch also detail repeated efforts by VA whistleblower Oliver Mitchell, a Marine veteran and former patient services assistant, to persuade the OIG to fully investigate the mass destruction of veterans’ medical files and the cancellation of examination requests. The documents, dating back to 2009, reveal that OIG spent barely two months investigating the allegations before closing the case.”

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4. And dereliction of duty in the Benghazi scandal?

From CNSNews  “Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney says he believes the evidence will show that  President Obama and top administration officials were guilty of a “dereliction of duty” both during and after the deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya that cost the lives of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

 “Verification of what the National Command Authority knew and when they knew it is extremely important as it will show, I believe, that there was dereliction of duty by the President, the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of State, and the CIA Director,” Lt. Gen. McInerney said at a joint conference with military and legal experts held by the Heritage Foundation and the Benghazi Accountability Coalition on Monday.

“That is a very serious charge. That is a very serious charge, and it was done in violation of the law of the United States,” declared Gen. McInerney, who served as an assistant vice chief of staff in the Air Force’s Washington headquarters, and was part of a group calling for a select committee to investigate the events in Benghazi back in March.”

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5. And in yet another potential scandal….

From TheDailyMail  “The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services makes no effort to determine the immigration status of adult relatives when they show up to claim unaccompanied minor children who entered the U.S. illegally, a spokesman at the agency confirmed on Wednesday.

Tens of thousands of the under-18s – ‘Unaccompanied Alien Children’ (UACs) in government-speak – have poured across the U.S.-Mexico border in recent months, creating what President Barack Obama has termed an ‘urgent humanitarian situation.’

HHS, which houses them until family members can be found, has begun releasing illegal immigrant children ‘by the hundreds’ into the custody of adults who are illegal immigrants themselves, an HHS official familiar with the situation on America’s southern border told MailOnline late on Tuesday.

An official spokesman for HHS’s Administration for Children and Families confirmed on Wednesday that the agency has no system in place to verify whether the adults are here legally.“

It’s not that they can’t, it’s because they don’t want to.

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6. Looks like corrupt PA democrats won’t be getting away with bribery and corruption after all, despite attempts by PA’s democrat AG to bury it.

From Philly.com  “Twenty-six months after an undercover operative allegedly made his last secret payment to a Philadelphia politician, a sting investigation that started and stopped has a renewed life.

Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams announced Wednesday that he had named a team of four top prosecutors to present the sting evidence to an investigative grand jury.

Williams pledged to complete the reborn investigation in “months, not years.” Prosecutors began calling witnesses before the 36-member jury about two weeks ago, his office revealed.”

“In March, The Inquirer disclosed the existence of the long-running sting and that state Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane, a Democrat, had shut it down. Soon after taking office in 2013, Kane quietly ended the probe by dropping all charges against Ali in sealed court filings.”

And maybe they should look into the corruption in Kane’s office that led to it being dropped as well.

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by

News/Politics 6-17-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Is the VA punishing employees who speak out?

Of course they are, and they have been for years.

From TheNYTimes  “Staff members at dozens of Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals across the country have objected for years to falsified patient appointment schedules and other improper practices, only to be rebuffed, disciplined or even fired after speaking up, according to interviews with current and former staff members and internal documents.

The growing V.A. scandal over long patient wait times and fake scheduling books is emboldening hundreds of employees to go to federal watchdogs, unions, lawmakers and outside whistle-blower groups to report continuing problems, officials for those various groups said. 

In interviews with The New York Times, a half-dozen current and former staff members — four doctors, a nurse and an office manager in Delaware, Pennsylvania and Alaska — said they faced retaliation for reporting systemic problems. Their accounts, some corroborated by internal documents, portray a culture of silence and intimidation within the department and echo experiences detailed by other V.A. personnel in court filings, government investigations and congressional testimony, much of it largely unnoticed until now.

The federal Office of Special Counsel, which investigates whistle-blower complaints, is examining 37 claims of retaliation by V.A. employees in 19 states, and recently persuaded the V.A. to drop the disciplining of three staff members who had spoken out. Together with reports to other watchdog agencies and the Times interviews, the accounts by V.A. whistle-blowers cover several dozen hospitals, with complaints dating back seven years or longer.”

I’m sure the President will be shocked when he reads about this. 🙄

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2. We don’t have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem.

From CNSNews  “Federal tax revenues continue to run at a record pace (in inflation-adjusted dollars) in fiscal 2014, as the federal government’s total receipts for the fiscal year closed May at an unprecedented $1,934,919,000,000, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement.

Despite record revenue, the federal government still ran a deficit of $436.382 billion in the first eight months of the fiscal year, which began on Oct. 1, 2013 and will end on Sept. 30, 2014.

In the month of May alone, the federal government ran a deficit of $129.971 billion–bringing in $199.889 billion in revenue while spending $329.860 billion.

The White House Office of Management and Budget has estimated that in the full fiscal 2014, the federal government will collect $3.001721 trillion in taxes, spend $3.650526 trillion, running a deficit of $648.805 billion.”

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3. The White House story on the immigration surge is falling apart.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “But whether or not many people noticed, this was the week in which the Obama administration’s attempts to deflect blame for the border crisis fell apart.

Most of the illegal immigrants are what Border Patrol officials call OTMs. That is, while they are crossing into the United States from Mexico, they are actually from other countries — in this case, mostly Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador — and are classified as Other Than Mexican immigrants.

Top administration officials have tried to attribute the surge in crossings to violence and poverty in those countries. “The situation is motivated primarily by the conditions in the countries that they’re leaving — El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala,” said Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday. “Violence, poverty — I believe that is principally what is motivating the situation.”

“As it turns out, the Republican explanation does withstand a whole lot of scrutiny. Recent days have been filled with anecdotal reports, from local news outlets in Central America to major American newspapers, citing immigrants who say they came because they believe U.S. law has been changed to allow them to stay. And now comes word that Border Patrol agents in the most heavily-trafficked area of the surge, the Rio Grande Valley sector of Texas, recently questioned 230 illegal immigrants about why they came. The results showed overwhelmingly that the immigrants, including those classified as UACs, or unaccompanied children, were motivated by the belief that they would be allowed to stay in the United States — and not by conditions in their homelands. From a report written by the agents, quoting from the interviews:”

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4. Lies my President told me. There’s a lot.

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5. Speaking of lies……

Even CNN isn’t buying the White House story on Lois Lerner’s lost emails.

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by

News/Politics 6-13-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Perhaps this is why folks are so concerned about the 5 just released.

From TheTelegraph/UK  “The FBI “most wanted” mugshot shows a tough, swarthy figure, his hair in a jailbird crew-cut. The $10 million price on his head, meanwhile, suggests that whoever released him from US custody four years ago may now be regretting it.

Taken during his years as a detainee at the US-run Camp Bucca in southern Iraq, this is the only known photograph of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the new leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria. But while he may lack the photogenic qualities of his hero, Osama bin Laden, he is fast becoming the new poster-boy for the global jihadist movement.

Well-organised and utterly ruthless, the ex-preacher is the driving force behind al-Qaeda’s resurgence throughout Syria and Iraq, putting it at the forefront of the war to topple President Bashar al-Assad and starting a fresh campaign of mayhem against the Western-backed government in Baghdad.

On Tuesday, his forces achieved their biggest coup in Iraq to date, seizing control of government buildings in Mosul, the country’s third biggest city. Coming on top of similar operations in January that planted the black jihadi flag in the towns of Fallujah and Ramadi, it gives al-Qaeda control of large swathes of the north and west of the country, and poses the biggest security crisis since the US pull-out two years ago.”

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2. CONTENT WARNING!!!! Some of the photos at the link are extremely gruesome. Baghdad is their next target.

From TheDailyMail  “The full horror of the jihadists’ savage victories in Iraq emerged yesterday as witnesses told of streets lined with decapitated soldiers and policemen. Blood-soaked bodies and blazing vehicles were left in the wake of the Al Qaeda-inspired ISIS fanatics as they pushed the frontline towards Baghdad.

They boasted about their triumphs in a propaganda video depicting appalling scenes including a businessman being dragged from his car and executed at the roadside with a pistol to the back of his head. The extent of the carnage came as:

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3. Of course they did. This has always been orchestrated by top Democrats from day one.

From PowerLine  “It is just about impossible to keep up with all of the Obama administration scandals, but the corruption of the Internal Revenue Service ranks near the top. Unfortunately, it has gone hand in hand with Barack Obama and Eric Holder’s corruption of the Department of Justice. The perversion of law enforcement agencies for political ends is starkly revealed by the fact that in 2010, as part of its effort to stem the Tea Party movement, the IRS gave the FBI disks containing more than 1.1 million pages of documents on Section 501 non-profits, so that the FBI could selectively prosecute conservative groups and donors.

The facts, as we know them so far, were laid out yesterday in a letter from Congressmen Darrell Issa and Jim Jordan to John Koskinen, Commissioner of the IRS. The letter includes a series of emails that the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has finally obtained, after more than a year of stonewalling by the Obama administration. The IRS originally told the House committee–falsely–that the disks contained only publicly available filings by the non-profit organizations. But the IRS later admitted that it had illegally transferred confidential taxpayer information to the FBI.

The IRS’s purpose was explicitly political. Sarah Ingram, Lois Lerner’s predecessor in charge of tax-exempt organizations at the IRS, wrote in a September 21, 2010 email, the subject of which was a favorable front-page story in the New York Times:“

Thanks, as always, for the excellent support from Media. I do think it came out pretty well. The “secret donor” theme will continue–see Obama salvo today and Diane Reehm (sp).”

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4. The FBI has finally opened up a criminal probe of the VA scandal.

From CNN  “The FBI says it has opened a criminal investigation of the Veterans Affairs Department, which is grappling with a scandal over long waiting lists to provide care and allegations that paperwork was faked to make delays appear shorter.

FBI Director James Comey told a House hearing on Wednesday the bureau’s Phoenix office has joined an ongoing review by the VA inspector general.

The move at least partly satisfies requests from key members of Congress from both parties who have pressed for a full probe by the Justice Department as the scandal accelerated in recent weeks and led to the resignation of VA Secretary Eric Shinseki in May.

Officials have said the inspector general is sharing findings with federal prosecutors, and the Justice Department could launch a full-blown criminal probe if any of the information meets the standard for doing so.”

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by

News/Politics 6-10-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Disgraceful.

From HotAir  “And they’ve been waiting a long time, too. The Associated Press reports on an internal audit from more than 700 VA facilities shows that 57,000 veterans have waited 90 or more days for their initial medical appointment, let alone for any advanced care that might be needed. Another 64,000 have been enrolled in the VA health-care system for more than ten years without ever getting to see a doctor:

The Veterans Affairs Department says more than 57,000 patients are still waiting for initial medical appointments at VA hospitals and clinics 90 days or more after requesting them. An additional 64,000 who enrolled in the VA health care system over the past 10 years have never had appointments.

The audit confirms that 13% of scheduling staff received instruction in how to fraudulently cover up the horrendous wait times and access issues. The rest of the wait-list issue gets chalked up to a “complicated” appointment scheduling process and “confusion” among staff on how to manage it.

Will anyone buy that? It’s important to remember that this is the result of an internal audit run by the VA on orders from Eric Shinseki before he resigned under an avalanche of public pressure on the VA scandal. No one has yet conducted an outside audit, although the Inspector General is conducting an independent investigation of the Phoenix facilities which became the epicenter of the scandal. For an idea of why an internal audit may not produce the whole truth and nothing but the truth, read Lindsay Wise’s McClatchy report on the internal culture of the VA and the complete lack of effort at reform over the last several years:”

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2. The crisis created by the Obama admin’s refusal to enforce border laws is worsening.

From TheDailyMail  “Obama instituted an immigration policy that the GOP says enticed tens of thousands of Central American children to cross America’s southern border illegally without any parents to guide them.

More than 33,000 have been picked up in Texas alone since October. The U.S. border patrol says its forces are overwhelmed, and the courts are bracing for a flood of immigration cases from children held in temporary detention facilities designed to handle a fraction of the numbers. Sanitation problems are beginning to rear their ugly heads.

Obama rolled out a controversial Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in 2012, allowing many illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as minors to escape deportation for two years. The White House gave them another two-year window last week.

As a result, say some GOP leaders, America’s system for handling illegal immigration has been strained to the breaking point and is attracting hundreds of new illegal-immigrant children every day. Compared to the year before Obama’s policy took effect, twelve times as many kids are coming north illegally this year.

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3. And there appears to be no end in sight.

From FoxNews  “Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said Friday she is “disturbed and outraged” after she was informed by federal officials that not only has the government been shipping illegal immigrants out of Texas and “dumping” them in her state, it has no plans to stop.

Federal officials told Brewer Friday that the practice will continue for the foreseeable future, and this weekend more than 1,000 illegal immigrant children will be “dumped” in Arizona. Adults and family units will also arrive, though Brewer was not told how many, her office said.

Reports first surfaced last week that scores of illegal immigrants in Texas were being flown, bused and then abandoned out of state in Arizona and elsewhere.  After learning of the practice, Brewer sent a scathing letter to the president on Monday posing a string of questions about the policy. Brewer said Friday what little she has learned since then has made her even more concerned.

“This is a crisis of the federal government’s creation, and the fact that the border remains unsecure – now apparently intentionally – while this operation continues full-steam ahead is deplorable,” she said in a statement.”

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4. News of this first leaked from a story on photos taken at the border by agents. So they get the treatment all whistleblowers get nowadays. Threats and intimidation.

From TownHall  “Last week, photos surfaced from Texas and Arizona showing Border Patrol processing centers overwhelmed as thousands of unaccompanied children from Central America continue to need shelter and resources. The photos show hundreds of children sleeping in crowded, chain linked cages. Agents have described the situation as a humanitarian crisis.

In response to the leaked images out of Arizona, Patrol Agent in Charge Leslie Lawson is cracking down on the use of personal technology by agents in the Nogales Border Patrol processing center.

“Due to the recent unauthorized use of a personally owned electronic device in the Nogales Processing Center, the use of such devices will be restricted to locations outside of detention areas,” Lawson wrote in a June 6 memo to all employees at the Nogales station. “Effective immediately, the use of personally owned cellular phones, cameras, or recording devices in the Nogales Detention Facility and the Nogales Processing Center is strictly prohibited. All personnel working or visiting detention facilities at the Nogales Station will be required to turn off these electronic devices and store them in a locker other secure location prior to entering the detention area.”

According to sources, agents have been threatened with firings if found to have leaked the photos to media.”

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5. “America’s rising “progressive clerisy,” and the march toward McCarthyism”

Also from HotAir  “Is there anything more intolerant than the Tolerance Brigade? At the Daily Beast, Joel Kotkin agrees with Bloomberg’s Stephen Carter on the rise of a new McCarthyism, this time imposing penalties for dissent from progressive orthodoxy rather than tolerating debate on a broad range of issues. Both use attempts to silence argument in academia as the flash point that exposes this thought-police mentality. Carter recently wrote about the attempts to intimidate Douglas Laycock, an opponent of same-sex marriage and explicitly invokes McCarthyism as the dynamic in play:

A law student and a recent graduate, spurred on by the advocacy group GetEqual, have filed freedom-of-information requests for his telephone and travel records, in what they describe as an effort at dialogue about what they consider the harmful effects of his views.

This description is implausible. If they wanted to talk to him, they could knock on his door. The effort is aimed at intimidation. They want him to shut up.” But even when a professor holds opinions off at the far margin, to target him or her for intimidation is an affront to the freedom that makes the academy worth cherishing.

Kotkin blames this on a rising “progressive clerisy” that has formed at the highest levels of government bureaucracy, the entertainment industry, and academia:”

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6. And here’s a look at one example of what those 3 groups are accomplishing together. Brainwash kids into compliance. This is much easier than having to deal with differing opinions from free thinking adult folks later on. Best to squash that while they’re young.

From, appropriately, Moonbattery  “hand reports on situations unlikely to be exposed on the evening news. This email from a concerned parent is a prime example:

I am a parent in Oakland, California and I have a kindergartner in public school. My child came home [Thursday] and told me about the MANDATORY assembly for gay “pride” month. Parents had NO idea this was going to happen and I’m totally blindsided by it.

There is a video on the school’s website showing the assembly… It was nothing more than homosexual indoctrination about the meaning of the rainbow flag and “queer” history. On stage was the rainbow flag but NO American flag. And then a “gay men’s chorus” sang songs about homosexual “freedom.”

This is an elementary school and children as young as 5 were present. Like I said, parents were NOT informed in advance. My child brought home a bookmark with the rainbow flag on it and a quote from radical lesbian poet activist, Audre Lorde, whose work includes a book called “Uses of the Erotic.” This is for Elementary School! …

You can watch the assembly yourself and decide if the origin of the rainbow flag and “queer history” are appropriate discussions to have with elementary students, or if it’s even has any educational value to begin with, at the link.

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by

News/Politics 6-6-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Not shocking, but still troubling.

From Time  “A Taliban commander close to the negotiations over the release of U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl told TIME Thursday that the deal made to secure Bergdahl’s release has made it more appealing for fighters to capture American soldiers and other high-value targets.

“It’s better to kidnap one person like Bergdahl than kidnapping hundreds of useless people,” the commander said, speaking by telephone on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media. “It has encouraged our people. Now everybody will work hard to capture such an important bird.”

The commander has been known to TIME for several years and has consistently supplied reliable information about Bergdahl’s captivity.”

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2. Meanwhile, the more that comes out, the worse the story gets. I’d like to think it’s a case of Stockholm Syndrome, but his statements prior to leaving his unit make me doubt it.

From FoxNews  “U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl at one point during his captivity converted to Islam, fraternized openly with his captors and declared himself a “mujahid,” or warrior for Islam, according to secret documents prepared on the basis of a purported eyewitness account and obtained by Fox News.

The reports indicate that Bergdahl’s relations with his Haqqani captors morphed over time, from periods of hostility, where he was treated very much like a hostage, to periods where, as one source told Fox News, “he became much more of an accepted fellow” than is popularly understood. He even reportedly was allowed to carry a gun at times.

The documents show that Bergdahl at one point escaped his captors for five days and was kept, upon his re-capture, in a metal cage, like an animal. In addition, the reports detail discussions of prisoner swaps and other attempts at a negotiated resolution to the case that appear to have commenced as early as the fall of 2009.

The reports are rich in on-the-ground detail — including the names and locations of the Haqqani commanders who ran the 200-man rotation used to guard the Idaho native — and present the most detailed view yet of what Bergdahl’s life over the past five years has been like. These real-time dispatches were generated by the Eclipse Group, a shadowy private firm of former intelligence officers and operatives that has subcontracted with the Defense Department and prominent corporations to deliver granular intelligence on terrorist activities and other security-related topics, often from challenging environments in far-flung corners of the globe.”

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3. Like I said, worse.

From TheDailyMail  “The Obama administration passed up multiple opportunities to rescue Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl because the president was dead-set on finding a reason to begin emptying Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to a Pentagon official.

‘JSOC went to the White House with several specific rescue-op scenarios,’ the official with knowledge of interagency negotiations underway since at least November 2013 told MailOnline, referring to the Joint Special Operations Command. ‘But no one ever got traction.’

‘What we learned along the way was that the president wanted a diplomatic scenario that would establish a precedent for repatriating detainees from Gitmo,’ he said. The official said a State Department liaison described the lay of the land to him in February, shortly after the Taliban sent the U.S. government a month-old video of Bergdahl in January, looking sickly and haggard, in an effort to create a sense of urgency about his health and effect a quick prisoner trade.

‘He basically told me that no matter what JSOC put on the table, it was never going to fly because the president isn’t going to leave office with Gitmo intact, and this was the best opportunity to see that through.’

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4. Lawmakers have announced a bi-partisan deal to reform VA medical care.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “Senate lawmakers announced a bipartisan agreement on reforming the Department of Veterans Affairs, but the bill could face opposition from Republican lawmakers who want to amend it.

Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., announced the deal on the Senate floor Thursday afternoon.

The bill would provide veterans “choice cards” to allow them to obtain private medical care if they face long wait times at VA hospitals. It would also give the VA secretary expanded power to quickly fire or transfer poorly performing senior executives.

The bill appears to be a hybrid of a GOP bill announced earlier this week and legislation unveiled Sunday by Sanders.”

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5. Meanwhile there appears to be retaliation against whistleblowers who broke the VA scandal.

From TheDailyCaller  “The U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) is currently investigating allegations of whistleblower reprisal from 37 different Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) employees in 19 states, The Daily Caller has learned.

OSC is investigating allegations that VA retaliated against whistleblowers on cases involving “improper” health-care scheduling. VA is currently under fire after it was revealed that a secret waiting list kept at a Phoenix, Arizona VA medical facility led to preventable veteran deaths.

A VA employee in one of the cases alleged that he/she was slapped with a proposed seven-day suspension, a lowered performance evaluation and reassignment after reporting scheduling impropriety to the VA Inspector General.”

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6. Boko Haram has struck again.

From TheNYPost  “When men wearing military fatigues and carrying weapons showed up in pickup trucks, villagers thought Nigerian soldiers had finally come to protect them from Boko Haram.

But it was a disguise. The gunmen rounded up everyone in the village center and then started shooting.

Altogether, Boko Haram militants slaughtered hundreds of people in three villages in the far northeast corner of Nigeria, witnesses said Thursday, describing the latest attack by the Islamic extremist group that drew international attention for the kidnapping of more than 300 schoolgirls.

A community leader who witnessed the killings on Monday said residents had pleaded for the military to send soldiers to protect the area after they heard that militants were about to attack.”

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7. This is what happens when you refuse to enforce the borders. Obama’s policies are now encouraging even more to come. 

From KRGV.com  “Central Americans say news reports in their countries are encouraging them to make the journey north to the United States.

A mother and child told CHANNEL 5 NEWS that the message being disseminated in their country is, “go to America with your child, you won’t be turned away.”

The woman, Nora Griselda Bercian Diaz, from Guatemala, said she endured threats from the Zetas and extortion from corrupt Mexican police. She eventually crossed the Rio Grande with her 6-year-old Delmi Griselda Paul Bercian by her side.”

“Agents eventually arrived and ushered the mother and daughter into a van. The agents didn’t have time to turn around before another group came walking up the same road.”

They’re turning them loose in the US and creating even more problems.

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by

News/Politics 5-30-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. The sad state of American politics. This is part of the reason good people don’t waste their time with politics. Why bother, when this is what you get for your troubles?

From BizPacReview  “Annette Bosworth, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in South Dakota, held an adults only press conference on Tuesday due to the graphic matter that served as a backdrop.

According to the local NBC affiliate KDLT, the physician asked graffiti artists to paint her campaign signs with the same graphic names she said she has been called since entering the race, which she then displayed on the walls around her. “What you see around you are the words which have been written about me on blogs, on the internet, throughout this campaign,” she told shocked attendees, KDLT reported.

A tearful Bosworth also spoke about her 10 year old son, and how this “filth” shows up “when he Google’s his mom’s name.”

“The Democrats talk about a war on women, but much of what you see here is written by the supposedly tolerant liberals, Bosworth said. “They are hateful, they are hurtful and no person should have to endure it.” “It is its own form of abuse,” she added.

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2. A new tool in the fight against abortion. This one targeting the country’s abortion leader.

More here, from HotAir

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3. While vets die from a lack of timely care, some VA employees do nothing for vets. Their work in no way benefits vets, yet taxpayers pay for their full-time union activities.

From NationalReview  “In 2012, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs paid at least $11.4 million to 174 nurses, mental-health specialists, therapists, and other health-care professionals who, instead of caring for veterans, worked full-time doing union business.

The list of these taxpayer-funded union representatives at VA offices around the nation and their salaries was obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by Georgia representative Phil Gingrey’s staff and provided to National Review Online.

“So many health-care providers were on that list — nurses or physical therapists or whatever they may be — when so many veterans are falling through the cracks,” a Gingrey aide tells me. “It’s kind of shocking that these paid employees wouldn’t be fully dedicated to patient care.”

In total, the VA spent at least $13.77 million on 251 salaried employees performing full-time union work. Others, who were not included on the list provided by the VA, work part-time for unions at the taxpayer expense. In fiscal year 2011, the latest on record, the VA used 998,483 hours of this “official time,” costing taxpayers more than $42 million.”

Disgraceful.

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4. It seems the VA and ObamaCare aren’t the only govt run healthcare debacles.

From GreatFallsTribune  “Misdiagnosed illnesses, denied payments and a shortage of trained medical personnel in government-run clinics are wrecking the federal health care system for Native Americans, tribal leaders said Tuesday as they pressed officials to overhaul a system beset with problems.

With the head of the Indian Health Service listening on, representatives of seven Montana and Wyoming reservations delivered a litany of health care woes suffered by their members during a U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee field hearing in Billings. They described an agency compromised by a bloated bureaucracy and unable to fulfill its core duty to provide health care for more than 2 million American Indians and Alaska Natives.

“All too often, tribal members complain of ailments but get sent home from the Indian Health Service with cough medicine or pain killers. Later we learn the situation is much more serious, like cancer,” said A.T. “Rusty” Stafne, chairman of the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of northeast Montana’s Fort Peck Indian Reservation. “We have lost fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers and future leaders because they were unable to get the health care they need,” he said.”

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5. Here comes the pain for millions more Americans.

From USAToday  “More employees are getting hit with higher health insurance premiums and co-payments, and many don’t have the money to cover unexpected medical expenses, a new report finds.

More than half of companies (56%) increased employees’ share of health care premiums or co-payments for doctors’ visits in 2013, and 59% of employers say they intend to do the same in 2014, according to the annual Aflac WorkForces Report. It’s based on a survey of 1,856 employers and 5,209 employees at small, medium and large-size companies.

In 2013, 19% of companies implemented a major medical plan with a high deductible (more than $1,000) and Health Savings Accounts as an alternative to a traditional medical plan, the study finds.”

That $2500 savings for a family thing the President talked about was yet another lie.

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6. A problem of their own making. And amnesty doesn’t fix this, that’s part of the problem, not the solution.

From Reuters  “Tens of thousands of children unaccompanied by parents or relatives are flooding across the southern U.S. border illegally, forcing the Obama administration and Congress to grapple with both a humanitarian crisis and a budget dilemma.

An estimated 60,000 such children will pour into the United States this year, according to the administration, up from about 6,000 in 2011. Now, Washington is trying to figure out how to pay for their food, housing and transportation once they are taken into custody.

The flow is expected to grow. The number of unaccompanied, undocumented immigrants who are under 18 will likely double in 2015 to nearly 130,000 and cost U.S. taxpayers $2 billion, up from $868 million this year, according to administration estimates.”

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7. Things have gotten so bad in some places that federal authorities are flying them, and then releasing them elsewhere.

What do we call this? Illegal alien redistribution maybe? Everybody gets their fair share I guess.

From AZCentral  “Scores of undocumented immigrants from Central America have been released at Greyhound Lines Inc. bus stations in Tucson and Phoenix over the past several days after they were flown to Arizona from south Texas, officials acknowledged.

Andy Adame, a spokesman for the Border Patrol in Tucson, confirmed that over the weekend federal officials flew about 400 migrants apprehended in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas to Tucson to be processed. He said the migrants were flown to Arizona because the Border Patrol does not have enough manpower to handle a surge in illegal immigrants in south Texas.

The release has drawn criticism from those on both sides of the immigration issue.

Border enforcement groups are concerned that the migrants will now disappear into the U.S., spurring even more to come illegally.”

Gee, ya think? 🙄

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by

News/Politics 5-29-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. It’s system wide.

From TheDailyBeast  “Last week, President Obama pledged to address allegations of corruption and dangerous inefficiencies in the veterans’ health-care system. But before the president could deliver on his pledge, the scandal has spread even further. New whistleblower testimony and internal documents implicate an award-winning VA hospital in Texas in widespread wrongdoing—and what appears to be systemic fraud.

Emails and VA memos obtained exclusively by The Daily Beast provide what is among the most comprehensive accounts yet of how high-level VA hospital employees conspired to game the system. It shows not only how they manipulated hospital wait lists but why—to cover up the weeks and months veterans spent waiting for needed medical care. If those lag times had been revealed, it would have threatened the executives’ bonus pay.

What’s worse, the documents show the wrongdoing going unpunished for years, even after it was repeatedly reported to local and national VA authorities. That indicates a new troubling angle to the VA scandal: that the much touted investigations may be incapable of finding violations that are hiding in plain sight.  

“For lack of a better term, you’ve got an organized crime syndicate,” a whistleblower who works in the Texas VA told The Daily Beast. “People up on top are suddenly afraid they may actually be prosecuted and they’re pressuring the little guys down below to cover it all up.”

They have a lot more details and paperwork proof at the link. You should read it all if you have time.

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2. Everybody’s gettin’ in on the scam.

From TheWashingtonTimes  “Retired military officers deeply involved in the climate change movement — and some in companies positioned to profit from it — spearheaded an alarmist global warming report this month that calls on the Defense Department to ramp up spending on what it calls a man-made problem.

The report, which the Obama administration immediately hailed as a call to action, was issued not by a private advocacy group but by a Pentagon-financed think tank that trumpets “absolute objectivity.” The research was funded by a climate change group that is also one of the think tank’s main customers.”

“One of the CNA panel’s vice chairmen, retired Navy Vice Adm. Lee Gunn, is president of a private think tank, the American Security Project, whose prime issue is warning about climate change.

The other vice chairman, retired Army Brig. Gen. Gerald E. Galloway Jr., is a prominent adviser to the Center for Climate and Security, a climate change group.”

The piece is long on details as to all the connections.

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3. They know they can’t do it thru proper channels, the legislative way, so they’ll try it thru regulation and executive order.

From TheDailyCaller  “Despite being soundly rejected a few years ago, cap-and-trade will soon get its U.S. encore — but not in Congress. The Obama administration will likely use its executive power to unilaterally impose carbon dioxide emissions trading systems.

The Environmental Protection Agency will unveil regulations for existing U.S. power plants early next month. For months, onlookers have been speculating about what could be included in the EPA’s rule for existing power plants.

But over the past few days it has become clear that the Obama administration will use the EPA to push cap-and-trade systems and other anti-fossil fuel policies on U.S. states. Administration insiders have told news outlets that cap-and-trade will likely be one of the options the EPA gives states to cut their carbon dioxide emissions.”

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4. It appears that stories of their demise have been greatly exaggerated, at least in some areas.

From CBSNews/Houston  “Republican voters appeared ready to push Texas even further to the right Tuesday, backing Tea Party favorites and casting out longtime Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst for a state senator and firebrand radio talk show host who criticized the incumbent as too moderate for one of the state’s most powerful political jobs.

Dan Patrick, who emerged as the front runner from the first round of voting, easily beat Dewhurst in the primary runoff for the GOP nomination, ending the political career of a multimillionaire energy businessman who has been lieutenant governor since 2003. Dewhurst had said this would be his final campaign.”

“With Texas Democrats again the underdogs in November, many Tea Party-aligned candidates who won Tuesday are poised to pursue an aggressively conservative agenda that would likely include further spending cuts, expanded gun rights, and more restrictions on abortion and illegal immigration.

Tuesday’s Republican runoffs settled nominations for four major offices and nearly a dozen statehouse seats.”

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5. Time to shill for Hill. And of course, run interference.

From Politico  “An array of Democrats — including Hillary Clinton’s allies — are meeting this week to hammer out a united front on national security issues, including a clear response to Republicans over the Benghazi controversy.

They see an opportunity to wrest control of a narrative that some allies fear could be damaging to Clinton if she moves ahead with a 2016 presidential campaign.”

“A major milestone in the effort will take place this Friday, when a coalition of Democratic-leaning groups and influentials converges at the headquarters of the centrist think tank Third Way for a briefing that includes top Clinton adviser Philippe Reines.”

“Several people involved in the meeting say Reines was invited to speak at Third Way on Friday to discuss the chapter of Clinton’s upcoming book “Hard Choices” that covers the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on U.S. diplomatic outposts in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead — including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens. Reines is one of a few guests expected to speak on various topics. Other anticipated topics of discussion include President Barack Obama’s Wednesday speech about foreign policy.”

Let’s face it, the book will be nothing more than an attempt at CYB, and an attempt to list her “accomplishments,” pathetic as they are.

I say, what difference does it make at this point? The 3 am call came, and she and the White House ignored it. Attempts at revisionist history won’t change that.

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