Monthly Archives: May 2017

Heckler’s Veto

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It’s alive and well in Canada, too.  A Canadian named Lorne Grabher had a vanity license plate on his car, one that he’s had for 25 years.  The plate had his name, GRABHER.  You’d think there’d be no problem here, both on its face and from the fact that there’s been no problem for that quarter century.

But no.

The Toronto Sun, as cited at the link, says that “at least one person complained” about that plate, and that’s all it takes.  One special snowflake with more time on her hands than productive work decided she was going to be offended by the plate—she decided it reminded her of then TV star Donald Trump’s remark about where to grab women—and she went crying to the Canadian authorities.  Those authorities agreed with her.

[T]he Transportation Department in Nova Scotia says that while they understand the roots of his surname, members of the public may not understand its context.

Because Canadian governmental authorities think their citizens are as grindingly stupid as our own Progressive-Democrats think we are.

It Just Keeps Getting Better and Better

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…or worse and worse, depending on your perspective.  Not only is the Veterans Administration continuing to make bad/false/improper payments, they seem to be getting acceleratingly worse about it.  The Veterans Affairs Office of Inspector General reported that the VA made $5 billion in “improper” payments in 2015, and then while that drew attention, the VA increased their improper payouts to $5.5 billion in 2016.

To show how terrible the rates can be, here are some data from James Clark at the above link:

  • the VA Community Care had 75% of their payments as “improper” payments in 2016
  • the Purchased Long Term Services and Support 69% of their payments as “improper” in 2016

You read that right: three out of four of the Community Care’s payouts were wrong, and over two-thirds of PLTS&S’ payouts were…erroneous, and they’re getting worse.  The prior year, those payout rates were “only” 54.77% and 59.14%, respectively.

Since the VA empirically no interest in cleaning up its act, since it insists on wasting money our veterans need for their care, it’s time to disband this miserable excuse for an institution and commit its budget to vouchers for our vets.

No more delay by Congress.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

Medicaid Cuts?

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Some conservative Republican Senators are looking to cut Federal transfers to the States earmarked for those States’ Medicaid programs.  Others are concerned.

[T]he [conservative Senate Republicans’] Medicaid plan could affect many more people and shift significant costs onto hospitals and states.

One State’s Medicaid program, though, should be paid for exclusively by that State and not subsidized by the other 49 through those Federal transfers. Medicaid is, after all, a state program by design, and Medicaid eligibility is determined by each State.  The Federal transfer subsidies are made the more egregious by the fact that each State determines its own citizens’ eligibility for Medicaid, and that eligibility is income-based—with the maximum income for eligibility in most States being a multiple of the Federal Poverty Guidelines.  This means that in those States, a citizen can be eligible for Medicaid funds even though, by definition, that citizen isn’t in poverty.  Other States ought not be required to subsidize, through Federal Medicaid transfers, such eligibilities.  Not only are the States are defining “low income” much too loosely, other States have to pay into those definitions.

If each of those other 49 were able to keep the monies collected by the Feds for transfer, they’d also have more money—of their own—with which to fund their own Medicaid programs, and each of the States, absent attendant Federal strings, would be freer to structure their individual Medicaid programs according to their own citizens’ needs and demands.  As it is, States wanting to structure their programs must waste time and resources pleading to the Feds “Mother, may I?” and then argue the matter.

Such State-initiated restructuring—subject to central government approval—already is beginning to include things like work requirements, drug testing and time limits on coverage, all of which would free up State resources for the State’s truly poor.  Federal cuts to transfers to State Medicaid need not interfere with this; on the contrary, such cuts would encourage needed restructuring, while moving to insulate each State from other States’ decisions.

Of course, such Federal transfer cut would have complex implications and require serious Federal tax code restructure and reform—the taxes the Feds transfer for Medicaid come from a variety of sources: individual and business income taxes, dividend and cap gains taxes, and on and on.

That just puts a premium on getting started.

The PRC and Northern Korea

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Harry Kazianis tried to explain, in his Real Clear World piece, why the People’s Republic of China “won’t solve” the northern Korea crisis for us.  It’s complicated for the PRC, he said.

He [Kazianis’ carefully unidentified “Chinese scholar” and “retired official of the People’s Liberation Army”] pressed his case, noting, “look at this problem from where I sit in Beijing. I see a world of trouble when it comes to North Korea. I see war. I see death. I see superpower showdowns. We must all agree we don’t want this. Yes, nuclear weapons are bad, but North Korea could create far more trouble than you realize, and China would have to deal with most of it.”

Kazianis then dragged out a couple of bromides that have been arguing against doing anything serious about northern Korea, one maintaining that a desperate Baby Kim, with his energy imports reduced, would start a nuclear war if we got serious; the other insisting that, with northern Korea’s food imports reduced, a desperate population would riot—and a failed coup would lead to civil war that would become nuclear and involve the PRC, the Republic of Korea, Japan, and the US.

Kazianis ignored a simple fact, though.  Baby Kim is going to use his nuclear weapons, either for blackmail or for actual strikes, as soon as he can deliver them.  He’s intimated as much often.

If Kazianis’ unidentified, anonymous source actually exists, that just puts a premium on the PRC getting started.  Even if this “source” does not, the principle and its outcome remain the same: Baby Kim is going to do what he’s going to do unless overt, serious steps are taken to deprive him of the tools with which to do them.

Stuff

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Now The New York Times is jumping on the bandwagon.  The paper is claiming that a James Comey memo has it that President Donald Trump interfered with Comey’s investigation of Trump’s ex-NSA advisor, Mike Flynn.  The following is based heavily on a comment I posted on Grim’s Hall.

First, the paper doesn’t have the memo; it was read to them. By a deliberately unidentified source. If the memo exists.  If the reader exists.

Second, it is, in fact, likely that some such memo exists. Every participant in that sort of meeting (and phone call, come to that) writes up their notes in some form of MFR—those are great memory joggers as well as necessary records. Comey, an inveterate note taker, is not unusual in that regard. It’s also the sort of thing I did when I was in the USAF. It’s the sort of thing every officer does after an important meeting or telecon. Waiting on formal minutes didn’t happen for most of us.

Third, any obstruction of justice was committed by Comey. As a law enforcement officer and as an officer of the court—he is, recall, a University of Chicago(!)-trained lawyer—Comey is legally bound to advise law enforcement—in his case his chain of command up the DoJ as well as his seconds in the FBI—of any suspicion of criminal activity. If he didn’t think Trump was interfering with his investigation, there’s no problem, either for him or for Trump. If he did think so, it’s Comey who’s committed a crime by suppressing evidence of one.

Fourth, however intimidated Comey might have felt over his job security or the sanctity of his investigation—assuming the meeting went down as the NYT claims—that’s all gone now, with Comey free and clear. And he’s still not reporting a possible crime.

Fifth, assuming the memo exists in substantially the claimed form, it’s important to keep in mind the integrity of the leaker, who’s speaking out of turn, releasing stuff he has no authority to release and who hasn’t bothered with his own chain of command or complaint system—including his IG system that the Left thinks is so important in other matters.  How did he even get his hands on Comey’s memo?  What does he say Comey told him when he asked Comey if the latter thought it would be a good idea to pass the memo to the press? How is such a leaker himself believable?

The NYT‘s story is highly suspicious, coming as it does a day after WaPo‘s equally carefully unsubstantiated, equally hysterical claims about Trump’s handling of classified information in a meeting with the Russian Foreign Minister and a notorious Russian ambassador.

Neither paper is even pretending to journalistic standards of reporting—stuff like corroborating anonymous sources’ claims with two or more on the record, named sources saying substantially the same thing.  At least National Enquirer and Globe have some minimal entertainment value.