…just have no sense of humor.
Some Governments
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Category Archives: ethics
Because, Veterans
President Obama’s 2016 budget blueprint proposes rolling back a program that gives veterans the right to receive faster care outside of the long waitlists at the troubled Veterans Affairs medical system.
Obama signed the Veterans Choice Program into law in August following months of partisan wrangling on Capitol Hill….
His 2016 budget “proposal” doesn’t zero out the program; instead, it achieves elimination of the funding by allowing the VA to reallocate that part of its budget to other purposes
to support essential investments in VA system priorities in a fiscally responsible, budget-neutral manner.
On the Confirmation of Loretta Lynch
…for Attorney General to replace Eric Holder.
During confirmation hearings which started yesterday [emphasis added],
Her biggest challenge could be explaining her support and participation in civil forfeitures, a legal process in which law enforcement agencies can seize money and other assets without charging or convicting the owners….
After nearly three years of legal battles, the federal government last week dropped its case against the Hirschs, who own a distribution company that serves convenience stores on Long Island. The government agreed to return more than $446,000 in assets and cash seized by the Internal Revenue Service in 2012 under federal civil asset forfeiture laws, even though the Hirsch family was never charged with a crime.
Privacy Misbehavior
Andrea Peterson of The Washington Post has a warning.
Recall that ‘way last November, Verizon was exposed as using a supercookie that they’d developed for the purpose: it sits on your cell phone and tracks, ostensibly for their own use, your cell usage (supposedly limited to your use on the Internet). And you can’t delete it.
It turns out that Turn, an online advertising company that works with Google and Facebook,
uses [the Verizon supercookie] to collect data that makes it easier for advertisers to place targeted online ads, according to the researchers.
Gun Control
Here’s some, via The Daily Caller.
A Tulsa convenience store clerk took on four masked men during an attempted robbery earlier this week, shooting and killing two and helping bring an end to a serial robbery ring.
I wonder how that would have worked out had the clerk not been armed.
I Think the Man Overstates His Case
In a Fox News op-ed this week, pollster Doug Schoen decried President Barack Obama’s offensive refusal to present himself in Paris to stand beside French President François Hollande and with dozens of other world leaders who stood with Hollande as all of them called out Islamic terrorists’ despicable murders in Charlie Hebdo‘s* publication offices, of a French cop, and of four innocents in a Jewish bakery, all of which occurred in the French capital, Paris.
Wrote Schoen [emphasis in the original]:
Distractions
House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R, LA) spoke, a dozen years ago, to a white supremacist group founded by KKK-er David Duke. He did this as a state legislator on the stump and speaking to any group willing to listen in an effort to push his then pending state tax legislation. There’s nothing in his record since, no behavior since, to indicate he agrees with the group’s or Duke’s “principles;” Scalise has, in fact, explicitly repudiated them.
Yet this speech is being touted as a serious distraction to the new Republican majorities in both houses of Congress.
The Flexibility of No More Elections
Some high points of President Barack Obama’s activities since the 2014 midterm elections—the last elections he’ll ever have to face, even vicariously through his party.
He’s chosen to give favor to Cuba’s Castro brothers, while receiving nothing of value to the US in return.
He’s chosen to extend favor to Iran and their nuclear weapons program while assuring all who can hear him that he’ll veto any Congressional move to extend sanctions.
He’s chosen to suspend enforcement of immigration law while assuring all who can hear him that he’ll veto any Congressional move to force enforcement.
Voter Suppression
Critics of voter ID laws always cry, “Voter suppression!” and they especially cry, “Black voter suppression!”
Here are some actual facts from North Carolina’s 2014 mid-term elections—an especially stern test since voter turnout typically is lower than in Presidential elections:
- the percentage of age-eligible, non-Hispanic black residents who turned out to vote in North Carolina rose to 41.1% in November 2014 from 38.5% in November 2010
- [t]he percentage of black registrants voting increased to 42.2% from 40.3% in the same period
- the black share of votes cast increased to 21.4% from 20.1%
At Last, Shovel Ready Jobs
And President Barack Obama only had to break the law (and the Constitution) to find them.
The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency is looking to hire 1,000 new employees to process applications pertaining to President Barack Obama’s new executive action on immigration, the New York Times is reporting.
Never mind that existing immigration law makes his Executive “Action” mandating protection from deportation of illegal entrants into the US illegal. Never mind that his Constitutional mandate, and his oath of office to take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, make his Executive “Action” illegal.