Monthly Archives: January 2016

Veterans Affairs, Yet Again

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Screen shots from a leak inside VA show Secretary Bob McDonald is diverting emails from whistleblowers into a special account within VA Central Office. The lists of names on the screen shot are titled “Sec Divert Internal.” The IT worker turned whistleblower told Washington Examiner that he/she believes the emails from those workers are being sent right to DC.

After Congress initiated the probe, VA admitted it was monitoring some emails that were flagged and diverted to DC.

Of course, the VA is saying the diversions are entirely innocuous.

Here’s the perspective of one of those whistleblowers, Scott Davis:

Instead of diverting the emails to ensure the matters are resolved, Davis’ emails are being diverted to his superiors.

Plainly, he’s already been to his superiors; that’s why he’s having to blow whistles. There is no legitimate reason to divert his whistleblowing communications back to those superiors who’ve done nothing about the problem already or given no rational answer for why they were unable.

And, it seems to be occurring without the whistleblower’s knowledge, and certainly without his permission. This is what SOFREP has on the matter:

A congressional investigation has been opened over allegations that the Department of Veterans Affairs has been diverting the emails of whistleblowers in an effort to spy on them. It does not appear to be a question of if they were, it is a matter of why they were, since the VA has admitted to the flagging of the emails. In an ethical matter like this, it is very difficult for the VA to justify their actions, particularly when email rules such as “Sec Divert Internal” are used. The VA wasn’t just spying, they were redirecting those emails without the sender being aware.

Veteranos administratio delende est.

More Disingenuousness in Government

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Mens rea is a criminal law concept that says in order to commit a crime, a man must have intended to commit the crime; he must have had a “guilty mind.” Lack of this guilty mind doesn’t mean the man didn’t do anything wrong; he may well have, and a trial and a jury can make that determination—it would be civil wrong, for which he still would be held accountable on that jury deliberation. He just didn’t commit a crime.

In addition to the current move in the Senate to reform sentencing and jail terms, some Senators want to clarify the specifics of mens rea in criminal law.

The House Judiciary Committee last year passed a bill on mens rea…reform that would create a default standard for criminal intent in instances when no standard exists. Republican Senator Orrin Hatch and House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte would like to see it pass along with sentencing reform.

However.

Both Senator Chuck Grassley (R, IA) and President Barack Obama (D) disagree with mens rea reform and for largely the same reasons, and they’re moving to block this reform.

Grassley is blocking it because

…strengthening the requirements for criminal intent would make it harder to convict corporations than under the current amorphous state of the law.

Obama wants to block it because

…a default standard of criminal intent would make it harder to prosecute companies for regulatory violations.

This is a cynical reading of Government’s role in trials. The purpose of bringing charges and having trials isn’t so prosecutors can get convictions and look good in the shower or otherwise have something to show for their taxpayer-funded paychecks. The purpose of standards of guilt or innocence in criminal law—or civil law, to stretch for a time the definitions of guilt and innocence—is not to stack the deck against the defendant.

The purpose of these things is to provide justice for the people wronged and for the people accused.

Full stop.

PRC Markets

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The PRC stock market tanked again earlier in the week. It’s a broader drop than just a fall in the PRC’s benchmark Shanghai Composite Index, though.

China’s outstanding margin loans—money investors borrow to buy stocks—declined for 16 consecutive sessions to Jan 22, the longest losing streak on record, with 209 billion yuan ($32 billion) worth of leveraged bets unwound during the period.

“Volume is getting very thin, as there are hardly any fresh inflows, and the process of deleveraging is continuing,” said Chang Chengwei, analyst at brokerage Hengtai Futures [a PRC-based financial investments player].

Fox Business lays much of this drop off to continued low (and perhaps lowering) oil prices. It’s not just oil, though. All those erstwhile investors have had their faces rubbed in the fact that it’s not (if it ever was) a price-sensitive market; it’s a government-sensitive market. And that it never had any contact with the underlying economy; it is a purely speculation play.

A Thought on Gun Rights

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The city of Lowell, MA, and its police chief have one. It’s dead wrong, too. The city’s new law, pushed by its Police Superintendent, William Taylor,

requires residents applying for a license to carry handguns to write “an essay” and pay upwards of $1,100 for training.

Aside from the outlandish cost being just another means of denying licenses to American citizens (training required in Texas, for instance, costs around $300), there’s this, from police department spokesman, Captain Timothy Crowley:

If you want a license to carry a firearm unrestricted wherever you want and whenever you want, the superintendent is just looking for some documentation as to why. That is not unreasonable to most people.

Yes, it is unreasonable to most people. It’s also wholly and cynically unconstitutional. Here’s what the 2nd Amendment says on the matter:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Notice that. There’s nothing in there that says, “Shall not be infringed unless Government disapproves the man’s reason.” There’s nothing in there that even grants Government a right to ask, much less to know, a citizen’s reason to keep and bear his Arms. Just for clarity’s sake, too, the Supreme Court has ruled that this is entirely an individual right, and not a collective one.

No. The only legitimate way to require licenses to keep and bear is, after training, on a will issue basis.

Full stop.

Empirical Socialism

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Bernie Sanders style. You remember him: the Independent Senator from Vermont, Democratic Party Presidential candidate, avowed Socialist, and as of Monday night’s Democratic Party Town Hall “debate” an avowed Democratic Socialist. In that “debate” (because it really wasn’t a debate; the three candidates appeared sequentially and answered carefully selected questions—and not even the same ones), Sanders assured us, one and all, that he really will raise taxes on us if he’s elected President.

From The Washington Examiner we get a list of just how bad his tax increase will be.SandersTaxes

To put that in perspective, the Congressional Budget Office projects that federal revenues over the next 10 years will be a total of $41.6 trillion, meaning that Sanders would raise taxes by 47% over current levels.

Guess what happens when Government takes that much money away from working Americans, removes that much money from the economy?

Yup.