Monthly Archives: October 2016

Missile Defense Systems

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President Barack Obama (D)…acquiesced…to Russian demands that we not deploy missile defense systems in eastern and southeastern Europe to counter intermediate range ballistic missiles that rogue nations, like Iran, might launch against our friends and allies.

Now Russia has deployed a modern missile system in Syria.  This isn’t the S-300 system the Russians sold Iran, though, ostensibly to defend against an air attack (against what in Iran? I’ll leave that as an exercise for the student).

No, this is Russia’s SA-23 missile system.  While it’s a variant of the S-300, this system is optimized for defense against short and intermediate range ballistic missiles and cruise missiles.  The system also is capable of launching smaller anti-aircraft missiles.  (Who in that fight has an air force against which to be defended?)

This SA-23 deployment came as Russian President Vladimir Putin “advised” Obama not to do anything foolish, else there’d be “tectonic consequences” for us.

Obama has chosen to remain silent on the matter.

There’s timidity, and there’s timidity.

A Howard Dean Apology

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Recall that the Democrat Howard Dean accused Republican Party Presidential candidate Donald Trump of being on cocaine.howarddeantweet

After the hoo-raw that rose over Dean’s scurrilous accusation, Dean said this to MSNBC‘s Stephanie Ruhle:

I apologize for using innuendo. I don’t think it’s a good thing to do, I don’t think it’s the right thing to do…. I’m not unwilling to apologize for using innuendo.

Notice that.  Dean apologized for beating around the bush (which he didn’t actually do; Dean was quite direct in that tweet of his) with his accusation about Trump being on cocaine.

But Dean has not a syllable of apology for his actual accusation.  Masquerading that statement as an apology for his accusation is a base lie.

Full stop.

Why Does Seattle Hate The Unskilled?

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The Seattle city council, in its infinite Know Better wisdom, has passed what it’s pleased to call a “secure scheduling” ordinance.  This is an ordinance that requires “certain” employers

to tell their workers two weeks in advance which shifts they will be working.

Should an employee be called in for extra hours, say, to replace a sick co-worker, the employer will have to pay him added “predictability pay.” Should an employee be sent home early—maybe because business is slow or a delivery is late—the employer must compensate him for half the hours he was scheduled to work.

And, if you can believe it,

[O]n-call staff will earn half pay for shifts when they are not called into work, while those employees that have less than 10 hours between two shifts will receive time and a half. Managers will also be required to offer any additional hours to current employees before taking on new hires.

Never mind some well-known actual facts.

In response to Seattle’s recently passed minimum wage law that will quickly raise the minimum to $15/hr, a University of Washington study released last summer

found that the mandated wage increase has led to fewer hours worked per-employee and slightly less overall employment for Seattle’s lowest-paid workers, compared to similar earners in other parts of the state.

And last spring the San Francisco Chronicle reported that in response to San Francisco’s “secure scheduling” ordinance,

1 in 5 surveyed businesses had cut back on the number of part-time hires, and a similar number were scheduling fewer employees per shift[.]

Of course, the worthies on Seattle’s city council know these things—the histories are much too recent for them not to know—hence the question in my title.

The VA Strikes Again

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Reform the Veterans Administration?  It’s still not happening.  It’s hard to believe the folks nominally in charge (they can’t be termed “leadership”) are even trying.

An Illinois Veterans Affairs hospital already under fire for excessive wait times, festering black mold and kitchen cockroaches faces a new shame—the bodies of dead patients left unclaimed in the morgue for up to two months without proper burial, whistleblower documents allege.

One example of the VA’s…failure…here is in this string of emails, beginning 7 Dec 2015, that a whistleblower provided outside authorities.

“[There is] an invoice for an unclaimed veteran that has been here for over 30 days. Please approve for burial at Abraham Lincoln,” the clerk wrote to [Chief of Patient Administrative Services, Christopher] Wirtjes and several others.

Three days later, the clerk wrote again: “Approval of unclaimed Vet D?? Status?”

On Dec 23, the clerk wrote to human resources: “Any further on my poor unclaimed? I WILL file a police report, but I hate doing that…”

Three weeks, and Wirtjes couldn’t even be bothered to respond.

There have been no consequences for Wirtjes, either.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

Federal Funding for Medicaid

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Medicaid is a State-run program for providing a measure of medical service for that State’s relatively indigent citizens.  The program is State-run, but it’s jointly funded by the State’s taxpayers and by the nation’s taxpayers via Federal funds transferred to each State for the purpose.  I’ve often written that Federal funds for Medicaid should be ended and that the States should  be allowed to fund and manage their Medicaid programs alone—without Federal funding and associated Federal interference.

Here’s another reason to end Federal funding for a State’s Medicaid program.

US District Judge Kristine Baker issued a preliminary injunction preventing Arkansas from suspending payments to Planned Parenthood for any services to Medicaid patients in the state. Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson last year terminated the organization’s Medicaid contract because of secretly recorded videos made by an anti-abortion group.

Baker also expects that Planned Parenthood would win at trial, hence her injunction.

Unfortunately, the Federal judge is right on the law, if only on 14th Amendment grounds, and on the courts’ Taney-esque position that unborn babies aren’t fully human.

Other than changing that law, though, the way around this sort of thing is that elimination of Federal funds for any State’s Medicaid program.  With that elimination, States that disapprove of Planned Parenthood’s funding of abortions could stop funding Planned Parenthood, and States that approve of easy abortions could continue to do so.