Category Archives: culture

Irrelevant Questions?

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An 11-year-old successfully defended himself, his 4-year-old sister, and his home during an attempted mid-afternoon home invasion by a 16-year-old and an accomplice, by shooting the 16-year-old and driving off the accomplice. The children’s mother was out at the time.

Now the police are questioning the mother—no word on what they’re doing with the accomplice, who was caught a short time after the successful defense.

[P]olice want to know why the children were home alone and why the 11-year-old had access to a gun.

What’s the problem with being home “alone?” The 4-year-old was being babysat.

Why shouldn’t the boy have access to a weapon? He’s eleven years old, and there’s no indication he’s not been properly trained. He fired a single shot to effect his defense, though—that’s either a potful of luck, or perhaps he’s had the training.

Police believe the mother bought the gun after prior break-in attempts.

There’s a hint there.

The police are wasting resources.

An Excerpt

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…from a VA Office of the Inspector General report.

We substantiated the second allegation that pending ES [Enrollment System] records included entries for individuals reported to be deceased. As of September 2014, more than 307,000 pending ES records, or about 35 percent of all pending records, were for individuals reported as deceased by the Social Security Administration. However, due to data limitations, we could not determine specifically how many pending ES records represent veterans who applied for health care benefits. These conditions occurred because the enrollment program did not effectively define, collect, and manage enrollment data. In addition, VHA lacked adequate procedures to identify date of death information and implement necessary updates to the individual’s status. Unless VHA officials establish effective procedures to identify deceased individuals and accurately update their status, ES will continue to provide unreliable information on the status of applications for veterans seeking enrollment in the VA health care system.

Not only is the VA not trying to take care of our vets—307,000 of them died waiting to get treatment—they’re not even troubling themselves to keep records.

We substantiated the third allegation that employees incorrectly marked unprocessed applications as completed and possibly deleted 10,000 or more transactions from the Workload Reporting and Productivity (WRAP) tool over the past 5 years.

They do, though, go to the effort of covering up their non-performance (I hesitate to say “failure to perform;” that would suggest they’re trying).

And there’s this insulting bit of vapidity from the Under Secretary for Health in response to the IG’s report (the whole letter is at Appendix D of the report at the link. It doesn’t get any better).

We regret the inconvenience and potential hardship place on applicants for health care and we are working hard to restore Veterans’ confidence and trust in VA’s systems and staff. We have and will continue to take timely and appropriate steps to improve our services to ensure we meet the expectations of those whom we have the honor of serving.

Yeah, dying while on the VA’s who gives a patootie wait list is such a potentially inconvenient hardship.

Since the VA doesn’t care, we should honor their lack of interest. Disband the VA, and use the budget dollars that would have gone to the VA in any particular year as vouchers for our veterans which they can find, in that year, their own quality care and decent hospitals.

EPA’s Orwellian Transparency

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Congressman Lamar Smith (R, TX), Chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, is unhappy with the EPA’s decision to be unresponsive to Committee requests for information regarding the EPA-caused disaster in and downriver from a Colorado mine.

It is disappointing, but not surprising, that the EPA failed to meet the House Science Committee’s reasonable deadline in turning over documents pertaining to the Gold King Mine spill. These documents are essential to the Committee’s ongoing investigation and our upcoming hearing on Sept 9. But more importantly, this information matters to the many Americans directly affected in western states, who are still waiting for answers from the EPA.

But that’s just transparency in the manner of this administration.

PC Foolishnesses

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The Agricultural Marketing Service of the USDA has proposed removing the term “midget” from its raisin standards in response to a petition from the Little People of America.

The AMS wants to eliminate five references to the term “midget” in the United States Standards for Grades of Processed Raisins, opting to replace the term with the word “small” instead.

Because some folks might get their precious feeling hurted. Never mind that the LPA admits

[T]he use of the word midget by the USDA when classifying certain food products is benign…

they still want the adjective referring to dinky raisins removed from the descriptions—by government fiat, no less.

What will the FDA propose to do when the LPA or some other sensitive group decides “small” is a terrifying affront? Maybe the FDA should skip that step and go right to labeling the raisins “little.”

And this, which is dangerous, and cynically so.

Santa Clara University says a bias incident is “a speech, act, or harassing action that targets, threatens, or attacks an individual or group because of their actual or perceived race, color, national origin, ethnicity, religious affiliation, sex, gender identity, disability, or sexual orientation.”

Students who experience such incidents should call 911, contact the Office of Student Life, alert Campus Safety Services, and file an anonymous report[.]

“Always call,” SCU insists with their new policy. Because hurt feelings are so vastly important they demand an emergency response by police, who have nothing else to do, anyway, there being no actual risks to life or limb in Santa Clara.

No, SCU knows better, hence the cynicism of their…advice.

SCU’s “policy” can be seen here. There’s an EthicsPoint link to an online incident reporting tool at the policy link. Perhaps the policy is itself a suitable subject for addressing via EthicsPoint.

Some Black Lives Matter More than Others

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Particularly when there’s no political point to be made from the others.

A crowd gathered Wednesday evening to protest the shooting of an armed suspect by Missouri cops, but no mention was made of the 9-year-old girl who had been shot dead by an unknown assailant just seven miles away the night before.

Racist identity politics matter more than actual lives to protest “movements.”