Category Archives: culture

Long Past its Use-By Date

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The Department of Veterans Affairs Inspector General Office has found problems in the VA’s process for vetting the contractors it hires. The IG’s audit findings include these (not an exhaustive list by me):

  • 47 of 50 contract files (94 percent) did not include position designation records that established the position investigative requirements for the contract
  • 34 of 50 contracts (68 percent) did not include contract language to communicate contractor vetting requirements to the contractor
  • 215 of the 286 contractor employees reviewed (about 75 percent) did not have evidence of completed fingerprint checks
  • 225 of the 286 contractor employees (about 79 percent) did not have evidence that a background investigation was completed by an investigative service provider

And this kicker [emphasis added]:

[T]he team’s review of a contract for unarmed security guards at the St. Cloud VA Medical Center in Minnesota determined that officials did not vet any of the 73 contractor employees, 38 of whom (about 52 percent) had criminal records. The criminal records included arrests and convictions ranging from petty misdemeanors to felonies such as disorderly conduct, domestic abuse, physical and sexual assault, financial card fraud, and terroristic threats. During the performance of the contract, VA police, St. Cloud officials, and the VA OIG were notified about improper behavior by the unvetted contractor employees, including stalking female VA and contractor employees, sexually harassing and assaulting other employees, getting into altercations at the medical center that required police intervention, and bragging to coworkers about being a gang member.

With that failure rate, does the VA actually have a vetting process, or is it just a few sheets of paper the department heads use for…decoration?

Further according to the IG’s audit, VA officials did not comply with executive orders, federal regulations, or VA’s policies for vetting contractor employees. Apparently, it’s not only that last regarding vetting, but VA officials are insubordinate and routinely ignore existing law and the orders of their boss, the President. Given these persons’ routine disregard of the other items, it’s not clear to me that the VA has any policies with which to not comply.

In any event, it’s long past time.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

The full IG report can be read here.

Biden Administration’s Monthly Job Numbers

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Peter Earle, American Institute for Economic Research Senior Research Fellow, has the tale.

In 28 years, I’ve never seen 11 of 12 months where job numbers came out looking very strong, and then they were revised downwards.

Which raises the question in my pea brain: are Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden and his economic staff and his bureaucrats at the Labor Department really that incompetent, or are they manipulating the initial numbers for their political benefit?

These aren’t rounding errors that happen to be overstatements rather than understatements or balancing out over the months, either. According to the Daily Caller:

The federal government in 2023 overestimated the number of jobs in the US economy by an average of 105,000 per month in initial reports, equating to a cumulative monthly difference of 1.3 million, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Impacting that behavior is this, as Earle continued:

Of course, the kicker there is that when you revise those things downwards, they don’t get the sort of media attention that the top line initial number gets.

Biden and his minions know that much full well. But, according to Biden, everything’s jake with our economy so, what—us worry?

Wrong Reasons

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Canada’s reigning government, led by the Liberal Party’s [there’s a misnomer] Justin Trudeau, has “delayed” its plan to kill euthanize its mentally ill population.

[H]ealth officials are slow-walking plans to expand the program, stating there are not enough doctors, specifically psychiatrists, in Canada to evaluate mentally ill people who wish to die, according to the announcement made by Health Minister Mark Holland and Justice Minister Arif Virani.

This is the wrong reason for slowing down the march to killing off the inconveniently mentally ill. The goal remains in place.

Holland went on:

The system needs to be ready, and we need to get it right. It’s clear from the conversations we’ve had that the system is not ready, and we need more time.

There is no right way to kill off the mentally ill. Suicide, assisted or otherwise, may or may not be the right answer for those with the mental capacity to decide that for themselves.  Those who are that mentally ill don’t have the capacity to decide, though, and having third parties decide whether a person should live or die is just state-sanctioned execution by reason of those persons being inconvenient for the state to support or to assist the person’s family to support.

So much for Canada’s erstwhile reputation for being…nice.

Supporting Terrorists

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The House passed a bill that expanded bars against PLO officers from entry into the US to include PLO rank and file, and that further expanded those bars to include the terrorists, Hamas. The bill says that anyone who

participated in, planned, financed, afforded material support to, or otherwise facilitated [the October 7 attack on Israel or attacks after that] shall be ineligible for any relief under the immigration laws.
Any alien who carried out, participated in, planned, financed, afforded material support to, or otherwise facilitated any of the attacks against Israel initiated by Hamas beginning on October 7, 2023, is inadmissible[.]

Congresswomen Cori Bush (D, MO) and Rashida Tlaib (D, MI) voted against the bill, while Congresswoman Delia Ramirez (D, IL) merely voted “present.” Since the bill passed with 422 ayes, that suggests that even Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D, MN) voted for the bill, or that she was absent and did not vote at all.

Bush and Tlaib, with their nays, have plainly stated their support for terrorists and for terrorism.

Tlaib’s rationalization for her terrorist-supporting No vote:

It’s just another GOP messaging bill being used to incite anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian, and anti-Muslim hatred that makes communities like ours unsafe[.]

Bush’s rationalization:

I opposed H.R. 6679 because it is a redundant, empty messaging bill Republicans are using to target immigrants and incite anti-Palestinian hate.
Republicans have ZERO credibility on these issues.

This is those two projecting their own hatred of all things Republican and their disdain for Americans of any political bent or ethnicity, especially those who disagree with them.

This is Tlaib, in particular, displaying her own bigotry and her disdain for American culture: communities like ours. Holding some groups of Americans apart from American culture on the basis of ethnicity, indeed.

Overly Complex

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It’s also too limiting. Congressman Greg Steube (R, FL) and Senator Tommy Tuberville (R, AL) are introducing a bicameral bill, The Protection of Women in Olympic and Amateur Sports Act, that would bar biological males from participating in Olympic events intended for women. Good idea, bad execution.

The bill defines a female as

an individual who has, had, will have—or would have, but for a developmental or genetic anomaly or historical accident—the reproductive system that at some point produces, transports, and utilizes eggs for fertilization.

The bill defines a male as

an individual who has, had, will have—or would have, but for a developmental or genetic anomaly or historical accident—the reproductive system that at some point produces, transports, and utilizes sperm for fertilization.

That’s way too complex, and it allows for too much weasel-wording interpretation. Much more straightforward definitions are these:

Female: a human with XX chromosomes.
Male: a human with XY chromosomes.

Maybe add inclusion as Female those with XXY chromosomes and Male those with XYY chromosomes. Those combinations are exceedingly rare, though, and likely would be better handled on a case-by-case basis.

The bill is too limiting, unless a companion bill also is put forward. There’s no room for transgender athletes in this or any other bills under consideration or in effect. That’s a deficiency that’s easy enough to correct other than politically. Simply amend Title IX to require Federally funded sports programs to include substantially equal programs for transgender athletes as a separate category, in the same way substantially equal programs currently are required for male and female athletes as separate categories. That also would obviate the need to play games with whether an athlete is a member of a particular sex simply on that athlete’s say-so.