Category Archives: defense policy

A Thought on Government and Enterprise

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This is from The Washington Times.

[T]he Obama administration first received clear notice more than five years ago about the need for an overhaul to reduce patient wait times.

“Excessive wait times are addressed by moving to a resource-based management system,” Veterans Affairs technology officials told the Obama-Biden transition team in a briefing report that included mention of VA’s “schedule replacement” project.

And this [emphasis added]:

“VA has been trying—and failing—to replace its outpatient scheduling system since 2000, wasting nearly $130 million in the process,” Rep. Jeff Miller, Florida Republican and chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, told The Times when asked about the delays.

“Because VA acquisition officials have proven time and again they are simply too inept to guide the development of a new proprietary appointment-scheduling system in an expedient and cost-effective manner, department leaders need to look at adopting commercial technologies that are being used in the private sector….”

It’s easy enough to knock President Barack Obama and his administration over this, and President George Bush’s administration had a hand in this, too. It’s also easy to hammer the Veterans Affairs Department. However, the problem isn’t about any particular President’s failure to deal with a problem, nor is it about the broad failure of the VA to perform.

No, this is an illustration of the general inability of government to do as well as private enterprise anything that private enterprise can do in a competitive market: if private enterprise can do a thing at all, it can within very broad limits do it better than government (national defense and foreign policy come to mind as things better left to the Federal government, but not much else). The Federal government cannot compete with private enterprise on efficiency at all.

In sum, such things should be left to the private sector of our economy, and the government should just stay out. In the particular case, this means that the VA should be disbanded and the VA’s annual budget sent to our veterans as vouchers with which they can find their own doctors, their own medical facilities, their own health plans.

As Predicted

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I predicted this at the end of last week.

Iran agreed to new steps to contain its nuclear work in exchange for additional sanctions relief from the US as the two sides extended negotiations for four more months to reach a comprehensive deal.

Under Friday’s deal, the US will give Tehran access over the next four months to an additional $2.8 billion in oil export revenues frozen abroad by American sanctions, Secretary of State John Kerry said.

In return for this additional money, this speaking fee for the Iranian negotiators,

Iran agreed Friday to take further measures to curtail the most advanced parts of its nuclear program.

Iran also agreed to dilute its stock of up to 2% enriched uranium into natural uranium, Western officials said, which could slightly lengthen the time it would take to spin that into highly enriched fuel for a nuclear weapon.

And we believe them. Certainly the guy who currently sits in the Secretary of State’s chair believes them. John Kerry said, in announcing this latest American concession,

Let me be clear, Iran will not get any more money during these four months than it did during the last six months.

In other words and as noted above, Iran is going to get more money: the $8 billion to which it got access “the last six months” is only an upper bound to that additional money; the released $2.8 billion may not be the last of it.

One last thing: here’s what President Barack Obama said last January in his State of the Union address when he described the just-expired 6 months of talks that were, then, just getting started:

If Iran’s leaders do not seize this opportunity, then I will be the first to call for more sanctions, and stand ready to exercise all options to make sure Iran does not build a nuclear weapon.

The opportunity is passed. It expired Friday. But, then, that was just a deadline.

Rockets on Israel

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The Executive Vice President of B’nai B’rith International, Daniel Mariaschin, is on the right track. In an op-ed written for Fox News, he very appropriately decried the European Union’s inability to identify, much less understand, who the enemy is in the current explosion of the confrontation between Israel and the terrorists bent on Israel’s destruction.

However, Mariaschin makes his own critical error:

Who exactly does the EU think is firing rockets at Israel?

One thing is for sure: the Hamas rockets have nothing to do with Israel’s settlement policy.

It’s true that those rockets and Israel’s settlement policy are unrelated. But they’re not Hamas rockets. When the Palestinian Authority merged with Hamas in a “reconciliation” government, those rockets became Palestinian Authority rockets.

Mariaschin, and too many others, still draw a distinction between Hamas and the rest of the PA; however, this belies the new reality. Hamas and the PA are one and the same. Hamas’ mission and goal have become the Palestinian Authority’s mission and goal.

Full stop.

It’s Not Me, It’s Them

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Regarding the current children’s crisis on our border with Mexico, and following a private meeting with Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) which President Barack Obama is masquerading as a suitable sub for him personally visiting that border area, President Obama had some comments.

I urged the Governor to talk to the Texas delegation, which is obviously at the heart of the Republican caucus both in the House and has great influence in the caucus in the Senate. …if the Texas delegation is prepared to move, this thing can get done next week.

And

[T]he only question at this point is why wouldn’t the Texas delegation or any of the other Republicans who are concerned about this not want to put this [Obama’s request for nearly $4 billion] on a fast track and get this on my desk…?

And

I suggested to the Governor he has, I suspect, some influence over the Texas delegation….

And

One of the suggestions I had for Governor Perry was that it would be useful for my Republican friends to rediscover the concept of negotiation and compromise.

And so on.

It’s never Obama’s fault. He’s just a helpless pawn of a pernicious House of Representatives and of Evil Republicans.

Obama and our Border

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Howard Kurtz has said,

Would a presidential visit solve anything? Not really.

Not by itself, no (and that’s the thrust of his piece—not by itself, but it would help).

However, it’s always important—overtly useful, even—for the guy in charge to go to the scene and see with his own eyes, hear with his own ears, smell with his own nose, touch with his own hands, the situation that’s of such grave concern, like the children’s humanitarian crisis currently expanding along our border with Mexico.

For President Barack Obama not merely to avoid this necessity here but actively to refuse it is to raise a question: of what is he so terrified that he might see, hear, smell, touch? The reality of the situation?

Obama says that members of his staff have been to the border many times, and they keep him closely informed. Recall, though, that this is the same staff that have been keeping him so closely informed that he usually doesn’t find out about this or that until he reads it in the newspapers.

Obama also says that he didn’t go because he didn’t want just another photo opportunity. He’s only projecting his own failing here, though; no one else who wanted him to go—not Texas Governor Rick Perry (R), not Congressman Henry Cuellar (D, TX)—were interested in that; they were interested only that Obama go see for himself, go speak with the personnel on scene for himself, go talk to the children himself.

Obama’s not interested, though.