Category Archives: morality

VA Obstruction

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…a program rolled out to give certain veterans the option of government-funded private care is experiencing serious bumps: according to reports, only 27,000 vets have taken advantage of the Choice Card program since it was launched in November.

Recall:

Technically, to be eligible to see a non-VA doctor, a veteran must be at least 40 miles away from the nearest VA hospital, or have waited at least 30 days for an appointment.

Which is bad enough, but it’s a clear rule, one that even bureaucrats can understand.

Air Force veteran Pat Baughman, for example, told Fox News he lives about 50 miles away from the nearest VA hospital in Bay Springs, MS—approximately a one-hour drive. But when Baughman called the Choice Card phone number last November, he was told to drive more than three hours away to a hospital in Natchez, MS.

“It didn’t make sense at all. I told them that’s longer than what I’m driving now. So they said they’d get back with me,” Baughman said, adding he received a call the next day and was told to drive to another location instead—two hours away.

And

One area of confusion is that according to the rules, a veteran must be 40 miles away from the nearest VA—”as the crow flies.”

Of course, the VA’s rules writers know that roads—especially rural ones—don’t follow straight paths.

And there’s Paul Walker, a veteran living in Minnesota and fighting cancer.

[H]e was turned down for private care for cancer treatment because there was a VA clinic within 20 miles of his home—but the closest VA hospital which offers the treatment he needs reportedly is more than 50 miles away.

“I tried using it and I got flatly turned down,” said Walker, who told the network that at the clinic, “all they do is dental work there and eye work and some basic kinds of different minor things…but I have cancer stage 4.”

And Congressman Tim Huelskamp (R, KS), with 63 counties and no VA hospital in his district:

I got an email by a veteran who drives 340 miles one way for cardiology.

These don’t appear to be isolated cases: that low number of signups, for instance. VA’s bureaucrats surely know these weaknesses in their rules and in their implementation of their rules; plainly these failures are the result of VA bureaucratic foot-dragging.

I’ve said it before: it’s time to disband the VA and convert what would have been its budget into vouchers for our veterans.

YGTBSM

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Senate Democrats are fuming over abortion language inserted into a bipartisan human trafficking bill that they failed to notice before voting to move the bill to the floor.

Failed to notice for the two months they’ve had it. Another case of irresponsible Democrats not bothering to read legislation on which they vote—even in committee.

Democrats are now threatening to block the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, which cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 2 by a unanimous vote and is now being debated before the full Senate.

Because spending your tax dollars on abortion is more important to Democrats than is protecting women and children from sex slavery. And one of its fallouts: pregnancies.

Unthinking Dishonesty

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President Barack Obama’s dissembling is legendary. Recall his claim, oft repeated, that if you like your health insurance policy or your doctor, you can keep them. Recall his oft repeated claims that Presidents don’t have the authority to act unilaterally on immigration in exactly the way he acted last November.

Here’s a couple more things he said.

The pattern overall is that the climate is getting warmer. That’s undeniable[.]

Except that the data are unclear on this, in the way that Obama means. It’s indisputable that the climate has not gotten warmer over the last 18 years. It’s indisputable that orbital mechanics and the sun’s cycles play a major role in Earth’s climate change. It’s indisputable that, over Earth’s existence, the sun is heating up. It’s indisputable that, over geologic time frames, Earth is warming. It’s entirely disputable that human activity is having a major effect on climate.

Obama also said,

Our homicide rates are so much larger than other industrialized countries, by like a mile.

Most of that is attributable to the easy, ready availability of firearms, particularly handguns.

No. Today’s homicide rate is half that of the Clinton administration’ time frame, yet handgun ownership has vastly increased since then. In general, gun ownership, and lack of gun control laws are correlated with fewer murders. For instance, in 2011, California, with the most stringent gun control laws in the US (according to the Brady Campaign), had a gun murder rate of 3.25 murders per 100,000 people. Texas, with pretty loose gun control laws, had a gun murder rate of 2.91 per 100,000. Utah, with the loosest gun control laws in the US, had a gun murder rate of 0.97.

Of course, Obama knows these things. He’s too smart, too well educated, too widely read, and too current on the events in the world not to know these things. But lying to get his way is so habitual in him that he just says these things of convenience without the slightest thought.

What could be worse than that? His Democratic Party has said not a word to correct his errors. These men and women also are too smart, too well educated, too widely read, and too current on the events in the world not to know these things. Their silence on the matter demonstrates that they agree with his behavior as much as with his claims.

See, too, the Democratic Party’s silence on Hillary Clinton’s misbehaviors in violating Federal law with her Secretary of State private email accounts and her accepting—quite sizeable—donations from foreign governments while she was sitting in the Secretary of State’s chair, even if the money was washed through her Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation‎.

Remember this in 2016.

The Fearfulness of the Left

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Some of you may recall the Democratic Congressman from Arizona, Raul Grijalva, and his assault on the integrity of scientists and others who have the impudence to question his and his Left’s Orthodoxy on anthropogenic global warming. One of his assault victims was Dr Willie Soon, of the Solar and Stellar Physics (SSP) Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Soon has released a statement regarding this assault and its implications. In part, he says,

I am saddened and appalled by this effort, not only because of the personal hurt it causes me and my family and friends, but also because of the damage it does to the integrity of the scientific process. I am willing to debate the substance of my research and competing views of climate change with anyone, anytime, anywhere. It is a shame that those who disagree with me resolutely decline all public debate and stoop instead to underhanded and unscientific ad hominem tactics.
…
I regret deeply that the attacks on me now appear to have spilled over onto other scientists who have dared to question the degree to which human activities might be causing dangerous global warming, a topic that ought rightly be the subject of rigorous open debate, not personal attack. I similarly regret the terrible message this pillorying sends young researchers about the costs of questioning widely accepted “truths.”

…I challenge all parties involved to focus on real scientific issues for the betterment of humanity.

Put up or shut up, guys. Of what are you so terrified, that you refuse to debate matters of science? Other than your understanding that you have no case, I mean.

 

h/t Power Line

A Conservative’s View of American Domestic Policy: Some Thoughts

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It’s out.

This is the first of a pair of publications on American policy; the other is concerned with National Policy, which consists of foreign and defense policy.

Domestic Policy both is necessary in its own right and must come before National Policy since a sound policy domestically is absolutely required both for the health of the nation within our borders and to facilitate—indeed, to enable—any form of outward-facing policy at the national level.

Domestic Policy is a combination of social and economic policies. Social Policy consists of these things: the concept of the American nation; American citizenship; the role of faith in our society; the role of immigration and its importance to our society; the importance of consensus; and the role of education.

Economic Policy consists of these things: the nature of a free market and its condition as the most moral system and the one most conducive to generating prosperity for all (even though there always will be some more or less prosperous than others), the role of the Federal government in protecting and enhancing our economy, and the role of Federal regulation in facilitating our economy.

Of course, these two major divisions of Domestic Policy are not truly separate from each other any more than biology, chemistry, and physics are separate from each other within science. Just as we divide scientific disciplines from each other to facilitate inquiry and discussion, I’m separating domestic policy into these divisions to facilitate a similar inquiry and discussion—while remaining fully aware and making occasional use of their very large areas of overlap.

The book is available in eBook form from amazon.com () and