Category Archives: morality

The VA Needs to Go

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The Department of Veterans Affairs has linked the recent deaths of at least 19 vets diagnosed with cancer in 2010 and 2011 to appointment backlogs and delays at VA hospitals and clinics and resulting hindrances in care….

That this is something entirely correctible from within the VA is corroborated by the VA’s continued coverup of responsibility.  The VA so far has refused to identify those responsible for these veterans’ deaths or for the delay-caused or exacerbated injuries of many other vets, and the VA has refused to discipline or fire anyone—anyone at all—regarding this…problem, according to Congressman Jeff Miller (R, FL), House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman.  Miller also said

I don’t want to hear the excuse anymore that “It was multi-faceted. … There were many people involved.”  If there were many people involved then they all need to go.

We are not asking for one particular person, we want to know exactly why things happened and who was held responsible.  At this point publicly, we haven’t seen anybody held responsible.

“They all need to go” must include General Eric Shinseki, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, who seems disinterested, or unable, to correct these problems.

Enough.  This VA needs to be gotten rid of entirely, and the function absorbed into the Department of Defense, where fellow veterans, both active and now-civilian, will be more likely to take such matters seriously.  That a Cabinet-level functionality like the present VA should behave in this way is utterly reprehensible and wholly unacceptable.

The Cynicism of the Obama Savings Plan

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President Barack Obama in his SOTU speech offered a new “investment” plan for all those workers who don’t have access to a company sponsored 401(k).  His MyRA (My Retirement Account.  How cute.) would be available to anyone who has a job.  Sort of like traditional and Roth IRAs.

With those other IRAs, the owner can choose from a plethora of investment vehicles: stocks; mutual funds; bonds; even Treasury Bills, Notes, and Bonds.  And a bunch of other items, as well, but you get the idea.  The choice of investment, the choice of risk level, every choice of interest to an investor or a retirement saver, is that of the IRA owner.

MyRAs, on the other hand, have a single—count ’em—investment option: Treasury Bonds of the same type that Federal employees get if they enroll in the government’s Thrift Savings Plan Government Securities Investment Fund.  These bonds had an annual rate of return of 1.47% as recently as 2012, and a 10-year rate of 3.61%.  Talk about your wonderful employee discount deal down at the car dealership…..  At least the investor would be relieved of the burden of all those choices, though.

No, the truth of this wonderful Obama boon is that it’s just another way to con people into lending money to a spendthrift Federal government, this time with special emphasis on the targeted young and poor.

Another Use for OPM

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It turns out that most members of Congress do not pay their interns a dime for their efforts.  There’s some validity to this; those interns get a potful of practical political experience and some resume material.

What makes this interesting, though, is that nearly every one of the Congressional Democrats who demand a minimum wage be paid—and who demand the current minimum wage be raised to $10/hr or more—are included in those who don’t pay their interns anything.

Employment Policies Institute found that 96% of House and Senate sponsors of the minimum wage bill do not pay their interns.  That includes lead bill sponsors, like Senator Tom Harkin (D, IA), according to the study.

It’s not only “Do as I say, not as I do,” it’s also “Do it with OPM.”

Hmm….

A Conservative’s Thoughts on Rights and Duties, their Duality, and some Implications

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I have a new pamphlet out, A Conservative’s Thoughts on Rights and Duties, their Duality, and some Implications; a link to the Kindle version of it (the only version, currently) has been added to the sidebar at right.

I touched on rights and duties and their duality in my book A Conservative’s Manifesto, but only tangentially to a larger discussion of Conservative principles.  However, an understanding of individual rights and individual duties, especially their nature as individual endowments rather than as attributes of groups of men or as grants from some men acting in a “government’s” name, forms a critical part of Conservative thought.  Now, with us Americans broadly divided on what our rights and duties really are, or even whether the government should have them instead of us, is the time to expand on that peripheral discussion and to address the matter directly.

My central thesis is this: our inalienable rights and our inalienable duties, as endowments from and by our Creator, and as duals of each other, are a part of the fabric of our existence—both as individual rights and duties and in the capacity of those duals.  Further, just as importantly, our inalienable rights and our inalienable duties are in each of us as individuals; they are not in groups of us, they are not in the whole of us as a nation.  Each one of us is possessed of them entirely in ourselves.

This, of course, has implications for the role our government, and especially for the roles of “civil law” and “civil rights,” in our lives.

I hope you enjoy the pamphlet.

Bigotry at the UN

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What a surprise.

A UN exhibit created as a joint venture between the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization—UNESCO—and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the People, Book, Land – The 3,500 Year Relationship of the Jewish People and the Land of Israel, and scheduled to open Monday, has been canceled, and cynically so: it was done at the last minute, leaving little time for the Center to respond.

Why?  The Arab League claimed the exhibit “could create potential obstacles related to the peace process in the Middle East.”   Never mind that the obstacle to peace there has been Palestinian terrorist refusal to take peace negotiations seriously (and President Barack Obama’s insistence on acquiescing to Palestinian demands while not supporting our ally in the slightest, but that’s another story).  Never mind that the PLO (under the rubric “Palestine”) is a member in good standing of UNESCO and in that capacity had review and input into this exhibit as it was being developed and scheduled.

Never mind the extortionate threat the Arab League’s…objection…represents.  Chairperson of Group V(b) (Arab States), Abdulla al Neaimi of the UAE, proclaimed in a letter to the UNESCO MFWIC, Irina Bokova,

The subject of this exhibition is highly political though the appearance of the title seems to be trivial.  Most serious is the defense of this theme which is one of the reasons used by the opponents of peace within Israel.  The publicity that will accompany…the exhibit can only cause damage to the peace negotiations presently occurring, and the constant effort of Secretary of State John Kerry, and the neutrality and objectivity of UNESCO.

For all these reasons, for the major worry not to damage UNESCO in its…mission of support for peace, the Arab group within UNESCO is asking you to make the decision to cancel this exhibition.

This is nothing more—or less—than anti-Israeli, anti-Jewish bigotry by the Arab League and the timid acquiescence to it by UNESCO (and by the Obama administration, which meekly accepted Neami’s charges and Bokova’s agreement with them).

It’s time we cut off funding to the UN until the UN goes back to its founding principles.  We have other uses for our money in an era of enormous deficits and runaway national debt.