Another VA Failure

Posted on by
Reply

…in a too-long string of failures.

A body found in a stairwell at the Bedford Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Massachusetts is a veteran who lived at the facility and disappeared more than a month ago.

He was missing, too, for five days before anyone cared enough to notice and report him missing.

It’s long past time to stop throwing taxpayer money into this hole. Disband the Veterans Administration entirely and use its budget and putative future budgets as vouchers for our veterans so they can get decent health care and shelter at quality facilities of their choice.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

Presidential Debates

Posted on by
Reply

Reince Priebus thinks President Donald Trump should debate the Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden as often as possible. He suggests that the Trump campaign should push for

“…six debates, not three debates in September and October,” because of COVID and all the other restrictions.
…
My advice is blow up the three-debate commission limit. Double it and go for that at the end of the campaign. They should focus on that like a laser beam.

Priebus has the right of it. And if Biden declines to debate often, or throws up roadblocks to debate formats, Trump should hold the debates, anyway—and debate an empty chair each time.

More Federal Money to States and Locals?

Posted on by
Reply

The “unrest” sparked by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and now by the killing of Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta, is encouraging Congressmen to include increased funding for State and local jurisdictions in any “next stimulus” package that might be in the offing.

States and cities facing budget shortfalls have warned they might need to pare back spending on public safety, including police officers and fire protection.

“Including police officers and fire protection” is a cynical excuse for spending yet more OPM.

State and local jurisdictions aren’t effectively using the Federal monies they’re being given now, though. This is demonstrated by the rioting, looting, bad policeman (not bad police force) incidents that continue to proceed with no, or too slow, consequences.

There’s no need to throw more Federal money—more money from the taxpayers of other jurisdictions—down those ratholes until they start cleaning up their own messes.

Affirmative Action in California

Posted on by
Reply

The good citizens of California banned discrimination on the basis of race and sex when they voted up Proposition 209 nearly 25 years ago. That proposition barred affirmative action programs.

Those citizens of a generation ago understood that affirmative action programs, by their deliberate use of race and sex as selection criteria, are fundamentally racist and sexist.

Here we have the California Assembly affirmatively supporting just that racism and sexism.

California Legislative Black Caucus Chair Dr Shirley Weber, primary sponsor of ACA 5, which is designed to rescind Prop 209 and to that end puts the matter on the November ballot, said this about her bill, claiming that the current political and social environment is

forcing Californians to acknowledge the deep-seated inequality and far-reaching institutional failures that show that your race and gender still matters[.]

However, rather than addressing the root causes of “inequality” (carefully undefined, that—inequality of outcome? of initial opportunity? of…?—of whatever seems convenient to the politician, apparently) and of “institutional failures,” the California Assembly has chosen to expand those failures, to strengthen the prejudice, by reverting to those inherently bigoted programs.

My irony alarm is sounding.

And the Assembly as a whole is proud of its bigotry.

“American Retreat from Europe”

Posted on by
Reply

Congressman Mac Thornberry (R, TX), Ranking Member of the House Armed Services Committee, has misunderstood the American situation in Europe. In his Thursday Wall Street Journal op-ed, he asserted that

press reports surfaced of a proposal, backed by some in the administration, to withdraw a significant number of troops from Europe….

His piece went on in that vein.

Thornberry is badly mistaken along a number of dimensions.

First, the alleged withdrawal of troops is from Germany, not from Europe.

More than that, though, Germany along with the majority of NATO members have demonstrated that they have no interest in defending themselves or each other—for starters, they’ve all welched on their own commitments to spend even minimally—a whole 2% of their national GDP—on NATO capability.

We can’t force those nations to defend themselves, nor should we spend American treasure or risk American blood trying. Poland and the Baltics do have such an interest, and that’s where our troops should go. All of those currently stationed in Germany should go, not just the token 9,500 currently being bandied about by “reports” for withdrawal. Apparently, too, at least some of those supposed to be taken out of Germany would be slated for Poland.

Overarching all of that is this. Germany isn’t upset over the 9,500 American troops supposedly to be withdrawn from the country. Germany is upset over the loss of all those millions of American dollars being spent on the German economy by the tens of thousands of American dependents of those soldiers, as well as by the soldiers themselves.