Tag Archives: ethics

More Stonewalling

Posted on by
Reply

The CFPB, which was created after the financial crisis and began operation in 2011, is the latest federal agency to reject requests using a “Glomar response,” named after the Glomar Explorer, a Cold War-era ship used by intelligence officials to retrieve sunken Soviet submarines.

A Glomar rejection of a FOIA request for information is a rejection based on the premise that the agency saying “No” cannot either confirm or deny that the requested records even are in its possession.  This is an intelligence-related claim; yet the the requests are consumer-related information, and the CFPB is reputed to be a consumer-oriented Federal government entity.

With consumer-related FOIA requests, there are no intelligence questions involved.  Of course, the bureaucrats of the CFPB know this.

Sam Gilford, a CFPB spokesman, had this on the matter:

Disclosing whether the bureau possesses records about a pending or potential investigation would effectively disclose whether it has in fact investigated the institution [which could hamper an investigation].

This is disingenuous.  If an “investigation” is pending, it’s under consideration for being initiated.  If an “investigation” is merely potential, it’s just a thought in a CFPB agent’s mind.  There is no investigation extant in either case, and so there can be no hampering of one.

The CFPB is simply stonewalling.

Stonewalling

Posted on by
Reply

This blatantly insults our intelligence.  The Republication National Committee sued in Federal court to enforce a FOIA request for a years’ worth of correspondence involving then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s aides, including her former chief of staff, Cheryl Mills; Jacob Sullivan, one of her advisers; and Patrick Kennedy, a senior State official at the time, a FOIA request against which State had already been stonewalling.  In response, State had a filing:

The State Department has told a federal court that processing a Republican National Committee demand for documents relating to Hillary Clinton and her aides would take as long as 75 years—and would stretch “generations.”

Generations to check out a year.  State expanded on those 75 years:

…it would take approximately 16-and-2/3 years to complete the review of the Mills documents, 33-and-1/3 years to finish the review of the Sullivan documents, and 25 years to wrap up the review of the Kennedy documents — or 75 years in total[.]

Because, State says, it’ll only process 500 pages, per month, and there are 450,000 pages of these documents.

The presiding judge should hold those State Department bureaucrats in contempt of court and send his bailiff to seize the records and the computers on which they sit, as well as any hard copy files, and bring them to his court where a court-appointed team of evaluators can go over them.

Fat chance, unfortunately.

“Systemic” Failures at VA Watchdog

Posted on by
Reply

That’s the heart the title of USA Today‘s piece earlier this week on the Veterans Administration’s continued failure to perform.  This smacks of active coverup by the top levels of the VA.

A Senate investigation of poor health care at a Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Tomah, WI, found systemic failures in a VA inspector general’s review of the facility….

And

The probe by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee found the inspector general’s office…discounted key evidence and witness testimony, needlessly narrowed its inquiry, and has no standard for determining wrongdoing.

And [emphasis added]

One of the biggest failures identified by Senate investigators was the inspector general’s decision not to release its investigation report….

Releasing the report would have forced VA officials to publicly address the issue and ensured follow up by the inspector general to make sure the VA took action. Instead, the inspector general’s office briefed local VA officials and closed the case.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

Cyber Threats

Posted on by
Reply

The White House has been unable to detect a single cyber security threat more than six months after issuing a “national emergency” to deal with what the administration identified as growing and immediate danger, according to a new government report.

Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton insists she has no evidence that anyone successfully penetrated her personal, private email server that she used for government business.

I wonder the basis of that claim.

Hillary Clinton Said, “No”

Posted on by
Reply

Hillary Clinton is ducking her final debate with Senator Bernard Sanders, brushing off a commitment she made earlier this year to participate in a forum in California ahead of the state’s June 7 primary….

This raises two questions in my pea brain.  One is, of what is she so afraid?  She’s shown herself an effective debater, and this would have been a golden opportunity to put her opponent away and enhance the strength of her supporters at the Democratic Convention regarding such things as the Party Platform, which Sanders wants to drag even farther to the left.

The other question is a larger one: if Clinton won’t keep this commitment, how can we trust her to keep any commitment were she to be elected?  What is the value of her word, exactly?