Tag Archives: morality

Law Enforcement

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…and President Barack Obama.  House Speaker John Boehner (R, OH) said last Thursday,

There’s widespread doubt about whether this administration can be trusted to enforce our laws.  It’s going to be difficult to move any immigration legislation until that changes.

This comes close to killing any sort of immigration reform before the November mid-terms.  Asked about this statement in a following daily mid-day press conference, Obama said through his Press Secretary Jay Carney the following:

The president has an exceptional record of improving border security on his watch.

Notice that.  Both Boehner’s description of the lack of trust in Obama to enforce the law and the question about that lack of trust were general; they were not limited in any way, including regarding any particular subset of the law.

Carney’s Obama’s evasiveness in answering the question is a clear demonstration of the factors underlying that lack of trust.

Are Liberals Embarrassed by Patriotism?

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Or are they just afraid of it?

Fort Collins High School won’t allow its students to celebrate America and Americanism.  Full Stop.

Administrators’ pseudo-rationale is this:

  • they didn’t want to offend anyone from other countries or immigrants
  • they didn’t want to be exclusive to any other country
  • they just really did not want to make anyone feel uncomfortable

Yet the students are required to participate in Cinco de Mayo celebrations.  The students, though, aren’t as dumb as the high school’s…management team…thinks they are.  One student, all of 16 years old:

There are men and women fighting for our country and we should be able to celebrate that and be proud that we live in a country where we are allowed to vote—the right to free speech. They won’t even let us celebrate it.

Never mind that “anyone from other countries or immigrants” are here to be in American, to reap the benefits of American culture.

Never mind that there isn’t any other country here, so that exclusivity is a cynical red herring.

Never mind that these administrators make the rest of us Americans, including their own students, uncomfortable with their…attitude…or that their attitude is offensive to the rest of us Americans.

Americans don’t count in Liberal minds.

As Todd Starnes put it

shame on the administrators at Fort Collins High School for treating American school children like second-class citizens.

Update: Fort Collins High School Principal Mark Eversole may have seen the light, or at least he’s reversed course and is allowing the students to put on their ‘Merica Monday–renamed America day.  Here’s the letter he wrote to parents:

We apologize for our recent decision regarding My Country Monday and that it was seen as not patriotic. This could not be further from the truth. The original intent of Spread the Love week at Fort Collins High School was to unify the student body. When students first proposed “Merica Monday,” we felt that it was against this unifying theme and disrespectful to our country. Merica is a slang term that is often used in a negative stereotypical way to describe life in the United States. This is what led us to discuss alternatives with students. We were surprised that our community interpreted our actions as anti-American. We are a proud public school in America and support many activities to celebrate our great nation. Due to this outpouring of sentiment and misinterpretation of our intentions, we have decided to rename the first day of Spread the Love week to “America Day” as opposed to “Merica Day.” We look forward to enjoying the creativity and energy of our students as they celebrate their patriotism next week.

This doesn’t entirely settle the matter, but it’s a step–however grudgingly taken–in the right direction.  Todd Starnes has more.

As do I: Merica is a slang term that is often used in a negative stereotypical way….  Maybe I’ve lived a sheltered life, but I’ve not heard it in any way other than neutrally.  Be that as it may, there’s also a so what factor, and another one: so were Yankee and Yankee doodle slang terms used in negative stereotypical ways.  Eversole would do well to review some American history the next time he thinks about deprecating American patriotism.

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….