Tag Archives: politics

The VA…Continues

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Now it’s the Veterans Administration hospital in Durham, NC, that’s come to light.

Hanna and Stephen McMenamin posted photos of two aging veterans in the hospital’s waiting room who were in obvious pain and getting no help, for hours.  One man was having trouble staying in his wheel chair, and another wound up lying on the floor because he kept asking for a place to lie down and getting no response.  The second veteran finally got a response—to make him get back in his waiting room chair.

Medical Center Director DeAnne Seekins finally reacted, after the McMenamins posted their photos:

It is an honor to serve America’s heroes and actions that do not align with our core values will not be tolerated. We pride ourselves on providing the highest quality care to the Veterans we serve and being responsive to our patient’s needs. Veterans deserve nothing less.

Really? When are you going to start living up to these pretty words?  When was the last time you left your office and actually walked the floor to see how things were going?  You would have seen this.

 

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

Hysteria or Hypocrisy?

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You pick ’em.  The latest example of irrationality (which is a superset of both hysteria and hypocrisy) comes via V the K at GayPatriot.

Recall that the Progressive-Democratic Party that runs Philadelphia passed a massive sugar tax to be levied against soft drinks sold in the city.  Recall, too, the high school economics teaching that if you raise the price of something, demand for that something falls off.  Finally, recall that applying a tax to that something is the same as raising its price.

The [soda] tax is huge, amounting to a 45% to 100% increase in the final consumer cost of typically affected beverage products.

Last week the other shoe dropped.

Two months into the city’s sweetened-beverage tax, supermarkets and distributors are reporting a 30% to 50% drop in beverage sales and are planning for layoffs.

And

One of the city’s largest distributors says it will cut 20% of its workforce in March, and an owner of six ShopRite stores in Philadelphia says he expects to shed 300 workers this spring.

“People are seeing sales decline larger than anything they’ve seen up to this point in the city,” said Alex Baloga, vice president of external relations at the Pennsylvania Food Merchants Association.

And

Sources with Teamsters Local 830 say that layoffs are “imminent” and that some workers have seen their take-home pay drop by 50 to 75% because they’re moving less product.

Restaurants are feeling the pinch, too. Josh Kim, owner of Spot Gourmet Burger, says sugary drink sales at his shop have gone down about 10 to 15%.

Naturally, the Progressive-Democrats, unable to confess to their economic illiteracy (I don’t think they’re economically illiterate, either; these are the party of Know Betters; economics is one of the things they Know Better than us petty commoners), are calling the supermarket and distributor management greedy liars.

We have no way of knowing if their sales figures and predicted job losses are anything more than fear-mongering to prevent this from happening in other cities,” said city spokesman Mike Dunn.
…
“I didn’t think it was possible for the soda industry to be any greedier,” [Philadelphia Mayor Jim] Kenney said in an emailed statement. “… They are so committed to stopping this tax from spreading to other cities, that they are not only passing the tax they should be paying onto their customer, they are actually willing to threaten working men and women’s jobs rather than marginally reduce their seven figure bonuses.”

Go figure.

Call Them on Their Obstructionism

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Heather Higgins, CEO of Independent Women’s Voice, says go big or go home regarding Obamacare.  Republicans in Congress should quit dithering, should not play reconciliation games, and should simply put an Obamacare repeal and replace package up for vote.  This would force the Democrat obstructionists—especially those #NeverTrumpNoHow and #NeverRepublicanNotEver Progressive-Democrats in the Senate on the record as by-name blocking reform of the Obama program that is in its death spiral, the endpoint of which will leave millions of Americans without health coverage and without even coverage providers to which to appeal.  Especially put those 10 Progressive-Democrats pretending to moderacy in order to protect their precarious reelection chances in 2018 on the spot.

Now that insurers are acknowledging the death spiral, there’s an opportunity for bolder action. The House could use regular order, not reconciliation, to pass a bill that not only fully repeals ObamaCare—returning control of the private market to the states—but simultaneously puts into effect at least the core components of reform while including grandfathering and other provisions to smooth the transition to lower-priced options on the free market.

Such a bill could easily pass the House, putting pressure on the Senate. Would Minority Leader Chuck Schumer allow proper consideration of much-needed health-care reform? And with all the evidence that ObamaCare has been a disaster and—untouched by Republicans—is quickly unraveling, would Democrats, 25 of whom are up for re-election next year, vote to defend the status quo?

And

There would be two Senate filibuster points—the first, to allow consideration; the second, to allow a vote. Thinking through what would happen, the American public and Trump administration would be well served by this exercise of transparent democracy.
…
If Democrats blocked consideration of the bill, they would do President Trump a favor by showing the public the parliamentary shenanigans of the anti-deliberation filibuster—call it the “Senatorial Full Employment Through Avoiding Tough Votes” maneuver.

And

If Democrats refuse to allow debate, Republicans should kill the filibuster against deliberation (as distinct from the filibuster to end debate and hold a vote). They can do so by simple majority vote, as Harry Reid showed when he ended the filibuster against most nominations in 2013. Either way, the Senate can actually have a vote on repealing the Affordable Care Act and reforming health care.

Republicans should heed this advice, and go for it.  If it fails, Republicans can always go the reconciliation route.

Don’t Offend Russia?

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Heaven forfend.  Or at least that was Michael O’Hanlon’s (Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution) concern when he proposed An Alternative to NATO Expansion That Won’t Antagonize Russia.  Never mind that what’s in American national interest is what matters, not that subset of it that won’t upset an enemy of ours.

[T]hese two countries [Ukraine and NATO], as well as other Eastern European neutral states, get no protection from NATO.

I’ll leave aside the value of NATO protection as that organization is currently constituted, funded, and armed; that’s a separate discussion.  No, the nub of O’Hanlon’s misunderstanding is this:

They are also too close to Russia for NATO to protect them, absent the deployment of a large and permanent forward defense.

He wrote that as though he thought forward deployment would be a bad thing.  In some respects it would be, but not for the reason he thinks.  Forward deployment of lots of heavy units would be foolish; such units would simply be targets in the event of a Russian decision to invade (aside from the fact that, with modern weapons and Russia’s forward deployment of nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad and its deployment of nuclear cruise missiles in western Russia, such units would be targets anywhere they’re stationed).  On the other hand, forward deployment of smaller, but still combat capable, units would send a very clear message that any Russian invasion would be an invasion of much more than just the nominally target nation.

On top of that, they most assuredly are not “too close to Russia.”  They merely abut Russia.  Russia is too close to eastern European nations by O’Hanlon’s logic.  Then he suggested this in all seriousness:

It is time that Western nations seek to negotiate a new security architecture for neutral countries in Eastern Europe today. The core concept would be permanent neutrality, at least in terms of formal membership in treaty-based mutual-defense organizations. The countries in question collectively make a broken-up arc from Europe’s far north to its south—Finland and Sweden; Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus; Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan; Cyprus plus Serbia, and possibly other Balkan states. …

The new security architecture would require that Russia, like NATO, commit to uphold the security of Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and other states in the region. Russia would have to withdraw its troops from those countries in a verifiable manner

It is, indeed, time for a new security architecture, but O’Hanlon’s idea is little different from unspoken surrender born of false premises.  Permanent neutrality?  Russia won’t allow it; it never has.  Russia commit to uphold another nation’s security?  It’s already partitioned Georgia and occupied parts of it, and it’s dividing up Moldava, working as it is to carve off Transnistria.  It’s partitioned and occupied parts of Ukraine, explicitly crapping on the Budapest Memorandum in the process.

O’Hanlon can’t be that ignorant.

This isn’t naïveté.  This is idiocy.  I repeat: what’s in American national interest is what matters, not that subset of it that won’t upset an enemy of ours.  The same holds for Europe, as well, most especially those nations of eastern Europe, under the Russian gun as they so plainly are.

The Sons of the American Legion is a Gang?

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This happened in a Dave & Buster’s restaurant last Saturday in Kentwood, MI, but corporate headquarters in Dallas has confirmed the thing and said it’s corporate-wide policy.  Two members of the Sons of The American Legion, wearing their SAL vests, and their wives entered the restaurant hoping for a nice dinner.  Management stopped them and told the men to turn their vests inside out.  The men and their wives chose to leave, instead of suffering the insult.  Victor Murdock, Assistant Director of American Legion Post 179 in Grandville, MI, and one of the men, told 24 Hour News 8,

It’s just a good group of guys that want to raise awareness for PTSD, fallen veterans, for the ones that didn’t come back, even for those who did come back and are dealing with situations they never got over.

And

The vest is one way Murdock and other members convey their message. After all, they say, there are few things that define American pride more than the flag and the eagle featured on the vest.

“It says we believe in America. We believe in our troops. We support our veterans,” Murdock said.

The full statement, from April Spearman, Dave & Buster’s Vice corporate President for Marketing:

We are extremely grateful to all of our active military members and veterans and are honored to have them as valued guests in any of our locations.

Our dress code, which prohibits evidence of gang affiliation, is in place to ensure that everyone is able to enjoy themselves in a fun and safe environment. Though we understand that the American Legion promotes a positive mission, for consistency reasons we cannot allow motorcycle jackets displaying patches or rockers. Our policies are in no way meant to be disrespectful and we apologize for any frustration this may have caused.

In addition, please know that this group was not asked to leave, but to simply turn their jackets inside out. Again, we apologize for any misunderstanding.

Because this affiliate of the American Legion is equivalent to a gang.  Notice, too, that last bit of disingenuousity.  No, the four were not asked to leave.  They were just told to disrespect everything they stood for.

Absent a turnover in management, Dave & Buster’s has lost my business.