Tag Archives: politics

What Does This Say

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…about Federal bureaucrats and their…managers? And no, I’m

not talking about a Deep State or an Administrative State.

The Biden administration on Wednesday issued a sweeping new order mandating that nearly all federal agencies patch hundreds of cybersecurity vulnerabilities that are considered major risks for damaging intrusions into government computer systems.

And

The new requirement is one of the most wide-reaching cybersecurity mandates ever imposed on the federal government. It covers about 200 known security flaws identified by cybersecurity professionals between 2017 and 2020 and an additional 90 discovered in 2021 alone that have generally been observed being used by malicious hackers. Those flaws were listed in a new federal catalog as carrying “significant risk to the federal enterprise.”

What does this say about the proactivity, the willingness to act on their own recognizance, of the bureaucrats running these agencies and of the bureaucrats responsible for IT in these agencies?

It gets worse.

A significant majority of the flaws being published on the DHS catalog are ones that weren’t covered under previous orders, a senior official said.

Where’s the initiative? The lack is as appalling as it is unacceptable. Waiting—needing—to be told what to do? Really?

These are people who Know Better and passive-aggressively obstruct actions and orders with which they personally disagree. They’re in the way and need to be terminated.

These are other people who are unable to make the office cultural change necessary. They’re also in the way and need to be terminated, albeit with more favorable rationales than that first category.

These are yet other people who’ve simply had their weak performance tolerated out of misguided efforts at being nice. They’re also in the way and need to be retrained—and terminated if the training doesn’t lead to improved performance.

But most of all, those office managers and IT honchos shouldn’t have had to be told to do this critical part of their jobs. They need to be replaced, and their replacements better vetted.

If cybersecurity officials at a certain agency fail to comply with a directive, DHS [for instance] can notify the agency’s senior leaders, who are then responsible for resolving the noncompliance.

This is entirely too slow. Those failing to perform need to be corrected promptly, and if necessary, terminated promptly.

Cybersecurity isn’t just a matter of national security. It’s a matter of national survival.

A Second Amendment Case

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors opined on the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v Bruen, a gun rights vs gun control case currently before the Supreme Court. That case centers on whether New York State gets to allow or not allow a citizen of New York (and so a citizen of the United States) to carry a firearm outside his home based on a bureaucrat’s personal view of the “need” for the citizen to carry.

In the course of that piece, the Editors exposed their own misunderstanding.

Regular citizens in New York face an almost insuperable bar if they want to bear a firearm for personal defense.

There’s nothing in the 2nd Amendment that authorizes Government to specify any purpose, personal defense or other, for an American to keep and bear Arms:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

On top of that, the 9th and 10th Amendments bar Government from making one up.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

And

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

(The courts already have made clear the relationship between this individual right and a Militia.)

Misleading—And Potential Fraud?

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Getting an adverse reaction—of any sort—from an employer-mandated or -encouraged Wuhan Virus vaccination? The Biden-Harris OSHA doesn’t want to hear about it.

The Department of Labor’s pledge Monday to publish an “emergency temporary standard” on COVID vaccine mandates “in the coming days” threatens to worsen the skewed picture federal regulators have been getting from employers for five months.

29 CFR Part 1904 – RECORDING AND REPORTING OCCUPATIONAL INJURIES AND ILLNESSES, among other things as JtN puts it requires employers to “record and report work-related fatalities, injuries, and illnesses[.]” OSHA, though, is exempting employers from reporting Wuhan Virus-related adverse reactions.

And this:

[T]he exemption is a “welcome reprieve to employers” because their insurance could have jumped based on recordkeeping logs of adverse reactions to vaccines, which have “little to no correlation” with an unsafe workplace, [labor lawyer Keith Wilkes of Hall Estill] told Just the News.

Concealing health data from the company’s health insurer could amount to insurance fraud, depending on the terms of the employer-insurer contract. It also could impact negotiations over new or renewed employer-insurer contracts, and fraudulently so if those withheld data are material to the matter being negotiated.

To be sure, OSHA still encourages employees

to file complaints when they believe their employer has exposed them to COVID or is “not taking appropriate steps to protect you from exposure.”

Which, to a candid world, would seem a bit one-sided when the employers are being told by the same OSHA to shut up about adverse reactions.

But that’s the Biden-Harris administration for you.

A Progressive-Democrat’s Bigotry

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Recall Senator Joe Manchin’s (D, WV) statement a couple of days ago when he said that he wouldn’t—couldn’t—be pressured into voting for a reconciliation bill about which he has serious, and potentially bill-killing reservations in order to get the already Senate-passed “infrastructure” bill voted on in the House.

Manchin said major parts of his reservations centered on these:

How can I in good conscience vote for a bill that proposes massive expansion to social programs when vital programs like Social Security and Medicare faces insolvency and benefits could start being reduced as soon as 2026 in Medicare and 2033 in Social Security? How does that make sense?

And

Nor will I support a package that risks hurting American families suffering from historic inflation. Simply put, I will not support a bill that is this consequential without thoroughly understanding the impact that it’ll have on our national debt, our economy, and most importantly, all of our American people.

In response, Congresswoman Cori Bush (D, MO) said

Joe Manchin’s opposition to the Build Back Better Act is anti-black, anti-child, anti-woman, and anti-immigrant.

Manufacturing a racist or sexist beef where there is no racism or sexism, as Bush has so blatantly done, is an especially pernicious form of racism, of sexism, of bigotry in general.

A Window on Biden-Harris Priorities

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Not so much from President Joe Biden’s (D) words or his Vice President and co-President Kamala Harris’ (D) careful silence, as much as what’s left in and left out of the current iteration of his reconciliation bill.

What’s still in after its seeming paring from $3.5 trillion to $1.75 trillion (don’t believe those numbers or that any numbers are anywhere near close to finality or even accuracy, but take them at value for now): climate change initiatives.

What’s out (so far):

  • paid family leave and Medicare expansion
  • drug pricing, paid leave, Medicare expansion on dental and vision
  • pathway to citizenship for millions

As Varshini Prakash, Executive Director of Sunrise Movement argued,

Progressives are the ones who have fought like hell for Biden’s full agenda, and their votes cannot be taken for granted[.]

Yet those concrete and potentially directly actionable programs are the ones that were dropped in favor of the Biden-Harris (and of so many others) fantasy of global warming as an existential threat to our species.

Yet, if those dropped programs actually were any good, they’d be fully supportable and easily voted up in their separate and individual bills. Prakash even (cynically I say) argued that the pathway to citizenship for millions was left to an unelected parliamentarian—never mind that here too, maybe especially so, the pathway to citizenship question, if it’s actually something We the People want, would be easily voted up in a separate Pathway Bill.

But no. Progressive-Democrats know these are not particularly desirable; that’s why they tried, from the height of their control of both houses of Congress and the White House, to ram these things through unilaterally with not a syllable of input from the minority party.