Tag Archives: responsibilities

The EPA Failed Again

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Quite apart from the pseudo-science that the Environmental Protection Agency’s previous Administrator, Gina McCarthy, so cynically used to rationalize her agency’s rules, and the frequent eschewing of the cost effectiveness analysis that’s supposed to underwrite or block Agency rules, the Obama administration personnel in management positions in that facility have routinely and for the duration ignored basic security rules and practices.  According to the EPA’s Inspector General,

Hundreds of contractors holding important information security jobs at the US Environmental Protection Agency have for years been working as high-level operators of its computer systems without the appropriate security background checks—a situation the agency is still scrambling to correct.

During all that time, the agency apparently did not even have a complete list of all the “high-risk” positions where detailed background investigations of outside contractors were required.

Among the IG’s findings:

As recently as last February,

nearly 70% of 484 contractors carrying a special, embedded-chip card allowing “elevated access” to EPA computer systems for their work still had not gotten their higher-level background checks.

In one sample,

five of nine contractor personnel were given sensitive access to EPA computer systems without strict background checks, even though they had worked for the EPA “for over five years.”

And

  • “a lack of oversight by responsible offices” within EPA to confirm that background investigations were initiated and eventually completed when contractors got the supposedly temporary right to special access cards
  • conflicting totals among various EPA offices about how many working contractors would require high-level background checks
  • a “breakdown in communication” among various EPA computer system managers and oversight personnel over verification of the checks
  • a refusal on the part of one EPA bureau to provide a listing of personnel who did not even have the special computer access cards but nonetheless still had privileged access to EPA computers.

Note to the IG: offices don’t do anything; the personnel manning those offices do things.  Name names.

Regarding that fourth bullet, it’s a mystery to me why the management personnel running that bureau, blatantly insubordinate as they are, haven’t been fired for cause.

Come to that, the management personnel in those other bullets also should have been fired long ago for their failure to perform, whether deliberate or not.

It’s also a mystery to me why those without the required background checks or clearances haven’t had their accesses canceled.

This is one more reason to abolish the EPA altogether.

The Veteran’s Choice Program

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This is a program that would give veterans the option of going to a private sector doctor in lieu of playing the delay wait game at a Veterans Administration facility, after the veteran has jumped through the requisite VA hoops.  After a political tussle in Congress over increasing/renewing its funding, some additional money was provided.  That additional funding was necessitated because

its popularity depleted the allocated funds more quickly than anticipated. Patient visits through the program increased more than 30% in the first quarter of fiscal year 2017, according to the VA.

Extra points for those of you who can say why the program is so popular.

Despite the success of this limited program, the Progressive-Democrats in Congress want to get rid of it.  Congressman Mark Takano (D, CA), for instance,

argued on the House floor in July that it’s a “mistaken belief that the private sector is better equipped to care for our nation’s veterans than specialized VA doctors.” But while the VA provides high-quality specialized care in certain areas, for the most part veterans’ needs are similar to everyone else’s.

Indeed.  Takano and his fellow Progressive-Democrats just want to maintain control over OPM. It’s a mistaken belief that the private sector cannot care for our nation’s veterans better than specialized VA doctors. As Burgess and Cleland (authors of the piece at the link) note, mostly our veterans’ needs are similar to everyone else’s.

Those few specialized needs unique to a veteran’s particular military history? The VA’s specialists, functioning in the private sector, can deal with those at least as well as they do now, and probably better and faster without the VA’s bureaucratic impediments.

Make the Veteran’s Choice Program functionally universal: privatize the VA, and use its current and what would have been its future budgets for veterans’ vouchers.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

The Cynicism of the Left

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And it’s especially stark in the season.  The Wall Street Journal has taken note of the “charities” of the Left and their negative attitude toward the just enacted tax reform.

“The tax code is now poised to de-incentivize the heart of civic action in America,” Dan Cardinali, president of Independent Sector, a left-leaning lobby for philanthropic outfits, told the Washington Post. “It’s deeply disturbing.”

Cardinali is projecting. Most of us donate time and/or money because it’s the right thing to do and because it’s part of our Judeo-Christian obligation to help the least among us, not because we expect some sort of reward for doing so.

Or as one commenter on that op-ed put it,

They think middle class donors who are saving $25 by giving them $100 will stop because it no longer makes economic sense? If that were the case they could save $75 before the tax change.

Cardinali and his fellows of the Left know this full well.

Wrong or Incompetent?

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Howard Kurtz had a piece up this week decrying the NLMSM’s performance with its “reporting.”

With one blunder after another over the last 10 days, the press is on a losing streak that is starting to take a toll on its collective credibility.

In two cases of…error…the pseudo-reporters got dates critically wrong.  One involved a claim, confirmed by two other “news” outlets, that Donald Trump, Jr, had received a decryption key to some collusion-related, Wikileaks-held emails prior to their release.

But the collusion allegation collapsed when it turned out the email was actually sent 10 days later, when the hacked DNC material had already been made public.

Another outlet suspended its star reporter (notice that: they didn’t fire him) over another missed date.

His original report said Trump had ordered Mike Flynn to make contact with the Russians during the campaign, which suggests collusion. But Trump actually directed Flynn to do so during the transition, as president-elect, when such diplomatic outreach would be routine….

Both of those instances relied on carefully anonymous sources, and in both of those cases the imitation reporters knew through their own sources that those dates were at best suspect and likely wrong.

The press’ losing streak is “starting to take a toll on its collective credibility?”  No, the press has had no credibility for a very long time; the current losing streak is only corroborating that.

Kurtz’ problem in assessing all of this is that he’s a man who knows no other business than what passes for modern journalism.  He’s been steeped in an industry that used have a simple, fundamental requirement: that the use of anonymous sources had to have, in the same article, corroboration by at least two on-the-record sources.  Instead, Kurtz’ business has made the conscious decision to walk away from that standard and, instead, to rely solely on carefully unidentified, deliberately anonymous sources.  As a result, we readers cannot assess the reliability of the sources and so of the articles; we cannot even determine whether those sources exist or the claims made are just manufactured rumors.

Wrong or incompetent, Trump asks in one of his ubiquitous tweets.  I say dishonest.  And Kurtz, raised as he’s been in a whorehouse, knows no other and is unable to see either the amorality or the dishonesty of his fellow residents.

Safe Spaces and Timidity

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Antonia Okofor is an advocate for empowering women, and she argues that the 2nd Amendment is a valuable tool in the empowerment.

She was scheduled to speak at two Liberal (note: not Liberal Arts—they’ve long ago lost that breadth) colleges, Hampshire College and Mount Holyoke.

Hampshire College canceled Okofor’s engagement on short notice—two hours’ notice—claiming that her speech was “too controversial.”  Then the place thought better of its excuse and claimed the trivial technicality of a student application not being complete as the premise for canceling.  This is nonsense: if that had been the reason, school management would have said so in the first place.  On the other hand, the lack of dotted i’s and crossed t’s would have been just as indefensible as an excuse.  This is fear, instead, fear of a better argument.

Mount Holyoke “allowed” Okofor’s speech to proceed, but here the pupils displayed their own timidity.  Their “angst” was centered on the horror of “the idea that women’s rights and safety is being linked with their right to bear arms.”  Empower women, sure, but only in terms of the power of others to protect them.  The Holyoke pupils’ solution was to set up a separate “safe space” where their own Precious Ones could go to hide from such uncomfortable subjects.

We feel that creating a deliberately separate space for conversation rather than holding a direct act of protest will be a more productive action for us without fueling the messaging of the Right.

Because actual participation would require determination and positive action.  Because actual participation would require the effort of rational thought and debate instead of the comfort of inchoate feelings and ducking away.

This is the pseudo-education that our children are getting at Liberal not-Arts places like these two.