It’s Wednesday, December 30th, 2015…but before we commence to blogging for the last time this year, everything wrong with the federal government in one sordid story:
US Attorney declines prosecution of former VA execs
Federal prosecutors have decided not to press criminal charges against two former executives at the Department of Veterans Affairs who were accused of manipulating the agency’s hiring system for their own gain.The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said Thursday it has declined a referral from the VA inspector general for criminal prosecution of Diana Rubens and Kimberly Graves.
The inspector general said in a report this fall that Rubens and Graves forced lower-ranking regional managers to accept job transfers against their will.Rubens and Graves then stepped into the vacant positions themselves, keeping their pay while reducing their responsibilities.
Rubens had been earning $181,497 as director of the Philadelphia regional office for the Veterans Benefits Administration, while Graves earned $173,949 as leader of the St. Paul, Minnesota, regional office. Before taking the regional jobs, Rubens was a deputy undersecretary at the VA’s Washington headquarters, while Graves was director of VBA’s 14-state North Atlantic Region. Rubens and Graves were accused of obtaining more than $400,000 in questionable moving expenses through a relocation program for VA executives, the inspector general’s report said.
The U.S. Attorney’s office said it has “referred the matter to the VA for any administrative action that is deemed appropriate.” Rubens and Graves were demoted in November, but their demotions were rescinded this month after a paperwork mix-up. The VA has said it will reissue the demotions after the problem is resolved.
It’s life imitating art, as demonstrated by this classic scene of bureaucratic insanity from Office Space:
Your tax dollars at work, professor! But unlike Milton, these two not only get to keep working, but get paid as well. “Demoted”…demoted?!? No prison, not even termination of employment; rather a demotion!!! Like Mussolini and his mistress…
…these two should be hung by their heels in the public square and flayed alive. 93,000,000+ Americans are out of the work force, our veterans can’t get timely medical treatment and the new Denver VA facility is 3X over budget; yet The Obamao’s Department of Injustice cannot see its way clear to prosecute the likes of these two common criminal clowns, Lois Lerner, Hillary and soooo many others.
But they do have the time, resources and inclination to arrest and/or press charges against filmmakers…
…pharmaceutical executives…
…war heroes…
…and the occasional cop:
As we’ve stated before, this isn’t an Administration…
…it’s an on-going criminal conspiracy!
Now, here’s The Gouge!
First up, since we’re on the subject of cops and chief executives…er,…criminals, we present a video portraying the danger police officers face every patrol:
The narrative accompanying the video describes what transpired:
“…Investigators say Lester was shot Friday morning by Andrew Coffee. The incident happened during a traffic stop. Investigators say Coffee was pulled over because he had no tag on his scooter.
In a tense few seconds, Coffee continues to ask Lester what’s the problem before punching him in the face and drawing a handgun concealed under his jacket. He shoots Lester, who was was able to return fire, hitting Coffee in the leg and torso. WPTV says he’s still in the hospital recovering from those wounds.
Coffee is a convicted felon. He served time in prison for an attempted murder charge back in 1993.We don’t know how he was able to obtain a firearm,(Undoubtedly a gun show, where he was not subject to a thorough federal background check!) but it probably was part of how this situation escalated; Lester seems to have been in the process of either searching him or placing him under arrest, where the firearms would have been found.“
A convicted felon in possession of a firearm; what a shock!!! We thought this went down in Florida, not Chicago!
Bottomline, Deputy Lester was a little careless, as well as very lucky. But you’ll never convince us had The Great Divider not lent comfort and support to Black Lives Matter and other anti-law enforcement movements, Lester wouldn’t have utilized significantly greater force in subduing what was undeniably a stubborn suspect, thus avoiding the shoot-out in its entirety.
Sorta kinda makes you wonder whose side this Administration is on?!?
And for more on The Chicago Way, we turn, courtesy of NRO, to the great Victor Davis Hanson, who weighs in on the reality…
“Black Lives Matter and other, related groups are still demanding that Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel step down well before his term expires. It appears that Emanuel did not release for over a year a police video showing the possibly unjustified shooting of criminal suspect Laquan McDonald. He apparently was too afraid of losing his reelection bid to another liberal — and expected that, as a former Obama confidant, he would be granted immunity from inner-city anger.
Is liberal anger at the liberal Emanuel a new trend? Will populists one of these days go after the newly declared populist Hillary Clinton for her Wall Street shakedowns? Will greens cannibalize Al Gore and John Kerry for their dinosaur-sized carbon footprints? Will reformers swallow Barack Obama for his scandal-ridden administration? In Baltimore, crowds of angry minorities rioted and burned stores over the death of detained suspect Freddie Gray — despite the reassurances of a black mayor, black police chief, and black prosecuting attorney. Community anger at police is now a hallmark of nearly every major American city.
Note that in all these cases the protests and riots were directed at city hall and its assorted bureaucracies — run for generations by liberal Democrats. There is not an easy villain, like Bull Connor or Lester Maddox, to be found among current American officials. In both his elections, Obama, for example, captured overwhelmingly the votes in megalopolises like Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. None of these cities in recent years has elected moderate Republican reformers demanding greater transparency, meritocratic hiring practices, lower taxes, less regulation, open bids for municipal services, balanced budgets, and an end to union monopolies.
Instead, the liberal municipal template of generous government pensions, lavish subsidies and welfare, unionized workforces, identity politics, lots of regulations, and high taxes apparently has ensured permanent underclasses of Democratic voters in the inner city. And for some reason, they are now furious at Democratic city halls, the police, and city administrators…”
Sorta kinda meets Einstein’s definition of insanity…no?!?
In a related item (not to mention yet another story you won’t hear or read in the MSM), as Noah Rothmann notes at Commentary Magazine, Rahmbo’s problems largely stem from the same source as the Boy Blunder’s: ignoring…
“The stunning details revealed in a Wall Street Journal report published on Wednesday expose the extent to which President Barack Obama and the coterie of flatterers with whom he has surrounded himself truly bought into their own hype. Journal reporters Nour Malas and Carol Lee revealed that the Obama administration had been conducting covert, backchannel communications with Syria’s Bashar al-Assad well after the Syrian civil war evolved from bloody semi-sectarian affair into a catastrophe of unspeakable proportions.
…When Assad began violating long-standing international norms of conduct and started deploying chemical weapons against civilians and rebel formations alike, it is reasonable to presume that Obama would cut off backchannel contacts. That the administration would maintain those contacts even after the president declared that the Assad regime must dissolve and the dictator in Damascus should “step aside”is almost unimaginable. That is, however, precisely what happened.As the Journal reporters indicated, the preservation of these contacts likely communicated conflicting signals to Assad, and allowed him to delude himself into believing that Washington still viewed him as the legitimate head of state in Syria…”
Imagine that: another foreign policy faux-pas from the fools who brought us the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accords. Next you’ll try to convince us there are convicted felons on the streets of Chicago in possession of firearms!
Look, we’ve witnessed utter ineptitude…
…but this smacks of decidedly deliberate design. And the ultimate end is NOT in Americas’s interest…at least not the America we know!
Next up, writing at Townhall.com, Walter Williams opines on The Left’s…
“…Some might misleadingly argue that we are a democracy, in which the majority rules. But a majority consensus does not make acts that would otherwise be deemed immoral moral. In other words, if the neighbors got a majority vote to force one of their number, under pain of punishment, to perform household tasks for the elderly widow, it would still be immoral. People like to give immoral acts an aura of moral legitimacy by noble-sounding expressions, such as “spreading the wealth,” “income redistribution,” “caring for the less fortunate” and “the will of the majority.”
If one American can use government to force another to serve his purpose, what is the basis for denying another American the right to do the same thing? For example, if farmers are able to use Congress to give them cash for crop subsidies, why should toymakers be denied the right for Congress to give them cash subsidies when their sales slump?
Congress has completely succumbed to the pressure to use one American to serve the purposes of another. As a result, spending grows. Today’s federal budget is about $3.8 trillion. At least two-thirds of it can be described as Congress taking the earnings of one American to give to another.
I personally believe in helping one’s fellow man in need. Doing so by reaching into one’s own pockets is laudable and praiseworthy. Doing so by reaching into another’s pockets is evil and worthy of condemnation.“
Turning back to the subject of Crime and Lack of Punishment, writing at the WSJ, Heather MacDonald reports how The Left is…
Trying to Hide the Rise of Violent Crime
Progressives and their media allies have launched a campaign to deny the ‘Ferguson effect’—but it’s real, and it’s increasingly deadly for inner cities.
“Murders and shootings have spiked in many American cities—and so have efforts to ignore or deny the crime increase. The see-no-evil campaign eagerly embraced a report last month by the Brennan Center for Justice called “Crime in 2015: A Preliminary Analysis.” Many progressives and their media allies hailed the report as a refutation of what I and others have dubbed the “Ferguson effect”— cops backing off from proactive policing, demoralized by the ugly vitriol directed at them since a police shooting in Ferguson, Mo., last year. Americans are being asked to disbelieve both the Ferguson effect and its result: violent crime flourishing in the ensuing vacuum.
In fact, the Brennan Center’s report confirms the Ferguson effect, while also showing how clueless the media are about crime and policing.
The Brennan researchers gathered homicide data from 25 of the nation’s 30 largest cities for the period Jan. 1, 2015, to Oct. 1, 2015. (Not included were San Francisco, Indianapolis, Columbus, El Paso and Nashville.) The researchers then tried to estimate what 2015’s full-year homicide numbers for those 25 cities would be, based on the extent to which homicides were up from January to October this year compared with the similar period in 2014.
The resulting projected increase for homicides in 2015 in those 25 cities is 11%. (By point of comparison, the FiveThirtyEight data blog looked at the 60 largest cities and found a 16% increase in homicides by September 2015.) An 11% one-year increase in any crime category is massive; an equivalent decrease in homicides would be greeted with high-fives by politicians and police chiefs.Yet the media have tried to repackage that 11% homicide increase as trivial…”
In a related item, courtesy of Tom Bakke and Powerlineblog.com, John Hinderaker offers…
A Historical Perspective on Homicide
The left axis is homicides per 100,000 Americans
The Young Conservatives Instagramed this graphic a couple of days ago. I haven’t verified all the numbers, but I checked most of them against FBI data and they appear to be correct. The chart puts current hysteria over homicide and firearms into perspective.
Crime is one area of several where liberals stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the great progress that we have already made, while they press for policies that will have the effect of undoing that progress.
Please note: the statistics highlighted herein are not to be confused with those detailed by Ms. MacDonald’s above. Hinderaker only covers the period up to and including 2012, and includes America in its entirety; Heather MacDonald focuses on the dramatic uptick in urban shootings subsequent to the August 2014 Ferguson fiasco.
Again, sorta kinda makes one wonder whose side these prevaricating Progressive putzes are on?!?
And in the Environmental Moment, Newsbusters.org offers…
“The detachment from reality of those who actually believe that the recent international climate agreement in Paris is anything but a dangerous and potentially expensive charade has become especially irritating.
The goals identified in Paris are obviously unachievable, and have no direct tie-in to reducing “global warming.” Convincing evidence of the link between carbon dioxide generation and allegedly rising global temperatures doesn’t exist. In light of this reality, someone really needs to ask the AP‘s Karl Ritter how much Kool-Aid he had to drink before he informed readers on Thursday morning that the “PARIS CLIMATE GOALS MEAN EMISSIONS NEED TO DROP BELOW ZERO” — and then attempted to take that goal seriously…”
Since we’re on the subject of jokes, we’ll call it a year with a walk on the Lighter Side:
Catch ya next year! Here’s hoping you had a VERY Merry Christmas, and wishing everyone a safe and blessed 2016.
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