Category: Behind The Black

Detroit announces that it will default on its debt today.

10:01 am

Coming soon to a blue state near you! Detroit announces that it will default on its debt today.

The City currently faces approximately $17 billion in total liabilities. Detroit is insolvent and cannot meet its financial obligations without a significant restructuring.

It is important to note that Detroit has been run exclusively by Democrats for about a half century. Thus, this bankruptcy is an entirely partisan event, supported by voters who blindly insisted on one-party rule, and never questioned the incompetence or corruption of that Democratic Party.

And please, don’t argue with me by mentioning examples where Republicans screwed up. They have their own lock on stupidity, corruption, and failure. The point here, however, is to recognize that the failure in Detroit, as well as all of the recent other cities that have gone bankrupt, is because of decades of liberal Democratic rule, where money got funneled to unionized city employees at the expense of the taxpayers, with no regard to cost or affordability.

And if you doubt me, read this history of Detroit’s last fifty years.

10 comments

Not one tea party group has yet been contacted by the FBI, one month after the IRS scandal began.

11:31 pm

Stonewalling: Not one tea party group has yet been contacted by the FBI, one month after the IRS scandal began.

Worse, the head of the FBI can’t even name the FBI person in charge of the investigation.

Republican Rep. Jim Jordan lit into Mueller for his lack of knowledge during a House judiciary committee hearing. “This is the most important issue in front of the country in the last six weeks, and you don’t know who the lead investigator is?” Jordan asked, sounding shocked.

“At this juncture, no I do not,” Mueller responded.

“Do you know if you’ve talked to any of the victims?” Jordan went on. “Have you talked to any of the groups that were targeted by their government? Have you met with any of the tea party groups since May 14, 2013?”

“I don’t know what the status of the interviews are by the team that’s on it,” Mueller said.

Reached for comment Thursday afternoon, the FBI’s Washington, D.C. press office transferred TheDC to a long-ringing phone line and eventually hung up.

I have embedded the video of this hearing testimony below the fold. Watch and you will know that the claims of “outrage” by Obama and Holder are utter crap.
» Read more

8 comments

An audit has revealed that in 2010 and 2011 more than 1,000 IRS employees misused government charge cards

4:01 pm

The law is such an inconvenient thing: An audit has revealed that in 2010 and 2011 more than 1,000 IRS employees misused government charge cards.

The key quote from the article is this conclusion from the audit:

The inspector general’s bottom line conclusion in this area was that the IRS is more tolerant of its own employees who misuse government charge cards than it is of American taxpayers who fail to pay their taxes in a timely manner.

“Of particular concern is the fact that the IRS ask taxpayers to voluntarily pay taxes owed in a timely manner and yet was more tolerant when its employees became delinquent and defaulted on outstanding payments, violated the terms of the Citibank contract, abused a Government-provided resource (travel funding), and compromised the integrity of the IRS.”

Leave a comment

The Obama administration demands the right to snoop on American private communications, but it specifically forbids any spying in mosques.

10:53 am

The world upside down: The Obama administration demands the right to snoop on American private communications, but it specifically forbids any spying in mosques.

Which might explain why this administration completely failed to catch the Boston marathon bombers, despite plenty of evidence that they were a threat.

No matter. They’ve got us covered. If anyone decides to criticize Obama they will be right on the case!

4 comments

A researcher of fuel cells, manhandled and arrested because he used the wrong mailing labels in selling and shipping sodium to fund his research, was then targeted by the EPA because he wasn’t home to maintain his sodium supplies.

6:16 pm

We’re here to help you: A researcher of fuel cells, manhandled and arrested because he used the wrong mailing labels in selling and shipping sodium to fund his research, was then prosecuted by the EPA because he wasn’t home to maintain his sodium supplies.

On May 27, 2004, federal agents in two black SUVs, waving assault rifles, forced Krister’s car off the road. Manhandling him as if he were a terrorist, they arrested, interrogated, and jailed him. For what? Putting the wrong shipping label—with the correct instructions, mind you—on a box of raw sodium that he sold on eBay.

A jury saw that it was an honest mistake and found Krister “not guilty.” But while Krister was on trial, sodium from his experiments sat in steel drums at an industrial warehouse. The Environmental Protection Agency learned of the additional sodium, determined that Krister had “abandoned” it, and charged him with a federal crime.

Although Krister’s expert witness testified that the sodium was stored properly, a jury found Krister guilty. He served 13 months in federal prison and eight more in a halfway house.

So, what did he do that was morally wrong? Nothing. Not that this matters to our lovely federal government. He did not obey their rules to the letter, even when they themselves made it impossible for him to do so. Thus, he must be destroyed.

9 comments

The Secret Service raided a man’s home expressly and solely because he was a frequent critic of President Obama.

9:59 pm

The new freedom: The Secret Service raided a man’s home expressly and solely because he was a frequent critic of President Obama.

The man wasn’t violent, had never threatened Obama in any way (something the Secret Service admitted). His only crime was that he expressed his first amendment rights to criticize the president. For that, his house was searched and he was threatened.

2 comments

Close-minded politicians everywhere!

4:51 pm

Despite the repeated news in recent weeks that the evidence for global warming is slim, or at least confused, today we have two elected officials and one appointed official screaming that the sky will fall if we don’t do something, including spending billions of dollars of other people’s money.

First we have our friend Al Gore, who was in Washington, DC to speak at an environmental event put on by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island). Whitehouse you might remember was the senator who, even before the injured and dead had been counted from the terrible Moore, Oklahoma tornado, started blaming Republicans for the tornado because they weren’t doing more to stop global warming.
» Read more

9 comments

Republican Lindsey Graham said today that he’d be willing to censor our mail if he thought it would help catch terrorists.

2:51 pm

O goody: Republican Lindsey Graham said today that he’d be willing to censor our mail if he thought it would help catch terrorists.

“In World War II, the mentality of the public was that our whole way of life was at risk, we’re all in. We censored the mail. When you wrote a letter overseas, it got censored. When a letter was written back from the battlefield to home, they looked at what was in the letter to make sure they were not tipping off the enemy,” Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters on Capitol Hill. “If I thought censoring the mail was necessary, I would suggest it, but I don’t think it is.”

This guy hasn’t a clue. The example he gives does not apply, as a military officer is under a different set of rules than ordinary citizens. If we do as he suggests, we will lower ourselves to the level of the thugs and dictators and bullies we supposedly oppose.

Then again, I’m not sure we haven’t done this already.

4 comments

Data from an experiment on Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has confirmed that light plastics can provide sufficient protection for humans against radiation.

11:45 am

Data from an experiment on Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has confirmed that light plastics can provide sufficient protection for humans against radiation.

This is very good news indeed. Combined with the data from Curiosity, which indicated that the radiation levels in interplanetary space were less intense that expected, it appears that radiation will not be a serious obstacle to interplanetary travel.

Now we just have to get the bone loss and vision problems solved.

9 comments

Despite the decline in Arctic sea ice during the past decade the population of polar bears in the Davis Strait has skyrocketed.

9:36 am

Despite the decline in Arctic sea ice during the past decade the population of polar bears in the Davis Strait has skyrocketed.

The increase might have even placed the population at the carrying capacity for the region.

In related news, the New York Times has finally admitted to the fact that the climate stopped warming fifteen years ago.

At the same time, the reporter has a great deal of trouble dealing with this fact, mainly because he refuses to recognize that the theories of carbon-dioxide-caused global warming might be mistaken.

3 comments

The red tape of the space bureaucracy

1:13 pm

“An article in the Economist today has some chilling conclusions about the difficulties faced by the new commercial space companies.

Although the cost of developing new space vehicles, products and services is high, just as much of a burden can be imposed by such intangible expenses as regulatory compliance, legal fees and insurance premiums.

The article points out the heavy cost to these new space companies caused by insurance requirements and government regulation, including the ITAR regulations that restrict technology transfers to foreign countries. However, this paragraph stood out to me as most significant:

Then there is the question of vehicle certification. The first private astronauts and space tourists may soon take to the skies in new launch vehicles, and the FAA has initially agreed to license commercial spacecraft without certifying, as it does for aircraft, that the vehicles are safe to carry humans. The idea is that specific safety criteria will become apparent only once the rockets are flying and (though it is rarely admitted) an accident eventually happens. This learning period will keep costs down for makers of the new spacecraft, even if significant compliance expenses are likely when it is over. The exemption was meant to have expired last year and was extended to the end of 2015. Commercial space companies are understandably keen for it to be extended again. “In the dawn of aviation, planes had 20 to 30 years before significant legislation applied,” says George Whitesides, the boss of Virgin Galactic.

Back in 2004 I noted in a UPI column the problems caused by these regulations, even as they were being written. (I had also done something at the time that few reporters ever do: I actually read the law that Congress was passing.) Then I said,
» Read more

5 comments

According to Ohio’s Insurance Department, Obamacare will cause healthcare rates to rise next year by 88 percent.

9:55 am

Finding out what’s in it: According to Ohio’s Insurance Department, Obamacare will cause healthcare rates to rise next year by 88 percent.

What are the drivers of the increase? According to Milliman, the two biggest drivers are (1) risk pool composition changes, such as forcing the young to subsidize the old, and the healthy to subsidize the sick; and (2) Obamacare’s required expansion of insurance benefits, particularly its mandated reductions in deductibles and co-pays.

This is a significant concept to understand. Some people have the impression that the main reason that rates are going up under Obamacare is because of the law’s requirement that insurers cover people with pre-existing conditions. But that accounts for only a fraction—around a quarter—of the rate hike. The rest comes from all the other things that Obamacare does, such as forcing people to buy richer insurance benefits; to buy products with all sorts of add-ons they might not need; to pay Obamacare’s premium tax; and to pay a lot more, if they’re young, to subsidize older individuals.

In other words, you won’t be able to buy the plan you want. Obamacare forces you to buy a more expensive plan, even if you don’t need it.

2 comments

The whistleblower who leaked the NSA surveillance program to the press has gone public.

12:48 pm

The whistleblower who leaked the NSA surveillance program to the press has gone public and is talking. Key quote:

Q: Does your family know you are planning this?

A: “No. My family does not know what is happening … My primary fear is that they will come after my family, my friends, my partner. Anyone I have a relationship with …

I will have to live with that for the rest of my life. I am not going to be able to communicate with them. They [the authorities] will act aggressively against anyone who has known me. That keeps me up at night.” [emphasis mine]

It tells us how far the United States has fallen if this man fears our government so much he thinks that government will go after his family.

Read the whole interview. It is quite horrifying, especially now that we know there are federal agents willing to use their power to target specific people solely because of their politics.

10 comments

The National Security Agency can secretly access user data provided by as many as fifty American companies, ranging from credit rating agencies to internet service providers.

6:15 pm

The National Security Agency can secretly access user data provided by as many as fifty American companies, ranging from credit rating agencies to internet service providers.

The furor this week over this NSA snoop scandal is fascinating to me. The snooping really isn’t news, as it has been known for years that the NSA delves into these kinds of records in its effort to identify terrorist activity.

So, why the sudden furor and outrage? Up until a few weeks ago, most Americans assumed the federal government restricted this kind of snooping to foreign sources and to specifically hunting for terrorists. Now, however, after the IRS scandal, the public realizes that this government, under Obama at least, is quite willing to abuse its power for partisan political reasons. Under Obama, the IRS was used to target innocent Americans, merely because they disagreed with Obama. The public now realizes that it is also likely that this administration will abuse its access to the private information gathered by NSA, and that sends chills up people’s spines.

Thus, the furor. This kind of snooping is suddenly perceived as a real threat to Americans.

One comment
1 … 827 828 829 830 831 … 1,102