Tag: government

EPA “loses” emails like the IRS.

1:24 pm

Transparency! Subpoenaed emails at the EPA have been lost because of a hard drive crash.

The hearing also included a bit of deja vu for the committee when members grilled [EPA Administrator Gina] McCarthy on lost emails from a hard-drive crash (the same issue that wiped out emails from IRS employee Lois Lerner). In this case, the emails in question were from retired EPA employee Philip North, who was involved in the agency’s decision to begin the process of preemptively vetoing the Pebble Mine project in Alaska.

North, who declined an interview request by the committee, is retired, and committee staff say they have been unable to track him down. According to a committee aide, North’s hard drive crashed in 2010—which was around the same time that the committee is investigating the agency’s discussions of a potential veto—and the emails were not backed up.

This is all crap. The only way these emails get lost is if the people involved intentionally “lost” them.

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Supreme Court forbids warrantless police searches of cell phones.

8:52 am

A victory for civil rights: The Supreme Court ruled today that police do not have the right to rummage through your cell phone data without a warrant.

As welcome as this decision is, I must point out the threat posed by this last sentence in the article:

The court did carve out exceptions for “exigencies” that arise, such as major security threats.

Since the Obama administration wanted the right to do warrantless searches, don’t be surprised if this exception grows so that everything possible can be made to fit it.

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The VA scandal expands with new report

4:42 pm

Coming to a hospital near you! A new report indicates that as many as 1,000 veterans might have died because of corruption and incompetence at the VA.

The report also alleges that the VA routinely performs unnecessary preventative care, cannot process claims in a timely fashion, employs health care providers who have lost their medical licenses, and – as has been widely reported – maintains secret waiting lists in order to create the impression that the department is meeting performance goals set in Washington.

The report further alleges that some VA staff have been implicated in criminal activities, including drug dealing, sexual abuse, attempted kidnapping, theft, and conspiracy. “Earlier this year, one former staffer at the Tampa, Florida, VA was sentenced to six years in federal prison for trading veterans’ personal information for crack cocaine,” CNN reported on Tuesday.

In spite of these failures, VA senior managers are still receiving bonuses.

I want to emphasize again that this is exactly the kind of mess we can expect to occur with our private healthcare system as Obamacare forces the government to interfere with it more and more.

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IRS admits it leaked confidential tax information

2:08 pm

Working for the Democratic Party: The IRS has agreed to pay $50K to a political organization for leaking confidential tax information to its political enemies.

The Daily Signal has learned that, under a consent judgment today, the IRS agreed to pay $50,000 in damages to the National Organization for Marriage as a result of the unlawful release of the confidential information to a gay rights group, the Human Rights Campaign, that is NOM’s chief political rival. ,,,

In February 2012, the Human Rights Campaign posted on its web site NOM’s 2008 tax return and the names and contact information of the marriage group’s major donors, including soon-to-be Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. That information then was published by the Huffington Post and other liberal-leaning news sites.

HRC’s president at the time, Joe Solmonese, was tapped that same month as a national co-chairman of President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.

The information had been fed from the IRS to a gay rights activist who to this day refuses to reveal who his contact at the IRS was.

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What are the odds of seven hard drives failing at the IRS?

1:50 pm

What are the odds of seven hard drives failing at the IRS? These are the odds: 78 billion to 1.

Of course, that number doesn’t include the fact that the seven failed hard drives just happened to belong to seven key figures in the IRS scandal and no one else, and that all seven failures apparently covered the key period of time when the harassment of conservative opponents to Obama and the Democrats was at its height.

But then, there’s “not a smidgeon of corruption” at the IRS or in Obama’s White House. Obama says so, and obviously we must believe everything he says.

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“They did not follow the law.”

10:48 am

“They did not follow the law.”

Guess who. Its initials are I-R-S, and the person making the accusation is the head of the National Archives. said during House hearings Tuesday on the IRS scandal.

Archivist of the U.S. David Ferriero, speaking before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, made clear that federal agencies are supposed to report whenever their records are destroyed or even accidentally deleted. But he said that after emails from embattled IRS official Lois Lerner vanished after a computer failure in 2011, nobody told the National Archives.

“They did not follow the law,” Ferriero said.

But hey, just try playing this game if the IRS calls you in for a tax audit.

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Russia begins its withdrawal from Baikonur in Kazakhstan.

9:49 am

With the impending first test launch of its new Angara rocket and the construction of its new spaceport in Vostochny on-going, Russia has begun its withdrawal from Baikonur in Kazakhstan.

Zenit-M rocket launching complex will become Kazakhstan’s property on January 1, 2015, Tengrinews correspondent reported from yesterday’s government meeting in the lower chamber of the Parliament. The announcement was made by the Chairman of the National Space Agency KazCosmos Talgat Mussabayev. “We have already approved the list of facilities of Zenit-M launching site that will be excluded from the lease agreement with Russia, and have obtained the technical and administrative documents from Russia that Kazakhstan needs to operate Baiterek complex. Withdrawal of Zenit-M facilities from the Russian lease agreement and their transfer to Kazakhstan is scheduled for January 2015,” Musabayev said.

In order to ensure proper transfer of the facilities and continue their operation afterword, 49 Kazakh experts are undergoing a practical training in maintenance and operation of Zenit-M site facilities. Their training will be completed before the end of the year.

Originally financed and built as an Angara launchpad in a partnership between Russia and Kazakhstan, the Russians backed out, deciding instead to keep Angara launches entirely in Russia at Vostochny while ceasing its participation in the Ukrainian-built Zenit rocket. Moreover, when Angara goes into operation, both the story above as well as this story suggest they will then cease Proton launches at Baikonur as well.

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India’s new prime minister to watch rocket launch.

9:22 am

The competition heats up: The new prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, will watch the next commercial launch of his country’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV)

Modi would be called a tea party candidate in the U.S. He is very pro-capitalism and business. And though he has said he is very pro-space, I do wonder what he thinks of the commercial efforts of India’s space agency ISRO. ISRO is developing its rockets in an effort to capture international market share. It is as if NASA built the Falcon 9 and was trying to make money selling its use to private satellite companies.

I would not be surprised if Modi decides eventually to privatize this operation, taking the rocket development and commercial launches out of the hands of the government.

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Russian government: Nyet to tourists.

11:47 pm

Turf war in Russia: The Russian space agency has disavowed any plans to send two tourists around the Moon in a Soyuz capsule.

Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, will not be involved in a plan to send two space tourists on a flight around the Moon and was not consulted about the project, the federal space agency said.

The mission, hatched by U.S.-based space tourism firm Space Adventures and a major Russian spacecraft manufacturer, Energia Rocket and Space Corporation, would see two space tourists travel to the Moon aboard a modified Russian Soyuz spacecraft by 2017. However, Roscosmos was kept out of the loop on the plan.

The organizers “could have consulted with us before making such loud announcements,” said Denis Lyskov, Roscosmos’s deputy chief in charge of piloted flights, Izvestia reported Monday. “We are not participating in the moon project, we are not planning to modernize the Soyuz,” Lyskov was quoted as saying.

Considering the recent power play by the Russian government to grab back full control over Russia’s aerospace industry, this disavowal does not bode well for the private effort. If the government opposes the flight, it will be very difficult for Energia to go forward.

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Tonight’s testimony and questioning of IRS commissioner John Koskinen concerning the destruction of Lois Lerner’s emails in connection with the IRS’s harassment of opponents of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party..

7:30 pm

Cover-up: Tonight’s testimony and questioning of IRS commissioner John Koskinen concerning the destruction of Lois Lerner’s emails in connection with the IRS’s harassment of opponents of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party..

An outraged Issa insisted that Americans should be able to know “they’re being honestly treated by your employees, especially somebody at such a high level. Isn’t that in fact a priority that should have allowed for full retention?”

“If we had the right resources, there would be a lot of priorities,” Koskinen shot back.

“So the American people should believe that if they don’t have the resources to pay their taxes, they shouldn’t pay their taxes,” Issa jabbed, “because if the IRS doesn’t have the resources, it won’t keep records? That’s pretty much what you’re telling us here tonight, is that resources are a question of whether or not you retain key documents.”

When Tennessee Republican Rep Scott DesJarlais asked Koskinen how much money it would take to replace the IRS’s computer systems in order to prevent another major data loss, he answered that it would cost between $10 and $30 million. In a tense moment, DesJarlais then reminded him that the IRS paid $89 million in bonuses last year, including $1 million to agency employees who owed back taxes.

Be sure the watch all the videos at the link. If you do and you still believe John Koskinen is telling the truth and is not a political thug who is doing the bidding of the White House to cover-up its use of the IRS to harass its political opponents, then you are probably so naive you believe Nigerian emails.

More information about tonight’s hearing here.

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The scandal of fiddled global warming data.

10:28 am

The mainstream press finally notices: The scandal of fiddled global warming data.

Goddard shows how, in recent years, NOAA’s US Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) has been “adjusting” its record by replacing real temperatures with data “fabricated” by computer models. The effect of this has been to downgrade earlier temperatures and to exaggerate those from recent decades, to give the impression that the Earth has been warming up much more than is justified by the actual data. In several posts headed “Data tampering at USHCN/GISS”, Goddard compares the currently published temperature graphs with those based only on temperatures measured at the time. These show that the US has actually been cooling since the Thirties, the hottest decade on record; whereas the latest graph, nearly half of it based on “fabricated” data, shows it to have been warming at a rate equivalent to more than 3 degrees centigrade per century.

I reported on Steve Goddard’s work back in January. Though these mainstream journalists are very slow in getting the story, it is good that some of them are finally waking up.

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In searching for three kidnapped teenagers, Israel has uncovered dozens of tunnels, weapons caches, and explosive labs hidden throughout the Palestinian-controlled Hebron region of the West Bank.

10:17 am

In searching for three kidnapped teenagers, Israel has uncovered dozens of tunnels, weapons caches, and explosive labs hidden throughout the Palestinian-controlled Hebron region of the West Bank.

Some of the tunnels were found by soldiers inside the homes of Palestinians, under large pieces of furniture and laundry machines. Using their specialized equipment, Yahalom (diamond in Hebrew) forces participated in dozens of raids on the homes of Palestinian activists across the West Bank, confiscating caches of weapons and explosives. The unit’s forces discovered some 20 laboratories for manufacturing improvised explosives devices (IEDs) hidden in homes they searched. “We would arrive at a suspicious home and find a family living on the first floor and a laboratory with explosives on the third floor,” said a senior officer in the unit. We also discovered underground spaces in the Hebron area which we had not known about previously,” he added.

The important take-away from this is that Hebron has been under Palestinian control since the early 1990s as per the Oslo accords. Instead of using that control to build a prosperous and independent state that would be a peaceful neighbor to Israel, the evidence once again shows that — like Gaza — the Palestinian leadership and population used the opportunity to instead wage war and to kill and kidnap Israelis.

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