Justice Department resumes program to steal property of citizens

Theft by government: The Obama Justice Department has resumed its partnership with state police departments to seize the property of citizens for profit.

Asset forfeiture is a contentious practice that lets police seize and keep cash and property from people who are never convicted of wrongdoing — and in many cases, never charged. Studies have found that use of the practice has exploded in recent years, prompting concern that, in some cases, police are motivated more by profit and less by justice.

The Justice Department’s Equitable Sharing Program allowed state and local authorities to pursue asset forfeiture under federal, rather than state law, particularly in instances where local law enforcement officers have a relationship with federal authorities as part of a joint task force. Federal forfeiture policies are more permissive than many state policies, allowing police to keep up to 80 percent of assets they seize.

Participation by the Justice Department had been suspended in December, but not because the Obama administration didn’t like the program, it turns out. Instead, the suspension allowed them to keep the money themselves that local police had seized under federal law. This however discouraged local police from pursuing more confiscations, so they have resumed the program.

The graph at the link is incredible. Do you know that citizens now lose more property to the government under this program than they do from ordinary burglaries?

SLS software over budget and behind schedule

Surprise! The launch control software NASA is writing from scratch for its SLS rocket is way behind schedule and way over budget.

Development of this new launch control software is now projected to exceed $207 million, 77 percent above 2012 projections. The software won’t be ready until fall 2017, instead of this summer as planned, and important capabilities like automatic failure detection, are being deferred, the audit noted. The system is vital, needed to control pumps, motors, valves and other ground equipment during countdowns and launches, and to monitor data before and during liftoff.

NASA decided to write its own computer code to “glue together” existing software products a decade ago — while space shuttles still were flying and commercial shippers had yet to service the space station. Both delivery companies, SpaceX and Orbital ATK, rely on commercial software, the audit noted. [emphasis mine]

In other words, even though NASA could have simply purchased already available software that other launch companies were using successfully, the agency decided to write its own. And that decision really didn’t come before the arrival of these commercial companies, because when it was made a decade ago that was exactly the time that SpaceX was beginning to build its rocket.

This is simply more proof that SLS is nothing more than a pork-laden waste of money designed not to explore space but to generate non-productive jobs in congressional districts.

Conservative professor to be fired for his opinions

Fascists: A conservative Marquette University professor has been been suspended and will be fired if he does not apologize for daring to criticize the liberal actions of another professor.

The story is a bit complicated, but it is worth reading. He has had a conservative blog for about a decade, and his punishment was prompted when he objected to the other teacher’s willingness to squelch conservative opinions in her classroom. He has also said he will not apologize and will sue if they try to fire him.

“Why do Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton believe they know more about Islam than Muslim clerics?”

Link here.

Read it all. This quote though sums it up nicely:

Sharia rejects freedom of speech as much as freedom of religion. It rejects the idea of equal rights between men and women as much as between Muslim and non-Muslim. It brooks no separation between spiritual life and civil society. It is a comprehensive framework for human life, dictating matters of government, economy, and combat, along with personal behavior such as contact between the sexes and personal hygiene. Sharia aims to rule both believers and non-believers, and it affirmatively sanctions jihad in order to do so.

Even if this is not the only construction of Islam, it is absurd to claim—as President Obama did during his recent visit to a mosque in Baltimore—that it is not a mainstream interpretation. In fact, it is the mainstream interpretation in many parts of the world. Last year, Americans were horrified by the beheadings of three Western journalists by ISIS. American and European politicians could not get to microphones fast enough to insist that these decapitations had nothing to do with Islam. Yet within the same time frame, the government of Saudi Arabia beheaded eight people for various violations of sharia—the law that governs Saudi Arabia.[emphasis in original]

I would answer the question in the headline very bluntly: The modern leftwing intellectual community, often led by Democratic politicians and college professors (but I repeat myself), are generally uninterested in reality. Their ideology trumps all, which is why they were able to push through Obamacare, and have had absolutely no understanding of the violence coming out of the Middle East and are willing to allow hundreds of thousands of people from that region to immigrate here without any vetting. As Obama ludicrously declared after the Brussels bombing this week, “We defeat them in part by saying, you are not strong; you are weak.” In other words, declaring them weak will stop their violence, end the terrorism, and make whole the lives they have shattered.

Until the American people reject these head-in-the-clouds fools, we will be subjected to more terrorism, more violence, and more ludicrous and impossible laws that make our lives miserable. My chief worry, however, is that the American people might be as disconnected from reality as these Democratic leaders.

Bill to trim BLM/Forest Service power

Good news: A new bill has been introduced in Congress to take all law enforcement powers away from the BLM and the Forest Service on federal lands and transfer those powers to local sheriffs.

It is always better to have control and power decentralized as much as possible. Having these lands administered and controlled by a bureaucracy in Washington has never made make sense, and was always really a power play between the federal government and the states.

This bill is part of a larger movement coming from the western states to restrict the power of these environmental agencies, who happen to control a vast majority of the territories of those states. With Congress increasingly shifting to the right in recent years, expect this movement to accelerate.

Saying “All Lives Matter” is now white supremacy

The coming dark age: A group of sixty professors at American University’s Washington College of Law have signed a letter claiming that to say “All lives matter” instead of “Black lives matter” is an example of “white supremacy.”

Dozens of professors from American University’s Washington College of Law (WCL) openly condemned an unknown student as a white supremacist for posting a sign with the catchphrase “All Lives Matter” on a faculty member’s door.

“The ‘All Lives Matter’ sign might seem to be a benign message with no ill intent, but it has become a rallying cry for many who espouse ideas of white supremacy and overt racism, as well as those who do not believe the laws should equally protect those who have a different skin color or religion,” the professors wrote in a statement to the WCL community.

For college professors to no longer recognize the plain meaning of words, and to instead assign a meaning of their own to those words, for their own political purposes, tells me that if I had a son or daughter attending this university I would pull them out immediately. Not only are students not being educated properly there, they are being taught nonsense and hate.

An estimated $55 billion in Obamacare waste

Finding out what’s in it: Since its signing Obamacare has caused the government and public to waste approximately $55 billion.

Though most of that number, $45 billion, is an estimate of the amount of money businesses and people have been forced to spend filling out Obamacare paperwork and thus somewhat guesswork, the remaining $10 billion is based on hard data and real waste, such as handing out almost a billion in improper subsidies or spending $2 billion to construct a website that did not work.

But who’s counting? It is more important that we can go to bed at night knowing that the Democrats care about us, and will try anything, even if it is insane or completely stupid, to make us feel better about ourselves.

TMT leadership looks at alternatives to Hawaii

Though they have refused to comment publicly, the Facebook page for the Thirty Meter Telescope on Monday showed the telescope’s management visiting the Canary Islands, a potential alternative site to Hawaii.

Their Facebook post serves two purposes. It shows that they mean business when they say they must start considering abandoning Hawaii. It also might force the Hawaiian state government to stop dragging its feet in the permitting process that protesters have forced TMT to go through, a second time.

Court again rules against IRS and Justice Department

Working for the Democratic Party: A federal appeals court has condemned the behavior of IRS and Department of Justice lawyers for a misuse of the law and demanded they begin cooperating with the court.

Tea party groups have been trying for years to get a full list of nonprofit groups that were targeted by the IRS, but the IRS had refused, saying that even the names of those who applied or were approved are considered secret taxpayer information. The IRS said section 6103 of the tax code prevented it from releasing that information.

Judge Kethledge, however, said that turned the law on its head. “Section 6103 was enacted to protect taxpayers from the IRS, not the IRS from taxpayers,” he wrote.

Edward Greim, a lawyer at Graves Garrett who is representing NorCal Patriots, said they should be able to get a better idea of the IRS‘ decision-making once they see the list of groups that was targeted. “What we’ll be able to see is how, starting in the spring of 2010, with the first one or two groups the IRS targeted, we’ll be able to see that number grow, and we’ll even be able to see at the tail end their possible covering up that conduct,” he said. He said they suspect the IRS, aware that the inspector general was looking into the tax agency’s behavior, began adding in other groups to try to muddle the perception that only conservatives were being targeted.

VA reinstates worker who committed armed robbery

Our government at work: A VA worker has been reinstated with back pay after being fired for participating in an armed robbery.

It is worse than you think. The reason her union won her case was because the VA hadn’t fired other workers who had broken the law, so thus it was unfair to fire her as well.

A Department of Veterans Affairs employee in Puerto Rico was fired after being arrested for armed robbery, but her union quickly got her reinstated — despite a guilty plea — by pointing out that management’s labor relations negotiator is a registered sex offender, and the hospital’s director was once arrested and found with painkiller drugs…

Employees said the union demanded her job back and pointed out that Tito Santiago Martinez, the management-side labor relations specialist in Puerto Rico, who is in charge of dealing with the union and employee discipline, is a convicted sex offender. Martinez reportedly disclosed his conviction to the hospital and VA hired him anyway, reasoning that “there’s no children in [the hospital], so they figure I could not harm anyone here.”

The union’s position — that another employee committed a crime and got away with it, so this one should, too — has been upheld by the highest civil service rules arbiters, and has created a vicious Catch-22 where the department’s prior indefensible inaction against bad employees has handcuffed it from taking action now against other scofflaws.

And the intellectual elites in Washington wonder why people are angry and want to throw the bums out. In fact, that they remain clueless about this anger and continue to do nothing about this kind of obscene corruption in the government departments that they control is only more reason to throw them out. Maybe we should even consider bringing back that old American custom: to tar and feather them and ride them out of town on a rail.

Emory University takes action to stop free speech

The coming dark age: Students at Emory University are protesting the horror of having to see the words “Vote Trump” and “Trump 2016” written in chalk throughout the campus last week, and the university president, in total sympathy with these horrified students, has agreed to take quick action to prevent such horrors in the future.

The letter the university president wrote is worth reading in its entirety, as it illustrates forcefully the uselessness of today’s academic elite and the worthlessness of a liberal arts education at most of today’s colleges. Here is just one quote:

Yesterday I received a visit from 40 to 50 student protesters upset by the unexpected chalkings on campus sidewalks and some buildings yesterday morning, in this case referencing Donald Trump. The students shared with me their concern that these messages were meant to intimidate rather than merely to advocate for a particular candidate, having appeared outside of the context of a Georgia election or campus campaign activity. During our conversation, they voiced their genuine concern and pain in the face of this perceived intimidation.

After meeting with our students, I cannot dismiss their expression of feelings and concern as motivated only by political preference or over-sensitivity. Instead, the students with whom I spoke heard a message, not about political process or candidate choice, but instead about values regarding diversity and respect that clash with Emory’s own.

In other words, these poor students might have to admit that there is at least one person on their campus who disagrees with them and supports Donald Trump. We can’t have that! The president then goes on to outline some vague actions he is going to take to prevent such dissent from happening again. These students mustn’t be subjected to a free and open debate. It might cause them to think!

In related news, a Hispanic businesswoman who expressed Latino support for Donald Trump at one of his rallies is now being threatened and harassed at her business.

NOAA head poo-poos private weather companies

At a congressional hearing on Wednesday the head of NOAA expressed serious doubts about the ability of private companies to provide worthwhile weather data.

At a hearing of the environment subcommittee of the House Science Committee on NOAA’s fiscal year 2017 budget request, NOAA Administrator Kathryn Sullivan said it was still too soon to determine if commercial sources of weather data, most notably GPS radio occultation systems, could augment or replace existing data sources. “In the weather domain, we believe it is a promising but still quite nascent prospect to actually have data flows from private sector satellites,” Sullivan said. “There have been a number of claims, there’s some hardware in orbit from at least one company that I’m aware of, but really nothing proven to the level that we require for ingesting something into the National Weather Service.”

This so much reminds me of past NASA administrators who repeatedly told us that private companies really couldn’t do the job of supplying ISS or launching humans into space, and that we really needed to leave that job to the government, which really knew better.

As it turns out, those past NASA administrators were wrong. Not only has private space done a very effective job at supplying ISS, they made it happen fast for relatively little money. And they are about to do the same in launching humans into space as well. NASA meanwhile has been twiddling its thumbs for decades in its efforts to replace the space shuttle while spending ungodly amounts of money and accomplishing little with it.

I have no doubt the same will be true with the weather. Allow private companies to compete for profits in providing the world with good weather data, and they will quickly do a far better job than NOAA. And the data will likely not be tampered with for political ends by global warming advocates in the government!

Roscosmos budget slashed 30%

How’s that consolidation working out for ya? The Russian government announced today that it will have to cut the budget for its space program by 30 percent over the next ten years due to the country’s deepening economic problems.

In line with its reduced funding, the space agency has agreed to delay a manned flight to the moon by five years – to 2035 from 2030 – and scrap plans to develop a reusable rocket, a potentially valuable cost-saving technology. A Roscosmos spokesman previously said the agency would reassess its plans after 2025.

Essentially, the consolidation of Russia’s entire aerospace industry into a single corporation run by the Russian government has produced a very expensive government program unable to accomplish much of anything for a budget of 1.4 trillion rubles ($20.4 billion) from 2016 to 2025. Sounds kind of like NASA, doesn’t it?

Give me competition over a centralized program any day, and see great things happen. Go with a centralized government program, and watch as the life ebbs from the creativity of everyone.

Tea party Republican wins primary for John Boehner’s seat

A conservative tea party Republican has won the primary for former House Speaker John Boehner’s congressional seat.

If anything should tell the Republican leadership that they aren’t doing what the voters want, even more than the presidential campaign, it is this story. Boehner did nothing but show contempt for the tea party Freedom Caucus in the House, doing anything he could to block them. In the end, they were instrumental in getting him ousted. And as the article notes,

Davidson’s win Tuesday could give those [tea party] lawmakers reason to dig their heels in as things escalate. They can make their case to Republican leaders that, sure, putting their foot down on a proposed budget that increases spending might hinder Republicans’ goal of passing a budget on time. But what they’re doing is really in the interest of a growing number of Republican voters. Look no further than this highly symbolic seat they just won.

Even though I have serious doubts about Donald Trump’s conservatism, his rise is just another indication that the voters are pissed off at the leadership in Congress, from both parties. That leadership had better change its stripes soon, or it will find others taking their place, as has happened with John Boehner..

Conservatives to block gigantic budget plan

Good news: The conservative Freedom Caucus in the House is moving to block the new 10-year budget plan put forth by the Republican leadership.

And why you ask? The highlighted sentence below explains it all:

The fiscal blueprint, released Tuesday by Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price, R-Ga., relies on eliminating health care subsidies and other coverage provided by Obama’s health care law, sharp cuts to Medicaid, and reprises a plan devised by Ryan years ago that would transform Medicare into a voucher-like program for future retirees.


But as in past years, GOP leaders have no plans to implement the severe cuts recommended by nonbinding blueprint. [emphasis mine]

This budget plan is merely a tool to make us think they are cutting things, when they really have no intention of doing so. When they finally get down to writing the real budget the increases will be there, as will funding for Obamacare and many of Obama’s pet projects, as they have been in all the previous years since the Republicans took power in Congress.

IRS given power to revoke passports

What could possibly go wrong? A new federal law, passed by a Republican Congress, gives the IRS the right to revoke your passport, even as another federal law will soon require many to use that passport for any airline travel, even within the United States.

What should happen is that both these laws should be repealed, now. Otherwise, I fully expect in the coming years that this new IRS power will be used to squelch opposition to those in power, just as the Obama administration used the IRS prior to the 2012 election to block conservatives from fighting his re-election.

Another glorious Democratic leader speaks!

Dumb and dumber: In yesterdays Democratic townhall event, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton not only claimed that “we didn’t lose a single person” in the regime change in Libya, she seemed unaware that

ISIS is taking up blocs of territory in Libya now, too. So have al-Qaeda affiliates like Ansar al-Sharia — the group that sacked our Benghazi consulate nearly four years ago, thanks in large part to security decisions made by State under Hillary’s leadership. We didn’t give Libya a chance — we destroyed Libya, and left nothing but a viper pit of terror networks to replace it. And Hillary thinks this is a success story.

Be sure to watch the video of Clinton at the link, where she argues that the elections in Libya have worked, installing a moderate government. I guess it was that moderate government that killed our ambassador and three others in Benghazi four years ago.

Obama shuts down oil exploration in Atlantic

Our lord and master: In a reversal the Obama administration has announced that it will ban all oil exploration in the Atlantic for the next five years.

Makes sense to me. By putting the squeeze on American oil companies it will force American industry to increase its dependence on the Arab oil barons, thus sending more of our wealth to the Islamic world. Moreover, this action will be very effective in further weakening the struggling American economy.

Iran to launch satellite?

Does this make you feel safer? Iran is preparing to launch a new ballistic missile capable of placing satellites in orbit.

The Simorgh rocket is a new development not seen previously. Its launch would also be a violation of a UN resolution forbidding Iran to do such research, but who cares about that? It wouldn’t be violation of the great deal Obama negotiated for us with Iran, a deal that they themselves never endorsed.

Democratic fascists force cancellation of Trump rally

Fascists: Upset that a Republican candidate they disagree with planned to hold a rally in Chicago, thousands of protesters threatened violence at tonight’s Trump rally and forced Trump to cancel the event.

In a telephone interview after postponing his event in Chicago, Trump said he didn’t “want to see people hurt or worse” at the rally, telling MSNBC, “I think we did the right thing.”

But Chicago police said they had sufficient manpower on scene to handle the situation and did not recommended Trump cancel the rally. That decision was made “independently” by the campaign, said police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.

I am not a supporter of Donald Trump, but I will always defend to the death his right to speak. These protesters are merely an extension of the oppressive academic leftwing movement that tolerates no dissent, and does whatever it can to silence and squelch any opposition. That was their goal tonight, and they succeeded. And if you doubt my conclusions, consider this quote from the above article:

Veronica Kowalkowsky, an 18-year-old Trump supporter, said she had no ill will toward the protesters — but didn’t think they felt the same way. “I feel a lot of hate,” she said. “I haven’t said anything bad to anyone.”

Chicago community activist Quo Vadis said hundreds of protesters had positioned themselves in groups around the arena, and they intended to demonstrate right after Trump took the stage. Their goal, he said, was “for Donald to take the stage and to completely interrupt him. The plan is to shut Donald Trump all the way down.” [emphasis mine]

Sadly, it was Trump’s nonchalant encouragement of violence against protesters that helped inflame this situation. In some ways he is as guilty of misbehavior as are these protesters.

Update: Read this eye-witness account of what happened at the rally tonight, and weep for the death of free speech and freedom in America.

The bigotry in the Democratic Party

The bigotry in the Democratic Party is not racial or ethnic. It is political. They hate Republicans so intensely that they are willing to let veterans die rather than work with Republicans to fix the problems at the Veterans Administration.

A federal employee union president is wracked with regret because veterans likely died at a time when she knew about gross misconduct within her Department of Veterans Affairs facility but didn’t tell congressional leaders because they were Republicans.

“If I would’ve gone to him two years ago, who knows what kind of lives could’ve been saved,” Germaine Clarno told a radio interviewer Monday, referring to the Republican leader of a VA subcommittee. Clarno, a lifelong Democrat and social worker at the Hines Veterans Affairs Hospital in Hines, Ill., has been president of the union representing doctors at the hospital since before the deadly wait-time scandal unfolded.

Several things about this story. First, my close reading of it does not indicate that this union official “is wracked with regret.” I think she is bothered, but not much more than that.

Second, as a union official she clearly works hand-in-glove with Democrats, who reciprocate that relationship. And in the case of the corruption at the Veterans Administration, that close working relationship between elected Democrats and unions was so strong that none of the Democrats this union official spoke to were willing to do anything to help sick vets, because to do so might do damage to the government unions and workers who were running the VA as their private little playground.

Third, the hatred of Republicans runs so deep in the Democratic Party and leftwing unions that not only were they unwilling to work with Republicans to help sick vets, they were willing to use the corruption at the VA to attack the very Republicans who had been the only politicians willing to deal with the problem. Consider for example this quote from the article:
» Read more

Images of North Korea’s rocket and nuclear bomb?

North Korea's nuclear bomb?

Does this make you feel safer? The North Korean state-run news agency today claimed that they can now build a nuclear bomb small enough to fit on their ballistic missiles.

The story includes pictures. In addition, John Batchelor sent me a few more, including the one posted above. It supposedly shows Kim Jong Un, the supreme dictator of North Korea, inspecting a miniaturized warhead. Whether that is a real bomb or not cannot be confirmed. I would be curious hearing what some of my engineering readers think of this image and the bomb that he is admiring.

Below shows Kim Jong Un inspecting two rockets. Once again, I wonder how real this is, or is it a Potemkin Village.

North Korea's rockets?

“The Republican Establishment is Worse Than Trump.”

Link here. This article is a nice bookend to my previous post, as it outlines quite nicely the reasons why Donald Trump is doing so well. As the author says,

Donald Trump is not the candidate I want to see Republican voters select, but I do love the fact that he’s raised a giant middle finger two inches from the face of the Republicans who prefer to mock, ignore and alienate those of us who put them into power rather than fight for God, country and conservatism.

The author also does a nice job of reviewing the history of the past six years, starting with the 2010 election when the voters gave the Republicans control of the House in one of the biggest landslides in decades, followed four years later by an even bigger landslide to give them the Senate. What did that Republican leadership do with those victories? Nothing. And when a handful of Senators and Congressmen (included Ted Cruz) tried to fight back against the Democratic Party’s agenda, the Republican leadership in Congress acted horrified and appalled.

The article at the link is also interesting in that it opens with a very telling quote from Cruz, noting how that Republican leadership only has outrage against anyone who tries to give the voters what they were promised.

What’s considered unpleasant in the Senate is not lack of civility – you can insult the heck out of each other although I don’t engage in that. What’s considered unpardonable is actually speaking the truth and doing what you said you would do and even worse making clear, shining the light on the fact that there are a whole lot of other people willing to do exactly the opposite of what they said they would do. That’s treated as the unpardonable sin, how dare you be so selfish – and it’s funny they use the term selfish – as to actually honor the commitments to your constituents.

Which is why it doesn’t bother me in slightest that Cruz is rumored to be hated in the Senate. He should be hated in the Senate. He hasn’t been playing their corrupt game.

Multicultural Student Government approved at Kansas University

The coming dark age: The student senate at Kansas University has voted to create a “Multicultural Student Government” operating in parallel to the already existing student government.

The KU Student Senate voted on allocating a list of required student fees for the upcoming school year, including a $2 fee increase to fund the newly created Multicultural Student Government. The fee would generate about $90,000 annually and be disseminated through KU’s Office of Multicultural Affairs.

While many senators agreed with the concept of the new governing body, others expressed concern that more detailed logistics had yet to be established and shared because the group was so new.

The last sentence refers to the big question that these genius students did not address: How will the elected officials of this racially-based multicultural government be chosen? Will there be racial quotas? Will whites be denied the right to run?

In the end, this is really just a power play by the bigots in the minority community. They not only have gotten themselves their own legislature (which can force the general legislature to do as it bids), those elected to it will get a stipend of $6,000 per year.

In related news, freshmen enrollment is down 20% at the University of Missouri, home of racial protests last year that got the head of the university fired. Also, existing students are fleeing the school in large numbers. The result: a budget shortfall of $32 million.

Violence against reporter and protesters at Trump events

Link here. The article is focused on a protester getting punched at a rally yesterday but it also includes details of other similar events, as well as the story of Trump’s campaign manager physically manhandling a reporter for asking a question.

I realize that people are angry, both the Trump supporters and the protesters at his rallies. Nonetheless, the worst thing we can do is become violent over these disagreements, as that violence will do nothing to solve our problems. Instead, it will likely make them worse.

One more point however: So far it appears that this violence has only occurred at Trump events. Worse, Trump himself has sometimes encouraged his supporters to treat protesters roughly. From my perspective, it is exactly this behavior by him that will work against Trump in the general election. Americans will not take kindly to it, and he will be damaged by it.

Iran tests ballistic missiles

Does this make you feel safer? Iran today completed two more ballistic missile tests, with rockets capable of reaching Isreal that were supposedly marked in Hebrew with the phrase, “Israel must be wiped off the Earth.”

The firings took place on the second and final day of a large-scale military drill, which marked the first time Tehran has fired ballistic missiles since signing a deal with world powers on its nuclear program in July.

U.S. officials said Tuesday that the tests did not violate the nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, but were very likely in breach of a U.N. resolution calling on Iran not to undertake ballistic missile activity. U.S. officials threatened Tuesday to raise the issue at the Security Council.

Well, I am so glad these tests didn’t violate the Obama Iran deal. That makes me feel so much better.

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