Monday - August 12, 2013
Ray-Bans and Paris Apartments, Part XXVII
No actual sunglasses or living quarters here. Just using the phrase Peiper brought to our attention the other day generically: yet another story of international aid gone awry. If you send cash, the dictators steal it. If you send food, clothing, and medicine then the local AQ steals it. Unless you deliver your nation’s aid packages surrounded by a medium army, it seems you’re just spitting into the wind. So why bother?
Thousands of pounds of UK-funded humanitarian supplies were stolen by members of the al Shabaab Islamist group in Somalia, an annual report by the UK Department for International Development revealed on Sunday.
Members of the Shebab Islamist group have stolen £480,000 ($750,000, 550,000 euros) worth of British government-funded humanitarian materials and supplies in Somalia, it emerged on Sunday.
The theft, revealed in the fine print of the Department for International Development’s annual accounts, is likely to fuel concerns about how Britain is spending its foreign aid at a time of budget cuts at home.
The accounts describe the “theft between November 2011 and February 2012, by al-Shebab in southern Somalia, of DFID funded humanitarian materials and supplies from the offices and warehouses of partner organisations, to which DFID had provided funding to deliver projects and programmes”.
“DFID’s partners had no prior warning of the confiscations being carried out and therefore had no time to prevent the loss by relocating goods,” the report said.
The loss, out of more than £80 million of aid allocated for Somalia in 2012-2013, appears in this year’s accounts because the investigation was only completed in the past 12 months.
Britain’s aid budget is protected from the government’s austerity programme and has recently reached the United Nations target of 0.7 percent of gross national income, according to ministers.
Gerald Howarth, a lawmaker in Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative party, said the theft raised concerns about how this money was being spent.
“There is huge public concern at the relentless increase in overseas aid. Incidents like this, where British taxpayers’ money is diverted into people fighting against us, are not acceptable,” he told the Sunday Telegraph newspaper.
A spokesman for DFID said there were always risks working in unstable countries such as Somalia, but it was doing everything it could to stop such thefts from occurring.
Ain’t that a kick in the pants? Bit of doublespeak here: nobody told DFID that the stuff was going to be snagged, so they couldn’t do anything. But hey, they’re doing everything they can to stop things like this. Yeah, because AQ, al-Shebah, and other thieves all phone in their plans in advance. Riiiight.
And while the whole UK is trying to cut expenses and run the place on an austerity budget (big joke, that, I’m sure), foreign aid is simply exempt from budget cuts. Oh that makes such good economic sense. Not. “Oh, we’ve got no money, must cut the budget.” FIRST THING CUT is foreign aid. Screw that.
Another site says the supplies weren’t even used; they were burned up. It seems a bunch of rebel types captured the warehouse, then put to the torch. So the stuff wasn’t actually stolen. Or maybe they did steal it, took it somewhere else, and then burned it. Sounds to me like Government can’t get it’s lies lined up here. Which reminds me a bit of how those poor starving Haitians set fire to several hundred tons of seeds, because they weren’t heirloom stock varieties and would only quickly grow a bumper crop to feed people this year.
Taxpayer-funded humanitarian aid worth £480,000 was captured by al Qaida-linked militants as they rampaged through southern Somalia.
The supplies were in warehouses seized by al-Shabaab and they were later believed to have been set ablaze, rather than stolen the Department for International Development (DfID) said.
Any way you look at it, it still sounds like bongo drumming to me.
Posted by Drew458
on 08/12/2013 at 08:59 AM
Filed Under: • Government • TURD WORLD • UK •
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Permalink • Friday - August 09, 2013
Special People Have Extra Special Privileges
Google up the earlier news stories and I’ll bet you two things: 1) the accessed records all belonged to Republicans, and 2) BRA.
So much for justice. So much for equal treatment under the law. And so much for accountability, ethics, and responsibility in government. “I’ll reward my friends, and punish my enemies” was Fearless Reader’s line, wasn’t it?
Confidential tax records of several political candidates and campaign donors were improperly accessed by government officials, but the Justice Department declined to prosecute any of the officials involved, even in one “willful” violation of the law, an IRS watchdog reported.
In a July 3 letter to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), the Treasury inspector general for tax administration (TIGTA) J. Russell George acknowledged that government officials had illegally accessed tax records of candidates and donors in four instances since 2006.
TIGTA determined that in three of the cases the access was “inadvertent.”
“In the fourth case, we presented evidence of a willful unauthorized access to the Department of Justice, but the case was declined for prosecution,” George wrote.
Grassley has sent a letter to the Justice Department asking why it declined to prosecute in the case of willful unauthorized access.
“Any agency with access to tax records is required to act with neutrality and professionalism, not political bias,” Grassley said in a statement. “The Justice Department should answer completely and not hide behind taxpayer confidentiality laws to avoid accountability for its decision not to prosecute a violation of taxpayer confidentiality laws.”
What a bunch of pond scum.
Posted by Drew458
on 08/09/2013 at 10:00 AM
Filed Under: • Government • Corruption and Greed •
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Permalink • Wednesday - August 07, 2013
Get your drone hunting license!
Deer Trail, a small Colorado town, is considering an ordinance that would allow its residents to hunt for federal drones and shoot them down.
The ordinance states, “the Town of Deer Trail shall issue a reward of $100 to any shooter who presents a valid hunting license and the following identifiable parts of an unmanned aerial vehicle whose markings and configuration are consistent with those used on any similar craft known to be owned or operated by the United States federal government.”
If passed by the town board, Deer Trail would charge $25 for drone hunting licenses and they would be valid for one year.
The Feds and Obama better wake up. The country is in almost total revolt over ObamaCare, drones, NSA spying, Moochelle’s school lunches, etc.
Posted by Christopher
on 08/07/2013 at 07:28 PM
Filed Under: • Big Brother • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Government • Corruption and Greed • Nanny State • Obama, The One •
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Permalink • Tuesday - July 30, 2013
Don’t Even Go There
New iPhone will have fingerprint sensor?
Examination of Apple’s latest beta software has revealed a folder labeled ‘Biometric Kit’ in iOS7.
A string of code from iOS 7 revealing ‘a fingerprint that changes colour during the setup process’ was posted online yesterday, sparking rumours that the new iPhone could contain a fingerprint sensor.
If the rumours are true, the latest iPhone will be the first Apple product to feature such a sensor, which could be used for unlocking the homescreen or confirming identity for payment from the App Store or other outlets. Any sensor would likely be embedded into the physical home button.
Earlier this year it was reported that a supply chain source in Taiwan said Apple had been forced to delay production of the next iPhone due to failure to find a coating material that did not interfere with the fingerprint sensor.
I think people may finally be wising up. Too little and way too late, but that’s par for the course. More than 110 comments on the article so far. Comment #1 says Why Bother with front end security, when the government is peeling all your data out the back? Comment #3 wonders how long until Apple sends your fingerprints to the government? Well duh. A few hours, at best. That’s what it’s all about. Photo and fingerprint ID for every citizen, every phone call and credit card transaction ever made, every banking record, vehicle ownership, CCTV monitoring of your car’s location by license plate identification, and real time GPS location of the cell phone in your pocket. All your school records, your DNA, and soon all your health records. In other words, the government knows everything about you and where you are at all times. And that’s OK. But voter ID is racist.
Posted by Drew458
on 07/30/2013 at 10:18 AM
Filed Under: • Big Brother • Computers and Cyberspace • Government •
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Permalink • We Are Doomed
Did you ever have the stray thought that maybe “professionally Black” groups and people justify their existence by doing stuff for no other reason than to really irritate White folks? Here we go again ...
Just two weeks after Janet Napolitano announced her resignation as Secretary of Homeland Security, the Congressional Black Caucus has suggested Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston fill her spot.
A letter dated July 25 and signed by Rep. Marcia Fudge, Ohio Democrat and caucus chairwoman, urges President Obama to consider Miss Jackson Lee for the position, calling the Democrat a “voice of reason” that the agency could stand to gain, the Houston Chronicle reported.
“Representative Jackson Lee would serve as an effective DHS Secretary because she understands the importance of increasing border security and maintaining homeland security,” the letter reads.
Mrs. Jackson Lee currently serves as a ranking member of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security, a position that the caucus said she “stands as a strong and honest ‘voice of reason.’”
Um. was that “reason” or “racism”?
Marica Fudge is the CBC chairwoman? 
Yeah, I’m sure SJL will just be suuuuper effective. Because hey, look at that border fence and all those deported illegals and all those terrorists captured before they could blow stuff up done while she was a big fish in the DHS subcommittee. And make another big step towards making the Executive Branch look like the city council that ran Detroilet Detroit right into the ground. That worked out so well, didn’t it?
B.
R.
A.
Posted by Drew458
on 07/30/2013 at 10:03 AM
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Permalink • Saturday - July 20, 2013
Well No Kidding
Retiring IRS lawyer implicates Obama appointee
Retiring IRS lawyer Carter C. Hull’s testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, in which he implicated an Obama appointee, will ensure that the IRS proceedings last through the summer, according to insiders close to the situation.
Hull has already implicated Obama-appointed IRS chief counsel William Wilkins and Washington-based IRS official Lois Lerner in his testimony.
“In April of 2010, I was assigned by my supervisor to work on two applications of tea party groups. In that same month, I became aware that a group of tea party applications were being held by EO determinations in Cincinnati,” Hull testified in his opening statement before California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa’s committee.
Hull, 72, implicated the IRS Chief Counsel’s office, headed by Obama appointee William J. Wilkins, and Lois Lerner, the embattled head of the IRS’s exempt organizations office, in the IRS targeting scandal and made clear that the targeting started in Washington, according to leaked interviews that Hull granted to the Oversight Committee in advance of Thursday’s hearing.
All the way to the top. Or just one leaf down from the end of the highest branch. So far.
No kidding. Tell us what we didn’t reflexively understand two months ago.
Hull’s testimony set off a storm of controversy among figures close to the case.
“This is one of the most extremely disturbing revelations yet,” said Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, which represents more than 40 tea party plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the IRS.
“It is now clear that the IRS Chief Counsel, appointed by President Obama in 2009, was involved in examining and reviewing applications from Tea Party groups – many that were basically shut out of the 2010 election process because of delays in handling of their applications. This development raises significant questions about what the White House knew and when. In a politically charged run-up to the 2010 election, why was one of President Obama’s most trusted and partisan appointees involved in examining the applications for Tea Party groups? We look forward to tomorrow’s testimony and further information about the origins of this unlawful and unconstitutional scheme that violated the First Amendment rights of our clients,” Sekulow said.
Posted by Drew458
on 07/20/2013 at 03:37 PM
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Permalink • Thursday - July 18, 2013
Meh, plus making infinite tasks take only seconds
Sorry, not much from me right now. I’m trying to get a whole bunch of things done here, all sorts of stuff that got set aside when I was sick.
Interesting sort of news on that license plate scanning story. Once upon a time, when I was studying computers in college, in a brutally difficult course on algorithm analysis, I got introduced to Aleph Zero, the concept of countable infinity. Countable. Infinity. I know, right? Anyway, the concept applies to computer programs that are actual algorithms - which are defined as repetitive but finite processes - that would simply run until the end of time before they finished. And that’s my first thought about the license plate scanning story: given a few dozen million traffic cams or cop car mounted scanners, it would take forever to plot the movement history of all the tens of millions of cars in the USA.
But on second thought, I learned about old Aleph Zero when a red hot PC ran at around 66Mhz. 10x faster is 660Mhz. 100x faster is 6.6Ghz, about twice the speed of today’s best desktop machine. But while today’s PC is about 50 times faster, it also has up to 8 subprocessing units in it, and since this plate searching thing is pretty much a linear task, any one of those could handle the job for one license plate at a time. So figure that a good PC can do 400 times (50x8) the work that a machine from back then can do. Still, Aleph Zero divided by 400 still equals Aleph Zero; that kind of power increase doesn’t make a dent in infinity. Scalar (4) times 2 orders of magnitude (10x10=100) isn’t much.
But if we move beyond the mundane world of personal computers, countable infinity starts to take a beating. The Chinese admit to having a supercomputer that churns data as fast as 338 MILLION modern PCs. Keyword: admit. Take a guess what they really have, and aren’t telling you. And do you think that our own NSA is far behind? Or more likely, far ahead and not saying a word? We already know about the phone call and email tapping stuff. And now folks have figured out that all those CCTV cameras can feed facial recognition software ... in real time. So, is keeping track of where everyone is in their cars at all times still a finite, countably infinite, effectively impossible task? Let’s take a fast look at the math.
Pull a number out of your hat, or whatever hypothetical guess storage device you use. Guess that the task of tracking all the cars every day would take about 100,000 years of computation on an old PC, each and every day. Now make a tiny assumption, that the NSA has supercomputers (how many? LOTS!) a decent step faster than the ChiComs admit theirs are. Call it 500 million times faster. 500,000,000 faster than today’s PC, which itself does 400 times as much work as the 66Mhz machine from 1993. Ignore that factor of 400 entirely for now. 500 million is a scalar of 5 followed by 100,000,000 - 9 orders of magnitude. So the 100,000 year task - which is 36,525,000 days including leap years gets divided by 500,000,000, and we get 0.07305 days, which is just 1 hour and 45 minutes. Now let’s factor in Modern PC against Old PC, so we divide 1.75 hours - 105 minutes - by 400. And the answer comes up 0.26298 minutes, or just under 16 seconds. Aleph Zero is dead: one of NSA’s supercomputers by itself can keep track of the whereabouts of every car in the USA just 16 seconds behind realtime. Well, given a nearly continuous data feed from all those scanners. If they check in any less often than that, say once every 30 seconds, then NSA can easily stay just one update behind, which is as close to realtime as anything other than a targeted missile strike will ever need. So be aware: it can be done.
Driving somewhere? There’s a gov’t record of that
Chances are, your local or state police departments have photographs of your car in their files, noting where you were driving on a particular day, even if you never did anything wrong.
Using automated scanners, law enforcement agencies across the country have amassed millions of digital records on the location and movement of every vehicle with a license plate, according to a study published Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union. Affixed to police cars, bridges or buildings, the scanners capture images of passing or parked vehicles and note their location, uploading that information into police databases. Departments keep the records for weeks or years, sometimes indefinitely.
As the technology becomes cheaper and more ubiquitous, and federal grants focus on aiding local terrorist detection, even small police agencies are able to deploy more sophisticated surveillance systems. While the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that a judge’s approval is needed to track a car with GPS, networks of plate scanners allow police effectively to track a driver’s location, sometimes several times every day, with few legal restrictions. The ACLU says the scanners assemble what it calls a “single, high-resolution image of our lives.”
The license plate readers alert police to an automobile associated with an investigation, “but such instances account for a tiny fraction of license plate scans, and too many police departments are storing millions of records about innocent drivers,” the ACLU said.
“Private companies are also using license plate readers and sharing the information they collect with police with little or no oversight or privacy protections. A lack of regulation means that policies governing how long our location data is kept vary widely,” the ACLU said.
The civil liberties group is advocating legislation regulating the use of the technology.
The readers have been proliferating at “worrying speed” and are typically mounted on bridges, overpasses and patrol cars, the ACLU said.
The devices use high-speed cameras, and the software analyzes the photographs to retrieve the plate number, the group said.
The system then runs the data against “hot lists” of plate numbers and produces an instant alert when a match, or “hit,” registers, the group said. The hot lists include the National Crime Information Center file, which includes stolen cars and vehicles used in the commission of a crime.
“License plate readers would pose few civil liberties risks if they only checked plates against hot lists and these hot lists were implemented soundly. But these systems are configured to store the photograph, the license plate number, and the date, time, and location where all vehicles are seen — not just the data of vehicles that generate hits,” the ACLU report said.
The growing collection of data allows police to create “a single, high-resolution image of our lives,” and the constant monitoring “can chill the exercise of our cherished rights to free speech and association,” the group said.
The “good news” here is that without the computing power of the federal government, tracking all vehicles or even one of them goes right back to being an Aleph Zero algorithm. In other words, your local town or county will never be able to afford the cost of the top-end computers that have the power to do the job. Phew. Of course, the bad news part of that good news is that all it takes is your local po-po streaming the data to the feds. And my goodness, given both the nationalization and militarization of police departments across the country since 9/11, and all of those “walls” Jamie Gorlick spent so much time building coming crashing down thanks to the Patriot Act and other bits of Big Brother legislation ... you’d never ever think your local donut eaters would be passing along data like this. Not them, not ever!
Think again.
So, shouldn’t this pretty much put an instant end to crime? Between the drones and the CCTV and the NSA, wouldn’t the Forces Of Goodness pretty much be able to track anything and anyone and thus capture the bad guys right away? Well no. To do that, we need to have a CCTV camera on every corner, every quarter mile or so on every road. And a whole army of citizens to target the analysis. Which would cost trillions. Which would cost $Aleph Zero dollars. But it’s for the chiiiildren, and think of how many jobs that would create or save!!!11!
Posted by Drew458
on 07/18/2013 at 12:30 PM
Filed Under: • Computers and Cyberspace • Crime • Government •
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Permalink • Saturday - June 29, 2013
Guns? Whatever. Somewhere around here. I think.
The federal government’s oldest law enforcement group, the US Park Police is tasked with guarding federal monuments and acting as Forest Rangers in urban public parks. Funny, this group has a SWAT team. I guess just in case the raccoons start to riot or something. They also own half a thousand M16s. I guess just in case they have to fight a war at the Washington Monument.
But what these cops seeming DON’T have is gun control. As in the “hey, have you seen my machine gun? It was right here last year!” kind of gun control. Lost, stolen, strayed, or mislaid. Somebody has misplaced hundreds and hundreds of firearms. Oops.
The U.S. Park Police is failing to adequately keep track of its firearms, creating an environment in which weapons are vulnerable to theft or misuse, according to a government report released Friday.
Due to “a lackadaisical attitude toward firearms management” by commanders, investigators said they found “credible evidence of conditions that would allow for theft and misuse of firearms, and the ability to conceal the fact if weapons were missing.”
In a force of approximately 640 officers, the report says, hundreds of weapons were not properly accounted for. The auditors also allege that the agency has more than 1,400 extra weapons, including 477 military-style automatic and semiautomatic rifles.
The head of the Park Police officers’ union, Ian Glick, said there are shortcomings in the “antiquated system of weapon tracking,” but public safety was never put in jeopardy.
“None of these weapons were ever seized in a crime, or found on someone who shouldn’t have one,” he said.
No, perhaps not. Not yet anyway. Still, that doesn’t excuse the attitude.
The U.S. Park Police has lost track of a huge supply of handguns, rifles and shotguns, according to a report released Thursday on the law enforcement agency responsible for safeguarding the National Mall and critical American landmarks.
In the scathing report, the inspector general’s office of the Department of Interior faults staff at the agency for having no idea how many weapons they control and says the department has no clear policies or procedures for investigating missing weapons. The office said top managers, including the police chief, have shown a “lackadaisical attitude toward firearms management.”
“Historical evidence indicates that this indifference is a product of years of inattention to administrative detail and management principles,” deputy inspector general Mary Kendall wrote to Jonathan Jarvis, the director of the National Park Service, in a letter that accompanies the report.
Glick Calls Glitch on Glocks
While the tracking system has its failings, he said, “all the weapons are accounted for. Every weapon, every stick of ammo, everything is accounted for. But it’s not accounted for in the National Park Service weapons inventory computer system.”The National Park Service declined to respond to Glick’s specific assertion. But it said it has immediately ordered a complete weapons inventory, to address the “significant, systemic firearms management problems” identified in the report.
Oh, so it’s merely utterly inept record keeping. Come on, who has time for that? We’ve got to guard this giant granite statue of some guy on a horse! You never know where terrorists or graffiti artists will strike next! Lock ‘n load! Oh wait, can’t find my gun. Screw it, just buy some more.
Yeah right.
You citizens though had better keep your guns properly stored, segregated, and secured. With all appropriate permits. And no more ammo than we think is sufficient. And heaven help you if one gun goes missing two whole days and you don’t report it to the authorities.
Boy am I getting tired of the daily government scandals that boil down to “Are you stupid, or evil? Or both?” It’s like they’re our overlords and have no accountability whatsoever.
Posted by Drew458
on 06/29/2013 at 10:48 AM
Filed Under: • Government • Guns and Gun Control •
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Permalink • Big Brother Descends
The philosophy of NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg, run amok.
There may be an economic cure for the nation’s obesity: Hike the price of food.
Raising the price of a calorie for home consumption by 10 percent might lower the percentage of body fat in youths about 8 or 9 percent, according to new research from the National Bureau of Economic Research.
“An increase in the price of a calorie regardless of its source would improve obesity outcomes,” according to a working paper that three researchers prepared for the private, nonprofit bureau.
As the nation confronts an epidemic of flab, many experts have pointed a finger at low food prices as a cause, leading to proposals for taxes on sugary drinks, fast-food and junk food, as well as reductions in government farm subsidies.
I have a better solution.
The majority of obesity seems to be among the lower income classes. The people who are more likely than not to be on the dole. So stop handing out SNAP money in urban and densely suburban areas, and set up soup kitchens every 5 or 10 blocks. Hire an army of cafeteria ladies for minimum wage, and have them dole out lower calorie, balanced nutrition meals three times a day. And hey, the recipients will get some exercise walking back and forth all the time. Don’t make the food terrible, but don’t go out of your way to make it any Guantanamo Bay epicurean festival either. What, you don’t like the yeast cake and red beans with a side salad meal on offer? Well, go get a job and buy what you want. This is what’s being served today. And every day. Although there is no reason there couldn’t be a rotating menu. Monday is chicken stew and dumplings kind of thing.
Naturally everyone would have to show their photo ID with a fingerprint (haha, the government runs both through the criminal databases monthly!). Every meal the IDs get scanned, and a “fed meal” box electronically checked off. No ID card, no food. Double dippers are immediately “fined” the next two meals, equivalent to the old parental punishment of being sent to bed without your supper. But we’ll be nice, so here’s a 12oz cup of vitamin enriched nutri-Tang. No credit is given for missed meals, but the soup kitchens are open 24-7.
The obesity epidemic would be over in a year. And unemployment (in areas where low income jobs exist but are not being applied for) would drop like a rock.
The same idea applies for clothing purchases under EBT. If such a thing exists; I don’t have one so I don’t know. But if it does, then you get your clothing allotment from the thrift shop. Government run of course.
We’d save billions.
Posted by Drew458
on 06/29/2013 at 09:35 AM
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Permalink • Friday - June 21, 2013
H.L. Mencken ……… that’s all ya need
So I’m still clearing out my inbox. Yeah, still at it. There’s so much there I can’t read it all. I have to get better at checking the mail. OK, I will!
Meanwhile, I don’t know if Doc Jeff sent this because he knows I like Mencken, but more likely he matched the quote with his favorite president. lol.
Sorry Jeff. Couldn’t resist.
H/T Doc Jeff
A Brilliant Prophecy From 93 Years Ago:
H.L. Mencken (born 1880 - died 1956) was a journalist, satirist, critic, and Democrat.
He wrote this editorial while working for the Baltimore Evening Sun, which appeared in the July 26, 1920, edition:
“As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and complete narcissisticmoron.”
----H.L. Mencken, The Baltimore Evening Sun, July 26, 1920
Posted by peiper
on 06/21/2013 at 10:59 AM
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Permalink • Wednesday - June 05, 2013
Don’t Worry, Nobody Ever Comes Here
A warehouse maintained by contractors for the Environmental Protection Agency contained secret rooms full of exercise equipment, televisions and couches, according to an internal audit.
EPA’s inspector general found contractors used partitions, screens and piled up boxes to hide the rooms from security cameras in the 70,000 square-foot building located in Landover, Md. The warehouse—used for inventory storage—is owned by the General Services Administration and leased to the EPA for about $750,000 per year.
The EPA has issued a stop work order to Apex Logistics LLC, the responsible contractor, ensuring the company’s workers no longer have access to the site—EPA security officials escorted contractor personnel off the premises on May 17—and ending all payments on the contract.
Since awarding the contract in May 2007, EPA has paid Apex Logistics about $5.3 million, most of which went to labor costs. Conditions at the facility “raise questions about time charges made by warehouse employees under the contract,” the report said.
“The warehouse contained multiple unauthorized and hidden personal spaces created by and for the workers that included televisions, refrigerators, radios, microwaves, chairs and couches,” the IG report said. “These spaces contained personal items, including photos, pin ups, calendars, clothing, books, magazines and videos.”
The agency has completed an inventory of the warehouse’s contents and segregated all surplus furniture. EPA has committed to conducting an agency-wide review of all warehouse and storage facility operations.
In addition to the secret rooms, the IG found an incomplete and inaccurate recordkeeping system; numerous potential security and safety hazards, including an open box of passports; and “deplorable conditions”—such as corrosion, vermin feces and “pervasive” mold.
A little By The Way: Apex Logistics LLC is owned by China. So why were they even hired by the EPA to run a warehouse in Maryland??
Our initial research at the EPA’s Landover warehouse raised significant concerns with the lack of agency oversight of personal property and warehouse space at the facility. In particular:
The warehouse recordkeeping system was incomplete and inaccurate. The warehouse was filled with considerable valuable amounts of unusable, inoperable and obsolete furniture and other items. The warehouse contained multiple unauthorized and hidden personal spaces that included such items as televisions and exercise equipment.
Numerous potential security and safety hazards existed at the warehouse, including unsecured personally identifiable information (such as passports).
Deplorable conditions existed at the warehouse; corrosion, vermin feces, mold and other problems were pervasive.
As a result of the conditions noted, EPA property at the warehouse was vulnerable to theft and abuse (including personally identifiable information), EPA property was not properly maintained, the EPA may not have received sufficient value for the funds it paid for the warehouse’s operation, and warehouse workers were subjected to unsafe conditions for which the EPA could be held liable.
Agency Corrective Actions
Subsequent to our briefing to the agency on the conditions noted at the warehouse, the agency issued a stop work order to the contractor, ensuring there will be no further access to the site by contractor personnel and that no further costs will be incurred under the contract. Further, the agency has taken the following additional actions:
Completed an inventory of the warehouse and is seeking an appraisal of
inventoried items.
Identified and segregated all surplus furniture.
Reviewed background investigations on warehouse employees.
Removed flammable materials from the warehouse.
Performed a health and safety review.
Reviewed security footage.
The agency also agreed to initiate action addressing personally identifiable information, completing standard operating procedures for the warehouse, developing security plans, and conducting an agencywide review of all warehouse and storage facility operations.
Not to worry, your government is on the ball (finally) and taking action:
In addition to the efforts to secure the facility on or before Friday May 17, 2013, the EPA took key actions within the agency to address information security issues identified by OIG. OIT A contacted the Department of State to determine an interim standard operating procedure for the decommissioning of expired or no longer needed government passports for agency personnel. Beginning immediately, the EPA will send expired or unneeded government passports to the Department of State for destruction, until such time as the agency can put in place a passport decommissioning process with the appropriate safeguards. OEI determined that the presence of documents containing personally identifiable information at the warehouse, when considered in light of the other conditions at the warehouse, warranted referring the matter to the EPA’s Breach Evaluation Team.
So the entire crate of passports that they shouldn’t have had in the first place - and which may have been expired (the pictured ones have punch holes in them, but still) - has been taken the the State Department shredder.
And all the propane tanks - propane tanks??? - that Apex brought in have been removed.
Actions Taken by the EPA on Saturday, May 18,2013, and Sunday, May 19,2013 EPA personnel worked at the warehouse with new contract employees during the weekend of May 1819, 2013 , to continue to evaluate and secure the site . The EPA initiated a health and safety review of the warehouse. The agency removed all propane tanks that had been brought onsite by Apex employees and secured those tanks outside of the building.
And what of Apex? What kind of punishment are they looking at for misusing government funds, fudging payrolls, breaching security, and leaving the place a grossed out mess? Oh, something SEVERE, that’s for sure! A short term Time Out. Maybe. Maybe not. That’s all.
The EPA also continued to take actions and evaluate possible actions with regard to Apex Logistics, the contractor at the facility. While the EPA’s stop-work order would prevent Apex from conducting additional work through the current end date of the contract of May 28, 2013, the agency began a legal analysis to determine whether the EPA could terminate the contract for cause before May 28, 2013. OARM ‘ s Office of Grant s and Debarment and Office of Acquisitions Management continued to work with OGC and OIG to determine whether suspension or debarment of Apex from future government
contracts can be supported by the facts available.
It’s not just that we can’t trust the government working for us. The government itself can’t trust the people working for them.
Where’s that Reset Button? I had it here the other day ...
Posted by Drew458
on 06/05/2013 at 12:38 PM
Filed Under: • Government • Corruption and Greed •
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Permalink • Put Another Log On The Fire
How many more of these will we need until the cold fact that the entire federal government takes it’s orders from the top can no longer be ignored?
A second federal agency is facing a probe and accusations of political bias over its alleged targeting of conservative groups.
The allegations concern the Environmental Protection Agency, which is being accused of trying to charge conservative groups fees while largely exempting liberal groups. The fees applied to Freedom of Information Act requests—allegedly, the EPA waived them for liberal groups far more often than it did for conservative ones.
The allegations are under investigation by the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is also holding hearings on the Internal Revenue Service targeting of conservative groups.
“I don’t think it is fair at all. It is not fair to the American taxpayer—the American taxpayer should expect and demand that the EPA treats everyone equally in regard to these requests,” said Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Tim Murphy, a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee. “This cannot be tolerated. As we see more federal agencies with this kind of bias, it is and should be a concern for all of us.”
Research by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a conservative Washington, D.C., think tank, claims that the political bias is routine when it comes to deciding which groups are charged fees. Christopher Horner, senior fellow at CEI, said liberal groups have their fees for documents waived about 90 percent of the time, in contrast with conservative groups that it claims are denied fee waivers about 90 percent of the time.
...
The EPA has denied any favoritism.
“We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends”
I guess there’s a new definition in DC for “going green”.
Posted by Drew458
on 06/05/2013 at 08:32 AM
Filed Under: • Government • Corruption and Greed • Obama, The One •
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Permalink • Saturday - May 25, 2013
Media Bias And Commies And Coverups
An excellent essay by Ron Unz at The American Conservative. Well worth the 20 minutes spent reading it.
Our American Pravda
Jessup: I’ll answer the question. You want answers?
Kaffee: I think I’m entitled!
Jessup: You want answers?!
Kaffee: I want the truth!
Jessup: You can’t handle the truth!
Peiper, this bit about White adds a new twist to those financial history books you’ve sent me in the past ... though it is a minor point in this essay.
The realization that the world is often quite different from what is presented in our leading newspapers and magazines is not an easy conclusion for most educated Americans to accept, or at least that was true in my own case. For decades, I have closely read the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and one or two other major newspapers every morning, supplemented by a wide variety of weekly or monthly opinion magazines. Their biases in certain areas had always been apparent to me. But I felt confident that by comparing and contrasting the claims of these different publications and applying some common sense, I could obtain a reasonably accurate version of reality. I was mistaken.
In mid-March, the Wall Street Journal carried a long discussion of the origins of the Bretton Woods system, the international financial framework that governed the Western world for decades after World War II. A photo showed the two individuals who negotiated that agreement. Britain was represented by John Maynard Keynes, a towering economic figure of that era. America’s representative was Harry Dexter White, assistant secretary of the Treasury and long a central architect of American economic policy, given that his nominal superior, Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr., was a gentleman farmer with no background in finance. White was also a Communist agent.
Author James Bovard has described our society as an “attention deficit democracy,” and the speed with which important events are forgotten once the media loses interest might surprise George Orwell.
Even after all these years, I don’t agree with this guy’s take on the Iraq war. I don’t think the MSM was supporting it one iota once the conflict had lasted more than a month and a half. And I still don’t swallow the “Bush lied” line. But that may be a minor quibble compared to the rest of the essay.
A democracy may provide voters with a choice, but that choice is largely determined by the information citizens receive from their media.
Most of the Americans who elected Barack Obama in 2008 intended their vote as a total repudiation of the policies and personnel of the preceding George W. Bush administration. Yet once in office, Obama’s crucial selections—Robert Gates at Defense, Timothy Geither at Treasury, and Ben Bernake at the Federal Reserve—were all top Bush officials, and they seamlessly continued the unpopular financial bailouts and foreign wars begun by his predecessor, producing what amounted to a third Bush term.
The half dozen links to follow-on articles will take you about an hour to churn through. In the end, whether you accept all, part, or none or it, your perceptions will probably be forever altered.
Deep stuff. And a great key to open the doorway to a weekend open thread discussion.
Posted by Drew458
on 05/25/2013 at 09:46 AM
Filed Under: • Government • Media-Bias •
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Permalink • Friday - May 24, 2013
Yay For NY Legislature
Here I go again, being a contrarian.
While other VRWC blogs see this story as some overweening abuse and waste of time by the nanny-state, I see it as a rare example of government doing what it ought to be doing.
ALBANY, N.Y.—With all the corruption in Albany, one of your representatives is instead focusing efforts on something many of you like to do, bowl.
New York State Senator Patrick Gallivan (R-59th District) New York State Assemblyman Robin Schimminger (D-140th District) are sponsoring a bill that would cover bowling shoes. The bill in the assembly is co-sponsored by Assembly members Brian Kolb, Crystal Peoples-Stokes and Jane Corwin.
It would require alley owners to post signs, warning keglers not to wear bowling shoes outside, lest they become wet and increase the likelihood that a bowler could slip and fall when they come inside
Bowling shoes, designed to slip on the lanes, can become extremely slippery when wet.
“Some things that might seem small to others, might be of significance to another group,” Gallivan told WGRZ-TV, while acknowledging that on the surface, such a law might seem silly.
In this case, the group most concerned bowling alley owners, who Gallivan says approached him seeking help to stem the tide of rising insurance costs.
Alley owners saw lawsuits by patrons who have increased, in the decade since the state made smoking in a bowling alleys illegal, tempting many of bowlers who smoke, to sneak out or a few puffs between frames, perhaps when it’s raining or snowing....who then come in, slip, and then sue.
Hey, protectionist laws are what it’s all about. Bowling alleys pay their taxes just like every other business, so they have the right to have bills considered that cover their specific needs. Remember a few years ago when all the Nanny-State mayors were suing all the gun manufacturers because people were being shot with guns that they had built? And then some federal law got passed, called the Protection of Lawful Commerce Act that said such lawsuits were wrong, and are now illegal? And we all said “Woo hoo, this is a great thing!!”? This bill isn’t that much different.
But the article does have one central fact wrong, albeit an understandable error. It isn’t that the slippery soles become too slippery when wet, it’s that they become unslippery when they shouldn’t be. And that CAN get you injured.
Bowling shoes are designed to be slippery. Well, one of them is at any rate. The other is designed to give maximum traction on bare wood which is what the approach area is made of. The footwork of bowling is such that as you throw the ball, you step forward into a slight lunge with your opposite foot, and it slides along the floor for a short distance. The underside of the sliding foot shoe has special surfaces designed to slide. Top end shoes even allow you to change those surfaces depending on conditions. Slide soles are made from leather, suede, felt, or smooth plastic. As you finish your lunge and your heel turns inward, the heel of the sliding foot begins to carry your weight, and at that point the special braking surface under the heel stops your slide. There are many different kinds of brake heels too, from sawtooth hard rubber down to rough suede, depending on how fast or slow you want to come to a stop.
If the leather or felt sole of your sliding shoe gets wet it will stick like sandpaper to the raw wood floor that is the approach area to the lanes. So when you go to slide, your foot jams up just as hard and fast as Captain Ahab finding an open knothole on the deck of the Pequod. And you go flying. In the worst cases, you’ll put your back or your hip out and do a header right onto the lanes, getting yourself all covered up with yucky bowling lane oil. Worse, you’ll pull the shot and foul, getting no score for that throw at all.
But bowlers already know this. That’s why we all have at least one pair of “shoe-phylactics” in our bags. Dry Dogs, No Wets, all different brands; slip on covers for the bowling shoes, just in case. And we use them, all the time.
Because there’s more than just moisture to worry about, either from stepping outside or from using the bathroom. Gum in the carpet will screw you up too. So will the grease from some kid’s spilled fries. Dust and dirt because the alley staff didn’t have time to vacuum before your league started. It’s a risk we all know about, and we all know how to deal with it. Because we’ve all gone flying from this, at least once. Damp approaches are the scourge of the sport, and the worst is when you’ve been super careful but you jam up from some other fool’s damp spot.
These days bowling alleys have more customers than just league bowlers. To survive in the modern world they have had to reinvent themselves into Family Fun Centers. It’s Mommy And Me time every day at 1:30pm; bring the little tykes! Birthday Bowling parties! Singles Date Night through match.com! My point is, they get a lot of people in who aren’t really bowlers, so they just don’t grok how things work. Their sticky little sprogs run all over the place, dropping food and spilling drinks. Mommy runs out to the minivan five times to get junior a toy, or his special stuffed animal, or his behavioral meds. And they never stop to put on their street shoes.
Smokers are a big part of it too. For some reason, probably because it doesn’t take much ability to breathe, smokers are a huge part of the bowling fraternity. Or they were. Bowling alleys were the very last places to go smoke free, and when they did, many alleys lost half their customers forever. Period. The smokers who stayed learned to go outside for a puff. But outside is where the weather is, and I haven’t heard of a single alley building a covered outdoor smoking area. They could. Double doors, vent fans, screened upper casement windows, a covered ramada to the outside door, doormats, a strip of indoor outdoor carpet on the walkway, etc. So what if it costs $25,000? A dozen regular league bowlers who smoke bring in that much revenue per year. And the smoking ban cost the alleys hundreds of customers. It would be worth it. It would be worth it to build such areas even with seats, A/C, heat, and lights.
The alleys all put up signs. They’re everywhere. “Don’t go outside in your bowling shoes! We have shoe covers, just ask!” “No street shoes beyond this point!” But expecting people to read things right in front of them is too much. And expecting them to have a basic understanding of physics, or at least the variable friction effects of wet surface interactions, is also too much. So the alleys get sued because people hurt themselves a little. It’s not like they die. It’s not like they become paralyzed. But I’m sure an unexpected fall could break bones, and I know it can injure your back ... the nebulous kind of injury certain types of lawyers just love. For the most part it’s just embarrassing; I bet I’ve seen 100 people take a dive and not one of them ever needed an ambulance.
So these businesses seek some protection from government. Good for them. Sorry folks, life is a risk. Out on the lanes it’s caveat iaculātor sphearae
And it doesn’t really matter if the government has bigger, better things to do, or if they are generally corrupt and/or incompetent. Passing laws to protect their people is what they are for. Maybe the alleys are going to have to have everyone sign a release form, and the shoes will all have permanently affixed warning tags, like the one on the cord of your hair dryer that tells you not to use their product underwater. Duh.
Posted by Drew458
on 05/24/2013 at 02:41 PM
Filed Under: • Bowling Blogging • Government •
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:
It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.
- Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
- Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
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- Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere
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Oh, and here's some kind of visitor flag counter thingy. Hey, all the cool blogs have one, so I should too. The Visitors Online thingy up at the top doesn't count anything, but it looks neat. It had better, since I paid actual money for it.
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