Category: Current Events

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Bureaucrats Behaving Badly

Of course it’s more than just your appointed, unaccountable time-servers we’re talking about here. The fish rots from the head, as they say:

IRS senior managers like acting Commissioner Steven Miller insist that the illicit behavior was the work of a handful of rogue employees. The trouble is that even though we are starting to learn who those employees are and who supervised them, we still don’t know what orders they were acting on, why no one stopped them and why they thought it was appropriate to selectively harass private citizens on the basis of their using such dangerous labels as “Tea Party,” “liberty” and “patriot.”

These IRS employees believed that they had implicit consent to ideologically profile nonprofit advocacy groups. Where did that come from? Lois Lerner—the IRS official who headed the division overseeing tax-exempt groups and who is now on administrative leave—certainly didn’t elucidate matters when she exercised her right against self-incrimination rather than testify before Congress on May 22.

Emphasis mine. She pulled a neat trick by first asserting her innocence, as just about any lawyer will tell you pleading the 5th doesn’t work that way. You either shut up, or you don’t. It’ll be fun to watch what happens when they haul her back in front of that committee – assuming the Republicans have the stones to do so. They’ve been so cowed by years of hectoring from the Left that they’ve become incapable of standing up for the principles they espouse, much less for the Constitution itself. It’s telling that when men like Ted Cruz or Rand Paul make solid Constitutional arguments about the prescribed role of government, they’re painted as lunatics. Because raaacism!

Ace of Spades has a pretty good read on this, as usual:

With all of these scandals (and I do include the Secret Service and military scandals), one has to wonder how much of our Congressional and current Administration behavior is to blame. Why follow the rules, the law, when the Senate blows off completing a budget for years? A congressman tweets his weiner and now runs for Mayor. IRS agents and management flagrantly violate the law but get put on paid leave or allowed to retire with full benefits. Susan Rice lies to the country on national TV and gets promoted to be the President’s National Security Advisor. Bad behavior will continue when no punishments are handed out.

It’ll take a lot more than just punishment of some bad actors, even if they’re agency heads. This is the end product of a bloated system that was primed to erupt in our faces – all it needed was a crowd at the top that made the functionaries feel like they had free reign to finally act on their fascist impulses (which were projected onto conservatives instead). It’s past time to start simplifying the tax and regulatory regime, and defund a few agencies accordingly.

Maybe it was necessary for us to reach this state in order to piss off enough people to ensure something finally changes. Want to see real economic growth and a flood of new tax revenue? 17% flat tax on all income above, say, $45,000. No cut-outs, loopholes, or deductions except that first 45 grand. That protects lower- and middle-income families from getting hit (the former group pays none at all, the latter loses their mortage interest deduction but may actually gain in reduced taxable income). The 1040 would be reduced to the size of a postcard, and the potential for misbehavior would shrink accordingly.

Hey, a guy can dream.

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“Ameritopia”

I may have to finally pick up a copy of Levin’s book, though it looks like we’re already there:

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America’s largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.

The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an “ongoing, daily basis” to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.

To be clear, collecting “metadata” of numbers, cell tower locations, etc. isn’t quite the same thing as listening in on every single conversation. But that doesn’t mean this shouldn’t give you the creeps, particularly if you’re a Verizon customer (as we are). And don’t worry, I’m sure there are similar orders out there for AT&T so their customers don’t feel left out.

There could be a perfectly legitimate reason for this, but I doubt it. Given all of the current revelations, it would be foolish to presume good will on the part of the guv’mint. Let’s run down what we’ve learned just in the past few weeks:

– The IRS ‘fessed up to targeting conservative and libertarian groups for harassment. Said harassment included demands for information that no reasonable person could be expected to provide, all under the penalty of perjury.

– In the meantime, liberal groups sailed through the same process. In the case of “Organizing for America”, tax-exempt status was granted retroactively.

– Pro-life groups were asked to detail the content of their prayers and activities conducted during prayer meetings, and required to sign affidavits that they would not exercise their rights to free speech by demonstrating at Planned Parenthood facilities.

– The EPA is showing similar favoritism by gumming up the works (which is what they do best) for companies, organizations, and individuals who don’t suit their politics. That is, they’re targeting groups that don’t bow before the altar of Anthropogenic Global Warming.

– EPA’s actions included disclosing private information on private citizens (specifically, farmers) to environmental extremist groups.

– The IRS performed a similar service by disclosing information on prominent (and not-so-prominent) conservative donors. This information, including their tax returns, went to “progessive” interest groups. I doubt their intent was to invite them over for a few drinks and a game of cards.

This actually explains a lot. I had volunteered twice last year to be a poll-watcher for True the Vote, but never heard back from them. Now I know why – the group’s founder was too busy digging out from under a mountain of paperwork while her husband was fighting off the EPA, OSHA, and ATF…who, for some reason, had suddenly taken an interest in their business. Coincidence, I’m sure.

And don’t forget my last post. Taken together, it’s clear that the mechanisms of our government have been turned against us. All that stuff the Left fantasized about Bush doing? Obama’s actually doing it.

I had no problem at all with wiretaps of phone calls between the US and foreign countries when a suspected terrorist was on either end of the line. That’s because I don’t think we should treat potential WMD attacks as criminal matters. It’s war, and should be conducted as such. That means we get to spy on the bad guys and not tell them about it.

But this is different…it’s hard to ignore the fact that things are coming to a boil. Plan accordingly.

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Creeping Tyranny…Again

It’s getting harder and harder to ignore an out-of-control Federal government. Robert Goyer at Flying magazine has apparently had enough:

As far as the pseudo detention program is concerned — nobody at TSA or Homeland Security will even confirm the existence of any such program — my best guess is that there’s some kind of flight profile that triggers a response, similar to what happened to me in my unregistered, leased airplane. The only common threads so far seem to be that most of the pilots stopped were traveling west to east and all of them so far were male — no surprise considering the overwhelmingly male pilot population. Some were on IFR flight plans, some were on VFR plans, and others were just legally flying VFR without a plan. They have all been questioned about what they were doing and why, where they were going, what they had in the airplane and why they were headed to the destination they landed at.
For the record, none of this is any of their business.
The new ramp check: “Your papers, please…”

Damn skippy it ain’t. Combined with the stories of pilots being detained by local po-po for violating nonexistent no-fly zones, and one might come to believe that the thugs are feeling – shall we say – emboldened? And make no mistake: the thugs are always there. There will always be a latent tendency by some in positions of authority to throw their weight around in ways that don’t exactly comport with the rule of law. The difference lies in their sense of how likely they are to get away with it – or even if it’s expected of them.

This too shall pass, but it won’t be pretty in the meantime. It’ll all end in one of two ways, so pay attention and make informed choices while there’s still time to end this politely.
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Wuss Nation

These stories seem connected somehow:

Consider the teacher new to an upscale suburban town. Shuffling through the sheaf of reports certifying the educational “accommodations” he was required to make for many of his history students, he was struck by the exhaustive, well-written—and obviously costly—one on behalf of a girl who was already proving among the most competent of his ninth-graders. “She’s somewhat neurotic,” he confides, “but she is bright, organized and conscientious—the type who’d get to school to turn in a paper on time, even if she were dying of stomach flu.” He finally found the disability he was to make allowances for: difficulty with Gestalt thinking. The 13-year-old “couldn’t see the big picture.” That cleverly devised defect (what 13-year-old can construct the big picture?) would allow her to take all her tests untimed, especially the big one at the end of the rainbow, the college-worthy SAT.

Behold the wholly sanitized childhood, without skinned knees or the occasional C in history.

In case you’re wondering what happens when this mentality is brought into adulthood, I think we’ve been seeing it for a while now:

The men who built the Empire State Building stood on bare planks to work in the sky; paradoxically, they were grounded in reality, not theory. They did not have to concern themselves with tones and timbres; nor did the educated architects who dreamed up skyscrapers. One suspects that if either the man on the beam or the one with the blueprints had been approached by a tanning-booth-bronzed-and-manicured corporate bureaucrat, and asked to enumerate their “goals” as part of their “performance review” they both would have hooted at him in derision. “My goal,” the first would say, “is to not fall. It’s to stay alive so I can pick up my pay, have a beer with the wife, raise the kids and get into heaven a half-hour before the devil knows I’m dead.”

“My goal,” the architect would say dismissively, “is to make your jaw drop, and the drop it some more; I want to build a mystery!”

Very likely the bureaucrat — too timid to walk the sky, and too unimaginative to even conceive scraping it — would have found their answers vague, and given both of them low marks in team-building, professional comportment and attention to guidelines. He would recommend training meant to get them comfortable with thinking and living inside the approved boxes, “and at no point should such recklessly lighthearted men be considered for promotion,” he would write.

Hat tip: Instapundit.

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Under Power

SpaceShip Two finally had its first powered flight today, passing Mach 1 with a 16-second burn of its solid/liquid hybrid engine. The jury’s still out as to how much of a safety advantage that may be, but it sure does look cool:

To infinity and beyond!

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. And video is worth even more:

Lots more at Clark Lindsey’s place and New Space Journal.

UPDATE: In more mundane aerospace news, Boeing’s 787 is finally returning to service. That program’s been a massive Charlie-Foxtrot from the beginning, but I do have high hopes for this bird.

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Mad Men…In Spaaace!!!

This could be interesting:

Writers from the hit TV series “Mad Men” are working on a potential TV series that would focus on the space program of the 1960s and the journalists who covered it. The working title of the program is “Cocoa Beach.” If it comes to fruition, the series could debut as early as this fall.

Mash up your ad-agency+astronaut names here…

They must be running out of 60’s trends to mine from the perspective of Madison Avenue, and so far this season Mad Men has gone full Soap Opera trashy. Walking Dead and Southland can’t come back soon enough.

And if Tom Wolfe was correct, there should be plenty of racy material to dredge up from the 60’s space coast.

Which reminds me…didn’t someone already try a TV show in that setting a long time ago? The mind reels at what they might’ve done with I Dream of Jeannie…

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Words Fail

Always looking to outdo his own hype, Richard Branson’s ironically-named Virgin America has taken hookup culture to the next level:

Passengers pinpoint their designated hottie with Virgin’s digital seat map, browse the menu and have a drink, snack or meal sent over. Passengers can also follow up with a text through the seat-to-seat messaging system.

Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson introduced the new feature in a video. He said the chances of deplaning with a plus-one are at least 50 percent.

No word on what modifications they plan to install in the lavs, but I sure wouldn’t want to be the new guy on the cleaning crew.

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About Boston

Not much to say, really, except that it’s more proof that we live in a world full of depraved people with sick ambitions.

I’m sorry…you thought I was talking about the Boston Bomber?

After a tragedy the normal person responds by falling to their knees in prayer. The compassionate person responds with concern for the affected. The professional reports the facts and differentiates between speculation and confirmation.

It is the desperate and professionally and spiritually anemic who heartlessly view tragedy as a chance to settle some imaginary score. These individuals are baselessly impugning innocent groups and in doing so, inadvertently impugn themselves and their profession.

Get over yourselves. For one day, get over yourselves. For one day realize the purpose you claim to serve and distribute what the authorities are confirming as fact. Practice actual news gathering.

At this point I don’t know what makes me angrier: the act itself or our supposedly impartial press falling all over itself to blame it on Bible-thumping-gun-toting-Tea-Partying-rednecks before a single piece of evidence is collected. First reports are almost always wrong, especially when they are so tainted by brazen partisanship.

At last count 3 people are dead, including someone’s little boy. Over a hundred are injured, including dozens who have lost limbs. All at the hands of a creature consumed by evil and motivated by God-knows-what. I have no idea who did this or why, but it’s certainly safe to at least make that assumption.

The assumptions made by our media watchdogs are more ill-considered.

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Make It So

Just found this piece on NASA’s research into faster-than-light propulsion at Popular Science (yeah, I know: often not much better than the Weekly Reader from grade school, but such is today’s media) so I’ll only link. Deep thoughts later. Or not.

Having said that, at least someone at NASA gets it:

In the wake of the shuttle program’s termination and given the increasing role of private industry in low-Earth orbit flights, NASA has said it will refocus on far-flung, audacious exploration, reaching far beyond the rather provincial boundary of the moon. But it can only reach those goals if it develops new propulsion systems—the faster the better. A few days after the 100 Year Starship gathering, the head of NASA, Charles Bolden, echoed White’s remarks. “One of these days, we want to get to warp speed,” he said. “We want to go faster than the speed of light, and we don’t want to stop at Mars.”

If that “someone” happens to be the Administrator, then so much the better. Investigating advanced propulsion concepts and hands-on work like the Asteroid Capture Mission are precisely what a government space agency should be doing. Leave earth-orbit access to private business while helping us figure out how to go even farther.

In the 1920’s, when the U.S. Post Office needed to move large amounts of mail across the country quickly, they didn’t design, build, and operate their own airplanes: they hired out the job to a number of companies that eventually became household names. In particular, you know them as United, American, and the late-great Pan Am. These carriers gave us pioneering aviators like Charles Lindbergh and Elrey Jeppesen.

In other words: a space industry, not a space program.

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You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Mattress

Thomas Sowell poses an interesting question: could a Cypriot-style money grab happen here?

This is what happens when nations run up too big of a bar tab and have run out of options as the taps run dry and the bartender shouts “last call”: they start scrounging for dropped change, steal the waitresses’ tips when she’s not looking, and then eventually start lifting other patron’s wallets.

Of course, now that tiny little Cyprus has decided to brazenly steal from its depositors, the other EU zombie-states are starting to fall in line. If the citizens of Spain, Italy, and Greece wish to remain “citizens” (before they finally blow right past being “subjects” and become “serfs”), they’d better be paying close attention and getting their cash out of the banks now.

Think that’ll go well? Me neither. But once a state has removed that crucial psychological pillar – that is, your money’s safe here – then there is nothing to stop a good old-fashioned bank run. And that’s bad for everybody:

The economic repercussions of having people feel that their money is not safe in banks can be catastrophic. Banks are not just warehouses where money can be stored. They are crucial institutions for gathering individually modest amounts of money from millions of people and transferring that money to strangers whom those people would not directly entrust it to.

That means no loans for new cars, new homes, or new businesses.

Once the dust settles, they’re likely to treat their elected “betters” the same way they’d treat the proverbial drunk trying to stick them with his bill. Of course, there’s one little problem in that they all have a share of the National Bar Tab.

EVENING UPDATE: Zero Hedge on the eventual endgame.

WHAT HE SAID: Dr. Krauthammer explains why this could be the EU’s Archduke Ferdinand moment. And we all know how that turned out.

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