Syrian Gas Attacks

 Warning:  This post contains graphic images unsuitable for children and other living things. 

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Sometimes, words simply cannot suffice.

 

"There's no tragedy in life like the death of a child.  Things never get back to the way they were."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

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The Syrian government has launched new gas attacks on Syrian rebels, killing at least 1,400, including many, many children and women.

It is said that "Nero fiddled while Rome burned."  Our UN ambassador was partying in Ireland - after 19 days on the job! - during an "urgent" Security Council Meeting last Wednesday concerning Syrian gas attacks.  She sent her deputy.  Where are our priorities?

We have no gas warfare red line.

We have abandoned any pretense to a moral high ground.

We are not our brother's keeper.

There is no Golden Rule.

We have no deeper interest than self interest.

Evil exists.

We are lost.  We have no leader or plan.  The wilderness is lonely and we are terrified.

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From Time.com:

"Syria’s Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi dismissed the possibility of an American attack, warning that such a move would risk triggering more violence in the region."

More violence than children dying of poison gas?  How?

Do something now, Mr. President.  I know, it's a war and it's dangerous but we need you.  The world needs you.  Don't lead from behind.  Now's not the time.

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"I don't oppose all wars.  What I am opposed to is a dumb war.  What I am opposed to is a rash war." 

"We have real enemies in the world.  These enemies must be found.  They must be pursued and they must be defeated."

"We're not going to baby sit a civil war."

"Why can't I just eat my waffle?"

All, Barack Obama

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"We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people.  Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way."


"Better to fight for something than live for nothing."

Both, George S. Patton

Student Loans ... Changing the Change

 

These people borrowed nearly a trillion dollars from you and they don't want to pay it back.

Why is that a problem?  

We previously looked at the reformed and inferior Federal Student Loan Program on March 30, 2010, at  Student Loans and the IRS.  I hope you'll take the time to read it. Student loan reform was a bad idea then and has been implemented poorly since. 

How do we know it was a bad idea?  The prez told us so.  He was speechifying about student loans last week.  In preparation, The White House announced:

"We have to fundamentally rethink how higher education is paid for in this country."  (Thank you, The Atlantic)

But that's what was supposed to happen in 2010.  The prez was mighty proud of his student loan reform back then, part of his Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), Obamacare to most: 

"With this bill, and other steps we've pursued over the last year, we are finally undertaking meaningful reform in our higher education system..."  Barack Obama, quoted by ABCNews.com on March 30, 2010

Mr. Obama called it "one of the most significant investments in higher education since the GI Bill."  (Thank you, Christian Science Monitor)

The prez promised us $60Bil in program savings that would be used partly fund Obamacare, part to be spent on community colleges, part for Pell Grants, part to ease stringent repayment requirements and on and on.  Wow, who wouldn't be on board with something as cool as that?  

But if that had been true, why would we want to fundamentally rethink the president's own reforms from which he promised us such miraculous results?  Answer:  It wasn't true.

Here are two more answers:

1)  The education reform issue was advanced to give the prez a political wedge issue;  

2)  It provided for the federal government to take over a profitable private sector (although admittedly publicly funded) business activity.  You know, like ObamaCare usurped the health care industry. 

The wedge issue is a dandy and conservatives have wilted under it.  

"Hey kids, want some student loan money (stubux?)?  Let me help you out there.  Interest rates too high?  Let's cut them in half for a while by borrowing from Social Security.  Yeah, I told you it's bankrupt but what the hey, let's do it anyway. (Oh, you didn't know that?)  And don't forget, VOTE DEMOCRAT!"

Rates will go up again, of course.  It's a part of the plan that he doesn't bother to mention.

Then comes the reason behind the reason:  When the built-in failure happens, he'll blame the Republicans and lead a crusade to "fundamentally rethink how higher education is paid for in this country."  (See above.)  He's doing it right now.  

"Changing the change" might actually work if he can get enough of us to forget that the original plan was his, not the Republicans'.  "Hope and Change" and all.

Reason #2:  Central planning is all the vogue again.  The gummint knows better than we do about everything.  Therefore, we should do things the gummint way because, you know, it's a matter of smarter people taking better care of us than we can care for ourselves.  Personal responsibility morphs into "it takes a village." Why should the private sector make a profit?

The gummint has taken over major industries on the grounds that the Washington can, and therefore should, run them better than the private sector.  The gummint took control of crop production during the Great Depression.  Wiki notes of a Woody Guthrie song:

In addition to being a lament for the braceros killed in the crash, the opening lines of "Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)":

"The crops are all in and the peaches are rott'ning,

The oranges piled in their creosote dumps."

are another protest by Guthrie. At the time, government policies paid farmers to destroy their crops in order to keep farm production and prices high. Guthrie felt that it was wrong to render food inedible by poisoning it in a world where hungry people lived.

A popular refrain is "Government, stay out of my bedroom."  True that, and the exact same sentiment applies to everything else in our lives - including crop production - except for the powers and duties conferred on the federal government by the Constitution.  "Stay out of my doctor's office," works, too.

Our Founders feared that a powerful federal government would threaten the freedom of Americans.  The Constitution tells us what the government can do, but that wasn't enough.  

The Bill of Rights tells us what we can do.  Nowhere is there a mention of gummint doing anything just because it feels like it.  Hello, Obamacare.  Oh, that's right, it's a tax.  Who knew?

Cars, banking, health care, student loans, crony capitalism loans to politically connected fat cats for solar panels and batteries that never worked or were never competitive or never existed.  Choose your industry.  Which one is working better than before gummint took it over?

Next up:  Gummint rates schools and directs students to the ones it thinks are best by increasing the amounts of individual student loans for them.  No, really.  (Thank you, BusinessWeek.)

Hey!  Gotcha again, didn't I?

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"The bottom line is we're not broke, there's plenty of money out there, it's just that the government doesn't have it."

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) 

July 25, 2013

Doing Business With al-Qaeda -- Where's Our Outrage?

 
The US Army is doing business with al-Qaeda.  Literally.  

Their guys:

Think about that for a moment.  Americans are killing, and being killed by, these a-Qs but we're doing business with those a-Qs, who are using the profits to fund the first a-Qs.  The mind reels.

According to a published report:  "Special Inspector General John Sopko said his office has urged the Army to suspend or debar 43 contractors over concerns about ties to the Afghanistan insurgency, "including supporters of the Taliban, the Haqqani network and al Qaeda."  (Thank you, FoxNews.com.)

Our guys:

 

 

The Army's Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) has strongly recommended that the Army stop doing that business.  Makes sense to me.  You?  But noooo!  (Thank you, John Belushi.)  The Army is going to keep doing business with the enemy, thank you very much.  SIGAR writes, and I'm embarrassed to quote this:

"In other words, they may be enemies of the United States, but that is not enough to keep them from getting government contracts.

Then WTF WOULD be enough to keep them from getting US government contracts?!  Regicide?  They'd like to.  Nukes?  They're trying.  Baby barbeques?  They're already doing that, so clearly that's not enough.  Killing our best and brightest young men and women?  They're doing that, too, yet we continue to do business with them.  Ramming loaded passenger jets into tall office buildings?  Yep.

The result?  We are co-sponsoring this:

 

And this:

 

And this:

Congress has taken note and at least one Representative has spoken out but, no surprise, Congress hasn't done anything about it. They're on vacation now, don'cha know?

"The fact that U.S. taxpayer money has ended up in the hands of terrorists and insurgents in Afghanistan is totally inexcusable. It's sickening to think that we've been giving money to the very people who are killing our brave service men and women," Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, one of the co-sponsors, said in a statement. 

In the report, Sopko's office noted that the U.S. has suspended 59 contractors and debarred 68 contractors following allegations that they were engaged in fraud and other misconduct. 
But the report said the refusal to send the same message to companies allegedly supporting terror and militant organizations is a "continuing problem." 

The report challenges the Army's claim that there was not enough evidence. The report said in each of the 43 recommendations, the office provided "detailed supporting information demonstrating that these individuals and entities are providing material support to the insurgency in Afghanistan." All were turned down. 

I wish I could vote for Rep.Chaffetz. 

And where is the Prez in all this?  Voting present, apparently.  He's in charge, f'God's sake, and we're at war.  One order, like, say, "Stop doing that, you idiots!" would be enough.  You can't be in a war and be afraid of confronting the enemy.  It's mutually exclusive.

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"When we hang the capitalists they will sell us the rope we use."  Did Joseph Stalin say that?  Well, no, but it's a good story.  Supposedly said to his very close comrade Grigori Zinoviev in the '20s.  They were such close comrades that Stalin had him imprisoned and shot.  Fast forward to today:  "When we blow up the American imperialists they will sell us the explosives."  Same thing. 

What's the point here?  The ultimate point, I suppose, is that some of our tax dollars are buying the bullets and bombs that are killing some of our soldiers... and there is no outrage.  Is that what you want?  What's wrong with us?  Where's YOUR outrage?

I get it about war.  A lot of good young men and women die but aren't they supposed to die for something?  If we can boycott Iran, why can't we stop doing business with al-Qaeda?  At the very least, don't sponsor their killers.

The prez, like his predecessor, can't stop the war and he won't escalate it, either.  There is NOTHING in this war for America.  

Here's the Alibi for Ignorance proposal:  Have John Kerry meet with a-Q reps in Geneva, just like HenryK did in the '60s and'70s.  Escrow $50Bil in a Swiss bank for 120 days, at the end of which the US will be entirely out of Afghanistan.  No troops, no aid, no embassy, no USAID, no CIA, no NOTHING.  If the withdrawal was reasonably peaceful, a-Q gets to keep the money

Costs us the $50Bil plus the cost to depart.  After the $50Bil+, no more current costs and no more battlefield casualties.  We lick our wounds again, treat our damaged veterans and try to figure out how best to use our military next time.  God knows, we blew it this time.  Again.

And we remember this:

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"When the war of the giants is over the wars of the pygmies will begin."
Winston Churchill

D-Day 2013 and Teddy Roosevelt, Jr.

I last posted my respects to the men - and women, as Bob Welch reminded us in American Nightingale - of D-Day 1944 on June 6, 2010, calling it Back Page News.  This year, not do much as a single mention anywhere in our local rag, the Eugene Register-Guard, not even on the back page.  What a comment on our national conscience.  What a disgrace. 

To us in America, raised on US-centric WW II history, this was the critical event of WW II in Europe.  The beginning of the end, and maybe it was.  But that gives short shrift to the Soviet Union's sacrifices.  We don't much like them any more but back in the day they killed 9 out of 10 German soldiers lost in the war.  Russia and its contemporaries remember them and honor them.  Us, not so much.

There is talk of another major celebration in Normandy next year.  That's great, as far as it goes, but what about saying thank you today?  Today, the living and dead veterans get not so much as a nod.

Here is Nancy Reagan placing flowers on the grave of Gen. Teddy Roosevelt, Jr., in 1994 while President Reagan looks on. 

TRJr deserves a special mention.  Gassed and wounded at Soissons in 1918, he had to overcome strenuous resistance to being in the invasion at all.   His commanding officer reluctantly OK'd it but thought he was sending him to his death.  Oldest man in the invasion, second man off the lead boat in the first wave (give that some thought), only general to land with the first wave, only man to serve with his son on D-Day.  

Medal of Honor for his actions on D-Day, one of only two sets of fathers and sons to win the Medal of Honor, along with Arthur and Douglas MacArthur.  As successive waves came ashore, he walked around under fire encouraging them to move inland and he personally led assaults against German positions, just as he did when he first came ashore.  He was admirably portrayed by Henry Fonda in the movie The Longest Day.  Maybe that's where you remember him from.  He is a man well worth remembering.

Here's his Medal of Honor citation:

For gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty on 6 June 1944, in France. After 2 verbal requests to accompany the leading assault elements in the Normandy invasion had been denied, Brig. Gen. Roosevelt's written request for this mission was approved and he landed with the first wave of the forces assaulting the enemy-held beaches. He repeatedly led groups from the beach, over the seawall and established them inland. His valor, courage, and presence in the very front of the attack and his complete unconcern at being under heavy fire inspired the troops to heights of enthusiasm and self-sacrifice. Although the enemy had the beach under constant direct fire, Brig. Gen. Roosevelt moved from one locality to another, rallying men around him, directed and personally led them against the enemy. Under his seasoned, precise, calm, and unfaltering leadership, assault troops reduced beach strong points and rapidly moved inland with minimum casualties. He thus contributed substantially to the successful establishment of the beachhead in France.

Only three other men won the Medal of Honor on D-Day, and one on June 7.  Four of the five were awarded posthumously, including TRJr who died of a heart attack on July 12, 1944, the same day he was promoted to major general.

TRJr is seldom remembered any more, just like the rest of the D-Day and WW II veterans.  But today is a good day to remember and thank him and them.

"If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten."
-- Rudyard Kipling

Achievements, not deaths, are the legacy of Normandy but it is death that dominates our thoughts today.  For each recorded act of heroism and sacrifice and death there were hundreds more that went unobserved or are forgotten.  They died to keep us free.  It is to our shame that they appear to our children only as roles in a video game instead of in a story of heroism and sacrifice that we have taught them.  

Gentlemen and ladies of D-Day, thank you for giving my family and me our freedom and our future.

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"We’ll start the war from right here!"
Teddy Roosevelt, Jr, upon learning that his unit had landed a mile from their designated beach on D-Day.

Memorial Day 2013

Since America began, Americans have been dying to keep us free.

In the Civil War

In the Indian Wars

The Spanish-American War

In World War I

 In World War II

In Korea

 

In Vietnam

In Iraq

In Afghanistan

Please... Remember and Honor Them Today

Thank you

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"All we have of freedom, all we use or know

This our fathers bought for us long and long ago."

-- Rudyard Kipling, The Old Issue

 

Corruption and Careerism at the IRS

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Images from theweek, unitedliberty, and tpnn

[Full disclosure:  I had a 27-1/2 year career in the Collection Division of IRS, doing and supervising enforced tax collection.  I was honored with the highest awards in both the IRS and the Treasury Department.  I had a 4-year post-career as an international consultant in the field of tax collection reform, during which I was honored with the highest civilian award in the Republic of Georgia.  I earned an MS-Tax from Golden Gate University.]

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The Internal Revenue Service (and it's predecessor, the Bureau of Internal Revenue) has a long history of corruption, mismanagement and careerism.  The IRS was established in 1953 when the BIR was found to be corrupt beyond redemption. The IRS website refers to that change merely as a replacement for "a patronage system".  That's like referring to the Titanic as "a shipping incident".  They describe it like this:

1952 - President Truman proposed his Reorganization Plan No. 1, which replaced the patronage system at the IRS with a career civil service system. It also decentralized service to taxpayers and sought to restore public confidence in the agency.  (My emphasis.)

1953 - President Eisenhower endorsed Truman's reorganization plan and changed the name of the agency from the Bureau of Internal Revenue to the Internal Revenue Service.

Corruption and failure dog the agency to this day.  Presidents used the IRS to their political advantage from the jump.  Now the IRS Commissioner has admitted corrupt interference with conservative, religious, pro-life and public education groups.  Corrupt interference.  Again.

Once there was a guy who broke that mold.  In 1997 Bill Clinton appointed Charles Rossotti as IRS commissioner.  The news was full of stories of ugly IRS Collection Division abuses.  One of CharlieR's jobs was "fix it".  Did a good job, too, eliminating collection quotas, expanding taxpayer rights and creating a culture of customer service.  (No, really.) 

Another systemic taxpayer abuse that Rossotti faced was the illegal manipulation of IRS-approved installment payment agreements.  Senior IRS collection officials hid the facts until they were threatened with Congressional testimony by employees.  They finally fessed up once IRS General Counsel was brought in.  The illegal program was terminated and more than $20Mil in illegally collected taxes was returned to taxpayers.

That's it.  Just one real reformer in all these years.  The IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998 is his legacy.  Look it up.  Let me know if you can find anyone else in his league.  You won't.  Not one other stand-out reformer before or since.

NB:  I always worked in the IRS Collection Division.  My comments regard things I witnessed, not second-hand stories or tales from other sources.

Most of the employees at IRS provide internal services or are technocrats who deal with technical tax matters.  I was one of the latter.

Technocrat:  a technical expert, especially: one exercising managerial authority.  (Thank you, Merriam-Webster.) 

The public is well served by most of them.  But far too many, especially managers, are simply careerists.  They sniff the wind and go in any direction they think may further their careers.  

Careerist: a professional who is intent on furthering his or her career by any possible means and often at the expense of their own integrity.  (Thank you, The Free Dictionary.)

Careerists think in terms of gaming the system to make themselves look good.  The ethics of the game seldom matter, only the result.  That kind of thinking gave rise to things like collection quotas, seizure (of taxpayer property) goals and promotions based on dollars collected.  Get the picture?

When accused, careerists lie if lies will further their careers or obfuscate inconvenient facts.  Rossotti knew that.  One of his Day 1 acts as Commish was an email to all employees telling us that quotas would not be tolerated and that he demanded high standards.  He told all employees to contact him directly by email if they knew of the existence of quotas as a measuring tool or goal in the IRS.  As expected, the careerists said "Quotas?  We ain't got no stinkin' quotas."  

They lied.  Many were later outed and reprimanded.  Sadly, most stayed with IRS.  But quotas and dollars as management tools at IRS disappeared.  Rossotti was as good as his word.  If you told him about illegal activities he looked into it.  Really.  That sort of involvement was unheard of in the IRS.  He told us how it was going to be and he made it happen.

Today's refrain is "the IRS/government/whatever is too big to oversee."  No, it's not.  It can be done.  If Ike could run D-Day without computers, is it so impossible to imagine that someone can run the IRS with the extraordinary technology they've got?  If Rossotti could do it then, why can't someone do it now?  It does require excellent public servants working very hard in order to run it properly and make course corrections when needed.  People like that exist.

Here's my recommendation:  Mr. Prez, give Charles Rossotti a call.  Ask him to return and fix this mess.  Beg, if you have to.  Play some golf with him, have a beer summit, invite him to meet Jay-Z and Beyonce at the White House, go over to his house and have breakfast.  Do something.  When he gets things going the right way at IRS you can let him turn the reins over to someone you both trust, but give him passes to all White House performances and State of the Union Addresses in perpetuity.  He will have earned it.  And he's a Democrat.  Take a chance.

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"From my point of view any kind of mistreatment of one taxpayer or one employee is one too many."
-- Charles Rossotti

25 Years of Continuous Sobriety

This is another of those days that I couldn't believe would ever come.  25 years ago today - May 2, 1988 - I had my first day of a sobriety that has lasted ever since.  I may drink tomorrow, who knows, but I have every confidence that I'll stay sober today.  One day at a time.  25 years ago yesterday I was near death from uncontrollable alcoholism.  Today I planted berries in my garden and haven't drank all day.  See the difference?

I owe the sober life I have to a lot of people.  Bill W. and Dr. Bob were AA's founders.  I still can't believe how perfectly they understood me and my alcoholism 78 years ago.  AA has no gospel, but Bill's book Alcoholics Anonymous comes awfully close for me.  Thanks, guys.

Clair H. took me to my first two AA meetings in Modesto, CA, and has remained my trusted friend.  Thank you, Clair.

My sponsor, Jack B. from Davis, CA, took me under his wing and showed me how to live a sober life and apply the principles of AA, suggestions if you will, to my life.  He guided me through AA's 12 Steps.  He was always there for me until I left California in 1990 for a 5-1/2 year adventure in Alaska.  Thank you, Jack.

My darlin' wife had the great good sense to have nothing to do with me for the first few years but married me in 1993.  I think she was tired of my begging.  Thank you, Edythe.  I owe you more than I can ever repay.

I used to blame everyone and everything for my drinking.  "If you had my life, problems, experiences yada yada, you'd drink, too."  Well, no.  I drank the way I did because I am an alcoholic.  Am, not was.  Simple, right?  Sure, unless you are in the kind of insane denial that I was in.  In that case, it's a deadly delusion.

All of the 12 Steps are crucial to the maturing sobriety of anyone trying for a different life through AA.  However, Step 1 still has the most compelling message for me:

"We admitted we were powerless over alcohol--that our lives had become unmanageable"

Powerless?  Me?  Yep.  Didn't think that was possible.  It's just alcohol, right?  I wasn't that bad, was I?  Everybody drinks, right? Most of us do, true enough, and are able to take alcohol or leave it.  10% of us or so, not so much.  We're alcoholics.  Once we take a drink we lose the ability to stop.  It's not how much we drink, it's what happens when we drink.

Unmanageable?  Me?  How could that be?  Didn't I have a job?  Didn't I have stuff?  Didn't I have achievements?  Turns out, none of that matters.  It's what happens when you drink, and what happened for me was bad.  Very bad.  That's what unmanageable means for me.

I currently have five AA sponsees.  That means five men who want what they think I have and are willing to go to any lengths to get it.  I think highly of each of them and I pray they will get the AA program and let it change their lives.  If I could give them sobriety, I would.  Can't, though.  They have to work their own AA programs to the best of their abilities - I'm honored to be a part of those programs - and rely on their higher power, just as I did with Jack.  Helping them has helped me stay sober, though.  That's the way it's supposed to work.  Bill W. told me so.

My AA home group has two meetings a week.  That's uncommon but I like it that way.  I attend them, hang out with sober friends enjoying the fellowship that AA promises and I work with others.  I'll be at one of those AA meetings in 90 minutes.  Mediocre coffee but terrific people who really care about me and my sobriety, just as I care about them.

Thank you, God.

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God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change
Courage to change the things I can
And wisdom to know the difference

AA's  Serenity Prayer