What difference does it make whether the San Francisco sheriff released the murderer or ICE did?

If the sheriff had handed him over to ICE they would likely have just released him anyway.

ICE has been complaining that the sheriff released Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez​ earlier this year when ICE had asked that he be held.  This, of course is due to San Francisco’s sanctuary city policy.  They are acting as if he had been remanded to ICE that he would not have been free to kill Kate Steinle.  But would that have likely been the result?

Do they think that we don’t remember that as recently as 2013 that ICE released 36,000 convicted felons on the promise that they would return for their deportation hearing?  There were something like 200 murderers released that year among those.  If they had custody of him, they would likely have just told him he had to show up for his deportation hearing in probably five years or so and let him go.

The best defense is a good offense.  This is just a bunch of phony outrage and finger pointing to distract from our feckless federal government’s failings.

Ebola Czar

Whatever happened to this guy? I don’t remember hearing from this guy since he was appointed. Clearly this political hack has been successful in collecting a big salary but wasn’t he supposed to be doing something?

The flood of immigrants over the border. A Cloward Piven strategy?

Cloward and Piven suggested that a tactic to be used to bring down the US government was to overwhelm the system with impossible demands for social services.
Seems like something like this is happening right now as the Border Patrol is overwhelmed, the government does not have the capacity to care for all of the kids who are pouring in and local communities are being overwhelmed as well.  Many are physically or mentally ill and we have insufficient resources to treat them.
I am sure that this is just a lot of unintended consequences from an incompetent administration, but it would not look a great deal different if it were planned. Perhaps the drug cartels in Mexico wanting less enforcement at the border or it could be more than that; an implementation of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals to bring down the government.
But it is probably just the incompetent thing.

IRS Emails: Is House Oversight Being Baited?

What if the administration knows that the evidence of IRS targeting of conservative groups was not in Lois Lerner’s government email account? And what would the effect be if after all of the R’s outrage over this “evidence” being “lost” (as absurd as that is on the face of it) that magically IRS FBI or NSA are able to recover them and they turned out to show no wrongdoing? Maybe if Lerner were involved she used non-gov email, phone calls… Or maybe she was not involved at all.
Imagine how public opinion would be for Oversight continuing to press the investigation after expectations were raised to the point that they have been.
Geraldo recovered from the Al Capone’s vault thing but….

“Lois Lerner’s emails likely gone forever” Really?

Not so fast there.  First off, the American people are not buying this nonsense.

Second, doesn’t the NSA have a copy of all of these in the massive database of emails that they originally denied and then admitted having?  I would imagine that they would be particularly interested in anything coming from a .gov address.

So couldn’t House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman, Darrell Issa, just subpoena all of Lerner’s emails from NSA and even get those personal emails that have been worried about?

That sword should cut both ways.

Sources: Lois Lerner’s emails likely gone forever – Rachael Bade – POLITICO.com.

School Board Elections are Today

Take notice how any concern about the safety and security of the students and schools pales in comparison to the goal of fixing these elections.
Those in power have made sure that every school employee has a polling place in their building so that they can pack the school board with members or affiliates of the unions.
Unlike the referendum votes, I don’t know if they are able to also motivate the 18 year olds in the high schools to do their bidding. But they have still set themselves up for success.
The last place these votes should be held for security and legitimacy is in open school buildings.

Is former Senator Ted Kaufman actually surprised?

He writes in last Sunday’s NJ:

Angry? You bet I am. Even more angry than I was back in 2009 when, as a U.S. senator, I saw shocking paper trails that I believed would have convinced juries to convict some crooked CEOs if there were aggressive efforts to prosecute them. That’s why I worked hard for and co-sponsored the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act, which in May 2009, gave an extra $55 million to the Justice Department over the next two years – over and above the Department’s normal appropriation. This money was specifically granted to bring to justice top executives who had engaged in fraud leading up to the financial meltdown…..

….I draw two depressing conclusions. First, without a real threat of criminal prosecution, there is no deterrent effect on anyone who commits financial fraud in the future. Second, the lack of action on mortgage fraud takes us a perilous step closer to a two-tiered system of criminal justice – one for the poor and one for the rich. That’s something we cannot allow to happen.

Now never mind that this all started with the feds blackmailing banks with the CRA laws, which led the way to the Wall Street abuses.

Did he really expect that they would use this law for anything other than another opportunity to shake down the private sector like they use the environmental laws?  Lets see, collect $Billions just by threatening to prosecute or spend $100s of Millions actually prosecuting and imprisoning them.  Just catch and release so they can collect more money next time.  They punish no one but the stockholders who have been repaid tenfold by the QE stimulus printing $85 Billion per month, inflating the stockmarket at the expense of the rest of us with devalued currency and higher food and gas prices.

And where do these billions go?  If just one percent gets lost in the seat cushions, it is enough for lots of people to become millionaires (ten per $Billion), but I am sure that is not happening.  Remember, government waste is not when they accidentally set fire to the money, someone gets every dime of it.

I really think Senator Kaufman is in earnest on this; that he really believed these were good honest people who would try to catch the bad guys.  Isn’t that cute?

Prosecuting mortgage fraud not a priority.

Unemployment Insurance Bill

Unemployment Insurance Bill

Has Delaware been making payments to the feds on the money it has borrowed to pay unemployment?  Did you know that some of this money is borrowed?  Check the attached article from 2011.

Will there be a default?

I guess that would depend on whether President Obama and the Federal Reserve decide that we should have one. Tax money will continue to come in ($220 Billion or so) and can be prioritized to pay the debt first and avoid a default. That is about $20 Billion per month plus principal on whatever notes and bills are maturing at that time.
The 60% of the debt that is held by entities outside the federal government would certainly have to be paid on first or we would be in default. I would think that the payments on the money borrowed from other government accounts like Social Security and that held by the Federal Reserve could be delayed until a deal can be reached. But that will require compromise by the House, Senate and President Obama. Yes, he will have to play too.
But if the president wants to default, we can.

My take on the current stalemate over the Continuing Resolution and Obamacare

As far as I understand, the House has sent several different bills to the Senate, each one with more compromise.
I believe that the last proposal sent over would fund the government, including ObamaCare, for the next year. People can sign up, get coverage, get subsidies and see doctors. The only thing that they change in the law is that if you choose not to buy a policy, the IRS fines for not purchasing one, are waived for a year. This is what, “Delaying the Mandate” refers to. Buy one if you want to; but if you choose to wait and see how it works, you get a one year exemption from punishment just like companies were given by the president. Does not seem unreasonable to me.
They also propose to remove the 71% subsidy for congress that was not part of the law but that the president just added in.  In order not to look like hypocrites Congress included in the law that was passed that they and their staffers had to sign up to get their insurance through the exchanges. Basically that their employer, the federal government, was cancelling their plan. They then would be required to pay for their policies and get whatever subsidy their income qualified them for like everyone else. With the new law, the cost of employer provided plans are going through the roof.  The law says that if an employer were to choose not to buy insurance for their employees then they would be fined. The employer might, in order to keep his employees, want to subsidize what they had to pay on the exchanges but the law makes that illegal. The current House proposal wants the 71% subsidy taken back so that Congress is in the same boat as everyone else. Seems only fair.
If all this is true, and I think that it is, why on earth would Harry Reid and President Obama want to keep the government shut down over these small changes; harming service people, war veterans, vacationers, kids with cancer and many more. Also, why are the Senate and the president getting a pass on this in the press?
Am I missing something here or am I completely wrong about the current proposal?