She Said She Wouldn’t – But She Did!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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I wrote a post on July 3rd posing the question “Are government bureaucrats capable of looking after data they collect about us?” (if you want to read it click here.)

The question was, of course, rhetorical, because we all know that the stupid bureaucrats the government employs aren’t capable of looking after anything.

The figure I quoted in that post, about the number of people whose data had been hacked, was 18 million which was a lot higher than the first government admission that 4.5 million records had been hacked. Now however the figure is well in excess of 21 million. It probably won’t stop there.

The Office of Personnel Management was responsible for losing the confidential information and there have been calls from both Republicans and Democrats for the chief bureaucrat of the OPM, Ms Katherine Archuleta, to do the decent thing and resign.

But as we also know there is no decency in stupid bureaucrats, only self-delusion and arrogance. They are too dumb to do their jobs and too stupid to realize it.

Thus for as long as she could, Archuleta clung on in there, rejecting bipartisan calls for her to resign. She said she had no plans to step down. Worse than that she said she was “committed to continuing her work for the agency”.

I read that to mean more incompetence, more lies and more denial, and more trying to cling on to a position which she is clearly not fit to hold. For example she pig-headedly refused to shut down servers identified by the US Inspector General as unsafe.

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, the White House, headed by another incompetent, President Barack Obama, continued to express confidence in the leadership of Ms Archuleta.

However, as the size of the security gaff became greater and greater so did the pressure on chief bureaucrat Archuleta. As the numbers of missing records continued to climb almost daily, the result was inevitable.

Although Archuleta continued to say she had “no intention of resigning and would stay on to sort out the mess” – she handed in her resignation. The President – who supported her and who had complete confidence in her – accepted it immediately.

It was either that or be fired. Everyone knew it but her.

The announcement came along with further emerging details about the pathetic level of security within the OPM. Many of its servers are apparently so antiquated they can’t run encryption and modern security software. Two-factor authentication is almost unheard of and seldom used. In fact things are so bad that the agency isn’t even sure how many computer networks it has!!!

One incompetent bureaucrat down.

Hopefully many more to follow.

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Corruptocracy!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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A Sunday Sermon

It’s been a while since I did a Sunday Sermon. It’s an occasional, rather than a regular, feature here at the fasab blog. It just happens when I’m in the mood to have a bit of a rant about a subject that I consider to be serious.

If you have read much of my blog you will know that two of my favorite targets are the banksters and politicians. When they act alone they are dangerous, when they combine their forces they are lethal.

Today I’m taking aim at both of them.

Strap yourselves in, here we go….

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In the wake of the financial catastrophe that the greedy banksters inflicted on the world there has been a lot of talk (but very little real action) about bringing these thieves under some kind of control.

Naturally the banks are fighting tooth and nail against any kind of financial reform and they have the contacts and the financial resources to do it.

They have, for example, dragged their heels at every opportunity, used our money (kindly donated by a stupid government) to lobby friendly and unprincipled politicians in Congress to repeal aspects of Dodd-Frank, sent armies of lawyers to frustrate regulators and make any new rules as weak as possible and threatened a plethora of legal challenges and lawsuits.

It has been a ‘David and Goliath’ battle but this time the richer and more powerful Goliath seems to be winning.

Unsurprisingly the banks’ biggest political allies in opposing the much needed financial reforms have been Democrats, such as the Robert E. Rubin wing of the Democratic Party, which has opposed moves to break up the big banks after the 2008 global crisis.

I say ‘unsurprisingly’ because the whole mess was caused by the Democrat regime of Bill Clinton who got rid of the Glass-Steagall separation of commercial and investment banking. Small wonder that they are railing against its reinstatement.

Unfortunately they aren’t alone. Most Republicans also oppose effective moves against the banksters. A fact less shocking when you realize that in the last two election cycles, over 60 percent of the bankster’s donations went to Republicans. It seems America’s form of democracy is still more about what the money-men want (and are willing to pay for), rather than what the ordinary people want.

Most disappointing of all, however, has been President Obama. He swept to power promising ‘change’ but he never backed meaningful reforms against the banks. On the contrary, the Obama Administration has repeatedly put forward nominees with Wall Street connections for major oversight roles. It’s a bit like appointing some of the inmates of a prison as the prison guards!

During the debate over the Dodd-Frank Act, Obama’s henchmen even lobbied against an amendment offered by two of his own Democratic senators (Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Ted Kaufman of Delaware) who wanted to cap the size of the banks.

The fact is, that if Obama had taken a stronger position on the much needed financial reform it would have been much stronger and much more effective.

Now they are neither strong nor effective. They won’t work, in other words. It’s just been a bit of window dressing and bluff for the benefit of gullible voters.

And now even more money will be paid to Republicans since they routed the Democrats and swept to power in the US Senate, as well as expanding their majority control in the House of Representatives. That means even less will be done against the banksters.

It is a simple equation. Money buys politicians, buys power and influence.

Some people call it corruption.

Others try to tell us it is democracy.

I know which one I think it is!

In fact let’s use a new word….

Corruptocracy!

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Shut-Up!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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I’m not sure what the correct official term is, but now that the “Shutdown” crisis is over let’s hope it’s the “Shut-Up”.

For another few months anyway, Obama and the other inmates in the Washington asylum have managed to kick the can down the road again.

Who can tell who won the pissing contest. It seemed to me like there was a strong wind a blowin’ and they all got covered in it – piss, that is, not glory!

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But Obama has signed HR 2775 and made it the law of the land. The Treasury Department is authorized to suspend the debt ceiling, which to you and me means that the government can now spend as much as it likes and borrow as much as it likes. Start the printing presses boys!

We’ll have to go through it all again in February next year but I think what has happened this time has set a precedent for the debt ceiling to be removed completely to pay for Obamacare and a few more wars. It was all nonsense anyway.

It’s never a good thing to live beyond your means as many people throughout America and Europe discovered when the banksters stole our money, credit lines dried up and the real estate catastrophe occurred.

America will find that out too sometime down that long road that the can is being kicked. But leave that problem for your grandchildren.

For now its spend, spend, spend!!!

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“Nobody Move…….”

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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A short Sunday Sermon on Wednesday – yes things are that confused!

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If it were a scene from the movie Blazing Saddles, like the one above, it would be funny.

But it’s a scene from Washington DC, the capital of the most powerful nation on earth – and it is pathetic!

Yet again we have seen ‘democracy’ at work.

Yet again we have seen people thrown out of work as a result of the imbeciles in Washington DC.

Yet again the Senate and the House are in gridlock over the paper exercise of raising the debt ceiling so that America can continue to spend money it does not have on things it does not need.

The Republicans are focused on just one of the things America can’t afford and that’s Obamacare.

The President and the Democrats have dug their heels in and won’t compromise in any way shape or form. They are calling the Republicans stubborn.

The Republicans have a completely different argument. They are calling the President and the Democrats stubborn.

The Democrats claim that the Republicans are destroying the nation and don’t care about the sick and needy. 

The Republicans claim that the Democrats have no fiscal responsibility and don’t understand anything about the budget.

House Republicans voted in favor of an amendment to the spending bill that would delay ObamaCare’s individual mandate for one year. The vote was 228-201.

The Senate then promptly rejected the House bill and sent it back.

My Dad is better than your Dad.

No he isn’t.

Yes he is.

No he isn’t.

Yes he…… and on and on it goes!

A couple of kids in the playground might be excused for such behavior. Elected representatives cannot.

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The result?

For the first time in seventeen years Federal agencies have been ordered to “execute plans for an orderly shutdown,” meaning around 800,000 federal workers will be furloughed immediately and another million or so, including Border Patrol agents and air traffic controllers, will be asked to work without pay.

America has held a gun to its own head and made itself a laughing stock throughout the rest of the world.

Harsh words perhaps, but true.

But there are always positives in everything, if one looks hard enough.

What this latest debacle has raised is the very important question of whether or not America really needs a government and bureaucracy as big as the one it currently has? 

If you have any sympathy at all with the theme of this blog, the “Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy” both of which have been highlighted during the past few days, then your answer to that question should be NO!

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Did They Really Mean To Say That? Newspaper Headlines Nightmares, Part Five!!!!!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Some more newspaper headlines today.

It’s quite amazing the capacity people have to get things wrong.

Worse if the result is on view to the general public.

Here is the latest batch.

Enjoy.

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It Never Rains But It Pours – Chicken Maryland Anyone?

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”
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I did a short series a few months back about some of the stupid laws stupid politicians had made. They were quite funny and most of them dated back many years, they just hadn’t been taken off the statute books.

That excused the old laws, maybe.

But they are still at it even today!

I know that you shouldn’t expect too much when a group of uninformed and irresponsible people go out and vote to elect a smaller group of uninformed and irresponsible politicians, while most people stay at home. But we call that democracy these days. And in what passes for normal times you can get away with it.

But these are not normal times we are living in. America, and most of the western world, is in desperate trouble economically. We need help from our politicians.

Help to stimulate economic growth; help to make it easier to do business in and from the US; help to protect us from cheap inferior crap being imported that has destroyed local jobs and industries; help for entrepreneurs to establish new wealth generating businesses; and help from the socialist bureaucratic nightmare that is completely out of hand.

As regard the stupid laws, these days most of them center around ways that bankrupt governments, whether national or local, can think up to extract more and more from the people who elected them.

Currently US bureaucrats are frantically trying to think up another way to tax the internet. Previous attempts failed because of public outcry, but sooner or later they will do it and who will it help? Everybody who isn’t in business in America and the EU probably, because it won’t apply anywhere else!

The mantra of these idiot bureaucrats is to make America more productive and prosperous by making America less competitive and poorer. It sits nicely with their other mantra of solving economic woes by extracting more and more tax from less and less income. Neither works and never will.

What prompted this rant? 

Well only the unbelievable fact that the idiot politicians in Maryland have decided to tax rain.

What????

Tax what????

Yes, you read it right, the idiot politicians in Maryland have decided to tax rain.

They call it by a fancy name, of course, the “Impervious Surfaces tax”, or ”storm water management fee”, but what it in effect does is to charge Maryland residents for rainwater that falls on their property.

Naturally, the bureaucrats are dressing up this latest money grab with the lie that it is for the benefit of the people. It’s bit like a pick pocket excusing his theft by saying he was relieving you of the burden of carrying your wallet around in your coat pocket. And it makes just as much sense!

Thankfully, however, there seems to be a few with a working brain left in local government. Anne Arundel County Executive Laura Neuman, for example, vetoed the tax proposal which unfortunately won’t kill it, but will give a little bit of breathing space.

But if the residents of Maryland are “chicken” enough to fall in line with this new tax – and so far it seems most of them have been dumb enough not to even notice it at all – then it won’t be the end of it.

Democratic Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who guided the passage of the storm water tax earlier this month, despite efforts from Republicans to dismantle the bill, has already been responsible for implementing 37 other taxes and fees since taking office — at a cost to residents estimated at somewhere in the region of $3.1 billion annually.

Does anyone really think an idiot like this is going to let the people have air and sunshine for free???

 

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