Category Archives: Legislation

DHS Fleecing and Iffy Bookkeeping

Posted on by

DHS Reports Spending Only 1 Percent of its $1.4B Training Budget

Though Congress provides more than $1 billion in funds to train personnel at the Department of Homeland Security, DHS spends a small fraction of that on workforce training—at least according to its bookkeepers.

jehjohnsonmain.jpg

As an example of the iffy bookkeeping, auditors found that in fiscal 2014, Congress provided $1.4 billion for training, but the department reported spending only $1.9 million to the Office of Personnel Management. And as of August 2015, the DHS Office of the Chief Financial Officer could account for only $267 million in training expenditures in the prior year. Such lack of oversight on data quality, the Homeland Security inspector general found, meant the department reported only 1 percent of its training expenditures that year.

“DHS lacks reliable training cost information and data needed to make effective and efficient management decisions,” the IG concluded in a report released Wednesday. “It does not have an effective governance structure for its training oversight, including clearly defined roles, responsibilities, and delegated authorities” to oversee training programs, the watchdog wrote.

The difficulty the massive department would have in tracking training funds was predicted as far back as 2003, when the Government Accountability Office named human capital management as a high-risk area for the fledgling new department merging 22 agencies.

But DHS has failed to fully implement as many as 29 recommendations for improving training efficiencies made by several working groups, the new report said.

Among other problems, the IG found that the Transportation Security Administration did not report any training costs for January 2015, but after being questioned by IG staff, that agency reported $23 million in training expenditures.

DHS also lacks an oversight structure to monitor training after it transferred authority in 2012 to the Office of the Chief Financial Officer and to departmental components. Such oversight is supposed to be supervised by the undersecretary for management, through the chief financial officer.

Inspector General John Roth recommended that DHS establish a better process for tracking training funds, set up an oversight structure and implement the remaining past efficiency recommendations.

Departmental managers agreed with the recommendations, with corrective actions underway for completion this year.

The actual Inspector General report is here.

Here is a previous interview with DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson, where he gives clues that he is in way above his head.

John Kerry Sent Classified Material via iPad to Hillary

Posted on by

Quietly, this past Friday, January 29, the State Department did release some emails that you are invited to harvest. Here is that link.

Ever wonder where John Kerry has been with regard to Hillary’s emails? After all, he heads the State Department that is tasked with sorting, reviewing, classifying and posting Hillary’s emails? Ever wonder when and if they are going to search personal property including homes for printed material? In fairness, the intelligence community and the FBI assigned this expensive task of Hillary’s emails and server (the whole expense of which she should personally pay for) is quite concerned to determine all the compromised conditions by foreign espionage and intelligence operations. Further, another area for real concern, is the Clinton Global Foundation which appears to be in full violation of IRS ‘foundation’ law a matter that will require a separate huge investigation, that is IF the IRS well….heh would even cooperate legitimately.

Then there is Sidney Blumenthal and those emails.

State Dept. Records Show John Kerry Sent Hillary A ‘SECRET’ Email From His iPad

 Ross/DailyCaller: Emails released by the State Department on Friday show that in 2011, then-Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry sent then-Sec. of State Hillary Clinton an email from his iPad that has been deemed to contain information classified as “Secret.”While previous releases of Clinton’s emails have shown that she and her staff communicated directly with Kerry when he was a senator, the new email is the first from Kerry that the State Department has determined contains sensitive information.

Kerry has largely been silent throughout the Clinton email controversy. He has sent letters asking the State Department’s inspector general to review the agency’s records keeping practices, but he has not publicly criticized Clinton for exclusively using a personal email account and a home-brew email server.

Perhaps now we know why.

In the heavily-redacted email, dated May 19, 2011, Kerry, who then chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, appears to be discussing negotiations between India and Pakistan. Besides Clinton, the email was sent to Tom Donilon, who then served as President Obama’s National Security Advisor.

kerryemail

Clinton forwarded the email to an aide, instructing her to “Pls print” the document.

The redactions in the email are listed under the Freedom of Information Act exemptions 1.4(b) and 1.4(d), which are categories reserved for information gleaned from foreign government sources.

The kicker is that Kerry sent Clinton the information from his iPad, a communications device that would have been much more vulnerable to hackers than an encrypted communications system.

According to the Republican National Committee, which flagged the Kerry email in an email to reporters, the batch of Clinton records released on Friday contained 11 emails that the State Department now says contain “Secret” information. That’s more than double the number of emails that contained similarly classified information released in all of the previous releases combined.

According to the RNC’s calculations, 243 emails released Friday were classified at some level, bringing the overall number of classified Clinton emails to 1,583. The State Department also announced Friday that it is withholding in full and into perpetuity 22 emails that contain “Top Secret” information — the highest classification category.

The State Department says it is uncertain whether the information in those emails was classified at the time they were originated. The Intelligence Community’s inspector general has said that two separate Clinton emails were contained information that was “Top Secret” when sent. That distinction is crucial because Clinton has maintained that none of the classified emails found on her server were classified when created.

As Clinton’s successor at the State Department, Kerry has overseen the release of the work-related emails that the Democratic presidential candidate handed over in Dec. 2014. But the Democrat and his agency have been criticized by many for appearing to side with Clinton in a battle with the intelligence community over the classification status of many of her emails.

During a press conference in Canada on Friday, Kerry declined to comment on the news that the State Department was acknowledging that 22 of Clinton’s emails contain “Top Secret” information.

“I can’t speak to the specifics of anything with respect to the technicalities, the contents … because that’s not our job,” he said, according to Reuters. “We don’t know about it, it’s in other hands.”

He was not asked about his sensitive communications with Clinton.

Another question Kerry hasn’t answered is why, since he knew that Clinton used a personal email account while at the State Department, he failed to demand that she turn her emails over to the State Department until autumn 2014 after agency lawyers uncovered Clinton’s email address while reviewing documents related to the House Select Committee on Benghazi’s investigation.

It is unclear if Kerry knew about Clinton’s use of a private server, though other high-ranking State Department officials likely did. Emails obtained by The Daily Caller earlier this month show that Patrick Kennedy, the under secretary of management, was on an email chain in which Clinton’s server was being discussed.

***

It is quite likely that Barack Obama will apply ‘executive privilege’ to both Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. It can be challenged in court as was the case for the Fast and Furious documents and Eric Holder. This month, however a judge did rule that those Fast and Furious documents must be turned over the Congress.

When it comes to the definition of ‘executive privilege’ here is a short summary:

 

So what is executive privilege?

The president can invoke executive privilege in order to withhold some internal executive branch communications from the other branches of government. The privilege is based on the separation of powers between the branches.

Executive privilege has been invoked since the U.S.’s early days but isn’t in the Constitution. It was only in 1974, when Richard Nixon tried to prevent the release of White House tapes during the Watergate investigation, that the Supreme Court upheld its constitutionality, and set some parameters for it. The Court ruled that no claim on executive privilege is absolute, and can also be overcome if evidence is needed in a criminal trial. (For a full legal history, see this report from the Congressional Research Service.)

So what does it usually cover?

Various administrations have set their own policies as to when they can invoke the privilege. (The Washington Post has a handy timeline showing when presidents have used it.)

Bill Clinton used them a lot, 14 times during his presidency. In 1998, his attempt to keep White House aides from testifying about the Monica Lewinsky scandal was struck down, the first time since Nixon that executive privilege was overruled in court. George W. Bush invoked the privilege six times, not always successfully.

Legal challenges have established two general categories of executive privilege: presidential communications and deliberative process.

The presidential communications privilege applies to communications involving the president or his staff that immediately pertain to the president’s decision-making process. The idea, according to Mark Rozell, a professor at George Mason University, and author of a book on executive privilege, is that “the president should have the right to candid advice without fear of public disclosure.”

Deliberative process involves a broader scope of executive branch activity: discussions involving White House staff or within other agencies on legal or policy decisions that don’t necessarily involve the president or his immediate advisers. Again, the argument is that government officials need to feel like they can talk honestly. The deliberative process privilege, Rozell says, is generally easier to challenge than a claim of presidential communications privilege.

Gag Order: Fired Employees vs. Foreign Workers

Posted on by

Laid-off IT workers muzzled as H-1B debate heats up

ComputerWorld: IT workers are challenging the replacement of U.S. employees with foreign visa holders. Lawsuits are on the rise and workers are contacting lawmakers. Disney workers who lost their jobs on Jan. 30, 2015, are especially aggressive.

There’s a reason for this.

The Disney severance package offered to them did not include a non-disparagement clause, making it easier for laid-off workers to speak out. This is in contrast to the severance offered to Northeast Utility workers.

The utility, now known as Eversource Energy and based in Connecticut and Massachusetts, laid off approximately 200 IT employees in 2014 after contracting with two India-based offshore outsourcing firms. The employees contacted local media and lawmakers to pressure the utility to abandon its outsourcing plan.

Some of the utility’s IT employees had to train their foreign replacements. Failure to do so meant loss of severance. But an idea emerged to show workers’ disdain for what was happening: Small American flags were placed in cubicles and along the hallway in silent protest — flags that disappeared as the workers were terminated.

The utility employees left their jobs with a severance package that included this sentence: “Employee agrees that he/she shall make no statements to anyone, spoken or written, that would tend to disparage or discredit the Company or any of the Company’s officers, directors, employees, or agents.”

That clause has kept former Eversource employees from speaking out because of fears the utility will sue them if they say anything about their experience. The IT firms that Eversource uses, Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services, are major users of the H-1B visa.

But staying silent is difficult, especially after Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) co-sponsored legislation in January 2015 that would hike the 65,000 H-1B base cap hike to as high as 195,000. The measure, known as the I-Squared Act, left some of the former utility IT employees incredulous. They were far from alone.

The 200,000-member engineering association, IEEE-USA, said the I-Squared bill would “help destroy” the IT workforce with a flood of lower paid foreign workers.

Eventually, Blumenthal’s staff did learn, confidentially, about the experiences of former Eversource IT workers.

In November, Blumenthal co-sponsored new H-1B legislation by longtime program critics, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), designed to prevent the replacement of U.S. workers by H-1B visa holders.

Nonetheless, Blumenthal remains a co-sponsor of the I-Squared Act, which raised questions among those laid off about his intentions.

“He is still co-sponsoring everything,” one former Connecticut utility worker said about Blumenthal. The worker asked not to be identified because of severance package limitations. “He is totally unbelievable.” Blumenthal was not immediately available for comment.

Leo Perrero, an IT worker at Disney who was laid off after training his foreign replacement, says non-disparagement agreements hinder the debate over the H-1B visa. Without such agreements, “you would have a lot more people speaking out – real human beings with real stories, not just anonymous persons speaking out,” said Perrero.

“Their freedom of speech is being taken away from them with the non-disparagement agreements,” he said.

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee wanted to hear, last year, from IT employees who had been displaced by H-1B workers. It also wanted them to testify. It reached out nationally to affected employees, but had to settle for written testimony that was kept anonymous by the committee. The workers were too afraid to speak publicly.

In December, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who is also the chairman of the Immigration subcommittee, and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), introduced an H-1B reform bill that includes a prohibition against non-disparagement clauses.

The bill “would prevent employers who seek access to the (H-1B) program from requiring American employees to sign so-called non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreements.” The agreements can prevent “American employees from discussing potential misuse of the program publicly.”

Non-disparagement clauses are common in severance agreements. But the Disney severance did not have one, and had no prohibition against any claims or lawsuits, said Sara Blackwell, an attorney representing former Disney IT workers. It is unclear why the company went this route.

Fear of jeopardizing new employment also keeps many displaced IT workers quiet. But lawsuits alleging discrimination and racketeering are being filed on behalf of displaced IT workers.

Brian Buchanan, a former Southern California Edison IT worker, is another who trained his foreign replacements. He is now part of a lawsuit alleging discrimination by Tata Consultancy Services, one of the IT services firms used by Edison.  He is also included in a lawsuit challenging the U.S. government’s decision to allow spouses of some H-1B workers to seek employment. That lawsuit argues that the added workers will hurt the job market for U.S. workers.

Buchanan, who has contacted lawmakers about the impact of the H-1B programs, sees “little progress” in the past year. “Americans are going to have to act and they are going to have to act in mass, because we are fighting a huge, unseen force,” said Buchanan.

Eversource was asked about the non-disparagement agreement, and had this response: “These are private arrangements between affected employees and our company that were made more than two years ago during a period of transition and change in support of our merger. We have successfully moved on to form a new organization focused on providing superior service and value to our customers.”

But many IT workers hurt by offshore outsourcing have not been able to move on.

Former employees at Disney, Edison and Eversource tell of financial strains, tapped retirement funds and an inability to find a job, or to find one that pays close to what they once made.

Workers will say, anecdotally, that they know of many former co-workers who are now struggling. The H-1B workers tend to be younger, and the displaced ones, older, they say.

“It’s hard to start over at 50 when no one wants you,” said one former Edison IT worker. That worker is still searching for a job.

Clinton House of Cards Falling?

Posted on by

The Hill:

It is the beginning of the end of the House of Clinton:

1. There is the stench of political death around Hillary, Bill, Chelsea and the entire House of Clinton.

2. You could feel it when Republican front-runner Donald Trump hit back — hard — over the “penchant for sexism” charge by basically calling Hillary Clinton an enabler in the former president’s sexual shenanigans.

3. When have we ever seen the Clintons back off? But they did.

4. Then came further reports about an expanded FBI probe of her handling of secure information; the nexus of State Department favors for donors to the Clinton Foundation; and the story that Hillary Clinton or her staff might have lied to FBI agents in this probe.

5. All of this has raised the speculation, yet again: Will President Obama stop the Department of Justice (DOJ) from indicting her if the eight-person DOJ team working with over 100 FBI agents recommends criminal charges?

6. The president will be in an odd situation: He ran against the Clintons. He is known to loathe Bill Clinton. He apparently does not want the Clintons back in charge of the Democratic Party (thus removing the thousands of Obama acolytes with cushy patronage jobs).

7. So: If the DOJ recommends an indictment and he K.O.’s it, he will have his own legacy smeared with a permanent taint of having covered up for the Clintons.

8. If he allows an indictment to move ahead, that will be the end of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Period. She may think she can march on despite charges, but that would be self-delusional. Her campaign will be finished the day charges are filed by Obama’s Justice Department.

9. She can’t claim “politics as usual” or that old “right-wing conspiracy” nonsense as this will be Obama’s Justice Department — not a Republican-controlled entity — bringing these charges.

10. Now, even without an indictment, Hillary Clinton’s fortunes are rapidly sinking.

11. As of today, she is on track to lose both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary — to an unelectable 72-year-old Vermont socialist!

12. That tells us how politically weak and out of it the Clinton machine has become.

13. It is no coincidence that Vice President Joe Biden has suddenly resurfaced — first in a Hartford, Conn. TV interview stating that he regrets not running “every day,” and then by softly criticizing Hillary Clinton for not leading on the anti-1 percent front.

14. Biden may very well be warming up in the bullpen for a possible emergency entry into the Democratic field once Clinton is charged and has to withdraw.

15. In the meantime, we see a frantic, panic-stricken Clinton family out on the stump hitting Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on healthcare and guns. But they’re hitting him from the center on healthcare — not the left, where the votes are.

16. They are running national TV ads on guns on MSNBC; there are ads every few minutes. If Team Clinton members think they can turn around her negative trajectory over guns, they are sorely mistaken.

17. Economics is the main issue.

18. And Hillary Clinton is seen as being in the tank for corporate interests, while Sanders has stood up to them. Period. That is the race.

19. The 2016 campaign is a political revolution.

20. The House of Bush is also falling.

21. So is the Establishment of both political parties.

22. Who is more establishment than the Clintons and the Bushes?

23. Who has milked the political system for more money, gigs, access and cushy jobs for cronies than the Clintons and the Bushes?

24. But this is the year that the public is standing up to the status quo.

25. We are witnessing history: the fall of the Houses of Clinton and Bush.

26. Who is rising?

27. The outsiders.

Further reading from a former Hillary senior aide: Admits Bill’s exploitation of women…

Politico: For the better part of the last month, Donald Trump has hit Hillary Clinton for playing the “woman’s card” in her attacks against him, frequently mentioning her husband’s past affairs in an attempt to discredit her argument that she would be champion for women in the White House.

For one of Clinton’s closest senior advisers as first lady, however, those arguments ring hollow.

“Here’s what I think about that: I think what Bill Clinton did in terms of infidelity was absolutely horrible. A shitty thing to do,” Patti Solis Doyle told David Axelrod in the latest episode of his “The Axe Files” podcast for the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, where she is a resident fellow this winter.

Remarking again what a “shitty thing” it was “to do to her,” Solis Doyle emphasized that it was the president, not his wife, who did anything wrong.

“It was awful. You know, many of us thought about quitting after what he did,” she revealed. “But when we thought about it – when I thought about it – I thought, she didn’t do anything. He is the jerk here.”

Solis Doyle surmised at another point that Axelrod was alluding to a comment in private correspondence in which Clinton wrote to a friend that Lewinsky was a “narcisstic loony toon.”

“It’s not like she went on television or said it publicly. She didn’t say anything publicly about any of the… And, you know, as a woman, if my husband were having some sort of extramarital affair with another woman, I’m sure I wouldn’t have very nice things to say about that woman either. I mean, that’s just normal,” she added. “But she never said anything publicly. And I think it’s its own form of sexism to somehow blame the spouse for what the husband did. I think that’s its own form of sexism.”

Solis Doyle advised Clinton during both of her Senate campaigns as well as serving as her campaign manager during her 2008 presidential campaign until a third-place finish in Iowa necessitated a change. She then worked as a senior adviser to Barack Obama’s campaign, serving as Joe Biden’s campaign chief of staff.

This time, while acknowledging that Bill appears to be the Clinton more at ease at rallies and on the rope line, Solis Doyle remarked that she had “no doubt” that her former boss would be the Democratic nominee.

“You know, Bill Clinton, he gets so much energy from the people at his rallies. When he’s working a rope line, you can just see him light up. You know, she’s tired. She gets tired. She does it. She does it dutifully. Is it her most fun thing to do? No. Would she rather be looking at policy and going through legislation and working with a bunch of experts on how to, you know, improve the Affordable Care Act? Absolutely,” Solis Doyle explained. “This is not her favorite thing to do. It’s a mean, you know, to an end, I guess.”

At the same time, she said, Clinton “seems much more comfortable in her skin this time around than she did in 2008 and I think she’s much more comfortable as a candidate.”

“I think she’s much more prepared for the rigors of a campaign. I always think that you learn so much more from losing than from winning,” she continued. “You learn many more lessons from losing a campaign than from winning one. I think that nobody likes an inevitable frontrunner.”

“I was in a discussion today and I quoted the famous Mario Cuomo about campaigning – ‘you campaign in poetry and govern in prose.’ She doesn’t seem all that comfortable with the poetry,” Axelrod mused. “I used to say that President Obama – and I suspect President Clinton as well – was the guy who cracked the book open the night before the exam, you know, and got the A. And she was the one who stayed up all night and did the extra credit.”

Solis Doyle agreed, responding that Clinton “does her homework” and might not be “the most inspirational kid in the class, right?”

“But man, do you want her running the country? Absolutely,” she said. “She has a level of competency that no one else has in this field both on the Republican side and on the Democratic side and in these times – we’re in some very tenuous times – I think you want her there at the helm.”

 

 

Lowell, the Stupid City in Massachusetts

Posted on by

What font point, how many words, who reads it? How long in committee? Trigger words? Ah ha ha

Would any criminal do this? Cursive or print?

Who thinks of this crap and then votes with it?

Critics blast Massachusetts city’s new ‘essay’ rule for gun-carry applicants

FNC: Critics are blasting a Massachusetts city’s new law that they claim requires residents applying for a license to carry handguns to write “an essay” and pay upwards of $1,100 for training.

The new laws take effect this week in Lowell, a city of 110,000 that lies 35 miles north of Boston. Pushed by Police Superintendent William Taylor and passed by the City Council, they require applicants for unrestricted handgun licenses to state in writing why they should receive such a license. Taylor, who was unavailable for comment on Monday, has sole discretion for approving or denying the applications.

“It is absurd that people should have to write an essay to the town to explain why they should be able to exercise their constitutional rights,” said Jim Wallace, executive director of Gun Owners Action League of Massachusetts. “We already have a very strict set of gun laws in the state, but this is way over the top.”

“It is absurd that people should have to write an essay to the town to explain why they should be able to exercise their Constitutional rights.”

– Jim Wallace, Gun Owners Action League of Massachusetts.

State law sets guidelines and requirements, but gives local chiefs of police broad discretion in implementation. While other cities and towns in Massachusetts have tough licensing regulations, Lowell’s new requirements, which also include taking a gun safety course over and above one already required by the state, prompted complaints at a public hearing last week.

“I will never write an essay to get my rights as an American citizen,” resident Dan Gannon told the City Council.

The new policy was prompted in part by a year-old federal lawsuit brought by Commonwealth Second Amendment, a Bay State gun-rights group. Attorney David Jensen said the suit stems from Lowell’s history of denying qualified applicants permits to carry handguns without what the plaintiffs consider a legitimate rationale.

lowellpic1

Lowell Police Superintendent William Taylor will review the written applications and determine who gets a license and who does not. (City of Lowell)

Jensen said the jury is still out on whether the new policy will prove a remedy or just a more formal system for rejecting applications.

“The question right now is what they actually do,” Jensen said. “Our initial response to that would be that the Second Amendment secures the right to keep and bear arms. You really shouldn’t be required to write an essay explaining why you would like to exercise this fundamental right.”

Lowell Police spokesman Capt. Timothy Crowley said characterizing the written requirement as an “essay” is not accurate.

“If you want a license to carry a firearm unrestricted wherever you want and whenever you want, the superintendent is just looking for some documentation as to why,” Crowley said. “That is not unreasonable to most people.”

Despite the criticism, the new rules were adopted unanimously and are set to take effect this week.

“We’re no longer taking a cookie-cutter approach to issuing firearms licenses,” City Manager Kevin Murphy told the Lowell Sun, noting that the new policy will allow Taylor to look more closely at each applicant.

That’s exactly what concerns Wallace, who urged Lowell residents not to adhere to the new rules and to simply turn to the courts if and when their applications are denied.

“It’s like having a college professor say, ‘I’m going to read your essay and if I don’t like it, I’m going to give it back to you,’” Wallace said.

A 1998 state law known as the Gun Control Act included a raft of new regulations, fees and requirements that contributed to an 80 percent reduction in gun licenses over time, according to Wallace. The new law in Lowell, which Taylor said has about 6,000 gun owners with licenses to carry, will require a specialized training course.

A local firearms-safety instructor, Randy Breton, told the Sun the training requirement appeared designed to purposely make it cost-prohibitive to apply for a gun permit. He said one five-day course approved by the city costs $1,100.

“It’s beyond ridiculous,” Breton told the newspaper.