zero accountability

U.S. Government Takes 10 Years and Spends $1 Billion to Digitize a Single Form

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Heaving under mountains of paperwork, the government has spent more than $1 billion trying to replace its antiquated approach to managing immigration with a system of digitized records, online applications and a full suite of nearly 100 electronic forms.

A decade in, all that officials have to show for the effort is a single form that’s now available for online applications and a single type of fee that immigrants pay electronically. The 94 other forms can be filed only with paper. 

From the start, the initiative was mismanaged, the records and interviews show. Agency officials did not complete the basic plans for the computer system until nearly three years after the initial $500 million contract had been awarded to IBM, and the approach to adopting the technology was outdated before work on it began.

By 2012, officials at the Department of Homeland Security, which includes USCIS, were aware that the project was riddled with hundreds of critical software and other defects. But the agency nonetheless began to roll it out, in part because of pressure from Obama administration officials who considered it vital for their plans to overhaul the nation’s immigration policies, according to the internal documents and interviews.

– From the Washington Post article: A Decade Into a Project to Digitize U.S. Immigration Forms, Just 1 is Online  

Another day, another example of almost incomprehensible government incompetence and waste.

Just yesterday, I highlighted how the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) paid out $142 million in cash bonuses to employees immediately after the scandal that led to the death of at least 23 veterans waiting for care. It was just the latest example of how government bureaucrats are not only above the law, but are often actually rewarded for criminal incompetence.

Today’s article actually makes yesterday’s piece look minor in comparison. You can’t make this stuff up.

From the Washington Post:

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Pentagon Employees Caught Using Government Credit Cards on Gambling & Escorts…Staff Given “Stern Warning”

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Last month, we learned that DEA agents were caught attending sex parties with prostitutes paid for by drug cartels. No one was fired. We also learned that the DEA agents who left a California student in a cell without food or water for five days until he was forced to drink his own urine in order to survive, were given a slap on the wrist. Finally, we heard about how TSA screeners in Denver were intentionally manipulating the naked body scanners in order to allow a particular agent to sexually molest male passengers. While the offenders were fired, no criminal charges were filed, and the TSA refuses to release their names. All of this was revealed in the last month alone.

Well, we can now add another to the list. In the latest example of abuse by the unaccountable feds, we learn that Pentagon employees have been caught using their government credit cards on gambling and escorts, amongst other things. Their punishment? A “stern warning.” 

Politico reports that:

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TSA Agents Caught Gaming System so Male Screener Could Grope Attractive Passengers; No Criminal Charges Filed

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Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

– Benjamin Franklin

When a society becomes sufficiently afraid of an outside enemy, it can be manipulated into irrational responses that are then easily abused by those in power. This has been the sad story of America in the decade and a half since 9/11 (for more, see: How I Remember September 11, 2001).

The TSA is just one of many shady and generally useless government agencies (and private companies) involved in a massive money and power grab since the kickoff of the endless, Orwellian “war on terror.” Rather than preventing any terrorist attacks, the TSA is engaged in security theatre. This has become very obvious to me during my many trips between Denver and New York City over the past five years.

As someone who has never gone through a naked body scanner, I am particularly sensitive to where they are positioned and where they are not. In Denver, they are basically everywhere, yet interestingly, in the terminal serving Frontier Airlines at La Guardia in NYC there are none. This seems incredible to me given how big of a terrorist target it is. Somehow New York City is able to screen passengers just fine without the naked body scanners, yet Denver can’t? How is that the case? It’s the case because the expensive new screeners are nothing more than security theatre. Security theater that pays very, very well for the device manufacturers.

Yet, it is much more dangerous than this. Whenever you give bureaucracies absurd powers “to protect you,” what you’ll invariably end up with is egregious abuse in the name of “for your own good.” The latest evidence of this was recently revealed in the emergence of a scheme by two TSA employees at Denver International Airport to allow a male screener to grope specific passengers that he found attractive. Importantly, this scam couldn’t have occurred if metal detectors were used.

We learn from CBS4 News that:

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U.S. Police Kill More Civilians in March than UK Police Killed in 100 Years

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The following statistics seem impossible to believe. While I wonder how accurately the UK has been tracking these numbers historically, the enormous spread seems much too large to ignore, and is a national embarrassment that should be dealt with immediately.

From the Free Thought Project:

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57-Year-Old Michigan Man Beaten to a Bloody Pulp by Police Officer Known as “RoboCop” for Running a Red Light

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Dent opened his door and was dragged out of his Cadillac; almost immediately, Melendez put him in a chokehold. Melendez then proceeded to deliver 16 blows to Dent’s temple. This all took place in about 15 seconds. Another officer arrived moments later and proceeded to use a taser stun gun against Dent, three times. In the video, Dent, with blood dripping from his forehead and cheek, appears not to be resisting Melendez’s efforts to arrest him.

Melendez’s record shows he has faced similar allegations before. At one point, he garnered more citizen complaints than any officer in Detroit, where he started his career in 1993 and served until his resignation in 2009. He entered Inkster’s police force a year later.

Over nearly two decades, Melendez has been named as a defendant in a dozen federal lawsuits, accused of planting evidence, wrongfully killing unarmed civilians, falsifying police reports and conducting illegal arrests. Some suits were settled out of court. Others were dismissed.

In 1996, Melendez, who was known in Detroit as “RoboCop”, and his partner shot and killed Lou Adkins. While Adkins was on the ground, several witnesses said the officers shot him 11 times, according to the Detroit Free Press. The case was settled for $1.05m, court records show.

– From the Guardian article: How a Traffic Stop Left a Michigan Man Beaten, Bloodied and Bitter at Police

Michigan police officer William Melendez has a sordid reputation. Amongst other things, he has come to be known as “Robocop” for his shady and often violent behavior. Additionally, he was “cited as the ringleader of numerous officers indicted by a federal grand jury in 2003 on civil rights violations.”

In contrast, Detroit native Floyd Dent worked at Ford for 37-years, has no criminal record and seems to be a decent and thoughtful citizen. He just happens to be black, driving at night, and had the unfortunate experience of running into William “Robocop” Melendez on the evening of January 28, 2015.

One of these individuals should be behind bars for a very long time, and one of them shouldn’t.

From the Guardian:

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