Saturday, January 21, 2012

Weekend Newsdrop

These Friday afternoon news drops are getting to be the "new normal". You know what I mean. This is when the current Administration wants to appear "transparent", so they drop news on Friday afternoon while everyone is out enjoying their date night. It may not always be on Friday, but with the cooperation of the MSM, they can place the news at the perfect time where no one will pay too much attention and they can control the fallout. It is not unique to this Administration, but they have raised it to an art form. Here are two examples from this week:

The Bane of Bain Capital: Obama and his cohorts (with the help of Rick Santorum), have made this huge deal about how awful it is that Mitt (Milton) Romney worked for Bain Capital. I won't bore with what Bain Capital is because you know. Well, guess what? As bad as Obama and his cohorts want us to believe Romney is the great scourge of 99%'ers everywhere, they've done gone and hired themselves a former Bain guy of their very own! Well to be more accurate they have promoted one. The White House proudly, yet quietly, announced this week that Jeffrey Zeints former Deputy of the Office of Management and Budget has been promoted to Director following the promotion of the former Director as Chief of Staff. Obama included the following statement with the announcement:

“I’m pleased to designate Jeff Zients to lead the Office of Management and Budget. Since day one, Jeff has demonstrated superb judgment and has provided sound advice on a whole host of issues,”

They were careful to stress that Zients has “twenty years as a CEO, management consultant, and entrepreneur", however they failed to mention that he worked quite extensively with Bain Capital as far back as 1988. Romney worked at Bain from 1977-1984 and from 1991-1992, so their paths must have crossed. One would think by all the brouhaha, that Romney worked there right before his campaign started and right after he shaved off his large, waxed handlebar mustache that he used to twirl while throwing little old ladies out on the streets! But then again, Zientz probably worked for Bain Capital in the those years where they were the good guys.

GM Volt Update: I reported last week that GM and the National Highway Transportation Safety Adminsitration (NHTSA) had come to an understanding that GM had to fix the exploding batteries in the GM Volt. They both agreed with a plan and then let everyone know there was a problem. Well, because of this unprecedented cooperation between industry and government, the NHTSA has decided that no further action is needed and they have closed the investigation on this matter. According to Sec't of Transportation Ray LaHood, there nothing to see here, move along.

Fortunately, Congress thinks otherwise. Rep. Darrell Issa (R/CA) Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, says "Not so fast". He has called all the parties to appear before his committee on Wednesday to explain who knew what when. GM CEO Dan Ackerson and NHTSA Administrator David Strickland are scheduled to explain why they knew about the fires in June of 2011, but failed to announce it to the taxpayer/stockholders until November 2011. Oh, and why the Obama Administration may have known in September.

Well, that's two. Do you know of any others? We need to keep the pressure on.

6 comments:

tryanmax said...

I actually do know of another, though it is not out of Washington. Dateline: Illinois. In the wake of the Pennsylvania "House of Horrors" abortion clinic revelation, along with its very own Jigsaw, Dr. Kermit Gosnell (never trust a man named for a Muppet), the state of Illinois decided it was long overdue to inspect the clinics of abortion providers in their state. Fifteen years overdue to be exact.

What they found, while not nearly on the scale of Dr. Muppet's dungeon, were a host of gross medical violations ranging from TV dinners stored in a biohazard refrigerator to failure to perform CPR on a patient who ultimately expired. In other words, these allegedly "safe" environments for receiving abortion bear little difference from their "back alley" counterparts. While no clinics were summarily shut down, several did due to an inability to bear the associated fines and improvement expenditures.

Unsurprisingly, one owner/operator told the press that she felt "victimized" by the surprise inspection after 15 years, describing it as "unfair." No, unfair is that a clinic was allowed to operate in violation of established medical standards for a decade and a half while presenting themselves as a "safe environment" to naïve young women the whole time. But I've already tackled that one.

More facts than these are hard to come by, since this is an AP story being carried verbatim by multiple outlets. The story is written primarily from the point of view of the clinic operator. (gee whiz) One additional item worth noting, however, is that Kansas, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Utah are also tightening regulations for abortion clinics.

BevfromNYC said...

Tryanmax: Interesting. I wonder how often independent inspectors actually inspect any doctors office or facility? I'll will ask my Dad.

I left one out too.

The Obama Administration announced ON FRIDAY that all religious organizations that offer health insurance will be required to provide birth control as part of their health plans at no extra cost to the employee. It does not matter whether they are morally or religiously opposed by doctrine. But they will get an extra year to comply. Catholic organizations are at the very least very upset.

Unknown said...

How about we just create the Bain-Volt car? It's good, except when it's bad.

tryanmax said...

Bev, I actually did hear that last one. But it was via a radio show (Beck, I think), not actual news. Pretty outrageous.

AndrewPrice said...

It's amazing how transparent it has become that they are dumping news when they think no one is looking and how, sadly, this seems to work.

Individualist said...

The GM Volt is an example of why you do not want the federal government to have a large role in industry and especially why you do not want them to have a significant role in individual private players in an industry.

When the government takes 60% plus of the stock, distributes it to their chrony investors and the union leaders how can they be trusted to regulate that comnpany.

It is called segregation of duties. I am coming to the conclusion that to the extent the role of government regulatory agencies is necessary it should be done by orpanizations independent of the government.

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