One Thing After Another

By William L. Garvin

Back in 2006, the Department of Justice sued Donald Sterling for discrimination against Blacks and Hispanics in renting apartments he owned.  Sterling subsequently paid $2.73 million in fines and nearly another $5 million in court sanctioned attorney fees and costs.  Inexplicably, the local NAACP awarded him the President’s Award in 2008 and a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009.  The latter was after Elgin Baylor had sued Sperling for wrongful termination as the Clipper coach for racial discrimination.  Apparently, they will no longer bestow the second Lifetime Achievement Award on him next month.  Will they be giving the money Sperling donated back?

Another thing that caught my eye was the “Great American Smoke-out” has now become the “Great American Smoke-in.”  Thousands of people chose Easter Sunday to get stoned by smoking marijuana in public places.  Even in Colorado, smoking dope in public is against the law.  However, law enforcement did nothing about their open defiance.  Later on, however, they did manage to arrest a ten-year old boy for selling marijuana on the school grounds.

So if it’s clear that smoking grass is no big deal what about grazing on grass?  The Bureau of Land Management estimates it would spend $3 million to round up cattle to pay for the $1.1 million in fees and penalties that Cliven Bundy owes in Nevada.  It’s clear that the law is on the side of the federal government but rather than simply putting a lien on his property, the BLM showed up in force with hundreds of agents, SWAT teams armed with assault rifles, and police dogs lunging at and menacing protestors.  Waco and Ruby Ridge images surged to the surface in many minds.  The initial government pretext of BLM protecting the desert tortoise went up in smoke faster than a doobie at 4:20 on 4/20!  Maybe if this army of BLM agents was reassigned to Arizona, they could take back all the parks and public lands that have been surrendered to the Mexican drug traffickers!

Meanwhile, faster than a speeding bullet, Harry Reid dashed to the Senate floor to declare Bundy and his Nevada supporters as “domestic terrorists.”  Of course Harry the Hypocrite failed to condemn the burning, looting, rapes, assaults against peace officers, and general hooliganism of the Occupy Wall Street movement which illegally occupied state and federal properties across the country.

It’s nothing new for Harry, just more of the same.  Remember he lied about Romney not paying taxes and personally attacks the Koch brothers every chance he gets.  Now of course, billionaire Tom Steyer has pledged $100 million for liberal environmental causes and Harry has rolled out the red carpet and burned the midnight Senate oil in honor of his hedge fund buddy.  Steyer opposes fossil fuels but made a fortune investing in them. His hedge fund, Farallon Capital, has extensive holdings in fossil fuel companies like Kinder Morgan which is building a pipeline money maker while Keystone is blocked.  Meanwhile the president sells out the unions to the environmentalists and bitches about “fat cats” as he sits down to his $35,000 per plate fund raisers.  Currently, Harry is mute about Steyer’s hundred million and Bloomberg’s fifty million dollar efforts “to buy America.”

Another unsettling episode was Nancy Pelosi saying there’s simply nowhere to cut in the federal budget.  Maybe if the State Department wasn’t spending $400,000 on a statue of a camel for an embassy in Pakistan ….  Maybe if they could find the $6 billion that Hillary’s department couldn’t account for….  Maybe if the Pentagon wasn’t about to destroy $1.2 billion worth of ammunition….  Maybe if the feds hadn’t spent $300 million on the Oregon healthcare website that went belly up….Maybe if the IRS wasn’t handing out $3 million in bonuses to 2,800 employees who had been disciplined for misconduct, including $1 million to 1,100 workers who did not pay their taxes!

If government was competent in handling programs of this magnitude, then forty veterans wouldn’t have died waiting for appointments in the Phoenix Veterans Administration Health Care system.  Sharon Hellman would have been fired for “cooking the books” regarding veteran suicides while she was in charge in Spokane.   Instead, she was reassigned to Phoenix where again she kept two sets of books to cover up waiting times for appointments for veterans for UP TO A YEAR!  For forty of America’s finest, she really was a “death panel.”