November 20, 2017
Billions of dollars at stake in epic battle shaping up between University of California and two Texas Universities
Ever since World War Two, the University of California has managed the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico, generating jobs, influence, prestige, and income for the university and bureaucrats who administer it. The LANL, which developed the first atomic bomb and has huge responsibilities for the nation’s nuclear arsenal and more, has a yearly budget of $2.5 billion, which generates a huge amount of “administrative overhead” paid to the contract administrator, to cover expense of administering such a vast enterprise. Jobs, office space, and many other expenses would have to be cut back at UC if the contract were to be lost.
Los Alamos National Lab
Picture via Office of the President, University of California
Now, it appears that this historical plum for the university may be at risk. Lindsay Ellis writes in the Houston Chronicle:
Texas' two largest university systems will have to knock off the incumbent if they hope to take over the Los Alamos National Laboratory management contract. (snip)In September, UT System regents approved $4.5 million in spending to put together a bid, a process that will include finding partners potentially in business and academia. The UT System hasn't formally voted to proceed on a bid to manage the facility, which is responsible for the safety and reliability of the country's nuclear weapons.They delayed a conversation and possible vote on the bid at a meeting earlier this month, and administrators said then that the vote will likely occur in an upcoming meeting.
It is, of course, possible that the Texas regents will decide that after spending four and half million dollars, the bid should not proceed. On the other hand:
Bids are due in mid-December, and the current contract ends in September 2018. Texas A&M University regents have also expressed interest in the contract.
I have to wonder if the UT system would be willing to allow its in-state rival to proceed without its own challenge.
Lurking in the background of the potential competition is the fact that the University of California has been disgraced by corruption of its organizational control system -- at the top of its organization. I have written about this previously, but a few days ago, the regents of the University censured but did not fire its CEO, Janet Napolitano. The San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board explained Saturday:
In October 2016, the state auditor’s office sent two sets of survey questionnaires to each of the 10 UC campuses to obtain honest feedback from the campuses about Napolitano’s administration. Each of the surveys directed the campuses to return them to the state auditor and not to share them outside of the campus.That’s not what happened, according to an independent report written by retired State Supreme Justice Carlos Moreno and released by the regents last week.Instead, Napolitano approved a plan that involved her chief of staff and his deputy pressuring campuses to change their responses on the surveys from negative responses to positive ones. In some instances, her office also reviewed the responses submitted by the campuses. Napolitano even called the chancellor of UC Santa Cruz after that campus submitted its surveys to the auditor without allowing her office to see them first, suggesting the campus withdraw its responses.“In short, the review plan was likely to, and in at least one case did, chill campuses’ responses to the State Auditor,” Moreno wrote in his report.That this is inappropriate behavior should have been obvious to everyone involved.
This is no trivial matter. It is the equivalent of a corporate CEO deliberately altering the reported results of operations to deceive the board of directors. So grave was this offense that the leftist legislature and governor of California have made it into a criminal offense, after the fact. The San Diego Union-Tribuneeditorial board wrote:
The still-stunning decision by University of California President Janet Napolitano to interfere with a state audit — by removing and weakening criticism of her office’s performance from individual UC campuses — has gotten the harsh rebuke it deserves. It came in the form of Assembly Bill 562, which Gov. Jerry Brown signed this week. Under the new law, a state agency’s decision to interfere with, impede or obstruct a state audit requested by the Legislature or required by statute is now a misdemeanor crime with a fine of up to $5,000.How Napolitano thought her behavior was acceptable in this matter remains incomprehensible.
It is impossible to conceive of a publicly held corporation not firing such an executive, yet Napolitano has been allowed to keep her job after corrupting the reporting system. Two subordinates left their jobs, but the boss who approved the corrupt plan to deceive the regents about her performance still has a job, for some reason. A public rebuke and shaming is not enough.
I have to believe that the Department of Energy, which owns LANL, will consider the integrity of the body to which it grants the next management contract. Can it, in good faith, allow an executive who approved corrupt altering of data about her organization to be in charge of an ultra-sensitive operation?
It seems to me that without a complete housecleaning, it would be folly to trust the UC System. Napolitano has disgraced herself and the University, and her continued tenure in her job is a danger sign for any other organization that relies on the integrity of the University of California System.
Nothing could be further from the truth. She’s nothing but a propped-up caricature, propped by that Democratic privilege. Because of that privilege, the average left-leaning voter knows little or nothing about what a reprobate she is.
November 21, 2017
Hillary: Corrupt, Clueless, Coddled
Hillary Clinton is not complex, not at all. For her legion of personal problems -- her tone-deaf woodenness, her arrogance, her greed, her worst problem has been her Democratic Party Privilege.
Yep, that’s the fatal flaw.
It’s really her biggest problem. She’s been coddled because of her party affiliation. She’s been coddled by a media that refused to report her ugly side. She’s been coddled by a base that has been fooled repeatedly. She’s convinced them she’s highly moral, highly intelligent, highly principled, and somehow represents all women, minorities, and the average American.
Nothing could be further from the truth. She’s nothing but a propped-up caricature, propped by that Democratic privilege. Because of that privilege, the average left-leaning voter knows little or nothing about what a reprobate she is.
So far.
I do think she’s about to be taken down, and thrown under the bus. The Democratic Party and the media will have no choice in the next year or so to come to that realization. But I digress.
The specifics:
A big issue is her part in enabling Bill with his sexual predations. She not only looked the other way as he hit on anything with a skirt, she led the charge against all the women whom he used and abused. She led the bimbo eruptions effort, destroying the women as being sluts or nuts while her husband ran rampant. She led the media to defend the indefensible. And try as they might to defend the Clintons now, in the new race to virtue signal, the media is finally admitting their mistake.
Her ill temper and horrifying personality behind the mask of being nice has been chronicled by one of her major Secret Service defenders and others. She was censured long ago for being dishonest and mean spirited by her own chairman during the Watergate hearings long ago. Her money lust and greed were there to see in her cattle futures gains. Whitewater was a manifestation of this character flaw, gaining personally because of political connections. Fast forward and you have the attempted heist of White House belongings. You have them dangling the bait of their political influence to gain money from the second they left the White House.
With the silence of the media, the Clintons amassed a fortune through speeches, books, and donations. The threat of their power and the cloak of their privilege kept them riding high. The final coup de gras was their Clinton Foundation. That they took donations for Haiti that never got to the recipients was criminal. That they got cover from the Bush family and the media was atrocious. I think this was the signal that corrupted the GOP so deeply. They saw they could get a piece as well.
Clinton Democratic Privilege. It led to more and more influence peddling. The hundreds of millions of dollars donated to their foundation and campaigns from illicit people simply continued. Everyone turned a blind eye to the obvious quid pro quos, corruption, and aggrandizement of power.
Uranium One, with the direct huge speaking fee to Bill, and the well over one hundred million dollars sent to the Foundation by those who benefited from this transaction was despicable. The irony of all this money coming from rewarding the dratted Russians, hiding behind “the Russian reset,” can’t help but be one of the best cons ever. All ignored by the media and the Democratic Party. As Sean Hannity has poignantly asked, who anywhere would think it was a good idea to sell control of 20% of our Uranium to a foreign adversary? And of all people, to the Russians.
Greed, corruption, and as said before, it’s the Mother of All Scandals. I’m betting it takes them down. The hint to follow is that Mueller’s indictment of Manafort was going after the Podestas, and not Trump.
There’s so much more to say about her corruption. The Democratic Party’s willingness to spy on others began with her successfully pilfering (illegally) secret FBI files long ago (“a bureaucratic snafu”). Paying for the Russian Dossier, her rigging the Democratic Party primaries, and so much more of despicable her.
Moving from her greed to her ineptness is easy, because she has never accomplished anything good. An empty suit if there ever were one. Once again, ineptness hidden because of her Democratic Privilege.
Examples: Her decision to help Bill beat the sexual predator rap with Monica. It continued with her carpet bagging win of her Senate seat, in itself just a bit tainted. But it was the fact that she did nothing of consequence with that seat, had no signature legislation, and simply used her seat as a celebrity stepping stone to the power she really wanted: the first woman President. Unfortunately for her, in the first run for the prize, she lost to someone who out-demagogued her, and out-flanked her in leftist identity politics. As Bill Clinton so inartfully put it, she lost to a guy who should have been fetching their coffee.
Her experience as Secretary of State, as Trump so deftly noted, was totally without success. Carly Fiorina boiled it down as follows: “Like Hillary Clinton, I too have traveled hundreds of thousands of miles around the globe. But unlike Hillary Clinton, I know that flying is an activity, not an accomplishment.” Hillary successfully helped destroy Iraq by watching as Obama pulled the troops early, and set the Arab world on fire with her horrific policies. She almost destroyed Egypt by installing and giving billions to head that country with a Muslim Brotherhood leader. They watched ISIS metastasize, sometimes helping. Their failure at pulling out the Benghazi ambassador months earlier, as all other major countries did, was lethal. Their non-response to Ambassador Stephens’s pleas for better security, was unprecedentedly stupid, despicable, and deadly. Instead of owning up to it, she spread the lie that a video was at fault. Lying to the nation and the victim families’ faces.
Her entire reign was a failure. One after another.
Her campaign failure: Russia obviously suggesting she not campaign in the industrial Midwest.
“Now having said all this, why aren’t I up fifty points you might ask?” was her best imitation of the Wicked Witch of the West.
Add that to her “deplorables” gaffe, and her disgusting inability to speak to her supporters the night of her election, and the mask should have come off for her true believer followers.
Her arrogance pushing the idea that everyone else was at fault for her loss is unprecedented in American politics. Her egocentric fail at being unwilling to let it go was capped by Trump’s tweet this week. He’s right, she’s good for the GOP. Heck, she’s a huge problem for the Democratic Party. A guest who stayed too long, drank too much, and wouldn’t leave.
A clueless guest.
As stated earlier, I think the Clintons are about to be thrown under the bus, and end up being the face of scandal for years to come. The Democratic Party will feign ignorance. The only thing in doubt is just how far the Clintons will fall, and how far the left will go to defend their scandals as they are all engulfed.
The final cluelessness of the obnoxious guest who wouldn’t leave: Her Democratic privilege is ending, and she is still going around trying to blame everyone else for her shortcomings. Along with their media enablers, the Clintons have no idea how bad they look. When their privilege evaporates, and it will, they will be left without the drugs that have fueled them: power, money, and influence.
The first hint of their undoing: The Podesta Group folding. The second: Donna Bazile. The third: The media is making up sob stories of how they shouldn’t have excused Bill’s sexual predations.
The next shoes are going to drop. And drop and drop and drop.
They are toast. The end is near.
I heard a caller to the Rush Limbaugh show recently upbraid him for saying the Clintons would skate once again. The caller was right to upbraid him.
They are going down. They are going to lose in every way.
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, that’s the saying.
That’s the story of Hillary.
Stripped of her privilege, she’s nothing but a corrupt, inept, and clueless felon.
This fall will be hard, long, and wide-ranging.
Watergate. Meh. Teapot Dome. Meh. This is a brave new world of fraudulent heroes tumbling over their clay feet, witnessed by a shocked world.
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