CAPITAL STORIES FOR CHILDREN

- Hallo friendsCAPITAL STORIES FOR CHILDREN, In the article you read this time with the title , We have prepared this article for you to read and retrieve information therein. Hopefully the contents of postings Article ADVENTURE, Article ANIMATION, Article LATEST DONGENG, Article WORLD OF ANIMALS, We write this you can understand. Alright, good read.

Title :
link :

http://ift.tt/2onj0IO

Sat. May 13, 2017

Our Granddaughter Lauren and her husband Yurie have started a bathing suit website. They are both students at UMass Dartmouth.

Lauren is the model featured in most of the swimsuit photos (the young blonde model).

BTW,  Lauren and Youri are high honors students at UMass Dartmouth. Youri is a 4.0 student and Lauren just behind that.

Here is their web site. Enjoy and let us know what you think. https://kalikaco.com/

CONTACT

Dartmouth, MA

+213 342 1669

7 Days a week from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm

Sales@kalikaco.com

Sikhs Launch Pro-American, Pro-Integration Movement

294

1

by NEIL MUNRO

A group of Sikhs in Virginia has created a new political organization to emphasize their support for the U.S. Constitution, partly because the media has often portrayed Sikhs as sidekicks for separatist Islamic groups in the United States.

The group, titled Sikhs for Liberty, held its first meeting in Virginia, where founder Dr. Jatinder Singh Mann described the organization’s goals: “The name of our organization is ‘Sikhs for Liberty’… it does not say ‘Liberty for Sikhs’ [because] we are Sikhs for liberty, and we want the world to know that Sikh[‘s religion] …. supports liberty for the whole of mankind.”

The group is dedicated to “making America more aware about the Sikhs, and equally importantly, dedicated to making Sikhs more aware of what America is all about,” he told his audience of Sikhs gathered in Chantilly, Va., on April 30.

Sikhs emerged and survived amid endemic war in India before the British conquest, and they need to learn the wisdom of America’s constitutional founders, including Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson, said Singh. Unrestricted “democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to eat for dinner  … [but in a] constitutional republic, the sheep has an AK-47,” Singh said.

Sikhs’ support for religious freedom is “very well aligned with Americans’ values,” Singh said, adding that Sikhs should:

We need to leaRn how to contribute to America. We came here for a better life. We get it. We are not thankless people. But we do not know how to give back. We want to and hopefully this organization will be a guidepost to help us achieve that.

The group’s pro-America perspective is markedly different from several other Sikh groups which are entangled in the Democratic Party’s politics of enforced acceptance of diversity and of “identity” blocs, such as post-graduate, Islamic, left-wing, sexual and transgender advocacy groups.

Dr. Jatinder Singh Mann

One unspoken goal for the new Sikh group is to show the public that Sikhs are not separatist Islamists, but instead favor integration into Americans’ society, and favor coexistence with other religious and political groups.

The Sikh religious community is based in Northern India, on the Indian side of the border with Muslim-dominated Pakistan. They lost control of their homeland territory when the British Empire captured the last corner of the Indian subcontinent in 1849. One hundred years later, nearly all Sikhs in the area were forced to flee Muslim mobs during the very bloody partition of the British empire into Pakistan and India.

Sikhs are proud of their history of military prowess, which allowed them to survive a 150-year on-and-off war with the Muslim emperors of India, which only ended in the late 1700s.

The Sikhs’  “Game of Thrones” history has deeply shaped their culture, and also helped Sikhs to prosper as soldiers, professionals and business executives who are culturally prepared to peacefully integrate into larger communities, including the United Kingdom and the United States.

Sikhs are named for their monotheistic religion of Sikhism, which is based on the teachings of leaders dating from roughly 1500 to almost 1700. Sikhs don’t worship a named deity and do not have an organization of clerics, but instead see a divinely connected value in truth, contentment, compassion, humility and love, which they describe as the  “Five Virtues.” Sikhs believe in reincarnation and do not seek to convert other believers.

Unlike Islam, Sikhism does not view women as subordinate and Sikh women do not wear Islamic-style face-veils. Sikhism is not hostile to other religions and it opposes the Indian-style caste system, ensuring that all Sikh men carry the Singh name and all Sikh women carry the name “Kaur.” Singh means “Lion,” and Kaur means “Princess.”

But aggressive Islam has followed Sikh migrants to the West, causing many Europeans and Americans to treat Sikhs as if they are part of the self-segregating Islamic communities in Northern England or in many U.S. cities. Also, Islamic groups use Sikhs as proxies to advance their separatist agenda. That widespread confusion has prompted hostile reactions in daily life, and some attacks on Sikhs, notably a 2012 attack by a racist who killed six Sikh people at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin.

Sikhs are visibly different from Americans and Muslims. The men usually wear a turban to contain their uncut hair, and they carry an iron bracelet and usually carry a symbolic “kirpan” dagger as a symbol of their military struggle to defeat oppression. But almost half of Americans told a survey in 2013 that they believe Sikhism is a variant of Islam.

“All of us are aware of the problem that we and especially our children face because of our unique outward appearance … [but] this is the best place on Earth to practice our religion, unmolested by government or people,” Dr. Singh said.

Sikhs began migrating to the United States in the 1890s and first prospered in California despite a period of official discrimination. The estimated number of Sikhs in the United States is uncertain, but it ranges from 78,000 in a 2008 estimate, to a minimum of 200,000 in a 2012 estimate, up to 700,000 according to Sikh political activists.

Democrats are eager to recruit Sikhs into their centralized coalition of diversity. In 2013, for example, President Barack Obama offered a short video greeting to Sikhs during their annual religious events, in which he flattered Sikhs as a model for the United States’ turbulent mix of autonomy and idealism.

I want to extend my best wishes to all our Sikh friends, across the United States and around the world, who this weekend are observing the anniversary of the birth of Guru Nanak Dev Ji, the first Sikh Guru. This sacred time is an occasion to reflect on Guru Nanak`s timeless teachings and the principles that are at the heart of Sikhism, including the equality of all human beings, the pluralism we cherish in diverse societies and the compassion we owe one another. Here in the United States, we're grateful to the many Sikh Americans who give life to these values and enrich our country every day, reminding us that these shared principles are not only at the heart of the Sikh faith, they are central to who we are as Americans.

Most Sikh political groups — many of which are very small — have aligned themselves with the Democratic Party’s “centralized coalition of the diverse” against the mainstream preferences of pro-integration Americans.

This Cover Up Involving Loretta Lynch Just Got More Serious

Millions of Americans believed the fix was in when Hillary Clinton escaped criminal charges for sending classified information over her private email server.

And at the center of this controversy was Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

But FBI Director James Comey’s congressional testimony is beginning to raise new questions about her role in the cover up.

When Comey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he was asked about a document written by a Democratic operative.

The memo declared that Lynch would protect Clinton from any criminal charges.

The New York Times reported:

“During Russia’s hacking campaign against the United States, intelligence agencies could peer, at times, into Russian networks and see what had been taken. Early last year, F.B.I. agents received a batch of hacked documents, and one caught their attention.

The document, which has been described as both a memo and an email, was written by a Democratic operative who expressed confidence that Ms. Lynch would keep the Clinton investigation from going too far, according to several former officials familiar with the document.

Read one way, it was standard Washington political chatter. Read another way, it suggested that a political operative might have insight into Ms. Lynch’s thinking.”

FBI Director Comey feared hackers would release the document.

Committee Chairman Senator Chuck Grassley grilled Comey about the report, but the FBI Director dodged giving a direct answer.

Breitbart reports:

“Grassley inquired: “Okay, moving on to another subject, the New York Times recently reported that the FBI had found a troubling email among the ones the Russians hacked from Democrat operatives. The email reportedly provided assurances that Attorney General Lynch would protect Secretary Clinton by making sure the FBI investigation ‘didn’t go too far.’

“How, and when, did you first learn of this document? Also, who sent it and who received it?”

Comey replied, “That’s not a question I can answer in this forum, Mr. Chairman, because it would call for a classified response. I have briefed leadership of the intelligence committees on that particular issue, but I can’t talk about it here.”

Grassley continued to press for answers, but Comey declined to answer.

Breitbart reports on the transcript of the exchange:

“GRASSLEY: What steps did the FBI take to determine whether Attorney General Lynch had actually given assurances that the political fix was in no matter what? Did the FBI interview the person who wrote the email? If not, why not?

COMEY: I have to give you the same answer. I can’t talk about that in an unclassified setting.

GRASSLEY: Okay, then you can expect me to follow up on that. I asked the FBI to provide this email to the committee before today’s hearing. Why haven’t you done so and will you provide it by the end of this week?

COMEY: Again, to react to that, I have to give a classified answer and I can’t give it sitting here.

GRASSLEY: So that means you can give me the email?

COMEY: I’m not confirming there was an email, sir. I can’t — the subject is classified and in an appropriate forum I’d be happy to brief you on it. But I can’t do it in an open hearing.”

Lynch’s questionable decision making caused Comey to hold his now-famous July press conference where he laid out all of Clinton’s wrong doing, but then said he would not recommend criminal charges.

He stated that Lynch’s meeting with former President Bill Clinton caused him to believe the Department of Justice lacked the credibility to finish the investigation.

But his refusal to answer questions about a memo that claimed Lynch would protect Clinton leads critics to believe the Department of Justice never had any credibility in the first place.

Hollywood Couple Sends Powerful Pro-Life Message
BY: AMANDA PRESTIGIACOMO

Hollywood is well known for its progressive politicking, particularly when it comes to abortion, but on Thursday, in a nice change of pace, a famous couple posted two powerful pro-life messages about their unborn child.

Actress Nikki Reed of Twilight and Ian Somerhalder of Vampire Diaries, who were married in 2015, took to Instagram to express their love for their unborn baby. The actors both announced the pregnancy with the same sweet photo of Somerhalder kissing Reed's belly, each posting their own message.

"Hi Little One," wrote Reed. "I know you, but only because I feel you. How is it possible to love someone so much already? All I know for sure is it’s the strongest feeling I’ve ever felt. We’ve been sharing this body for quite some time, and we’ve already experienced so much together. We can’t wait to meet you."

The 28-year-old signed the post from both her and Somerhalder.

Somerhalder said he's "never experienced anything more powerful and beautiful" than the couple's pregnancy.

"To our friends, family, and rest of the world. In my 38 years on this earth I’ve never experienced anything more powerful and beautiful than this," wrote the Vampire Diaries actor. "I can’t think of anything more exciting than this next chapter and we wanted you to hear this from us first. This has been the most special time of our lives and we wanted to keep it between the three of us for as long as possible so we could enjoy this time with each other and our little one who is growing so fast…because that’s what they do, they grow so fast. Thank you for your kind energy."

The couple stands in stark contrast with the rest of the abortion enthusiasts in Hollywood, but they are not alone. Other stars who have stood for the unborn include Patricia Heaton, Mel Gibson, Jack Nicholson and Jordan Sparks, among others.

Trump approves plan to arm Syrian Kurds in renewed effort to defeat ISIS in Syria

Jon Street

President Donald Trump approved an order to directly provide arms to the Kurdish fighters in a renewed effort to defeat the Islamic State in Raqqa, Syria. (Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump signed off on a plan Tuesday to provide arms directly to the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, in a renewed effort to defeat the Islamic State in Syria.

According to NBC News, Trump’s order “allows the process [of providing arms] to begin to function.” The order now goes to the Pentagon, which will carry out the president’s instructions.

The administration believes there should be quick turnaround for a least part of the order since certain U.S. equipment is already in the region.

The U.S. is expected to provide bulldozers and other engineering machines intended to breach ISIS attacks. The U.S. government is also likely to send the Syrian Kurds more rifles, ammunition, armor and radios for communication.

The ultimate goal in providing more arms to the Syrian Kurds is to eventually take over the city of Raqqa, Syria, an ISIS stronghold that has been occupied by the radical group since 2014.

According to chief Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White, the Syrian Democratic Forces, a group of Arab, Christian and Turkmen fighters overseen by the YPG, is “the only force on the ground that can successfully seize Raqqa in the near future.

The move is likely to upset the government of Turkey, which views the Syrian Democratic Forces as a threat. Turkey considers the YPG as an arm of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which both the U.S. and Turkey agree is a terrorist organization, the Washington Post reported.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer was asked Tuesday during the White House press briefing if Trump discussed with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the decision to arm the Syrian Kurds. Spicer said he is not aware of any discussions regarding the decision between the two leaders.

Trump’s Quiet Victories
By Conrad Black

It requires a bit of perspective to see the trend in Washington: nothing fails to succeed like success. When presidents have threatened the Washington condominium of Tweedledee liberal Democrats and barely distinguishable Tweedledum Republicans, and then were seen as successes, opposition flaked off in retreat.

So it was with Richard Nixon, who arrived in Washington with all the baggage from the Alger Hiss affair and the Helen Gahagan Douglas Senate election (in which she called him “Tricky Dick” and he called her “the pink lady-right down to her underwear”), and the Chequers smear, but moved with agility abroad and at home. The president ran gradually better in the polls and was widely respected by the moderate and conservative majority of voters. Of course it all blew up when he mishandled the Watergate affair, but for four years the glacial mass of his opposition melted steadily.

Ronald Reagan incited fears of extremism and was represented as a simplistic dolt who should still be selling 20-Mule Team Borax in a cowboy outfit on television. But he was amiable, a magic public speaker; his tax cuts induced an immense economic boom, and his defense build-up culminating in comprehensive anti-missile defense deescalated and ultimately won the Cold War. The alarmists fell silent and he did not really attack the great Washington sleaze factory’s activities, so they endured him and closed in behind him when he returned to California.

As was foreseen, the response of the solid anti-Trump press after the election was not that public grievances against Washington must be based on something, but rather that there were more racist, sexist, gun-happy, Bible-thumping, lager-lout philistines than had been appreciated.

Donald Trump has not just been a distasteful opponent, as the D.C. political establishment generally considered Nixon; or a convivial Californian outsider like Reagan, who changed economic and strategic course but didn’t attack pillars of Washington incumbency. Nixon and Reagan had contested numerous elections as Republicans, and despite the odd rhetorical flourish, weren’t going to do more than make course corrections from their Democratic predecessors, Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter.

But Trump was different. He launched a movement, paid for his own campaign, (no ghastly fund-raisers with the dumb, opinionated rich), dismissed the Bushes, McCain, and Romney as Clinton-Obama sound-alikes, and frontally assaulted Wall Street, Hollywood, the national media, the lobby system, and every adult in Washington D.C. (which voted 96 percent against him).         

Trump’s crushing victory in the Republican primaries was attributed to the weakness of the other candidates―he would hit a stonewall with Hillary. His victory over Hillary was a freakish product of the vagaries of the electoral system (from which John Quincy Adams, Hayes, Benjamin Harrison, JFK, and George W. Bush also benefited), and of Russian interference via Wikileaks and otherwise, and the conduct of FBI director James Comey. (Comey was at first praised for his “integrity” for recommending against indictment of Mrs. Clinton after recounting a sequence of her likely illegalities.) As was foreseen, the response of the solid anti-Trump press after the election was not that public grievances against Washington must be based on something, but rather that there were more racist, sexist, gun-happy, Bible-thumping, lager-lout philistines than had been appreciated.

In office, the fallback position of the irreconcilables has been that he could not get anything done. Yet he has dismantled the entire self-garrote apparatus promoting global warming and impeding off-shore and shale-oil production, and is dismantling and reversing the welter of financial regulation designed to promote the Dodd-Frank myth that Congress had lacked the authority to prevent the economic calamities created by official inflation of the housing bubble up to 2008, (with the full approval of the Congress). There is steady promotion of charter schools over the ignorance factories of the state school systems reduced to mockery by the teachers’ unions to which the Democratic Party is bound from sandal to mortarboard.

In foreign policy, though, it is early. The Iranians shriek that the Americans and Russians are replacing them in the Middle East with the Turks; Assad now knows that gassing civilians can be hazardous; Hamas pretends to accept Israel’s right to exist, and the North Koreans denounce China, which created this Frankenstein Monster and sustained it to irritate the West, and which is now reducing trade across the Yalu. The direction, however tentative, is away from the universal contempt for the Obama policy of simply ordering, like a dancing master, that America’s friends and enemies change roles and places.                   

Now it is Trumpism, and not the corrupt left, that is advancing in ant-like, unpublicized, but constant forward movement, every week. The House health care vote confirms Republican solidarity, just six months after Speaker Ryan declined to share a platform with candidate Trump. Trump’s followers, who knew it would be a slog, are solid at near his electoral result in the mid-forties in the polls. His outnumbered media supporters and talk-show and social media backers are in place, despite some grumbling about the Syrian Tomahawk attack from the magnificent Ann Coulter and some others. The intellectual left has gone all the way to the end of the diving board. Michael Kinsley (as intellectual as left-wing journalists get in the U.S.) declares the president a fascist, as if mentioning the side on which his hair is parted. Christopher Browning in the New York Review of Books, with a few pro forma distinctions, laboriously likened Trump with Hitler, at such length that the unwary might imagine that there was a comparison to be made.

The party of Jefferson and FDR is unrecognizable, but it can still be distinguished from a liberal ISIS. The president’s shortcomings are overly notorious, but his enemies are no longer of this world. He will win, and change the nation for the better.

The bizarrerie of the intellectual right is illimitable. My dear and esteemed friend George Will, after an acrobatic exercise in the columnar snobbery that Trump was unaware that Andrew Jackson died 16 years before the start of the Civil War, (Jackson was concerned about the danger of civil war throughout his presidency, as George knows and Mr. Trump was alleging), has fled into the television embrace of Rachel the Madd and Mika Buzzfeed at MSNBC, the most astonishing flight since Joachim von Ribbentrop went to Moscow. They have all walked the plank; President Trump has induced self-destructive political bilharzia in the deranged effigies of once-serious and important people. I still love them, but I grieve for them.

The rank and file Democrats have plumbed new depths of scatological banality. The party chairman, Tom Perez, occupies a post once held by serious people like James A. Farley and Larry O’Brien. But Perez cannot speak a public sentence without assimilating the president to excrement. The people won’t have it. The self-targeted Democratic torpedoes, which Trump had the tactical intelligence to goad and then to consign to due process, were the lies about collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign, and the challenge to the president’s constitutional authority over immigration, (reinforced by ninjas smashing and burning at Berkeley, and the mobbing of travelers at airports around the country and overseas). The torpedoes will come home on those who launched them in the next few months, warhead-first and at high speed. Then, frenzied partisanship will start to give way to the instinct of self-preservation, and the locked-arm solidarity of the Never-Trumpers will start to break up. The party of Jefferson and FDR is unrecognizable, but it can still be distinguished from a liberal ISIS. The president’s shortcomings are overly notorious, but his enemies are no longer of this world. He will win, and change the nation for the better.

About the Author: Conrad Black

Conrad Black has been one of Canada’s most prominent financiers for 40 years, and was one of the leading newspaper publishers in the world as owner of the British telegraph newspapers, the Fairfax newspapers in Australia, the Jerusalem Post, Chicago Sun-Times and scores of smaller newspapers in the U.S., and most of the daily newspapers in Canada. He is the author of authoritative biographies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Richard Nixon, and one-volume histories of the United States and Canada. He is a member of the British House of Lords as Lord Black of Crossharbour.

NBC’s Lester Holt Interrupts Trump 9 Times in Less than 3 Minutes

141

3

screen grab

by AARON KLEIN

NBCNews.com on Thursday posted a two minute and 34 second preview clip of anchor Lester Holt’s exclusive sit-down with President Donald Trump. The clip features Holt conducting an interrogation-like interview in which the NBC personality interrupted Trump nine times and spoke over the president on many of those occasions.

The short clip is part of a 31-minute White House interview set to air Thursday night on NBC Nightly News.

In the clip, Holt can be seen questioning almost every statement made by Trump.

In one instance, Holt asked Trump about his May 9 letter ousting F.B.I Director James Comey in which Trump wrote, “I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation.”

Holt asked Trump, “Why did you put that in there?”

Trump replied, “Because he told me that. I mean, he told me…”

Before Trump could finish his sentence, Holt interrupted, asking, “He told you you weren’t under investigation regarding the Russian investigation?”

“Yeah, and I’ve heard that from others. I think…” Trump began to respond before Holt interrupted again.

“Was it in a phone call? Did you meet face-to-face?” Holt interjected, speaking over Trump.

“I had a dinner with him. He wanted to have dinner because he wanted to stay on. We had a very nice dinner at the White House…”

Holt spoke over Trump again, interrupting this time by asking, “He, he asked for the dinner?”

“A dinner was arranged. I think he asked for a dinner.”

Holt interrupted Trump again when Trump was explaining he knew that he wasn’t under investigation both from Comey three times and from a “committee level.”

“So that didn’t come directly from him?” Holt cut in and asked before Trump could finish his explanation about the times he says he heard from Comey that he wasn’t under investigation.

Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.

Acting FBI Director: Yeah, The Decision Not to Indict Hillary Clinton Caused Controversy Within The Bureau

Katie Pavlich

When former FBI Director James Comey walked out to television cameras on July 5, 2016, he announced the Bureau would not recommend charges against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for using an unsecured private email server despite "extremely careless" handling of classified information.

"There is evidence they [Clinton and staff] were extremely careless in their handling of classified information," Comey said. "Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before deciding whether to bring charges."

The announcement of a non-indictment came just days after former Attorney General Loretta Lynch was caught secretly meeting with former President Bill Clinton on her private plane in Phoenix. When caught, Lynch claimed the meeting was about grandchildren and golf.

Media reports at the time indicated the decision not to indict Clinton, combined with the secret meeting, was highly disconcerting to many FBI agents.

Today during testimony in of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe confirmed there was in fact controversy.

"I think morale's always been good, but there were folks within our agency that were frustrated with the outcome of the Hillary Clinton case and some of those folks were very vocal about those concerns,” McCabe said.

McCabe also testified FBI agents had "broad support" for Comey and that the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election will continue despite his firing.

OPEC on Verge of Collapse; Asks US to Decrease Production (But No...)

by Alice Greene

Last December, OPEC and allied oil producers agreed to cut production by 1.8 million bpd in a desperate attempt to shrink global supply and rebalance the market.

The effort began on January 1st, 2017 and was scheduled to last for 6 months. As OPEC’s biggest producer, Saudi Arabia agreed to cut production by a staggering 486,000 barrels per day (about 5% of its total production).

OPEC and its allies will reconvene on May 25th. We expect they will announce an extension of the original deal.

“Based on consultations that I’ve had with participating members, I am confident the agreement will be extended into the second half of the year and possibly beyond,” said Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih.

OPEC is also begging other oil producers to cut production in order to help rebalance the market and drive prices up.

Balancing the market will “require the collective efforts of all oil producers,” stated OPEC in its monthly report. This should be done “not only for the benefit of the individual countries, but also for the general prosperity of the world economy.”

OPEC blames the oversupply on the US shale industry, which has continued to increase production in spite of low prices.

American shale producers were not part of last year’s deal, and their increasing production levels have made it impossible for OPEC to keep prices between $50 and $60 per barrel.  

US producers, who were forced to become more efficient after OPEC ramped up production in 2014 in an attempt to drive higher-cost producers out of business, can continue to make money as long as prices stay higher than $40 per barrel.

“Oil prices have gained support but global inventories remain high,” reports Reuters. In recent months, prices have hovered between $47 and $54.

“I think [OPEC] are now acutely aware that they don’t have the kind of influence they used to have 10 years ago, and that shale is now the swing producer in the market,” says Capital Economics commodities economist Tom Pugh.

In addition to extended production cuts by producers in the Middle East, here are some more factors that could influence the oil market in the near future:

• Growing Chinese economy

• India’s decision to cut oil imports from Iran by 25%

• President Trump’s reach for energy independence

• President Trump’s policies on drilling and fracking

Author's Note: Saudi Arabia and the OPEC nations tried to squeeze US shale out of the market, but they failed. Now they face competitors with more efficient technology and reduced production costs.

Saudi Arabia has very little in the way of productivity other than oil production. Like Venezuela, SA could be another chilling example of a socialist economy that eventually destroys itself.

Veterans Affairs has 346 workers who do only union work

by Sean Higgins

An estimated 346 employees in the Department of Veterans Affairs do no actual work for taxpayers. Instead, they spend all of their time doing work on behalf of their union while drawing a federal salary, a practice known as "official time."

That's according to a report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office. But exactly what those VA workers are doing and why so many are doing it is not clear. The VA doesn't track that, and the GAO report offers no clue.

Rep. Jody Arrington, R-Texas, a member of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, thinks the number on 100 percent official time may be much higher. He also notes that the 346 workers don't include those who spend most, not all, of their time doing union work.

"The lack of accountability at the VA when it comes to monitoring official time suggests it might be worse," said Arrington, who has introduced legislation that would require the department to track the use of official time, among other reforms.

Pointing to the waiting list scandals at the department, Arrington said the official time situation is reflective of the "broken culture at the heart of the VA" and adds, "I haven't heard one good, acceptable reason why the practice has continued."

The VA was not eager to discuss the matter with the Washington Examiner. After several days of inquiries, it responded with the following statement: "VA believes that the appropriate use of official time can be beneficial and in the public interest as stated in the Federal Service Labor-Relations Statute, which governs how executive branch agencies treat official time. VA takes the position that labor and management have a shared responsibility to ensure that official time is authorized and used appropriately. VA practices are in compliance with the Federal Service Labor-Relations Statute."

Official time is allowed under the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act. The idea behind it is to ensure that a federal employee who is also a union official won't be penalized for being away from work if he or she is negotiating a contract or addressing a worker grievance, for example. It is essentially a trade-off for the limitations put on federal unions, such as prohibitions on striking.

At least 700 federal workers do nothing but work on official time, according to the GAO and data obtained from various Freedom of Information Act requests. The VA uses official time far more than any other agency.

"Employees spent approximately 1,057,00 hours on official time for union representation activities … In addition, the data show that 346 employees spent 100 percent of their time on official time," the GAO found in a January report.

It is possible that even those figures are conservative. The GAO said the said the VA's poor monitoring meant the data was "inconsistent and not reliable."

The GAO didn't know what the employees are doing with all of that time. "We just didn't get into that in that particular study," said Cindy Barnes, the GAO's director of education, workforce and income security issues and author of the report.

Part of the explanation is that the VA is one of the largest federal agencies with 373,000 workers, making it second only to the Pentagon in the sheer size of its workforce. About 250,000 VA workers are covered by collective bargaining agreements, according to the GAO, citing 2012 data. Arrington puts the covered figure at 285,000.

By comparison, the Department of Homeland Security has 240,000 workers and the Department of Commerce has just under 44,000 workers. But those departments get by with proportionately far fewer people working exclusively on official time. DHS has 39, while Commerce has just four.

Another factor is that the VA's workforce is represented by no less than five unions: The American Federation of Government Employees, the National Association of Government Employees, National Nurses United, the National Federation of Federal Employees and the Service Employees International Union.

National Nurses United representative Irma Westmoreland was the only union official willing to talk about the practice with the Washington Examiner. She is one of five nurses union members who work exclusively on union time at the VA. The union has another nine who spent 80 percent of their time at the VA on official time, she said.

Westmoreland said her work was necessary because nurses can't simply stop taking care of a patient to do something like address a worker grievance. People such as her do the union work and make it possible for the other nurses to focus on providing care.

"I have to travel across the country working with 23 VA facilities in four time zones," she said. "The management teams want somebody at 100 percent official time so they don't have to pull somebody out of care."

But not everyone at the VA is involved in care. So what are the other 341 exclusive official time workers doing? Westmoreland had no insight.

"I don't know how the other people do it," she said.

American Federation of Government Employees President J. David Cox told Arrington's subcommittee in February that official time involved activities such as "designing and delivering joint training of employees on work-related subjects and introduction of new programs and work methods that are initiated by the agency or by the union."

He added that "in no way did the [February GAO] report suggest that the use of official time presents problems for the department." The report sought only to quantify the amount of time used.

Arrington argues that the practice has to change if the VA is ever to be truly reformed. He has sponsored the Veterans, Employees and Taxpayer Protection Act, which would require the VA to track the use of official time. It also would prohibit employees involved with direct patient care from spending more than a quarter of their work hours on union activities and bar any VA employee from spending more than half of their time on official time.

The legislation would effectively put VA employees under right-to-work protection. The VA would be prohibited from agreeing to union contracts that force workers to join or otherwise support a union as a condition of employment.

Westmoreland said she has no trouble with better tracking the use of official time but warns against putting any limitations on its use.

"It makes it very difficult if you cannot have set official time," she said.

G’ day…Ciao…….
Helen and Moe Lauzier

Thus Article

That's an article This time, hopefully can give benefits to all of you. well, see you in posting other articles.

You are now reading the article with the link address https://capitalstories.blogspot.com/2017/05/httpift_12.html

Tweet

Subscribe to receive free email updates: