Details at Hot Air. It’s the first contraction in three years.

This administration is shaping up to be very similar to that of FDR, one of the worst presidents in American history. Obama came into office facing an economy that already was doing poorly, thanks to bubbles inflated by Fed policy, and swung a Louisville slugger at the knees of that economy repeatedly. New regulations on employers, and new goodies for unions? Take that, economy! Misallocation of resources through monstrously huge government spending programs? Take that, economy! ObamaCare? How do you like that, economy?! Wham! Wham! WHAM!!!

And what do you know? The economy is starting to buckle under the repeated blows.

We’ve been through it all before, in the 1930s. This is a milder version, but the principles are exactly the same.

P.S. Admin Guy is working on issues with the site. Please be patient!

Because I hear that comments aren’t working. We’ll be right back …. And we’re back.

This is what happens when the lights flicker around here.

[guest post by Dana]

Ezra Klein asks Nancy Pelosi what her position is on the “ongoing scandal” in the Veterans Health Administration.

Pelosi brazenly obfuscates and attempts to spin in a disgustingly shameful manner.

As a reminder,

At least 40 U.S. veterans have died waiting for medical appointments at Phoenix Veterans Affairs Health Care system — including many placed on a secret waiting list.

The list was part of a complex cost-cutting scheme set up by Veterans Affairs managers in Phoenix aiming to hide the fact that between 1,400 and 1,600 sick veterans were forced to wait up to 21 months to see a doctor.

Retiring Dr. Sam Foote, who spent 24 years with the VA system, told CNN that the Phoenix VA worked off two patient appointment lists.

The “official” list shows the VA was offering timely appointments within 14 to 30 days. Foote called this a “sham list” because there was another secret document where waits where much longer.

“The scheme was deliberately put in place to avoid the VA’s own internal rules. They developed the secret waiting list,” he said.

According to Foote, the elaborate plans involved shredding evidence to hide the long list, with VA officials instructing staff to not make veterans’ appointments in the computer system.

If this does not fit the very definition of scandal, what on earth does?

–Dana

[guest post by Dana]

Another new regulatory end-run around Congress?

President Barack Obama’s administration has quietly suggested it is willing to create a two-tier race-based legal system in Hawaii, where one set of taxes, spending and law enforcement will govern one race, and the second set of laws will govern every other race.

The diversity proposal is portrayed as an effort to create a separate in-state government for people who are “native Hawaiians.”

The presentation of this proposal is contained in a document referred to as the Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking.

“The Secretary of the Interior is considering whether to propose an administrative rule that would facilitate the reestablishment of a government-to-government relationship with the Native Hawaiian community,” said the document.

To what end?

“to more effectively implement the special political and trust relationship that Congress has established between that [Hawaiian] community and the United States.”

Gail Heriot, a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is concerned about the balkanization of the state as a result,

If Obama succeeds, “what’s to prevent creating similar [self-governing racial] groups out of say, Cajuns, or Orthodox Jews or Amish?” “If you can do that with groups that are already part of the mainstream, you can balkanize the country,” said Heriot, who is a law professor at the University of San Diego.

But the proposed measure to increase legal diversity is illegal because the president doesn’t have the power to grant one group of Americans the status of a separate government, she said.

“There is no constitutional basis for conferring such status, and Congress has repeatedly refused to confer this status,” said Carissa Mulder, a spokeswoman for two members of the federal Commission on Civil Rights.

“This seems to be yet another case of the Obama administration ignoring the law to achieve its policy objectives,” she added

Who benefits and how?

The move is likely intended to protect lucrative financial set-asides for Americans who are also part of the Hawaiian racial group, said Heriot.

These set-aside, which include cheap loans, are being threatened by the Supreme Court’s move to curb racial divisions and imposed racial diversity. In 2000, for example, the court’s Rice vs. Cayetano decision allowed non-Hawaiians to participate in the election of trustees for the state’s wealthy Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

The office holds a large tract of land in Hawaii under a legal trust, which generates revenue that is distributed to racial Hawaiians.

–Dana

I am working on something I want to get done in the next hour. If I knew how to do it, it would be easy. It requires basic iMovie skills — how do you insert a blank page with titles in between video clips, etc. Does any longtime reader know how to do that, who could hop on chat with me or something?

It has to do with that post I did about the judicial candidate and her supporter who used a bogus copyright claim to remove the truth from YouTube. My tech guy is not responding to me and I am looking to put together a short movie to show what these Orwellian people are editing out of the public dialogue.

UPDATE: JWB is on the case and the tech guy is on it too. Things are looking up!

Whoever got the watch on Amazon — thanks for doing so though my Amazon portal!

Here’s the news they dumped on you this past holiday weekend while you were grilling and remembering:

Many employers had thought they could shift health costs to the government by sending their employees to a health insurance exchange with a tax-free contribution of cash to help pay premiums, but the Obama administration has squelched the idea in a new ruling. Such arrangements do not satisfy the health care law, the administration said, and employers may be subject to a tax penalty of $100 a day — or $36,500 a year — for each employee who goes into the individual marketplace.

The ruling this month, by the Internal Revenue Service, blocks any wholesale move by employers to dump employees into the exchanges.

Sounds good, right? If they like their doctor they can keep them! Not so much:

Andrew R. Biebl, a tax partner at CliftonLarsonAllen, a large accounting firm based in Minneapolis, said the ruling could disrupt arrangements used in many industries.

“For decades,” Mr. Biebl said, “employers have been assisting employees by reimbursing them for health insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs. The new federal ruling eliminates many of those arrangements by imposing an unusually punitive penalty.”

Just another way ObamaCare “benefits” the public, by putting the giant and oppressive thumb of the federal government on private arrangements.

Come on, now. COME ON!

President Obama berated Real Clear Politics reporter Alexis Simendinger after she asked him about reports of the U.S. sending trainers to help the rebels in Syria.

Moments after the president finished speaking with individual students and taking pictures with the press at the White House’s science fair exhibit, Simendinger asked him a question regarding these reports.

“I’m sorry, we’re doing a science fair- c’mon, c’mon,” Obama responded before rushing out of the room and avoiding comment on the breaking news.

Video:

He just wants to eat his waffle. (By the way, that haughty response was also to a female reporter. Just a coincidence, I’m sure.)

[guest post by Dana]

It’s come to this: A government agency, believing employee ratings are too discriminatory, has opted to eliminate the process altogether. As a result of the decision, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will award all employees a gold star – regardless of their performance reviews.

The CFPB, which oversees transactions in the financial sector for the federal government, decided to no longer conduct employee reviews because there were just too many apparent “significant disparities” between the races, ages, and locations of its employees.

According to American Banker, this new policy is set to cost over $5 million dollars, as it will now pay employees as if they received the highest evaluation score. The previous system ranked staff on their performance from a scale ranging from one to five, with five being the best score a CFPB staffer could receive after a review of their work on the job.

One wonders about the timing of such a decision involving such a costly change in procedure.

This development comes right before the agency is scheduled for a Wednesday hearing to investigate allegations that it practiced retaliatory actions towards certain employees. News reports have circulated that the alleged “discriminations” were race-based and that the CFPB implemented their new policies to alleviate that problem.

Apparently, the belief is that only racism can explain any disparities in employee evaluations.

It should be noted that CFPB Director Richard Cordray justified the change in procedure, saying there were broad-based disparities in the way performance ratings were assigned.

“These differences indicate a systemic disadvantage to various categories of employees that persisted across divisions, offices, and other employee characteristics.”

–Dana

The L.A. Times tells us:

The CIA’s top official in Kabul has been publicly identified by the White House in an email accidentally circulated to thousands of journalists as part of President Obama’s surprise Memorial Day weekend trip to Afghanistan.

Whoops! Oh well. These things happen, as the Times reminds us:

In 2003, another CIA operative, Valerie Plame, was publicly identified by I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a top aide to Vice President Cheney, in an apparent attempt to discredit her husband, who had publicly raised questions about the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq.

Libby was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice, but his sentence was commuted by President Bush.

Wait . . . what?!

I could have sworn the leaker was a fella named Richard Armitage.

Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said yesterday that he believes he was the initial source for a 2003 newspaper column by Robert D. Novak that disclosed the CIA’s previously secret employment of Valerie Plame, the wife of a prominent critic of the U.S. war in Iraq.

That’s from 2006. This has been known for, what? 7 1/2 years?

Um, L.A. Times?

Thanks to G.H.

UPDATE: Another day, another correction. The linked article now begins as follows:

FOR THE RECORD

CIA name disclosure: An article in the May 27 Section A stated that former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby disclosed that former intelligence official Valerie Plame worked for the CIA. Former State Department official Richard Armitage said he was the first to disclose that Plame worked for the agency.

Kudos to G.H. for catching this.