Paradigms and Demographics: Morning Edition

VA hospital lacks PJ’s, sheets and toothbrushes, yet spends millions on new furniture, TVs and solar - Veterans at the Shreveport, La., Veterans Administration hospital have been going without toothbrushes, toothpaste, pajamas, sheets and blankets while department officials spend money on new Canadian-made furniture, televisions to run public service announcements and solar panels, a Watchdog investigation has revealed. 

Sources inside the hospital told Watchdog.org that patients also have had to contend with substandard care, as many

nurses spend less time on work than on cell phones, iPods or accessing personal data on hospital computers. “It shouldn’t be like this. These are our veterans,” one employee said. “When I saw those solar panels out there and they waste money on things like new TVs that just play (public service) announcements, it really made me angry.”  According to the VA, the department spent $74,412 on 24 flat screen TVs for “patient/employee information” — one 50 inches wide and the others 42 inches. The furniture cost $134,082 and the solar project was approximately $3 million…..Volunteers come through and drop off toothbrushes, deodorant, mouthwash and combs,” the first employee said. “We run out, so all we have available are pre-moistened sponges for oral care.”….Scott said aides complained that patients often waited hours to be bathed. She said one aide complained that it was useless to keep patients clean early in a shift. The aide told her, “If I have to do it now, I will just have to do it again before the end of my shift.”…..

 

Assisted Suicide 'Out of Control' in Netherlands - The number of mentally ill people who have been killed through euthanasia in the Netherlands has trebled in a single year, according to new figures. The Daily Mail reportsthat in 2012, 14 people with "severe psychiatric problems" were killed by lethal injection, a figure that rose to 42 in 2013. There had also been a 15 percent overall rise in assisted dying over the past year, with the number of cases increasing from 4,188 to 4,829. Deaths from euthanasia have risen by a total of 151 percent in a period of just seven years, with most cases involving cancer sufferers. However, there were also 97 people who were killed by their doctors because they had dementia. The figures do not include "terminal sedation", where the patient is sedated and then has food and fluids withdrawn. If they did, however, euthanasia would account for one in eight of all deaths in the Netherlands…..euthanasia in the Netherlands is "way out of control", saying that it proves that assisted dying is impossible to regulate. "….

Unions take dues from more than 250,000 public workers - Public-sector unions took forced dues from more than 250,000 public employees in 2013, siphoning away taxpayer money to support the unions’ shared goal of bigger government. Some, but not all, of the labor unions that take mandatory “agency fees” from public employees must report the number of agency fee payers to the U.S. Department of Labor each year. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees had 130,920 agency fee payers in 2013 while National Education Association had 88,378. Service Employees International Union reported 243,799 agency fee payers. Many of the employees represented by SEIU work in the private sector. DOL defines agency fee payers as “those who make payments in lieu of dues to the reporting labor organization as a condition of employment under a union security provision in a collective bargaining agreement.” Public-sector unions can impose agency fees in 23 states…..

 

Obola Obama -  It's too soon to answer the question the IBD is asking this morning: "Is Ebola Obama's Katrina?" Yet the Zero Administration's malfeasance makes the question already worth asking.  Thomas Eric Duncan is a Liberian citizen with a Liberian passport, living in the capital city of Monrovia. On Monday, Sept. 15, he helped carry (was in physical contact with) a family friend sick with Ebola to her home, who died early the next morning. With him at the time was the lady's brother, who then died of Ebola the day after his sister, Wednesday the 17th.   On Friday the 19th, knowing that he had been doubly exposed to Ebola, he left for the United States. It is hard not to conclude that he came here for the medical treatment that he would die without if he remained in Monrovia, and could care less who he infected along the way. Thanks to this, people are freaking out everywhere, especially in Dallas with parents pulling their kids out of schools, as five of their schoolmates were exposed to Duncan after he reached Dallas. The London Daily Mail reports that over 100 people were in contact in Dallas with Duncan, many of whom are now quarantined. ….Try this on. Yesterday (10/01), Josh Earnest, the pathetic dweeb who recently replaced the pathetic dweeb who's name I can't bother to remember as White House Spokesman, announced that the Zero Government has no intention of preventing Ebola carriers from entering the United States….

 

California's do-something green reflex - California government can’t fix its nation-high unemployment rate of 7.4%, or its water management ahead of droughts, or its chronic state budget deficits, or its dangerous “medical marijuana” abuse, while insisting upon a “bullet train” to nowhere. But, it always has time to tack on another costly, useless and stupid measure of inconvenience to flatter their environmentalist constituents.  While numerous California cities have adopted local controls over the use of plastic shopping bags, California Gov. Brown and our Democrat-dominated legislature couldn’t resist spending state government time and money to enact a state-wide ban on plastic shopping bags.  Of course, eco-group supporters of the bag ban made up lists of the tenuous threats posed by continued plastic bag use. But, a study by the Reason Foundation deflates the plastic bag anxieties with some practical insights.

‘So-called Khorasan Group’ Is Actually ‘Wolf Unit’ of al-Qaeda’s Syrian Franchise — Report - Far from being its own organization, the terror group is at most one of trusted advisers within al-Qaeda…..President Obama and his subordinates take pains not to mention al Qaeda, particularly in the context of continuing plots to mass-murder Americans, because the president repeatedly and falsely claimed during the 2012 campaign to have “decimated” the terror network and put it “on the path to defeat.” The administration miniaturizes the continuing threat by breaking al Qaeda down into its components and speaking about them as if they were independent actors rather than a global jihadist movement unified by virulently anti-American Islamic-supremacist ideology…..

The Khorasan Group Does Not Exist - We're being had. Again. For six years, President Obama has endeavored to will the country into accepting two pillars of his alternative national-security reality. First, he claims to have dealt decisively with the terrorist threat, rendering it a disparate series of ragtag jayvees. Second, he asserts that the threat is unrelated to Islam, which is innately peaceful, moderate, and opposed to the wanton “violent extremists” who purport to act in its name…..Hence, Obama gives us the Khorosan Group. The who? There is a reason that no one had heard of such a group until a nanosecond ago, when the “Khorosan Group” suddenly went from anonymity to the “imminent threat” that became the rationale for an emergency air war there was supposedly no time to ask Congress to authorize……. It’s a fictitious name the Obama administration invented to deceive us....