Tag Archive for: DHHS

Transform or Terminate? Our options for failing Federal Agencies.

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We MUST choose wisely!

Almost everyone complains about government — Local, State, & Federal. It’s right up there with finding fault with your spouse, being annoyed with your kids, bitching about the weather, etc., etc.

Today, let’s just focus on Federal Agencies (e.g., DOE, EPA, DHHS, DOEd).

Unfortunately, most people have lots of complaints about them — but they are short on quality solutions. As readers here are hopefully critical thinkers, we should be able to be more than whiners, and actually provide meaningful and practical solutions. Let’s go through the four important federal agencies I mentioned, and see what we get…

Department of Energy (DOE) —

Energy is an under-appreciated and enormously important part of our everyday life. Just have the power in your house go off for a day (or a week!) and you will quickly see how almost EVERYTHING we do involves some form of energy (e.g., electricity).

The fundamental problem with the DOE is that it has replaced real Science with political science. For decades, it has endorsed make-believe energy options like wind turbines. For example, here it still says that DOE’s objective is to “support wind energy as an abundant, readily accessible resource that fosters economic prosperity, societal well-being, and energy security.”

That is a political statement devoid of Science. It is unadulterated ignorance, as there is nothing about industrial wind energy that genuinely “fosters economic prosperity, societal well-being, and energy security.” Nothing!

With such profound departures from their mission statement and statutory obligations, does this mean we should Terminate the DOE?

I hear no serious person or organization saying that. Rather, they are saying let’s get a competent DOE Secretary (like Chris Wright) and have him do what it takes to get DOE onto the right track, as we need federal energy oversight.

So far, that is exactly what has happened: DOE is in the process of being substantially reformed, which includes making our energy policies much better. This is the direction that is in the best interest of America!

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) —

The EPA has only been around since 1970. (See some history here.) It has been primarily driven (controlled) by NGOs that are environmental advocates (e.g., the Sierra Club). Like the energy situation, if we are suddenly subjected to an environmental problem (e.g., our water supply becomes polluted), this can very quickly become a major concern.

The reality of life on Earth is that everything is “dirty” to some extent. Further, no one wants problematically polluted air, water, ground, etc. The core EPA questions are: 1) What parts of our world should the EPA be involved with? 2) At what level of pollution of these world components should the EPA get involved?, and 3) exactly what authority should the EPA have to fix things?

The problem here is that unelected NGOs have effectively turned the EPA into an alarmist, activist agency. Worse, their assurance that they only utilize “the best available science” is a joke.

A classic example is Climate Change. The EPA has aggressively targeted CO2, which is NOT a pollutant. (Note: anything in excess can cause a problem.) CO2 is a naturally occurring gas that is an essential part of the life process — from humans to plants.

As with DOE, the fundamental problem with the EPA has been that it has replaced real Science with political science. For decades, it has supported make-believe crusades like demonizing CO2. For example, the so-called Endangerment Finding is what they have used to justify trillions of dollars of rules and regulations on US citizens and businesses.

That is a political campaign devoid of real Science. It is unadulterated ignorance that is mostly about bringing America down.

With such profound departures and overreach from their mission statement and statutory obligations, should we Terminate the EPA?

I hear no serious person or organization saying that. Rather, they are saying let’s get a competent EPA Administrator (like Lee Zeldin) and have him do what it takes to get the EPA onto the right track, as we need competent federal oversight of the environment.

So far, that is exactly what has happened: the EPA is in the process of being substantially reformed, which includes making our environmental policies much better. This is the direction that is in the best interest of America!

Department of Human Health Services (DHHS) —

Clearly, our health is also an enormously important matter. Again, just like with energy, if we suddenly lose it (e.g., come down with a serious illness), all of a sudden, this will become our top priority.

I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but again, the fundamental problem with the DHHS has been that it has replaced real Science with political science. For decades, it has allowed self-serving parties (like Big Pharma) to dictate US healthcare policies.

For example, the COVID fiasco made it clear to anyone paying attention that CDC/FDA policies and enormous amounts of wasted money were more designed to profit pharmaceutical companies rather than improve the health of US citizens.

One simple but powerful example is to examine the THOUSANDS of scientific studies that were done about proposed COVID-19 treatments. The clear results are that treatments endorsed by the FDA/CDC did poorly (e.g., Paxlovid, Remdesivir, etc.) while treatments opposed by the FDA/CDC did well (IVM, HCQ, etc .) That was a political campaign devoid of Science that likely resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

With such profound departures from their mission statements and statutory function, does this mean we should Terminate the DHHS?

I hear no serious person or organization saying that. Rather, they are saying let’s get a competent DHHS Secretary (like RFKjr) and have him do what it takes to get the DHHS onto the right track, as we need proper federal oversight of our failing healthcare system.

So far, that is exactly what has happened: DHHS is in the process of being substantially reformed, which includes making our healthcare policies much better. This is the direction that is in the best interest of America!

Department of Education (DOEd) —

Here is a brief history of DOEd, which (at 4000± employees) is the smallest of all federal agencies. For example, DHHS has about 100,000 employees.

Guess what? The fundamental problem with the DOEd has been that it has replaced real education Science with political science. For example, for decades, it has allowed self-serving parties like teachers’ unions (e.g., AFT) and the American Library Association (ALA) to dictate US K-12 education policies. This has been an unmitigated disaster.

Unfortunately, the DOEd has not focused on what it should be doing: providing constructive K-12 leadership to the States. The end result is that the fifty states are, by and large, wandering aimlessly like sheep in a large field, without any shepherd — while progressive wolves take them over.

For example, the COVID fiasco made it clear to anyone paying attention that the States and the unions were not focused on what was best for our children. This was the States’ doing, as the DOEd had nothing to do with this.

Another simple but powerful example is that forty-nine (49) States agreed to adopt most or all of the NGSS — which is a horrific set of K-12 Science standards (e.g., see here). The DOEd had nothing to do with this either!

With these and other widespread failures in our K-12 education system (e.g., inferior test results), should we terminate the DOEd?

Unlike with the other failing — but important — federal agencies, I do hear otherwise competent people and organizations advocating that. For some reason, they do not apply the same logic that applies to the other poorly performing federal agencies to the DOEd.

They should be saying let’s get a competent DOEd Secretary and have her do what it takes to get the DOEd onto the right track — as we need competent federal oversight of our devastated K-12 education system.

YES, that is the correct answer, and it’s all spelled out here.

So far, the focus has been to dismantle DOEd rather than to substantially reform it (i.e., to make our decrepit K-12 education system much better). This is NOT the direction that is in the best interest of America!

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U.S. Liberal Jews pushing for more Syrian refugees. Why?

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At one time I was a member of the national board of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) in the early 1980’s when the priority was helping Jews escape from tyranny in Russia, Ethiopia and Syria. There are reported to be less than a dozen elderly Jews left in Syria. HIAS was also involved in processing Vietnamese boat people refugees in the US.  That was over three decades ago.  HIAS is one of the 11 Voluntary Agencies (VOLAGS) under the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) and Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement pushing to bring to the US 100,000 Syrian refugees streaming out of the more than 5 million displaced internally and in external camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

HIAS has joined with Arab American advocacy groups and immigration lawyers, some controlled by Muslim Brotherhood leaders, like those on the Syrian American Council, to bring predominately Muslim Syrian refugees to America. As we have seen in the flood of an estimated  400,000 Syrian refugees, a vanguard of whom have entered the broken open borders of the Shengen system of EU countries, the predominate demographics are young men,. Among who may be ISIS sympathizers that may add to the already daunting problems that FBI Director Comey had said already faces us in all 50 states.

President Obama announced last week an increase in the annual allotment of 10,000 Syrian refugees to be resettled here. The current total PRM allotment under the Refugee Act of 1980 is 70,000. The PRM updated a list of local resettlement agencies in more than 180 communities throughout the US being screened as potential recipients of these Syrian and other UN designated refugees. One of those on the PRM listed is Catholic Charities in my community of Pensacola in northwest Florida.

A Pew Trust study revealed that 1.7 Muslim immigrants were admitted to the US over the US over the period from 1992 to 2010. Upwards of 250,000 Muslim refugees have already been admitted under the US Refugee Resettlement Program from conflict zones in the Middle East, Eastern and sub-Sahara Africa and South Asia since 1990. One refugee family assisted by the program in Boston were the Chechen Tsarneavs, whose sons, Tamerlane and Dzhokhar, who became Jihadist terrorists who perpetrated the heinous Boston Marathon bombing. We have written extensively about assimilation and national security problems of Somali refugees in the U.S., especially the problems in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Columbus, Ohio and other émigré communities. Some of these communities have spawned émigré fundamentalist fighters who joined terrorist groups Al Shabaab in Somalia and ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Some of these émigré jihadis have returned to the U.S. and been arrested and convicted for material support for terrorism. Now the threat may be self motivated jihadists who perpetrated attacks such as in Garland, Texas and the deadly attack on Marine and Naval reservists in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

On 9/11 the Jewish Telegraph Association (JTA) reported these developments in an article, “Arab Americans look to Jews for help on Syrian refugees:”

Over the last few days, HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, launched a petition drive calling on President Barack Obama to swiftly open America’s gates to an additional 100,000 Syrians, and the president of the Union for Reform Judaism wrote to the president and congressional leaders calling for a coordinated international response.

“Our great nation must respond immediately by providing safety, food, shelter, refuge, and dignity,” wrote the Reform leader, Rabbi Rick Jacobs. “How can a nation built by refugees from political persecution turn our back on refugees fleeing religious and political persecution?”

Omar Hossino, the Washington-based Syrian American Council’s public relations director, singled out HIAS as being particularly helpful.

“HIAS has been consistently calling for more resettlement and pushing back against the discriminatory rhetoric opposing opening the doors to Syrian refugees,” he said.

This week, HIAS president Mark Hetfield held a conference call with American Jewish organizational officials to talk about his agency’s decision to join with Arab-American leaders in critiquing U.S. policies that limit the numbers of refugees settled in the United States to about 70,000 per year.

Only about 1,500 Syrian refugees have been admitted since the start of the civil war in 2011. Obama announced Thursday that the United States soon would take in 10,000 refugees, but Hetfield said that number was inadequate.

“We are dealing with a global humanitarian crisis to which the entire world must respond,” he said in a statement issued within hours of Obama’s announcement. “If Germany can open its doors to 800,000 asylum seekers, the U.S., with a population four times the size of Germany’s and a history as a nation of immigrants and refugees, can take 100,000.”

Hetfield appealed to regional Jewish groups to act on the grassroots level to help absorb refugees.

Akram Abusharar, a Gaza-born U.S. immigration attorney who handles approximately 80 Syrian asylum cases per month, said HIAS’s involvement was a boost to his cause.

“The Jewish community has more capacity to move the politicians on this issue than the Arab-American community,” he told JTA in an interview.

But more recently Hossino has tracked an uptick in opposition to bringing Muslim immigrants to the United States — especially among Republican candidates and members of congress. In television appearances last weekend, Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina said the United States has “done its fair share” when it comes to the refugee crisis. Sen. Rand Paul asserted that the U.S. “can’t accept the whole world” and should adopt a cautious stance towards resettlement.

Hetfield, in the conference call, said concerns about the Muslim and Arab identity of the refugees are misplaced, reminding listeners of similar reasoning when some nations in the 1930s blocked Jewish immigration from Germany.

So why is HIAS joining with other willing NGOs like the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Lutheran World Refugee and Immigration Services, Church World Services and the International Rescue Committee promoting a flood of Syrian Refugees to come to the U.S.?  Is it a humanitarian gesture of openness?  Or is it the fees they receive  from processing refugees and asylees who fit the UN and US Citizenship and Immigration Service definitionthat determines who  qualifies to be admitted  for asylum under the Refugee Act of 1980? Those refugees that are admitted under the US resettlement programs receive a smorgasbord of federal and state welfare, medical, housing and other benefits that some migration specialists’ estimate could exceed 10 to 12 billion dollars annually. That taxpayer burden might double if HIAS and other VOLAGs, with the assistance of the Obama White House, succeed in dramatically increasing the allotments for Syrian Refugees over the next several years.

Syrian Christian refugees(1)

Syrian Christian Refugees.

If anyone among the displaced Syrian refugees deserves priority it is the Syriac Christians and other non-Muslim religious minorities with existing Diaspora communities in the US. Communities that might provide private sponsorship assistance. Those traditional private sponsorship programs like the Canadian federal effort have demonstrated the ability to rapidly absorb refugees who share basic values traditional with our society.  We also have the examples of Jewish philanthropists like the venerable UK publisher, 95 year old Lord George Weidenfeld, a holocaust survivor, spearheading the Safe Havens Fund actively supporting efforts to spare a fraction of these threatened Christian and non-Muslim Middle East minorities. HIAS could expand upon Weidenfeld’s example.

HIAS, Jewish Federations and the leaders of the  Reform Movement should carefully vet Arab American ‘partners’ before sallying forth on humanitarian grounds to admit more Syrian and predominately Muslim refugees. Especially, when there are threatened Middle East Christians and other non-Muslim minorities that deserve preference. That is demonstrated by the Safe Havens Fund of Lord Weidenfeld, who received the Theodore Herzl Award of the World Jewish Congress.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the New English Review.