The irony, it burns.
The government shutdown began with the president’s demand for border security money. But it has also halted E-Verify, a federal program that’s supposed to prevent immigrants from working here illegally.
If U.S. employers want to check whether their prospective hires are eligible to work, they can’t. The E-Verify database is “currently unavailable due to a lapse in government appropriations,”
NPR
An estimated 800,000 federal workers have had their lives upended by this latest presidential temper tantrum. Some 420,000 of those, deemed “essential personnel,” are working without pay. This includes upward of 41,000 law enforcement officials, 54,000 Border Patrol agents and 53,000 Transportation Security Administration workers. (If you flew this holiday season, it was only thanks to these unpaid women and men.) Another 380,000 workers have been furloughed, including 28,800 employees of the Forest Service, 16,000 in the National Park Service and 16,700 at NASA.
New York Times
Nothing to see here. Move along, move along.
How long did he sit on this report?
The Washington Post reported that on Thursday out-going Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) issued “a scathing summary of his years investigating the U.S. Marshal Service, saying his committee found “a culture of mismanagement, abuse of authority and lax accountability” at the law enforcement agency.”
“Misdeeds” consisting of “forging hundreds of subpoenas to gather telephone records,” but no firings or dismissals with discovered to “repeated attempts to retaliate against whistleblowers who brought misconduct to light.”
A conference table that cost $22,000 and a contract for a “speechwriter” who was paid over $1 million.
An unidentified senior official “after two DOJ IG reports found he misused government resources, engaged in sexual harassment, and threatened and retaliated against employees who participated in an investigation of his conduct,” was allowed to retired with full benefits.
For a 10-year period ending in 2005, “approximately 800 of the fraudulent subpoenas were served on telecommunications providers in order to obtain telephone records of private citizens connected to fugitive investigations,” according to an investigative document released with the senator’s memo. “The subpoenas contained a pre-printed signature” from a judge who later told investigators he never issued the subpoenas and was not even assigned to the court in question after the year 2000.
Washington Post
“One service employee told investigators that he alone used the phony subpoenas approximately 500 times.”
“No criminal charges were ever filed in the matter, and only one Marshals Service employee was given a reprimand, according to Justice Department officials. Two of the employees who were criticized for their roles in the phony-subpoena practice were later promoted.”
Move along….
This is really a New York Times report, but Raw Story’s image seems to capture the moment much more effectively, don’t you think?
In a follow up to this NYT’s story, Making President Trump’s Bed: A Housekeeper Without Papers, another one of Trump’s employees at his Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey, The Bedminster, Emma Torres, an illegal alien from Ecuador, is alleging that she was one of many “undocumented” workers at Trump’s golf course whose names were purposely marked off the list of employees who Secret Service should have vetted.
Victoria Morales, an illegal in the US since 1999 from Guatemala said she “was given a Secret Service pin to wear when the president was in residence at the club.” But according to the Secret Service “officials,” they said the pin “did not signify that she passed any security clearance.”
Ms. Morales was still working at the club when The Times published its report, but has not returned to work since. She said that when her initial fraudulent green card expired, a manager at the club arranged for her to be driven to a place where she could obtain new counterfeit documents. She said he lent her money to purchase them.
New York Times;
In early 2017, Torres quit and found a new job. After over a year of serving sandwiches to the Secret Service and food for Trump, who had “praised her work and tipped her,” she and other employees left because they became “increasingly uncomfortable” with Trump’s “derogatory comments during the campaign.”
“When he won the election, fear took over me. I felt I was in the lion’s den. I had to leave.”
Evidence of proof of the allegations were turned over to the New Jersey’s Attorney Generals Office and to Robert Mueller’s Office of Special Counsel in October. Mueller reportedly referred the evidence to the FBI. A lawyer representing some of the workers told the NYT that “both state and federal authorities contacted him in November.”
Move along….
Stick around. Definitely something to see here.
Florida man gets his ass kicked, CNN reported.
St. Petersburg, Florida passed a city ordinance that will completely eliminate drinking straws by January 1, 2020 and are in the process of enacting “a year of transitioning away for these single-use products before the regulations will be fully enforced.” As such, starting January 1, 2019, straws are no longer placed at the condiment station in the lobby area and are given only upon request.
A McDonald’s customer became “upset” when he returned to the counter and complained because there were no straws. When the server attempted to explain that it is now the law, this further inflamed the customer and calls the server a liar and said “there was no such law.”
And then, that’s when the fight started.
Daniel Taylor allegedly kicked another employee in the stomach when being escorted out the door. Police were called to the scene and a short time later Taylor calls the police to report the incident. Unaware the man making the call was Taylor when they arrived they identified him as the suspect in the video and arrested him.
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