ATF Director Badmouthing Rifle Ammunition
In a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, ATF Director B. Todd Jones said all types of the 5.56 military-style ammo used by shooters pose a threat to police as more people buy the AR-15-style pistols.They’ve been trying to use this issue as a backdoor gun ban since I was in elementary school, as a way to ban all rifle ammunition. Here’s my concern: I hadn’t realized Jones was scheduled to appear in a budgetary hearing a few days after announcing he was backing off. What’s to prevent Jones from putting the M855 ban back on the table once he gets his agency’s budget approved? I think we need some protections in there to ensure he’s not just playing games for the sake of his agency’s budget.
“Any 5.56 round” is “a challenge for officer safety,” he said. Jones asked lawmakers to help in a review of a 1986 bill written to protect police from so-called “cop killer” rounds that largely exempted rifle ammo like the 5.56 because it has been used by target shooters, not criminals.
Related posts (automatically generated):
http://www.pagunblog.com/2015/03/12/atf-director-badmouthing-rifle-ammunition/
It not it amazing that the NSA can capture all of the publics emails, but the State Department can lonely capture .006 percent of its emails. What a sorry state we are in as a country.
The new ‘transparency’: State Dept. records .006 percent of emails
With the United States’ State Department showing accountability for less than .006 percent of its emails in a given year, the Obama administration is still arguing that it’s the most transparent administration to ever step foot in the White House.
Under a presidency that sold itself into office with the catchy campaign slogan of “transparency,” more and more information — or lack thereof — regarding the email scandal clouding Hillary Clinton’s potential 2016 presidential run continues to surface. Now, the State Department that she headed from 2009 to 2013 is also under question for billions of emails that it somehow forgot or outright refused to record.
On Wednesday, the State Department’s Inspector General (IG) released a report declaring that employees of the department are not saving “enough” of their records to keep for “official records.” The 2014 first quarter review scrutinizing the State Department’s systems in the nation’s capital says that the massive “oversight” can be remedied with a little “training.”
“[State Department employees] have not received adequate training or guidance on their responsibilities for using those systems to preserve ‘record emails,’” the IG’s report reads.
Billions of emails … gone without a trace
In the IG’s report, any mention of Hillary Clinton’s emails were omitted — a fact many have found peculiar, especially in the midst of the scandal exposing her use of a personal email address and server while serving with the State Department at Foggy Bottom. However, given in the IG’s report as examples of the State Department’s failure to measure up to accountability standards were several years under Clinton’s leadership, when her entire staff did not preserve countless records of its emails.
“In 2013, Department employees created 41,749 record emails,” states the IG’s report. “These statistics are similar to numbers from 2011, when Department employees created 61,156 record emails out of more than a billion emails sent. (The OIG team did not review 2012 figures.) Department officials have noted that many emails that qualify as records are not being saved as record emails.”
Calculating 2011’s numbers alone, State Department employees are only being held accountable for roughly .006 percent of their emails. With just over 61,000 emails showing on government records for that year, this means roughly one billion other electronic communications remain in oblivion — communications that can no longer be accessed for security or legal purposes.
Excuses abound for the wide-scale government breakdown just down the street from the White House, ranging from inadequate protocol to incompetent supervision. But regardless of the reasoning behind the State Department’s breach of trust, the colossal failure for such a key department of the administration has many on both sides of partisan lines extremely concerned.
Upgraded system, downgraded performance
This all happened despite the fact that an exorbitant amount of taxpayer funds went into upgrading the system slightly more than five years ago — the same year President Barack Obama was inaugurated.
“The IG explained that, although the State Department upgraded its system in 2009 in order to keep emails for records use, there is not enough oversight of the function,” Breitbart reports. “There is a lack of understanding about what should be saved as official records, and some employees are not keen on leaving a record trail.”
Other excuses given in the official report for State Department employees not doing their jobs draw even more concern and fail to explain their lack of due diligence in carrying out their duty.
“Some employees do not create record emails because they do not want to make the email available in searches or fear that this availability would inhibit debate about pending decisions,” the report states.
Even though all the improved specs of the current email system were put into place more than five years ago, the IG is only just now beginning to take suggest action steps to ensure that the State Department and its email protocol is being followed correctly.
In order to make up for nearly six years of gross negligence and to get State Department employees to use the fully functional system the way they should have since the inaugural year of the Obama Administration’s first term, the IG has thrown together a list of seven recommendations — all designed to preserve records of emails.
Some of the preparations included in the IG’s report to get the department up to speed and put an end to the email fiasco include: training to identify official records emails, the creation of a body to give advisement on the matter, guidance about employees’ record-keeping responsibilities and annual reviews of record email.
http://www.onenewsnow.com/politics-govt/2015/03/14/the-new-%E2%80%98transparency%E2%80%99-state-dept-records-006-percent-of-emails#.VQRSoWdOXIU
http://www.pagunblog.com/2015/03/12/atf-director-badmouthing-rifle-ammunition/
It not it amazing that the NSA can capture all of the publics emails, but the State Department can lonely capture .006 percent of its emails. What a sorry state we are in as a country.
The new ‘transparency’: State Dept. records .006 percent of emails
With the United States’ State Department showing accountability for less than .006 percent of its emails in a given year, the Obama administration is still arguing that it’s the most transparent administration to ever step foot in the White House.
Under a presidency that sold itself into office with the catchy campaign slogan of “transparency,” more and more information — or lack thereof — regarding the email scandal clouding Hillary Clinton’s potential 2016 presidential run continues to surface. Now, the State Department that she headed from 2009 to 2013 is also under question for billions of emails that it somehow forgot or outright refused to record.On Wednesday, the State Department’s Inspector General (IG) released a report declaring that employees of the department are not saving “enough” of their records to keep for “official records.” The 2014 first quarter review scrutinizing the State Department’s systems in the nation’s capital says that the massive “oversight” can be remedied with a little “training.”
“[State Department employees] have not received adequate training or guidance on their responsibilities for using those systems to preserve ‘record emails,’” the IG’s report reads.
Billions of emails … gone without a trace
In the IG’s report, any mention of Hillary Clinton’s emails were omitted — a fact many have found peculiar, especially in the midst of the scandal exposing her use of a personal email address and server while serving with the State Department at Foggy Bottom. However, given in the IG’s report as examples of the State Department’s failure to measure up to accountability standards were several years under Clinton’s leadership, when her entire staff did not preserve countless records of its emails.
“In 2013, Department employees created 41,749 record emails,” states the IG’s report. “These statistics are similar to numbers from 2011, when Department employees created 61,156 record emails out of more than a billion emails sent. (The OIG team did not review 2012 figures.) Department officials have noted that many emails that qualify as records are not being saved as record emails.”
Calculating 2011’s numbers alone, State Department employees are only being held accountable for roughly .006 percent of their emails. With just over 61,000 emails showing on government records for that year, this means roughly one billion other electronic communications remain in oblivion — communications that can no longer be accessed for security or legal purposes.
Excuses abound for the wide-scale government breakdown just down the street from the White House, ranging from inadequate protocol to incompetent supervision. But regardless of the reasoning behind the State Department’s breach of trust, the colossal failure for such a key department of the administration has many on both sides of partisan lines extremely concerned.
Upgraded system, downgraded performance
This all happened despite the fact that an exorbitant amount of taxpayer funds went into upgrading the system slightly more than five years ago — the same year President Barack Obama was inaugurated.
“The IG explained that, although the State Department upgraded its system in 2009 in order to keep emails for records use, there is not enough oversight of the function,” Breitbart reports. “There is a lack of understanding about what should be saved as official records, and some employees are not keen on leaving a record trail.”
Other excuses given in the official report for State Department employees not doing their jobs draw even more concern and fail to explain their lack of due diligence in carrying out their duty.
“Some employees do not create record emails because they do not want to make the email available in searches or fear that this availability would inhibit debate about pending decisions,” the report states.
Even though all the improved specs of the current email system were put into place more than five years ago, the IG is only just now beginning to take suggest action steps to ensure that the State Department and its email protocol is being followed correctly.
In order to make up for nearly six years of gross negligence and to get State Department employees to use the fully functional system the way they should have since the inaugural year of the Obama Administration’s first term, the IG has thrown together a list of seven recommendations — all designed to preserve records of emails.
Some of the preparations included in the IG’s report to get the department up to speed and put an end to the email fiasco include: training to identify official records emails, the creation of a body to give advisement on the matter, guidance about employees’ record-keeping responsibilities and annual reviews of record email.
http://www.onenewsnow.com/politics-govt/2015/03/14/the-new-%E2%80%98transparency%E2%80%99-state-dept-records-006-percent-of-emails#.VQRSoWdOXIU
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