From Sacramento Bee: Prompted by a massive state audit that found misleading budgeting practices and extravagant spending in the University of California’s central administration, one lawmaker is demanding the resignation of UC President Janet Napolitano.
“The leaders of our state university systems are duty-bound to maintain the highest levels of transparency, integrity, and accountability to California taxpayers, students, their families, and the Legislature, especially when it comes to public monies,” Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva said in a statement Tuesday. “President Napolitano no longer engenders the public trust required to perform her duties. It’s time she resigned.”
Released two weeks ago, the audit slammed UC’s Office of the President for systematically overcharging campuses to fund its operations, spending excessively on employee compensation and secretly stashing $175 million for presidential initiative, even as the university’s governing board recently voted to raise tuition for the first time in six years.
Quirk-Silva, who is carrying legislation to freeze student fees at California Student University and community colleges, said UC’s spending priorities show “President Napolitano is not worthy of the public’s trust.”
“She’s not the person to lead the university system,” Quirk-Silva said.
DCG
Since former Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano became President Obama’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Matt Drudge coined the nickname “Big Sis” – an Orwellian take on her role overseeing United States security.
“I’ve made it,” the Secretary said with a grin in 2010 when asked by a reporter about the nickname. “Drudge has a nickname for me.”
But other times, Napolitano was frustrated by the Drudge Report coverage of her department, reminding a Congressional panel that the Drudge Report was “not credible.”
“After four plus years of focusing on these challenges, I will be nominated as the next President of the University of California to play a role in educating our nation’s next generation of leaders,” Napolitano said in a statement on Friday, announcing her retirement from the Obama administration. “I thank President Obama for the chance to serve our nation during this important chapter in our history, and I know the Department of Homeland Security will continue to perform its important duties with the honor and focus that the American public expects.”
In a tribute to her retirement, here is a list of some of the classic Drudge Report banners featuring Napalitano as “Big Sis”:
1. Going after ‘right wingers’
2. Bagpipes?
3. The TSA is going too far
4. Be careful frying turkeys
5. Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Sis?
6. Lawsuit!
7. Keeping our borders safe
8. One of many stories highlighting DHS guns and ammo purchases
Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano is stepping down Friday, a DHS official confirms.
The former Arizona governor, who was named to her current role in 2009, will serve as the next president of the University of California system.
(credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano will become the first female president of the University of California system, officials announced Friday.
“I am pleased to announce that the Special Committee has nominated Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano to serve as the 20th president of the University of California,” UC Regent and Committee Chair Sherry Lansing said.
Napolitano, who will resign from her federal post Friday, will head the 145-year-old, 10-campus system that includes local schools such as UCLA, UC Riverside and UC Irvine. The UC system also includes five medical centers, three affiliated national laboratories and a statewide agriculture and natural resources program.
The system has more than 234,000 students, about 208,000 faculty and staff, more than 1.6 million living alumni and an annual operating budget of more than $24 billion.
Napolitano, one of 300 potential nominees reviewed for the position, received a unanimous vote of recommendation from the 10-member Special Committee, Lansing said.
“While some may consider her to be an unconventional choice, Secretary Napolitano is without a doubt the right person at the right time to lead this incredible University. She will bring fresh eyes and a new sensibility – not only to UC, but to all of California,” Lansing said. “She will stand as a vigorous advocate for faculty, students and staff at a time when great changes in our state, and across the globe, are presenting as many opportunities as challenges. A final decision on Secretary Napolitano’s appointment rests with the full Board of Regents. I can say with great confidence that the Special Committee has put forward a remarkably gifted candidate.”
The full Board of Regents will act on the recommendation Thursday, July 18, during a special meeting following the board’s regular bimonthly meeting in San Francisco.
“For more than four years I have had the privilege of serving President Obama and his Administration as the Secretary of Homeland Security. The opportunity to work with the dedicated men and women of the Department of Homeland Security, who serve on the frontlines of our nation’s efforts to protect our communities and families from harm, has been the highlight of my professional career. We have worked together to minimize threats of all kinds to the American public. The Department has improved the safety of travelers; implemented smart steps that make our immigration system more fair and focused while deploying record resources to protect our nation’s borders; worked with states to build resiliency and make our nation’s emergency and disaster response capabilities more robust; and partnered with the private sector to improve our cybersecurity. After four plus years of focusing on these challenges, I will be nominated as the next President of the University of California to play a role in educating our nation’s next generation of leaders. I thank President Obama for the chance to serve our nation during this important chapter in our history, and I know the Department of Homeland Security will continue to perform its important duties with the honor and focus that the American public expects,” Napolitano said in a statement.
The 55-year-old served as governor of Arizona from 2003 to 2009, when she was named Secretary of Homeland Security.
Current UC President Mark G. Yudof announced in January that he would step down from the office in August after a five-year term.
Sorry, but ding dong the Bitch is Gone. Karma Sis Karma. It’s gonna bite your ugly arse yet.
The Foundry: Last week, government watchdog Judicial Watch issued a report that showed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) abandoning ordinary background checks due to a surge in amnesty applications as a result of President Obama’s executive action last year.
If DHS cannot manage a few hundred thousand temporary amnesty applications, it is scary to think about how it will handle 10 million or more amnesty applications that would occur as a result of the Senate’s immigration reform bill.
Based on e-mails and documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Judicial Watch’s report revealed that DHS agents were operating under irregular and inconsistent orders on how to manage Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) applications. This resulted in DHS moving in September 2012 to a “lean and light” system of background checks, with only a few randomly selected applications being processed.
Then on November 9, 2012—three days after the re-election of President Obama—the entire agency was told to “put all DACA work on hold until further notice.” Judicial Watch received no other documents indicating how or when DHS resumed background checks—if they have even resumed at all.
Under the Senate’s immigration bill, S. 744, the vast majority of the estimated 11.5 million unlawful immigrants would be given registered provisional immigrant status after passing a background check. This is supposed to ensure that criminal aliens or national security threats are not being allowed to remain in the U.S. DHS, however, would only have six months to prepare for this flood of amnesty applications and background checks.
This is in addition to the many other things that DHS would have to do, including launching new border security plans and enforcement systems, creating and executing a biometric exit system, administering new visas, overseeing new agricultural worker programs, and implementing a brand new employment verification program.
Then add to that the ways in which the executive branch could use its discretion to distort the system. Judicial Watch’s FOIA requests also uncovered the former Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis, actively urging unlawful immigrants to pursue employment. She told workers that “federal laws are very clear and protect all workers equally, whether or not they have papers.” The former Secretary needs a lesson on U.S. immigration and labor laws, because that’s not the way it works.
President Obama’s DACA, Solis’s statement, and countless other actionsshow that this Administration will enforce immigration laws the way it wants to. Together with the sheer volume of work DHS has to do under S. 744, it doesn’t leave a lot of hope for real background checks.
Washington Post: So, what happens if Hillary Clinton doesn’t run in 2016? It is hard to imagine the presidential field without a woman contender, and here’s one to keep your eye on: Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Napolitano is quietly making it known that she is considering the race, and there is reason to take her seriously.
Before coming to Washington, Napolitano was a highly regarded and very popular governor in Arizona, a state not known as a hospitable one for Democrats. In 2005, Time Magazine named her one of the nation’s five best governors, noting: “Positioning herself as a no-nonsense, pro-business centrist, she has worked outside party lines since coming to office in January 2003 to re-energize a state that, under her predecessors, was marked by recession and scandal.”
While in Arizona, she was criticized for not being aggressive enough in dealing with the influx of illegal immigrants. But her more recent job gives her an opportunity to change that image. This week, for instance, finds her on a high-profile tour of the southwest border, where she will highlight the stepped-up resources that the Obama administration has been devoting to reducing the flow of illegal entrants to this country.
Still, running for the White House from the cabinet is not an easy thing to do. Not since then-Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover did it in 1928 has anyone successfully made the leap from the president’s cabinet to the Oval Office.
Her current job compounds that difficulty. The fact is, most Americans don’t hear all that much about the Homeland Security Department unless something has gone wrong.
Still, Napolitano is a sharp and savvy politician, and her decision to remain in the Obama administration for a second term is a telling one. Immigration overhaul may well be an opportunity to put herself at the forefront of an issue–and a constituency–that represent the future of the Democratic party. Particularly if Clinton doesn’t run, it’s a decent bet that she will be on the debate stage in 2016.
What better person for president than one who issued a report on right-wing extremists, has been accused of running a department with a “lewd atmosphere”, and is on top of keeping us safe from exploding turkeys? With savvy and smarts like that, what could go wrong with her as president?
DCG
Second ICE staffer claims anti-guy bias by Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano
NY Post: A second employee at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is suing Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano over claims his career was curtailed due to anti-male bias at the agency, The Post has learned.
Jason Mount alleges in court papers that he was denied 43 promotions because he’s a white male and that he took a lower-grade job because of “how serious the discrimination and retaliation had become.”
Mount, 37, filed suit on July 31, about two months after ICE official James Hayes Jr. sued Napolitano for $3 million for allegedly pushing him out of a top job in Washington, DC, to make way for Dora Schriro, later named New York City’s jails commissioner.
Hayes, now in charge of ICE investigations in New York City, says Schriro was less qualified than him but was allowed to usurp his role because she “enjoyed a longstanding relationship” with Napolitano. Schriro served as director of the Arizona Department of Corrections under then-Gov. Napolitano.
According to Mount’s suit, he began working for the US Customs Service in September 2001 and was promoted to branch chief/supervisory special agent at ICE headquarters in DC in October 2009. But after leveling a November 2010 complaint of gender discrimination in relation to “not being provided an office,” court papers say he was repeatedly subjected to illegal retaliation that kept him from rising in the ranks.
His DC federal court filing details dozens of incidents in which he was allegedly passed over for promotions despite being fully qualified. The litany of allegations include Mount’s September 2010 application to fill an assistant-special-agent-in-charge, or ASAC, post with Homeland Security Investigations in Boston.
Despite receiving “a rating of 100 percent on the knowledge, skills and abilities rating factors for the position,” Mount says, he was never contacted “to take part in an interview or further selection activities.” Instead, court papers say the job went to a woman who was one step lower than Mount on the federal civil-service pay scale.
In addition, the woman, Linda Hunt, hadn’t completed an 18-month tour of duty at HSI headquarters in Washington, which “is required to be considered for an ASAC position,” the suit says.
Because of “the severe and pervasive retaliation and discrimination,” Mount says, he “essentially committed career suicide” in December 2011 and asked for a reassignment, “stating that he would be willing to accept a downgrade” in rank and pay.
After sending the memo, he was notified in March that he was selected for a spot in Boston and “begrudgingly accepted” the offer, the suit states.
An ICE spokesperson said, “US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently received a copy of Mr. Mount’s complaint. The agency doesn’t comment on unfounded claims and will respond to Mr. Mount’s allegations as appropriate through the judicial system.”
Meanwhile, a federal official said the allegations in Hayes’ suit “do not align with the fact that Mr. Hayes has routinely held high-ranking assignments, including his current position as special agent in charge of ICE’s second-largest field office.”
The official also said the Department of Homeland Security “intends to timely file a motion to dismiss this unmeritorious lawsuit” to meet an Aug. 24 deadline.
Nothing shocking about this…liberals love to help out their buddies and use affirmative action. It will be shocking if either if these men prevail in a court.
DCG
Via infosecurity-us.com: Out-Hoover Hoover: FBI wants massive data-mining capability for social media
27 January 2012
The FBI is asking industry for help in developing a far-reaching data-mining application that can gather and analyze intelligence from social media sites.
The FBI wants “to determine the capability of industry to provide an open source and social media alert, mapping, and analysis application”, the agency said in a request for information (RFI).
“The application must have the ability to rapidly assemble critical open source information and intelligence that will allow SIOC [Strategic Information and Operations Center] to quickly vet, identify, and geo-locate breaking events, incidents and emerging threats”, the RFI explained.
The application must be able to provide an “automated search and scrape capability of both social networking sites and open source news sites for breaking events, crisis, and threats.”
The FBI also wants the capability to analyze the social media data to provide early warning; detect credible threats or monitor adversarial situations; locate bad actors or groups and analyze their movements, vulnerabilities, limitations, and possible adverse actions; predict likely developments or future actions taken by bad actors; and develop databases on the information gathered from social media sites.
Nowhere in this detailed RFI, however, does the FBI ask industry to comment on the privacy implications of such massive data collection and storage of social media sites. Nor does the FBI say how it would define the “bad actors” who would be subjected this type of scrutiny. -End
I am dismissing the terrorist angle right off the bat, as given perhaps a handful of kook exceptions, most truly determined terrorists are not going to announce their intentions on a public forum.
That brings us to a far larger question which is, what exactly is the government looking to do here?
Having read a great deal of history over the course of my life, I am fully aware that all governments have their totalitarian leanings, and ours is no different.
Historically, governments do not much like dissent, and as they become larger and more powerful, their intolerance of dissent grows right along with them. At first, it is threats and intimidation. Later on, it becomes incarceration, and all too often after that come the gallows, firing squads, or the gas chambers.
Way back in the Usenet days, I formed a theory that government was most likely monitoring what was being posted, and probably recording things that might catch its interest. In the years since and given what I have seen, that theory has been reinforced several times over.
Of course, there is no case to be made that government monitoring public forums is illegal, but the idea that it may ultimately be not a little sinister is not all that much of a stretch.
After all, we are now existing in a surveillance society, and when you factor in the Obama administration’s track record of open hostility when it comes to its detractors, the term ‘bad actor’ could mean just about anything.
You see, it is not the terms themselves, but who gets to define them that ultimately matters. -Dave
Via dailycommercial.com (emphasis mine): Training excercise startles locals
Published: Wednesday, January 04, 2012
LEESBURG
MILLARD K. IVES | Staff Writer
millardives@dailycommercial.com
It may have looked like they were ready for war or some deranged person looking for his late Social Security benefits.
But it was only Federal Protective Service officers with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security who were conducting a random training operation early Tuesday morning when they surprisingly showed up at the Social Security Administration office in downtown Leesburg.
With their blue and white SUVs circled around the Main Street office, at least one official was posted on the door with a semiautomatic rifle, randomly checking identifications. And other officers, some with K-9s, sifted through the building.
“I thought someone was upset about not getting there check,” said Laura Kelly, who took a friend to the office on Tuesday.
According to one Homeland official in the Washington, D.C. office, Operation Shield. is an effort that uses routine, unannounced visits by FPS inspectors to test the effectiveness of contract guards, or protective security officers — “detecting the presence of unauthorized persons and potentially disruptive or dangerous activities.”
Part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, FPS is the federal law enforcement agency that provides integrated security and law enforcement services to over 9,000 federally-owned and leased buildings, facilities, properties and other assets.
Officers on the scene would not speak to the press and by noon they were gone. But Thomas Milligan, district manager for the Social Security Administration office, said while the visit came as a surprise, the office was ready. He added the officers checked videos, security measures, alarm system and more.
“It was to make sure security measures are in place and properly followed,” Milligan said. -End
See related story here.
I am not exactly sure what to make of this, but given the fact that Little Caesar Obumma essentially flushed the Bill of Rights down the crapper over the weekend, this has me not a little concerned – not to mention a little frightened.
I do not trust this administration even a little bit, especially given the fact that it appears to view white Christian males as aterrorist threat.
How long will it be before asserting our constitutional rights as American citizens is considered a potentially disruptive or dangerous activity?
We are very rapidly approaching the point where this country will be America in name only.
(h/t: Drudge)
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