The 2015 RAG Blog Minor Awards

A RAG blog tradition is end-of-the-year mock awards; I started the Man of the Year back in the first year of the blog; this one is not a mock award, but like the other others, it comes with no trophy, stipend or anything other than a few bytes of recognition in cyberspace. I do not necessarily agree with or like the selection (like this year's recognition of economic nationalist politicians), but in my judgment they were major figures behind key events over the past year. I later added my mock award for Dem pols behaving badly, the Jackass of the Year. This is basically a nonpartisan blog (the GOP is more classically liberal and skeptical of Big Government, but make no mistake--when I left the Dems in the 1980's, I nominally registered with the GOP, mostly as the opposition party. I've never worked for or contributed to the party, and I typically don't vote straight ticket. Anyone who has read my blog knows that I've been very critical of individual GOP politicians, including Rand Paul, who I favor in the current race for POTUS. But to further emphasize my critiques aren't simply partisan, I recently introduced my Bad Elephant series. (I'm not crazy about the name, but I couldn't think of a pejorative similar to jackass.)

Even more recently I introduced new categories of outrageous jurists, bureaucrats and economic illiterates. Rather than create separate one-offs for each category, last year I bundled them in the "minor awards", and the current post is the second in the series.

• Bad Judge of the Year: Justice Kennedy on Obergefell v Hodges

via Biography

I have published my opinions on "gay marriage" elsewhere (see here, for example). I don't have a problem with gay individuals' rights to associate freely, to form relationships (and use whatever language they want to use to characterize their commitments to each other) and live their own lives in the pursuit of happiness. I see the institutions of marriage and family as private sector constructs predating and independent of the State. As a general principle, I don't believe that the State should intervene in the social context, including economic incentives or privileges. I see the state definition of marriage as more reflective of  or proxy for a social preference/public morals under the Tenth Amendment. If states wanted to confer special privileges on nontraditional relationships, fine, but for decisions to be imposed by the judicial branch is tyrannical. (Note that the states in question did not prohibit nontraditional relationships.) To argue that legal traditions going back to English precedents were "discriminatory" is ludicrous.

This is where Justice Kennedy comes into play. In the prior decision, Kennedy explicitly recognized the Tenth Amendment, but he decided the CA Prop 8 decision on a legal technicality of standing (the then Governator and AG Jerry Brown refused to defend pro-traditional marriage Prop 8 in court). Activist judges and Courts of Appeal then set aside traditional marriage propositions in up to 31 states; a couple of Appeals courts ruled in favor of traditional marriage definition. When I saw SCOTUS refuse to set aside the pro-gay marriage decisions in other circuits but did agree to pick up the appeal of the states rights decisions, I knew how the decision in Obergefell would come down.

• Economic Illiterate of the Year: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Presidential Candidate

via Wikipedia

I don't have the time or patience to rant about all Sanders' delusional leftist conspiracy income inequality nonsense, but two of his talking points, about the Scandinavian welfare states as a model for the US and his anti-immigrant labor protectionism, are particularly irritating. As to the income inequality argument, I've pointed out on an individual basis, the Gini coefficient, has remained relatively flat since the 1960's; migration occurs both ways across income levels. The Scandinavian countries had higher growth before the introduction of the welfare state, and they also tend to have more pro-business liberty policies than we do--something Sanders explicitly rejects elsewhere. And his anti-immigration policies ignore the net contributions of immigrants as entrepreneurs, workers, taxpayers and consumers in our national economy. The US cannot afford to imitate the high-unemployment, low-growth policies of Europe and Japan, also rapidly aging societies; we are on our way to a $19T national debt and up to $200T in unfunded senior entitlements. We need exactly the opposite of what Sanders is promoting.

• Scumbag Public Servant of the Year:  Diana Rubens and Kimberly Graves, VA

via Fellowship of the Minds

Isn't it incredibly how the scandal-ridden Veterans Administration has managed to give out over $100M in bonuses. I'll simply quote from the above-cited source and the AP which speak to the point without any additional commentary necessary:

The Department of Veterans Affairs reportedly paid out more than $142 million in performance bonuses in 2014 despite a string of scandals inside the agency...But [new VA management] only restricted bonuses for senior execs in the embattled Veterans Health Administration. The VA continued to pay bonuses to other workers in other departments, including those facing their own controversies. 

On Sept. 28, 2015, the VA Inspector General’s office issued a report finding that Rubens and Graves had “inappropriately used their positions of authority for personal and financial benefit” by arranging the transfer of subordinates whose jobs they wanted and then volunteering to fill the vacancies.

Rubens became director of Veterans Benefits Administration’s Philadelphia and Wilmington VA regional offices and received $274,019.12 for relocation expenses under a program that was meant to offer incentives for hard-to-fill posts. Graves became director of the VBA’s St. Paul, Minn., regional office, with relocation pay of $129,467.56.

Both women maintained their senior executive salaries after transferring to these less-demanding jobs. Their predecessors also received relocation costs totaling $60,000, the report found. Rubens received an $8,000 bonus last year, which she was not asked to repay.

The Department of Veterans Affairs will not try to recoup more than $400,000 from [Rubens and Graves], The agency has remained silent on questions about its decision to demote and transfer but not fire [the two women].