Following up on two earlier posts, today’s WaPo has an extended hit piece on NASA Inspector General Robert W. Cobb. The general theme should sound familiar to administration-watchers out there: inappropriately-appointed unqualified supervisors, waste, fraud and a hostile environment that drives the career professionals out the door. Let’s tick off the familiar aspects of a recurring pattern over the last few years.
First, there’s the refusal or inability of appointed officials charged with oversight to simply do their job.
Written complaints and supporting documents from at least 16 people have been given to investigators. They allege that Cobb, appointed by President Bush in 2002, suppressed investigations of wrongdoing within NASA, and abused and penalized his own investigators when they persisted in raising concerns.
Next, the general problem of filling demanding posts with unqualified hacks:
Under the Inspector General Act of 1978, the president appoints independent officials to monitor Cabinet departments and larger federal agencies through audits and investigations. Cobb is among four of 11 inspectors general appointed by Bush who previously worked in the White House, and one of nine with no audit experience.
Yep, Cobbie, you’re doing a heck of a job.
The inevitable friction when oversight may result in making the management look bad:
Many described Cobb as abusive to subordinates and dismissive of their abilities. “He would cut people off, get up and leave during meetings,” said Dan Samoviski, who retired in 2004 as deputy IG director for audits at NASA headquarters. “Personally, I just think he created a hostile work environment.”
Dennis Coldren, the retired manager of space station and space shuttle audits, was one of several who described Cobb as a “bully,” and several sources also said they believed Cobb was too friendly with then-NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe. They said Cobb suppressed audits, stopped investigations and otherwise edited IG activities to avoid embarrassing the agency or its leadership.
The fiscal mismanagement:
In another complaint filed with the Integrity Committee, IG auditor Carroll Tom Hassell described how “a person in a South American country” over three days in late 2002 logged into the Marshall Space Flight Center’s supposedly secure computer system, stole space shuttle data valued at $1.9 billion and shipped it to a third country. The complaint said Cobb’s office refused to report the theft to the Commerce Department as an illegal transfer of intellectual property.
Steve Benen observes that as long as Congress refuses to fill its role in government oversight, the Inspectors General have become the only remaining oversight body. It may seem like an unhappy coincidence that a catastrophically incompetent government happens to have a Congress that won’t investigate and Inspectors who won’t inspect, but it’s not. It’s a prerequisite. Josh Marshall recently pointed out that just like sunlight is often the best disinfectant, rot flourishes in the dark:
The president’s critics are always accusing him of law-breaking or unconstitutional acts and then also berating the incompetence of his governance. And it’s often treated as, well … he’s power-hungry and incompetent to boot! Imagine that! The point though is that they are directly connected. Authoritarianism and secrecy breed incompetence; the two feed on each other. It’s a vicious cycle. Governments with authoritarian tendencies point to what is in fact their own incompetence as the rationale for giving them yet more power. Katrina was a good example of this.
Amen. Proper oversight at every level will go a long way towards giving us a government capable of actually governing.
Jorge
To quote Atrios
“Mars! Bitches.”
DougJ
That’s actually Dave Chappelle, Jorge. Go to the Comedy Central web page and check out the skit “Black Bush”. It’s pure genius.
Mr Furious
Good post, Tim. I hope reading stuff like that stuff on his blog keeps John awake nights regretting his votes for Bush.
Andrew Reeves
In the end, it is for actions like this that I despise Bush. Not because he’s a capitalist kaffir zionist lackey, but because the idea of competent governenment is completely alien to the administration. Bankrupting the state, using appointed posts as a reward for cronies, and a general pattern of governing like the Iraqi army in 1990 Kuwait (i.e. steal whatever isn’t nailed down and trash the rest) are this administration’s MO.
Mike
John, if you believe this:
Amen. Proper oversight at every level will go a long way towards giving us a government capable of actually governing.
then why did you vote for and apparently continue to support a party and people who have NO INTENTION of doing any such thing?
Just curious…..
Marcus Wellby
My favorate piece of Black Bush is the exchange with reporters:
Reporter: How do you answer critics who say this war is about oil?
Black Bush: Oil, who said anything about oil? Are you cooking, bitch? [gets up and runs out of room]
docG
NASA’s manned space program is intellectually and morally bankrupt. The manned space program needs to be shut down for at least 10 years. Let technology move forward, and let the next generation of manned space exploration be removed from the historical baggage that has paralyzed the program for 30+ years. Restart the program in concert with the private space entrepreneurs so that the federal funding stream is managed efficiently and effectively. This will also lessen the political motives that so successfully pushed us to the moon and then gave us the useless shuttle program and a space station that has all the utility of a Port-A-Potty at Tiffanys.
The apologists quickly refer to the great technological advances from the shuttle program. Can the average taxpayer accurately name three of them? Or one?
Tim F.
I’m a registered Democrat who worked my ass off for Clark until it became clear that 2004 wasn’t his year. I haven’t given time or money to the GOP since Jim Roddey in 1999, and that was a fluke; I was registered Green at the time.
DougJ
The incompetence and corruption of this administration is stunning. Simply stunning.
But Howard Dean, he screams! And John Kerry looks silly wind-surfing! How could we vote those clowns in? So what if Bush heads up the most incompetent White House in the past 80 years?
Laura
This has nothing to do with NASA, but I wanted to brag about my tiny local zoo, where science is winning: Lecture series will hew to evolution theory’s path: Sacramento Zoo takes Darwin’s side
Marcus Wellby
From the Simpsons:
Announcer: “It’s a lovely day for a launch, here, live at Cape Canaveral, at the lower end of the Florida Peninsula, and the purpose of today’s mission is truly, really electrifying.”
Announcer 2: That’s correct, Tom. The lion’s share of this flight will be devoted to the study of the effects of weightlessness on tiny screws.”
Announcer: “Unbelievable, and just imagine the logistics of weightlessness. And of course, this could have literally millions of applications here on Earth — everything from watchmaking to watch repair.”
Lines
Inanimate Carbon Rod for Employee of the Month at NASA!
Mike
My apologies TimF, I missed your name at the top of the post. This read very similarly to some of John’s recent posts whining about typical actions by Bush and the Republemmings, but John refuses to accept his and many others culpability of going with the flow and voting straight ticket Republemming and keeping BushCo in office.
That type of hypocrisy bothers me.
Mr Furious
You’re even, Mike, Tim obviously missed your reference to John in your first comment…
Took me a while to adjust to the two authors as well.
DougJ
I just thought I’d share with you something a wingnut wrote into the Washington Post science Q&A this morning. No wonder this country is going down the tubes
nyrev
DougJ,
Said wingnut might have a better chance of selling his spiel some winter when we’re not having record high temps. We’re about 12 degrees above average in northern New York right now.
Laura
Nevermind the fact that six former heads of the EPA, five of which were Republican, wrote a letter warning about the effects of greenhouse gases on climate change. Simple-minded Bush partisans always accuse critics of the Administration’s policy as “left-wing.” Yep, that Bob Barr sure is a flaming liberal.
SeesThroughIt
“Protect the queen! Protect the queen!”
“Which one’s the queen?”
“I’m the queen!”
“Freedom! Horrible freedom!”
demimondian
Yah, nyrev, but Siberia is having a record cold winter, so it all balances out. (In fact, that last is a pretty good representation of what’s going on. The jet stream has moved this year, accounting for both the record heat in NYC and the record cold in Novosibersk.)
Pooh
O’, not sure any of those words mean what you think they mean…
Otto Man
As the old saying goes, Republicans are the ones who claim government doesn’t work and then get elected and prove it.
One of my co-bloggers is named Inanimate Carbon Rod. He’ll be thrilled to know he’s been made Employee of the Month.
Ancient Purple
No kidding. Phoenix normally has some cold snaps here and there during the winter, but this year, we are trying to find something resembling winter. Even up north in Flagstaff, there has been no snow and warm (relatively) temps.
(And, as a side note, Phoenix has now gone 108 days without a drop of rain. A new record and no rain in sight. Ouch.)
Mac Buckets
As you may know, I can’t be shocked when someone alleges mismanagement, waste, and fraud in a huge government bureaucracy. It is government, after all. I can be shocked, however, by the partisan who self-righteously pretend that this would never happen on their party’s watch, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary.
NASA abuses ranging from giving away vital technology to misappropriation of funds to safety coverups have been steadily alleged for the last 20 years (but despite the known problems, Clinton never even nominated an Inspector General of NASA in eight years (I guess he thought they were “doing a heckuva job!”).
As to calling Cobb an “unqualified hack” because he has no audit experience or NASA experience, it’s significant to note that perhaps the worst, most ineffective IG ever to tread the halls of NASA was Bill Colvin, who came up through the NASA IG office ranks with 10-15 years of government audit experience, while the longest-serving IG recently was Dan Goldin, who came from the private sector (what a surprise!) — he was a longtime techie from TRW, IIRC. So Cobb may well be a disaster, but it’s not predictable by a lack of credentials.
Mac Buckets
Ah, the classics.
“I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords! I’d like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.”
jaime
At least the Astronaut on Survivor has a good shot to win. Man is that guy white.
srv
Goldin was administrator, not IG.
The Disenfranchised Voter
Interesting proposal, docG.
I like it.
SeesThroughIt
Bwah! I love how Kent always buckles. One of my favorites was his rapid about-face regarding the Movementarians:
“Springfield has been overrun by a strange and almost certainly evil sect calling themselves the Movementarians. In exchange for your home and all your money, the Leader of this way out and wrong religion, claims he’ll take believers away on his spaceship to the planet “Blisstonia”. Excuse my editorial laugh. [laughs] But– [pause] Ladies and gentlemen, I just learned of a change in this station’s management! Welcome, Movementarians! Continue to improve our lives! I love you, perfect Leader.. and new CEO of KBBL broadcasting!”
There was a nice bit of continuity not too long ago when Mr. Burns shows a flow chart of nuclear plant employees and Homer is still ranked below the Inanimate Carbon Rod.
The Disenfranchised Voter
You know, while that gave me a good chuckle, by the time it started to really set in, I felt like crying.
What has happened to this nation?
Gold Star for Robot Boy
“Look out! They’re ruffled!”
“Deep Space Homer” is 1A on my list of fave Simpsons episodes, right up there with “The Front,” which has Bart and Lisa writing for I&S under Abe’s name, and Homer going back to school to earn his H.S. diploma.
SeesThroughIt
“This is Abe Simpson. He has something you writers don’t: life experience.”
“Uh, I wrote my thesis on life experience.”
A definite classic. Plus, for the right-wingers, it has this exchange between Lisa and Grampa:
“Didn’t you wonder why you were getting checks for doing nothing?”
“I figured cuz the Democrats were in power again.”
Otto Man
“Yes, I did the Iggy.”
Krista
It’s been freakishly warm here in Nova Scotia. We had days in January where it was 11 degrees Celsius, and had hardly any snow at all until Wednesday, when we got about 25 cm. It’s already starting to go away, though, and tomorrow they’re calling for 7 degrees Celsius and rainy, so that’ll take care of much of the rest of the snow, methinks. Weird weird weather. And of course, this was the year that I splashed out on snowshoes AND new snow tires. Bah.
Lines
Please don’t confuse global warming with individual data points, its comparing apples to manimals.
Mike
Actually most reputable scientists working on this area now do not say “global warming”, but rather “global climate change” for precisely the reasons given above. It may be warmer in some places, colder in others, but the point is that the climate is changing in many places in mostly unpredictable ways all at once.
jg
Its the partisans who act like there’s no problem becuase both parties do this crap that scare me.
If it was the other party doing it right now you’d want something done about it. Its not so you blow it off as dems making partisan noise. Adress the problem.
My favorite Simpsons episode is Whacking Day.
Lines
Look out!, he’s got a board with a nail in it!
…
Soon, they will create bigger boards with bigger nails until they destroy themselves.
Krista
The Father, the Son, and the Holy Guest Star was a good one.
Father Sean: But if you do break a rule, you can always find absolution in the sacrament of confession.
Homer: Wait, wait, wait wait wait. No matter what I did, no matter how many people lost their pensions, it’s forgiven like that?
Father Sean: If you truely repent, then, yes.
Homer: Oookay, let’s make some magic here. I wiped a booger on your shirt, made a dog and a cat kiss, I swiped a bolted-down TV from a Holiday Inn (Cut to Homer in confessional box) I coveted the wife in Jaws 2, I lied to a waiter, I masturbated eight-million times, and I have no plans to stop masturbating in the future. (Darts out confessional door) Wahoo I’m clean! In your face Lord!
Lines
Ok, here’s the actual quote from Kang and Kodos:
Kodos: Well Kang, it seems the earthlings won.
Kang: Did they? That board with a nail in it may have defeated us. But the humans won’t stop there. They’ll make bigger boards and bigger nails, and soon, they will make a board with a nail so big, it will destroy them all!
Tim F.
The best sight gag ever:
Durign the episode where the foundation starts to give way. A bluejay lands on the chimney, the whole house tilts, Bart flies screaming out of a window on the low side, shuffles back inside complaining, slams the front door which slams back open because the frame’s tilted.
SeesThroughIt
My favorite quote from that episode, Krista, is at the end when Flanders/Reverend Lovejoy reconcile their differences with the Catholic Church, and Flanders says, “We should join together to fight our common enemies: monogamous gays and stem cells!”
(Sorry your thread appears to have been hijacked, Tim. I don’t know what to say about the topic, aside from the fact that it’s just business as usual for Bush.)
DougJ
“Climate change” is also a Frank Lunz-created Republican euphemism for global warming. So be careful.
DougJ
Hey, Mac, that’s a record. The fastest you’ve ever mentioned Clinton in a dicussion of Bush’s policies.
DougJ
Hey, what about Travelgate? That was much worse than any of this. Let’s be clear Clinton got a blow job in the White House. Next to that, hiring a crony whose incompetence led to the death of several astronauts is pretty minor.
Otto Man
I’ve got to go with a favorite sight gag from my namesake.
Otto walks out of a pottery store called “Stoners Pot Palace” and grumbles, “Man, that is flagrant false advertising!”
The Disenfranchised Voter
My all time personal favorite:
(From the school uniform episode)
Bart: These uniforms suck!
Marge: Bart! Where do you pick up words like that?
Homer (talking on the phone): Yeah Moe, that team sure did suck last night! They just plain sucked. I’ve seen teams suck before, but they were the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked!
Marge: Homer, watch your mouth!
Homer: I gotta go, my damn weiner kids are listening.
jg
Bart and Homer acting out The Raven was classic. Bart’s little wise ass voice saying nevermore never gets old.
Otto Man
“I used to rock and roll all night, and party every day. And then it was every other day. Now I’m lucky if i can find a half hour a week in which to get funky.”
Pooh
“No such thing as Scotchtoberfest? Ya used me Skinner!”
Mac Buckets
Bill Colvin was during Reagan’s administration, not Clinton’s. Geez, you guys get so defensive when anyone mentions any pre-FLorida 2000 history. You should really get over it.
DougJ
From your earlier post, Mac:
Jeesh, you get so defensive when I throw your own posts back at you.
stickler
Not to interrupt a fine Simpsons threadjacking to resume the weather bitching, but … (and I was raised on a farm, so I can bitch about the weather with the best of ’em)…
Ugh. We should trade places. Here in Portland, Oregon, we’ve had record rains. For two months. In January we had twice the average rainfall. All the rivers are at their banks and the color of, ah, well, an icky light brown. Let’s leave it at that. People are discovering what “seasonal affective disorder” really means.
The sun appeared for a few minutes last week and I swear I expected folks to run screaming from the strange fiery orb in the sky. And we haven’t had a good freeze since mid-December, so the slugs are multiplying at a horrific rate. You haven’t lived until you run to your car at 7:30 in the morning and step square on a 6″ long slug in your driveway. Who needs coffee to wake up, after something like that?
Krista
Woke up this morning, and that 25 cm of snow I mentioned? All gone. No snowshoeing for me. :(
Oh well…will go Geocaching instead. Later, all.
Mac Buckets
I guess it would help if you blockedquoted the correct part of my post, then. You know I forget that stuff as soon as my fingertips hit “enter!”
You’re right, though — I should pretend that Clinton never existed, that the Democrats have never held the Presidency, and that they deserve a shot at the Big Chair because they’ve never had it before and no way they’d ever have any waste, corruption, or bad intelligence on their watch.
I hear there’s a Kool-Aid I can drink to make me forget history — it’s available at Dkos, DU, and the DNC website.
Mac Buckets
Another jg Strawman® for sale!
The Disenfranchised Voter
Anyone ever see that episode of South Park, where they keep doing things from the Simpsons and the one kid keeps saying “Simpsons Did It!” over and over.
That reminds me of Mac Buckets…
“Clinton Did It!”
“Clinton Did It!”