If anything illustrates the Bush league style of management strikes again, it has to be the amazing cavalcade of crooks, cronies and fools whom he has appointed to key oversight posts.
Commerce Department Inspector General Johnnie E. Frazier retired yesterday in the face of multiple investigations and a formal report recommending that President Bush punish him for violating the whistle-blower protection law.
Frazier got away with violating whistleblower protection laws, of course, because the official tasked with overseeing whistleblower protection, Scott Bloch at the Office of Special Counsel, has proven neither willing nor able to do his job. Perfectly reflecting the president’s emotional incapacity to handle criticism, we have a dysfunctional government where nobody considers it their job to watch anybody. In an environment like failure at every level becomes an inevitability, from Iraq to Katrina to humiliating courtroom defeats. History’s lessons from this flop of an administration will need to include the point that government without oversight just doesn’t work.
***Update***
Yet another report alleges that Robert “Moose” Cobb, Inspector General at NASA, has disgraced his office as well. I think time will show that Inspector General posts are among the most important assignments in the Bush administration, to the degree that the administration depends on IG’s not to do their job. For an example look at the embarrassment that Stuart Bowen caused when he proved insufficiently loyal to the cause, and the panicked efforts by Congress and the White House to get rid of him. The hackish, incompetent tomfoolery of our present administration can only thrive in the dark.
Jake
Wait, I know this one! “Who’s watching the yoghurt heads.”
You may have discovered Bush’s Legacy (TM). I can see the introduction now:
“Through an endless array of tricks and pranks more suited to the plot of a lame rip-off of the movie Animal House, the Bush Administration proved once and for all that an ungoverned government is no government at all.”
Hyperion
Your title summarizes the problem exactly, Tim F.
Last night CSPAN showed a hearing about NASA’s IG Cobb. He was selected by the NASA chief admin and sounds like a real piece of work…not just in the pocket of the fellow whose agency he is supposed to be auditing, but stupid as well. Evidently when he testified, he cited the NASA admin’s approval as evidence that he was doing his job.
Interestingly, the only reason the hearings are taking place is to review of the Inspector General system that was set up in 1978. Not because Cobb is Exhibit A for how motivated assholes can find a way to subvert oversight.
So…yet another part of the system is BROKEN. Maybe we need an IG for the IGs. Turtles all the way down?
Rome Again
Holy smokes, I just figured it out. George Bush is merely taking the Peter Principle and making sure it reaches it most obvious conclusion. Only idiots needs apply. All others starve.
norbizness
Well, at least they’re not incompetent. Just highly competent at being unethical shitstains.
Andrew
Where’s Walter Kovacs when you need him?
Jon H
When he was elected, George W. Bush became the apotheosis of the Peter Principle.
Then he made the pie higher.
FDS
Nasa is on the George Noory show and he sells to nasa. Nasa buys and there are all these accidents,etc. Noory sells because he gives people nightmares, etc. like all the media used to do in the past to anyone who listened and wasn’t liked. It’s a bad deal for the Noory listener because there are nightmares anyway and the space shuttle blows up. The tank in built in New Orleans(nightmares) and that’s probably where Nasa’s selling got the shuttle blown up. Foam from the tank.
Noory sold this last night: The next shuttle is going up on a pillow(foam) and a prayer.Pad(pillow) people should leave because we don’t know where it’s going to blow up, again.
Jon H
“He was selected by the NASA chief admin ”
Never trust anyone with so many degrees. He clearly isn’t focusing on his work, so what *is* he doing, and how is he getting ahead?
Stooleo
Republicans have used the code words of “smaller government” to hide their distain for the government as a whole. So here we are and Grover Norquist has gotten his wish; the government in the bathtub. These jokers never had any intrest in actually governing, just power and cronyism. And now, I guess the jokes on us. If there is any historical lesson I would hope it would include the fact that government may be slow, bloated and inefficient, but it is cruically important that it be there, opperating in some capacity. Because if it is not there people die, quite literally. So as we head into the weekend don’t dwell to long on that medium rare hamburger you just ate or the peanut butter sandwich you made for your kid.
scarshapedstar
Doesn’t work?
Huh?
The oilmen and the military-industrial complex got what they paid for. Hell, their investment paid off beyond their wildest dreams. They got every fucking dime you and I send off to Uncle Sam, and then they used our names to open up a bunch of credit cards with a trillion-dollar limit and max those babies out, too. And the White Hood Republicans got more dead sand nigger porn than they could ever possibly wank to.
Bush was a resounding success.
HyperIon
i have no idea what point you are trying to make.
are you BIRDZILLA’s cousin (on anti-depressants)?
Justin
One of the most important tasks for the next President (and one that won’t happen unless it’s a Democratic one) will be to purge the federal bureaucracy of everyone involved in the Bush administration’s warping of our democracy. If you notice they have people in every department willing to outright ignore federal law and the Constitution…these people need to go before it’s too late.