Sequester Ethics Train Wreck

Christie And Obama: Is It Me? I Keep Expecting Partisans And the News Media To Have Integrity And Honesty, And I Keep Getting Disappointed…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments
Nah!

Nah!

The news media feeding frenzy over Chris Christie’s traffic jam scandal continues, with the news that a special prosecutor is being handed the investigation being treated with solemn nods and predictions of sinister revelations to come. This is all fine and good: the possibility that any elected government leader would intentionally cause pain for the citizens it is pledged to serve is too offensive to the concept of duty to be allowed to linger in doubt. When a New Jersey Democratic legislator opined that the governor should face impeachment if it is shown that he ordered the despicable traffic sabotage, I heartily agreed, and I count myself as a Christie admirer. The poll results so far regarding this incident, especially in New Jersey, are troubling: by Ann Athouse’s calculations, 7% of those polled believed that Christie was behind the outrage and lied about it, and don’t mind a bit. Where are the ethical standards of such individuals? What’s wrong with those people?

Whatever it is, it is apparently the same thing that is wrong with Democrats, progressives, African-Americans and the news media, who don’t seem bothered at all that equally insidious, or worse, governmental abuses have been, may have been or are being engineered by President Obama and/or his lackeys, and there appears to be no accountability for it, or even adequate bipartisan criticism. How can this be? What am I missing? Continue reading →

Ethics Quote Of The Week, Government Shut-Down Ethics Train Wreck Division: Unidentified Park Ranger

/ Jack Marshall / 85 Comments

“We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.”

—An unidentified U.S. Park Ranger, quoted by the Washington Times, in connection with a story about the Park Service shutting down the parking lot at Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home, which is not run by the Park service.

My Dad would have been in this picture. Having his own nation that he risked his life for intentionally target him as a pawn would have hurt and angered him deeply. For the first time since Dec. 1, 2009, I'm thankful that he's dead.

My Dad would have been in this picture. Having his own nation that he risked his life for intentionally target him as a pawn would have hurt and angered him deeply. For the first time since Dec. 1, 2009, I’m thankful that he’s dead.

My late father, a decorated World War II veteran, loved the World War II Memorial. He was an invited guest at its dedication, and I accompanied him. Up until a few days before Dad died, he would wear a vest covered with his patches, insignias and medals, including the Silver Star, and just hang out there, often signing autographs for young visitors who treated the real life World War Two relic as both part of the Memorial and as a celebrity. Sometimes I accompanied him. It is a large, wide open space, without a discernible entrance. No government employees were ever in evidence while I was there. Beyond routine maintenance and cleaning, there is no need for any. Security? Just try vandalizing that space with the veterans there, old as they are. I dare you.

So why has the Park Service expended extra funds to block access to that memorial, where visitors just wander in and out, as well as non-government attractions like Mount Vernon, and even private operations that serve visitors to government attractions, like the Pisgah Inn, a private hotel that holds a concession on the Blue Ridge Parkway? Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week, Sequester Ethics Train Wreck Division: U.S. Dept. of Agriculture Officials

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

“We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that ‘APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs.’ So it is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be.”

—- U.S. Agriculture officials, responding to Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service official Charles Brown after he asked “if he could try to spread out the sequester cuts in his region to minimize the impact.” Brown quoted the response in an internal e-mail obtained by the Washington Times.

Why isn't the news media screaming?

Why isn’t the news media screaming?

Assuming that Brown’s account is accurate, the e-mail appears to show, in the interpretation most favorable to the Obama Administration, that at least one federal department believes that its job is to ensure that the across-the-board sequester cuts do as much tangible harm as possible, even where it is possible to mitigate that harm through effective management. The interpretation least favorable would conclude that President Obama has issued internal orders to the effect that any effort to lessen the cataclysmic results he and his Cabinet members predicted prior to the sequester deadline is forbidden, since it would undermine the political strategy of creating public anger against Republicans.

I don’t know where the truth lies. I can say that here in Washington, D.C., both Democrats and Republicans, without the benefit of the e-mail, seem to have adopted the worst case interpretation, which is shocking. Even more shocking is that the sick culture here is largely shrugging this off as “hardball politics” on behalf of the President and his Democratic allies. I cannot fathom this, just as I cannot fathom why all news media, left and right, are not screaming like the Donald Sutherland pod duplicate at the end of the remake of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” if they also believe this is true. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: The Washington Post Editors

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

“To govern is to choose. By missing Friday’s deadline for averting $85 billion worth of across-the-board spending cuts to defense and domestic programs, Congress and President Obama have chosen not to govern. Instead, each side has concluded that its interest lies in letting the “sequester” proceed as scheduled — and then trying to win the political blame game….”

—-The Washington Post, in its lead editorial today, as the sequester deadline passed.

gordian-knot1While so many other Obama supporting media organizations continue to absolve the President for any responsibility in this disgraceful episode, his hometown newspaper, blue as blue can be, has been uniquely  fair and objective on this issue. The Post’s blueness manifests itself in overly-gentle terms to describe conduct that deserves far harsher terms, much as Bob Woodward’s using the term “mistake” to describe President Obama’s claim that he didn’t propose the sequester in the first place, when the accurate term is certainly “lie.”  For example, the Post editors, later in their piece, say this: Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week, Sequester Ethics Train Wreck Division: Senior White House Advisor David Plouffe

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“Watching Woodward the last 2 days is like watching my idol Mike Schmidt face live pitching again. Perfection gained once is rarely repeated.”

–—  Senior White House Advisor David Plouffe, in a tweet contributing to the White House effort to undermine the credibility of journalist Bob Woodward for the crime of calling attention to some of its more unsavory maneuvers regarding the sequestration crisis.

plouffe

“I think you will regret staking out that claim.”

He owes Mike an apology too.

He owes Mike an apology too.

Maybe this is what Gene Sperling meant.  Now the White House gang is suggesting that Woodward has lost it, can’t get around on the fast ball, that his time has passed, that he is, in short, an old geezer who should be put out to pasture, like 1970’s baseball great Mike Schmidt.

Democrats are quick on the trigger to accuse adversaries of coded racism, sexism, and homophobia, but appear to have no compunction at all when it comes to denigrating opponents as old, or fat. This is bigotry, you know, from a White House that has benefited mightily from planting the myth that any criticism of its primary occupant is subject to legitimate suspicion of being motivated by prejudice. Let’s see—Woodward is 68, almost 69. Harry Reid is 74. Nancy Pelosi is 72.  Justice Ginsberg and Justice Breyer, two liberal stalwarts protecting the Presidents legal flanks, are 79 and 74 respectively. Hillary Clinton, who is being pumped up for a Presidential run in 2016, will be 66 this year, and 70 by the time she runs, if she runs.  Joe Biden is older than Woodward; so is newly appointed Secretary of State John Kerry. Plouffe tweet is a slur and a cheap shot, rank hypocrisy, and really stupid.

His message is that if a journalist dares to challenge this administration’s Machiavellian tactics, it must be because of creeping senility. Perfection is, naturally, holding Republican administrations to standards of integrity and honesty. Doing so with Democrats, however, is proof that a journalist has stayed to long at his desk.

He is a bigot, an ass, and I fear, an in-house assassin.

You know, I wouldn’t bet against Mike Schmidt still being able to hit one out.

_____________________________

Source: Instapundit

UPDATE: Spinning The Woodward-White House Dispute

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments
Here's a question, Gene: What the hell is going on???

Here’s a question, Gene: What the hell is going on???

Now that the e-mail that apparently caused Washington Post icon Bob Woodward to feel he was being threatened has been released, several new questions and observations arise:

1. In the e-mail, at least, the senior official, now confirmed to be economic advisor Gene Sperling, never denies the central point of the Woodward column at issue: that President Obama, not congressional Republicans, was the first to propose the sequester, contrary to the statements of Jack Lew and the President himself, in contradiction to the blame narrative being pushed by the White House. This means that either the White House concedes its obfuscation, or that it chose to muddy the waters and undermine Woodward’s credibility by focusing on another aspect of his analysis where it was subject to legitimate challenge.

2. Why did Woodward feel threatened by this ostensibly “friendly” message? He is a veteran of such exchanges and presumably adept at translating Washington-speak and reading between the lines. I yield to his reporter instincts, but frankly, I don’t see it. I presume the threats in his phone argument with Sperling were more overt. I don’t know that, however. Continue reading →

The Sequester Ethics Train Wreck: The White House Shows Its Dark Side To Bob Woodward

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments
"Deja vu, Bob?"

“Deja vu, Bob?”

[ UPDATED] It is time to upgrade, or perhaps downgrade is a fairer term, Washington’s sequestration battle to a full-fledged ethics train wreck. This is one that may cause far reaching damage, and anyone, including the White House and the Republicans, who thinks it is predictable or controllable is deluded. You don’t control a train wreck; it controls you, once you are on board. The White House, and thus President Obama, are riding right up front.

Today Watergate-busting journalist Bob Woodward revealed that after he dared to interfere with the White House disinformation campaign—-designed to re-write history and assign Congressional Republicans responsibility for the introducing irresponsible, certifiable and reckless sequester device (voting for it was bad enough)—by writing in a Washington Post column that it was White House staff that initially proposed the gimmick, he was threatened by a senior White House official. “I think you will regret staking out that claim,” the official wrote to him. Woodward told both CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Politico that he regarded the statement as a thinly veiled threat, especially after the same official (now identified as Gene Sperling) had screamed at him over the phone for the cardinal sin of letting the facts interfere with the White House’s public opinion manipulation strategy. Woodward told Politico,

“‘You’ll regret.’ Come on. I think if Obama himself saw the way they’re dealing with some of this, he would say, ‘Whoa, we don’t tell any reporter ‘you’re going to regret challenging us.’ ” Continue reading →