Byron York at the DC Examiner is sounding off about one such precious little nugget. But first, a little background.
There is a position in the government called "Inspector General". Those who occupy this position are tasked with keeping an eye on government agencies, contractors, and pretty much anyone doing government business, in order to sniff out instances of waste or fraud. Think of them as a sort of wandering mongoose in the snakepit of American politics.
Classically, the IG's main strength is that they operate largely independently from the agencies in which they serve. In other words, the various offices of the IG's are not swayed by political pressure from any agencies, officials or appointees to either prosecute, or not prosecute, individual cases. They have the authority to pursue whatever malfeasance they find, regardless of who it might embarrass.
Until now.
Just before the final vote in the Senate, someone slipped in a provision which calls for the creation of (brace yourself)....the "Recovery Accountability and Transparency" board.
Sen Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) was tipped off to it by a justifiably worried IG. This is what he found when he read it.
In the name of accountability and transparency, Congress has given the RAT Board the authority to ask “that an inspector general conduct or refrain from conducting an audit or investigation.” If the inspector general doesn’t want to follow the wishes of the RAT Board, he’ll have to write a report explaining his decision to the board, as well as to the head of his agency (from whom he is supposedly independent) and to Congress. In the end, a determined inspector general can probably get his way, but only after jumping through bureaucratic hoops that will inevitably make him hesitate to go forward.
When Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, a longtime champion of inspectors general, read the words “conduct or refrain from conducting,” alarm bells went off. The language means that the board — whose chairman will be appointed by the president — can reach deep inside a federal agency and tell an inspector general to lay off some particularly sensitive subject. Or, conversely, it can tell the inspector general to go after a tempting political target.
That's right: this board will now preside over those very same IG's, with the authority to "ask" the inspectors to target -- or overlook -- any case the board deems fit.....and the One True King gets to pick the lead knave.
So why was there no hue and cry over something so completely opaque, that had absolutely nothing to do with righting the economic woes this bill was supposedly designed to combat?
Simple, says Grassley...no one who would have fought against it knew it existed, until it was too late.
...It wasn’t until Friday morning — after the bill was finished and just hours before the Senate was to begin voting — that Grassley discovered the board was in the final text. “This was snuck in,” Grassley told me. “It wasn’t something that was debated.”
Snuck in by whom? It’s not entirely clear. “I intend to get down to the bottom of where this comes from,” Grassley vowed. “And quite frankly, it better not come from this administration, because this administration has reminded us that it is not about business as usual, that it is for total transparency.”
Uh-huh.
Kiss the investigation into Jack Murtha's lobbying ties goodbye.
Say adios to looking the wrong way at Chuck Rangel's tax & real estate shenanigans.
And anyone who even accidentally digs up anything The Chicago Kid wants to stay buried will be painfully reminded of the plague of locusts that descended upon Wasilla when their favorite daughter dared to rise above her station.
The gloves are, ever increasingly, being taken off.
With every inch they gain on our individual and representative voices, those who now control the Capitol grasp for one inch more.
And it's only been ONE MONTH since the Inauguration.
If anyone needs me, I'll be over here clinging just a little harder to my Bible and gun collection, thank you.
Comments for this post
Posts
