Where are they now ... (aka the Peter Principle lives)

"Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job!!" is one of the saddest catch phrases to come out of the Bush administration. You know why. "Brownie" was sacked and dismissed from government work, but his chief of staff, Patrick Rhode had a different fate. Rhode was the guy who, while New Orleans was drowning, emailed his boss, "Brownie", to say that he was having his hair moussed for a tv appearance rather than coordinating relief for the victims of Katrina. Needless to say he was canned along with his boss and dismissed from government work, right, .... right...???

Wrong. In Jan. 2007 he was hired as a senior advisor to the office of the administrator for NASA. His qualifications: he was an event planner for the Bush campaign in 2000 and prior to that he was a tv reporter. Hopefully he just draws his salary and surfs the internet for hair care products, 'cause I'd hate to think that he's getting paid with our tax dollars and screwing up NASA.

But wait, there's more. The name Hans A. von Spakovsky is not easy to say (or type), but he was counsel to the asst. Attorney General for civil rights from 2003-2005. In that job his speciality was suppressing minority voting rights, and he led efforts to purge voter roles of poor and minority voters. It should come as no real surprise then that he worked for the Bush campaign on the Florida recount in 2000. While he wasn't entirely successful in his efforts to purge voters, fifty percent of the career employees in his section quit on his watch. After his rather nefarious stint in the AG's office he was naturally appointed to the Federal Elections Commission. Fair elections? Impartial monitoring of elections? Expanding democracy by involving more voters in the process? HA!!, ... and HA!! again.

The disdain the Bush administration shows for our country's government and the citizens it is supposed to work for is just unspeakably galling.

The above is taken from the current issue of Mother Jones and therein are more examples similar to the two included here. The author of the Mother Jones article is Joshua Kurlantzick.

Thanks for reading.
Mike

First post - Leadership (or not)

Hello blog readers. The following are some musings on politics at local, state and national levels. I shall try to relate how politics at the various levels affects individual lives and what individuals can do to cause positive changes through political involvement.

First, I wish to say that the United States of America has exactly the wrong leadership in office at this critical juncture in history. The Bush administration has used misinformation, disinformation, misdirection, fear mongering and lies to keep itself in power. Unfortumately, it took 6 years for America to figure it out. Meanwhile we are involved in a "war" that kills 2-3 american soldiers a day and costs over a billion dollars a week. Evidently the one book W. read was 1984, or perhaps Laura read it to him, for we have as close to an Orwellian situation as a constitutional democracy can become in 6 short years - constant war, information control, limited civil rights and a nebulous and changing enemy to fear.
Now I am all for going after the schmucks that attacked the USA on 9-11, but the waste of thousands of lives and billions of dollars in Iraq could have been averted had this country had a real leader with real vision.
Imagine having 150,000 soldiers and half a trillion dollars at your disposal for four years. What could be accomplished?
With even less resources it would have possible to make a good start in restructuring the energy infrastructure of the United States toward renewable, non-nuclear sources. Improved subsidies for building energy efficient buildings and purchasing hybrid or electric vehicles, improved mileage requirements for all personal vehicles, government incentives to power companies to build wind, tidal, solar and geothermal power generating facilities all could have been a reality after four years of work by leader with vision.
But of course we have an oil man with a penchant for cowboy diplomacy - "If you're not with us you're against us.".
If we had a leaders with vision we could be well on the way to not caring about that nasty black liquid under the sands of the Middle East, and we would have more real security, and our children would have one less mess to deal with.

Thanks for reading.