L’état, c’est moi
Open-government advocates say that Vice President Cheney is to executive branch secrecy what darkness is to the night.
In 2001, Cheney famously refused to disclose the names of oil company executives and others who attended meetings of a White House energy task force that he headed, which helped draft a national energy policy.
More recently, a government watchdog group has called attention to less noticed records that Cheney has sought to keep private: travel costs.
In a report this month, the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity said Cheney and his staff have sidestepped regulations that require annual reporting of travel expenses of more than $250 received from outside groups. The center, which focuses on ethics and public service issues, said previous vice presidents routinely disclosed such payments for lodging, travel and food when the veep and his staff made appearances at colleges, think tanks and trade associations.
...
Cheney's office says nothing is amiss. In three letters since 2002 to the Office of Government Ethics, which collects the travel reports, David S. Addington, then Cheney's general counsel, noted that the reporting requirement applies to the "head of each agency of the executive branch."
"The Office of the Vice President is not an 'agency of the executive branch,' and hence the reporting requirement does not apply," wrote Addington, who this month replaced I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby as Cheney's chief of staff.
The Sun King and the Prince of Darkness all in one corpulent, sneering container.
posted by bluememe at 11/30/2005
2 Comments:
This is one of those times I wish I could start threads as there is nowhere to put this in recent posts. This one is too much:
From Reuters - Bush to fight Iraq critics with speech on strategy
...The White House plans to release a document on the national strategy for victory in Iraq, which officials say will mainly reiterate policies that have already been in place.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan described the document as "an unclassified version of the plan that we have had in place and the plan that we've been pursuing."
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The unclassified version: Endeavour to win the War on Terrorism because there is too much at stake and we have to honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice so that their efforts will not have been in vain.
The classified version:
Keep sacrificing our troops and our nation's reputation in the world while making us more vulnerable to attacks at home and abroad in order to siphon money from the public hands of the many to private hands of the few for as long as the people will allow it to go on, and then just a little longer beyond that.
This is just another way for Cheney to give a big "f*** you" to the rest of us. Or as some corrupt southourn cops used to declare, "I can't break the law, I am the law!"
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