A Patronage Shop
by KevinMay 9th, 2006
That is what Bush has created:
After discussing the huge strides the agency has made in doing business with minority-owned companies, Jackson closed with a cautionary tale, relaying a conversation he had with a prospective advertising contractor. ‘He had made every effort to get a contract with HUD for 10 years,’ Jackson said of the prospective contractor. ‘He made a heck of a proposal and was on the (General Services Administration) list, so we selected him. He came to see me and thank me for selecting him. Then he said something … he said, ‘I have a problem with your president.’ ‘I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘I don’t like President Bush.’ I thought to myself, ‘Brother, you have a disconnect — the president is elected, I was selected. You wouldn’t be getting the contract unless I was sitting here. If you have a problem with the president, don’t tell the secretary. He didn’t get the contract,’ Jackson continued. ‘Why should I reward someone who doesn’t like the president?’”
If the President does not fire this apparent law breaker, then he will have reduced the public’s businesses to the status of a mob deal, where what matters is not how well you do your job but who you kick up to. Only the right people, as defined by their political contributions, would be allowed to have jobs.
But then, what do you expect from a President who would appoint someone to purge the CIA of dissenters from his worldview?
“The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House,” said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. “Goss was given instructions … to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president’s agenda.”
Politics, in the Bush White House, trumps everything else. If you do not toe the company line, if you do not kick up to the right people, then you are an enemy and you must but sliced out of whatever place in government your competency and talent has earned you. If they have no problem gutting the CIA in the pursuit of political purity, I am sure they have no problem with what Jackson did. After all, no one in the government’s pay should ever contradict the King President.
Categories: Politics |
Stalin would smile, and then shake his head at the pathetic stupid imitator.
Businesses shouldn’t be getting business based on the skin color of the business owner. That is racism.
“The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House,” said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. “Goss was given instructions … to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president’s agenda.”
Fred: Sounds good to me. The CIA is an agency that is part of the administration. Those who are obstructing the president’s agenda should be fired.
The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals
Actually, I took a course on cold-war politics in college from a professor who described the CIA as “the last refuge of the liberal despots” - by which he meant that it was filled with people who saw the world in good/bad terms and saw themselves as engaged in trying to actively promote the good. It’s not like they haven’t also been the last refuge of the coldhearted realpolitiker as well, but there is that history in the CIA of self-annointing themselves as on the side of the angels.
GOP = Greed Obfuscation Patronage