Category Archives: Politics: The Party of Sleaze

The power of a blog? Be it truth or libel this is one powerful tale about the rabid madness of John Bolton.

Chris Nelson says the real reason this nomination is still alive is Republican omerta. Or is that democratic centralism?

I've been pushing the GOP as the “Party of Sleaze” meme for some time. Who would have thunk that David Brooks of all people would be the one to give this idea a catchy name: not merely the Masters of Sleaze, but “sleazo-cons”.

Sleazo-cons. Can't top that.

AP has the story about the whistleblowing complaint against Scott Bloch, the head of the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, the office that's supposed to protect whistleblowers and investigate their complaints. He's accused of instructing staff to deep-six complaints without even interviewing the complainant. And of refusing to enforce laws protecting gay workers from discrimination.

“While publicly congratulating himself for reducing the caseload … Mr. Bloch has failed to explain just what happened to all of the cases he closed,” said the complaint filed in Washington.

…

Bloch came under fire last year when he moved to deny gay federal workers protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation and removed references to sexual orientation from the agency's Web site and complaint forms.

…

In a letter to Bush, the employees' lawyer, Debra S. Katz, wrote: “Mr. Bloch ignored your express direction that federal agencies enforce” anti-discrimination laws against gays.

What you have to understandis that all these whistleblowers are bad people. Not with the program or they would air dirty linen in public. They're probably Democrats. Which makes them near terrorists. And you expect Mr. Bloch to protect them?

Secretary On the Offensive: SecDef Donald Rumsfeld no longer even bothers to pay lip service to the idea that Congress has a right to oversight, information, or to question.

The GOP now seems to have embarked in the sort of hubristic fall that seems to come to all one-party governments eventually. The remaining questions are the rate of decent, and the degree of collateral damage to the rest of us on their way down.

You know, I can just vaguely recall when the press cared when the White House had an enemies list. But that was another time, another country.

So here's the latest on the Fargo do-not-admit list. The official white house position is that it was all a mistake, by a volunteer, but no one knows who it was, and there has been a policy decision taken that it will not be possible to find out.

I kid you not.

· IN-FORUM ·: “It was the result of an overzealous volunteer,” said White House spokesman Jim Morrell of the list. “We weren't aware of it here at the White House.”

Republican Party officials and Morrell said they do not know the identity of the volunteer.

“I don't know if we'd ever be able to find out what overzealous volunteer it is or anything like that,” said Jason Stverak, executive director of the North Dakota Republican Party. “We'll talk to people and stuff, but it will be impossible.”

Got that folks back home? Be sure to keep your mouths shut tight.

If there were Democratic talk radio, it could milk this for weeks — I imagine live callups of various people associated with the event, asking them if they saw the list, who gave it to them, etc. etc. Plus calling on various White House officials to repudiate the practice, to make promises that future events will be open, to describe how tickets are made available.

Indeed, it's not just a partisan opportunity: A real press would be all over this at least prospectively for the next events, looking at how tickets are distributed.

It's not just the wench that's dead.

FSU center spent public money to tout feds' policies: A Florida State University center has used more than a half-million in education tax dollars to put a positive spin on President Bush's key school policies, including hiring a public relations firm to teach charter schools to be more media-savvy.

Of course, this also fits in with Governor Jeb's attack on Florida's public schools, so it's a double-bonus subsidy.

Since 2003, taxpayers have given the center $627,567 as part of a 5-year, $1.2 million federal grant made available through the No Child Left Behind Act, which promotes school choice as a fix for failing public schools.

The center's mission is to make parents aware of all choice programs, including traditional magnet schools, expand the number of choice schools in the state, and help them “work the media” — as was written in one of the PR firm's pamphlets.

But links on the center's Web site are almost entirely to studies and articles from conservative groups and strong school-choice proponents such as the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Center for Education Reform and the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.

Note the intellectual integrity demonstrated by the following paragraph. Would make any university proud!

For example, a link to private-school voucher articles includes nine entries that provide positive news on the voucher movement, but no mention of the problems in Florida's three programs that have allowed hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to be misused or stolen.

Despite conflicting studies on the success of charter schools and other alternative education programs, the School Choice Center at FSU touts them as ways to “increase student achievement, increase parental involvement, promote school improvement through constructive competition, and accomplish racial and ethnic diversity.”

But wait! There's more!

Another link on charter schools includes a Manhattan Institute study showing some academic success from charters, but nothing on how 12.5 percent of Florida's charter schools were given F grades last year, compared with 1.3 percent of the traditional public schools.

And PR begets PR.

The center also hired a Tallahassee public relations firm, Moore Consulting Group Inc., to help charter schools and private schools sell their product. The group was given $45,000 to create template advertisements for choice programs, hold workshops, and offer tips such as “Never lie” to editorial boards and “Never screw up on a slow news day.”

“Never lie.” Orwell was a piker.

(spotted via FlaBlog)