When CSPAN Looks Like Monty Python

It’s been nearly a week since it aired, and there have been so many other scan­dals, dis­as­ters and idio­cies since then, because that is what a typ­i­cal week with the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion in power is in the US, but I just had to show this clip.

Here’s the con­text: There was a ‘Brown Bag Lunch’ at the Fed­eral Offices of the GSA, the Gen­eral Ser­vices Admin­is­tra­tion. The Wikipedia entry for the GSA is this:

The Gen­eral Ser­vices Admin­is­tra­tion (GSA) is an inde­pen­dent agency of the United States gov­ern­ment, estab­lished in 1949 to help man­age and sup­port the basic func­tion­ing of fed­eral agen­cies. The GSA sup­plies prod­ucts and com­mu­ni­ca­tions for U.S. gov­ern­ment offices, pro­vides trans­porta­tion and office space to fed­eral employ­ees, and devel­ops government-wide cost-minimizing poli­cies, among other man­age­ment tasks. Its stated mis­sion is to “help fed­eral agen­cies bet­ter serve the pub­lic by offer­ing, at best value, supe­rior work­places, expert solu­tions, acqui­si­tion ser­vices and man­age­ment policies.”

Back in Decem­ber of last year, Lurita Doan, (a loyal Repub­li­can sup­porter to the tune of $226,000 in cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions) the GSA’s Inspec­tor Gen­eral, pro­posed cut­ting $5 mil­lion from the bud­get of GSA’s Office of the Inspec­tor Gen­eral for review­ing gov­ern­ment con­tracts for fraud and waste. In other words, remove over­sight. One won­ders where the pres­sure for doing such a thing may have come from (dare I say, Lob­by­ists for Gov­ern­ment Con­trac­tors like Hal­ibur­ton, per­haps?). When other Inspec­tors wouldn’t go along with her plan, (like GSA Inspec­tor Gen­eral Brian D. Miller) she said: “There are two kinds of ter­ror­ism in the US: the exter­nal kind; and inter­nally, the IGs have ter­ror­ized the Regional Administrators.”

That’s right, going against her plan was likened to ‘Ter­ror­ism’. So the ‘You’re either with us or against us’ slo­gan applies to the award­ing of gov­ern­ment con­tracts, too.

But that’s not what this video is about. As I men­tioned ear­lier, this is about a lunchtime pre­sen­ta­tion about a week ago at the GSA’s offices in Wash­ing­ton. It seems that the Pow­er­point slides that were shown dur­ing the lunch some­how found their way to the desk of Con­gress­man Bruce Bra­ley (Rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Iowa). The author of that Pow­er­point was none other than the cen­ter of so many other scan­dals and skul­dug­gery in Wash­ing­ton, Karl Rove.

The clip is a lit­tle long (about 10 min­utes), but some of it is so unin­ten­tion­ally hilar­i­ous that I almost have to remind myself that this is real tes­ti­mony, not a com­edy sketch. If you’ve already seen it, you’ll know what I’m talk­ing about. If not, and you have a few min­utes, take a look; Rarely do you see some­one caught in such out­right lies. Ms. Doan was clearly instructed by legal coun­sel to pull the ‘Rea­gan Defense’ (I don’t remem­ber any­thing), but I’m not con­vinced, and I sus­pect that most peo­ple aren’t either.

Oh, and by the way, The Hatch Act of 1939 makes it clear that this sort of thing is ille­gal. Ms. Doan should not only be fired, but she should serve jail time. But that prob­a­bly won’t hap­pen in the slow motion train wreck that is the USA these days.