Some Stuff is Making Me Nervous
by Jane on Feb.19, 2009, under Politics
I’ve come across three things today that are making me nervous. Then again, it’s early still.
First: Byron York talks about the RAT insertion in the stimulus bill.
The provision, which attracted virtually no attention in the debate over the 1,073-page stimulus bill, creates something called the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board — the RAT Board, as it’s known by the few insiders who are aware of it. The board would oversee the in-house watchdogs, known as inspectors general, whose job is to independently investigate allegations of wrongdoing at various federal agencies, without fear of interference by political appointees or the White House.
In the name of accountability and transparency, Congress has given the RAT Board the authority to ask “that an inspector general conduct or refrain from conducting an audit or investigation.” If the inspector general doesn’t want to follow the wishes of the RAT Board, he’ll have to write a report explaining his decision to the board, as well as to the head of his agency (from whom he is supposedly independent) and to Congress. In the end, a determined inspector general can probably get his way, but only after jumping through bureaucratic hoops that will inevitably make him hesitate to go forward.
The RAT commissioner is appointed by the President, which means the President dictates who gets investigated. Charlie Rangell, Chris Dodd and John Murtha should be breathing easier today.
No one knows who inserted the RAT provision in the Porkulus bill.
The second thing making me nervous is an incident in Oklahoma, reported by Glenn.
A police officer in Oklahoma pulled a man over last week for having an anti-Obama bumper sticker. The Secret Service later showed up at his house. The sign said:
“Abort Obama, not the unborn.”
Compared to the speech repeatedly used against President Bush for the last 8 years, this anti-abortion plea is pretty tame. Yet no one was ever interrogated or detained for anti-Bush bumper stickers that I recall. And I think I would recall, because the cries of “FASCISM” by the press would have drowned out the rest of the news. Apparently fascism is now change we can believe in.
Finally, over at The Corner, Jerry Taylor reads the NY Times so you don’t have to, and finds little known fact about President Obama’s housing bill announced yesterday:
“Except for the provision that empowers bankruptcy judges, almost all of the other elements can be enacted by Mr. Obama without further action by Congress.”
So The Congress is obsolete when it comes to this $75 billion dollar piece of legislation.
Perhaps we have elected a King afterall.
February 19th, 2009 on 4:46 pm
First off, it wasn’t a bumper-sticker… it was a sign. And a quick Google search for “anti-bush sign arrest” will yield a bunch of instances where people were arrested for wearing/carrying anti-Bush signs.
Second, none of those signs featured the suggestion that Bush should be killed. (Although the Bush/Hitler stuff comes close, IMO.) And despite the “Abort Obama” guy’s lame protestations to the contrary, that’s exactly the idea he was pitching. You can’t have “abortion == murder” as the central component of your argument and then claim that it means “impeach” in some cases.
Now, should the cop have confiscated the sign? Not in my opinion. Potential assassins seldom drive around with big signs declaring their intentions, and absent any clear evidence of such intent, it should have been assumed to be hyperbole and left alone.
All that aside, I agree that the RAT stinks, and the Congress shouldn’t abdicate it’s responsibility to control the purse-strings.
February 19th, 2009 on 5:24 pm
Roger,
My search on “anti-bush sign arrest” yielded 2 arrests, one for vulgarity, and the second to keep 2 T-shirt wearers from entering a Bush (related) event. Those people sued and the government gave them $80,000 in settlement. Of course the story was featured on Hardball so who knows if it is true. (I am going to hold that thought as an option if things get really tough in the future. If the same standard applies it will be easy money indeed.) In neither case did the secret service interrogate the people or search their houses. So that appears to be a change from the Bush standard.
Since you were a big Obama fan I’m wondering if he has lived up to your expectations.
February 20th, 2009 on 9:34 am
Try this search:
+arrested +”anti-bush sign”. That’ll give you a few more.
I don’t understand. While this same kind of bullshit went on for the past eight years you never uttered the slightest obectionable peep about Administration protesters’ civil rights being challenged. Has something changed?
February 20th, 2009 on 10:04 am
Eve,
Link for me where the Bush administration had secret service search a sign holder’s house and we will talk.
If President Bush had done any of the things President Obama has done – RAT, enacting legislation without reading, stopping free speech I would have been on my feet. He didn’t.
February 20th, 2009 on 10:16 am
That didn’t work. Let me try that again.
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=13995
February 20th, 2009 on 10:31 am
Actually that guy got visited at his place of employment. Here’s an example that more closely matches incident you commented on:
http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2007/01/secret_service__1.html
February 20th, 2009 on 10:33 am
http://www.splc.org/report_detail.asp?id=662&edition=18
In fairness, I don’t think Bush or Obama had any involvement in the Secret Service visiting these people. It appears to be standard operating procedure when the SS receives a report that someone may be threatening the president.
February 20th, 2009 on 11:08 am
Eve,
Looks like you are right. Do you have an example of Bush’s version of the RAT provision, and the consolidation of power in the housing bill?
Are you happy with what President Obama has done so far?
February 20th, 2009 on 11:10 am
Roger,
Is there any way to permanently approve some people for comments? I’m getting a ton of spam – it all appears to be alike and probably from the same source, but I hate to have to approve you and Eve every time you post.
February 20th, 2009 on 2:21 pm
Jane: I flipped a switch that auto-clears any post from someone you’ve already allowed to post in the past. So that part of the problem is addressed.
RE: spam… we can set up a spam killer for you if you like. It’ll catch at least 90% of the spam you get and hide it from you automatically.
February 20th, 2009 on 2:47 pm
I’ve gotten about 10 10,000 word nonsensical replies today, all of which I have marked as spam or deleted.
I’m trying to figure out why people post multiple non-sensical posts about ibuprophen.
February 20th, 2009 on 3:04 pm
It works like this:
(1) Spammer posts comment full of keywords and links to your site. Today the keywords and links may relate to ibuprofen, tomorrow it’ll be Xanax or something else.
(2) Google comes by and indexes your page, including the ibuprofen links.
(3) Meanwhile, the spammers are doing the same thing to thousands of other blog owners, many of whom don’t even pay attention to comments and let them all automatically post.
(4) Clueless User goes to Google and searches for “ibuprofen”, Google sees that hundreds or thousands of blog comments are linking to this one site selling ibuprofen, and sends CU there.
(5) Spammer takes CU’s money and laughs all the way to the bank.
February 20th, 2009 on 3:15 pm
Okay, I’ll take the 90% filter and never buy ibuprofen on line.
February 20th, 2009 on 2:22 pm
I also turned on threaded comments for you… if you want to reply to a specific comment, click the “Reply” link under it.
February 20th, 2009 on 11:43 am
Thirty one days in, I’m reasonably happy with Obama, not so much with Congress (either side of the aisle).
I can’t comment on Bush’s version of the RAT because I didn’t know he had one. I do like the new administration’s recovery.gov website, though. If Bush ever offered anything like that he had one crappy pr team marketing it because it would be news to me.
Has anyone actually been appointed to the RAT board? I can’t get enthused or outraged until I at least know who’s minding the store.
February 20th, 2009 on 12:38 pm
Eve,
Bush didn’t have a version of RAT. If he had, democrats would have been yelling “fascism” every day following. It doesn’t matter who is appointed, what matters is that President Obama has politicized ethics and wrongdoing. That is unprecedented in this country. If some head of an agency is robbing you blind, the President can instruct the RAT people to ignore it – for the good of the country and all that.
And Bush didn’t need a recovery website, because he didn’t stage a recovery. Tarp was (mis)handled by Bernake, Paulson and Geithner, and I’m pretty sure they don’t want anyone watching that. If the Recovery site mirrors the rest of President Obama’s accountability thus far it will be too little too late. As you know he promised transparency prior to enacting legislation and so far he has refused to do that even on legislation of no consequence.
So what has the President done so far that has inspired your confidence? It seems odd that you would dislike both sides of Congress since they have been voting as polar opposites.
February 20th, 2009 on 2:13 pm
More info on the RAT:
(1) All Inspectors General are Presidential appointees, and serve at the President’s whim. There is nothing unprecedented about it… that’s the way it’s been since IGs were created in the ’70s. The only difference now is that, with the amendment to the IG act from last fall, appointees are explicitly selected without regard of political affiliation (yeah, right), and the president can no longer fire them without giving a written report to Congress. (Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, and Carter had more leeway.)
(2) Bearing the preceding in mind, this means that the RAT board basically restores a limited version of the power over IGs to the presidency that all presidents had from 1978 to 2008, only restricted to this specific IG.
(3) The members of the RAT board will be other IGs or vice-secretaries appointed by Obama in other, related departments. So worrying about the president appointing the board’s chair is kinda silly… he effectively owns them all.
(4) The RAT wasn’t slipped in as suggested in the linked article… the idea was initially floated by Daniel Inouye back in mid-January, and has been part of both the Senate and House versions of the stimulus package from the beginning.
So I take back what I said about the RAT. It’s pretty much a non-issue
February 20th, 2009 on 2:42 pm
What’s your source Roger?
From my friend JMH at Quasiblog:
Read the whole thing: http://www.quasiblog.com/2009/02/who-dunnit.html
Now to be fair, I’m confident President Obama would say it’s a non-issue too – like bringing the census to the White house and hiring 12 lobbyists and a bunch of tax cheats and criminals to sit in his cabinet. And the mainstream media would certainly confirm that it’s a non-issue too. No news here, just look away.
Oh and for the record, everything in the porkulus package was slipped in – so let’s not pretend it is anything but a give-away for democrat causes.
But dismiss away.
February 20th, 2009 on 3:38 pm
My sources for point (1) are the Inspector General Act of 1978 and the October 2008 amendment.
My sources for point (2) and (3) are all the reports about the contents of RAT bill, including the one you provided. They all say the RAT board will be composed of IG and deputy secretaries, both of which serve the mercy of the Executive. (Actually, one of them says that the board will only be made up of IGs, not deputies. Same difference, in terms of Executive connections.)
As for (4), here’s Inouye’s proposed bill summary from January 27th:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:SN00336:@@@D&summ2=m&
The Project On Government Oversight had spotted it on January 15th:
http://www.pogo.org/pogo-files/alerts/government-oversight/go-bo-20090115.html
And for the record, I’m not dismissing… I’m analyzing. “Dismissing” doesn’t properly describe burning 45 minutes of my time reading the 2008 IG amendment, or the overall hours I’ve spent today, researching my replies to this thread.
To the contrary, “dismissing” was what I did to the RAT when I went solely off the report of the single author you provided in your post.
February 20th, 2009 on 4:20 pm
One correction: The folks over at the volokh conspiracy do not think that the WH can stop an investigation. Their read of the issue is that WH board can ask them to, but the final decision is the IG’s.
February 20th, 2009 on 4:02 pm
Roger,
So what do you suspect is the point of the RAT provision? If it doesn’t change a thing, why is it necessary? It certainly isn’t stimulative.
My understanding is that the as inspectors general have always operated without fear of White house interference. Now they won’t.
A similar situation is the census controversy (largely ignored by the press as well). The census has always been performed independently by the Commerce Dept – the secretary of which is also appointed by the President. Since Judd Gregg resigned over the politicization of the census I don’t think it is out of line to assume the same thing is going on here.
The WH can now stop investigations it doesn’t like, and presumably direct those it does. You don’t find that troubling?
February 21st, 2009 on 6:12 am
Hi Jane, Roger:
I’ve got an updated look at Title XV in the H.R.1 Conference Report over at Quasiblog in “Rats Redux.”
http://www.quasiblog.com/2009/02/rat-redux.html
I’m always open to correction, and I didn’t attempt to slog through the Senate’s version too, but there are a couple of substantive changes to the oversight provisions in question between HR1 as passed by the House and the ultimate Conference Report which passed into law. The short, shorter, shortest version is this:
The RAT Board now defined in Title XV, Subtitle B acquired the power to hold public hearings and subpoena witnesses, which is HUGE. Even without it the RAT Board would have altered IG operations in serious, counterproductive ways.
The place where the partisan train wreck looks likely to occur, however, is in the “Recovery Independent Advisory Panel” created in Title XV, Subtitle C to putatively make recommendations to the recommenders on the RAT Board. The President can appoint anyone he likes to this Panel, which somewhere between HR1 and the Conference Report, acquired the stunning power “to secure” any information it likes from any agency head of its choosing.
Simply digging out those two critically significant changes — after figuring out where to look for them — would probably have taken most of the allotted time between receiving the Conference Report and being compelled to vote on it. Thus is representative government subverted. The fact that the President didn’t even bother to sign it on the arbitrary deadline he, himself, set up, just piles insult on top of the injuries already inflicted on the body politic. It will be months before we have a clear picture of what’s actually in it.
February 22nd, 2009 on 12:17 pm
The first page of the Recovery.gov page raised my blood pressure way up.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will be carried out with full transparency and accountability
We’re talking about a bill that had not be read completely by a single member of the House or Senate when it was voted on. But it’s going to be carried out with full transparency and accountability. That statement has to be a joke. The person in charge of the full transparency can’t even produce an American birth certificate.
This is your money. You have a right to know where it’s going and how it’s being spent.
The people who were elected to control how our money were spent were not even allowed to read what the money would be spent on, before they voted. Yet we read some BS about “you have a right to know”.
The recovery.gov page is a waste of space.
February 21st, 2009 on 7:20 pm
Okay, your spam-blocker is now installed.