Saturday, June 16, 2007

Office of Special Counsel investigating politization of Federal Civl Service

The U.S. Attorney purge was just the very tip of the program to totally politicize the federal government, using it to raise money and get Republicans elected everywhere. Once locked up, the machine that Rove was building would have left America as a one-party state in which elections mean nothing more than did the elections in the USSR or in Saddam's Iraq. Think Progress reports on the investigation now being conducted by the Office of Special Counsel into the politicization of the Federal Government.
Politicization of the federal government has been illegal for decades. The 1939 Hatch Act specifically prohibits partisan campaign or electoral activities on federal government property, including federal agencies. But in 2005, Ken Mehlman, formerly one of Bush’s top political advisers, outlined the White House’s strategy of utilizing government resources for partisan gain:

One of the things that can happen in Washington when you work in an agency is that you forget who sent you there. And it’s important to remind people that you’re George Bush people. … If there’s one empire I want built, it’s the George Bush empire. [One Party Country, p. 102]

With that imperial partisanship in mind, the Bush White House has engaged in an unprecedented quest to politicize the federal government, giving briefings and PowerPoint presentations everywhere from the Interior Department to NASA on how to secure Republican victories. Said one Interior Department manager, “We were constantly being reminded about how our decisions could affect electoral results” (One Party Country, p. 103). Bush loyalists in federal agencies have also helped generate millions for favored political candidates.

This was - and is - a coup-de-etate conducted by the American right-wing extremist conservatives, both economic and religious. It is beginning to be exposed, but the exposure is mostly surface so far.

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