Recovery.gov and Beating the Dead Horse
When the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 passed Congress earlier this year, I knew it was only the beginning of a long four years under the Obama Administration. When President Obama was elected, he promised us, repeatedly, (Can I get a “Let me be clear…” anyone?) to run a transparent and honest administration, a goal I hope any political opportunist candidate lives up to.
However, mere months after the implementation of this so-called stimulus package, we’ve learned the “jobs saved or created” numbers were falsified and that someone got a little lax with their number checking regarding Congressional District numbers. But the whole point of this whole kerfuffle isn’t the fact that some Congressional District information was iffy.
The real issue here is the sanctity of the American Republic. What time machine did we step into that dropped us off in an alternate-universe called Soviet America? As The Next Right wrote today, “Politicians lie,” but never before in American history have we had an executive branch so blatantly use the 1984 treatment on figures and data with the expressed intent of creating more support for a political agenda.
But with lax legislative language regarding the posting of “estimates” (h/t TNR) of jobs created (or saved, whatever that means), it’s no wonder we’ve ended up where we are today. Language such as this is nothing more than a cop-out on the part of our elected officials. They provided enough wiggle room for themselves to claim accountability, but, at the same time, offer some justifiable deniability. It’s just “politics as usual” in Washington, to quote my favorite former Governor; we’re still beating the same dead horse named corruption. The problem is, she’s not really dead; the sleaze bags in Washington just renamed her.
Final thought: how much better would the world be if America could trust her leaders?
