Up until only a few months ago, the GOP was in control of both the Executive and Legislative branches of government, and they are still in control of the Executive. Well, this is what happens when the political party controlling government is based on an ideological belief that government isn't good for anything . . . (more below the fold)
The FBI:
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/...
Here's another legacy for the Bush administration: plummeting fraud, identity theft, and civil rights investigations by the FBI.
The reason is plain: in the wake of 9/11, the administration ordered the FBI to reorganize with a heavy influence on counterterrorism. Hundreds of agents were reassigned, and many who weren't were put on the beat anyway. Far fewer agents were left to handle other investigations.
When FBI Director Robert Mueller asked Attorney General John Ashcroft and then Alberto Gonzales for help, he was rebuffed, according to The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Says a former FBI assistant director: "We were told to do more with less."
But, of course, they've done less with less.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/...
Thousands of white-collar criminals across the country are no longer being prosecuted in federal court -- and, in many cases, not at all -- leaving a trail of frustrated victims and potentially billions of dollars in fraud and theft losses.
It is the untold story of the Bush administration's massive restructuring of the FBI after the terrorism attacks of 9/11.
Five-and-a-half years later, the White House and the Justice Department have failed to replace at least 2,400 agents transferred to counterterrorism squads, leaving far fewer agents on the trail of identity thieves, con artists, hatemongers and other criminals.
Two successive attorneys general have rejected the FBI's pleas for reinforcements behind closed doors.
. . .
Among the findings of a six-month Seattle P-I investigation, analyzing more than a quarter-million cases touched by FBI agents and federal prosecutors before and after 9/11:
Overall, the number of criminal cases investigated by the FBI nationally has steadily declined. In 2005, the bureau brought slightly more than 20,000 cases to federal prosecutors, compared with about 31,000 in 2000 -- a 34 percent drop.
White-collar crime investigations by the bureau have plummeted in recent years. In 2005, the FBI sent prosecutors 3,500 cases -- a fraction of the more than 10,000 cases assigned to agents in 2000.
In Western Washington, the drop has been even more dramatic. Records show that the FBI sent 28 white-collar cases to prosecutors in 2005, down 90 percent from five years earlier.
Civil rights investigations, which include hate crimes and police abuse, have continued a steady decline since the late 1990s. FBI agents pursued 65 percent fewer cases in 2005 than they did in 2000.
Already hit hard by the shift of agents to terrorism duties, Washington state's FBI offices suffer from staffing levels that are significantly below the national average.
The EPA:
http://archive.salon.com/...
When John Suarez, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's top enforcement official, resigned on Monday to take a job at a Wal-Mart division, he assured his colleagues and President Bush that the EPA has "been able to provide more compliance assistance to industry than ever before." The operative wording here, of course, is "assistance to industry," seeing as Suarez played a key role in the notorious decision by the Bush administration to scrap lawsuits against dozens of coal-burning utilities for past dirty-air infringements under the New Source Review provision of the Clean Air Act -- one of the biggest and most controversial enforcement lapses in the agency's history.
To make the situation even more absurd, Suarez concluded his resignation letter by saying, "I can assure you that the enforcement and compliance efforts are [left] in good hands at EPA." Apparently, he failed to notice that there are a fast-dwindling number of good hands after an exodus of senior talent from the EPA over the holidays, including the unexpected retirement of two top-level career employees in the agency's enforcement division just weeks before Suarez's own announcement. Bruce Buckheit, who had served in the EPA through six presidential administrations, and his deputy, Richard Biondi, both retired with clear signs of indignation about the Bush administration's disregard for their positions.
"I just didn't feel comfortable working in that environment anymore," Biondi told Muckraker from his home soon after his resignation. "Certainly the direction that the agency was going over the last couple years was different than what I'd experienced during my 32 years working for EPA. It was contrary to everything that I had worked for."
Buckheit, who was director of the EPA's air enforcement division, is on extended holiday travel and could not be reached, but made strong statements to Greenwire just before his departure: "This new enforcement policy [under the Bush administration] will stop almost all work in the power plant enforcement world," he said. "If there was any interesting and useful work [left] in the power plant sector, I'd still be [at my desk]."
They're not the first to take a stand: Eric Schaeffer, former director of EPA's regulatory enforcement division, quit the EPA in February 2002 in a fury and sent a withering public resignation letter to then-administrator Christie Whitman. Sylvia Lowrance, an agency employee for more than 20 years who was in Suarez's very shoes as acting assistant administrator of the EPA Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance for the first 18 months of the Bush administration, retired quietly in July 2002. Though at the time she did not speak out, she has since voiced serious misgivings about the state of the enforcement program.
In fact, the number of EPA enforcement staff has fallen to its lowest level since the agency was established, having decreased by 12 percent -- from 528 to 464 -- since Bush took office. According to a former EPA employee who spoke on condition of anonymity, the administration is working on a master plan to quietly get rid of the senior career staff at EPA. The plan is carried out through one very effective strategy: an incentive for early retirement. "I've heard that they are offering a financial incentive of $25,000 in addition to their retirement plans to get out," said the former official. "The Bush administration is the first ever to offer such a plan to senior officials at EPA."
FEMA
http://thehill.com/...
Bush tore down the FEMA that Clinton built up
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
. . . the country's premier agency for dealing with [disasters] -- FEMA -- is being, in effect, systematically downgraded and all but dismantled by the Department of Homeland Security.
http://dir.salon.com/...
During the 1990s, FEMA was routinely praised as one of the best-functioning federal agencies. Its response to the Midwestern floods of 1993, the Northridge earthquake of 1994, and 1995's Oklahoma City terrorist attack are considered models of emergency response. By contrast, its performance during Katrina is almost universally acknowledged to have been abysmally poor. At first, FEMA's post-Katrina failure appears baffling: What happened to the once-great FEMA? But George Haddow, who served as the deputy chief of staff at FEMA under James Lee Witt, Bill Clinton's FEMA director, thinks that FEMA's current flaws are all too understandable -- and are a direct consequence of the Bush administration's decision to pull the federal government out of the natural disaster-relief business and turn over more power to state and local officials.
Indeed, the White House's new response to the political disaster prompted by Katrina -- one in which officials are attempting to blame authorities in Louisiana, rather than in Washington, for the slow aid -- underscores the Bush philosophy. According to Haddow, instead of working with local officials to try to minimize the impacts of an impending storm, the White House has decided its best strategy is to keep its distance from people on the ground. That way if anything goes wrong, the White House can "attack, attack, attack."
The IRS:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
The federal government is moving to eliminate the jobs of nearly half of the lawyers at the Internal Revenue Service who audit tax returns of some of the wealthiest Americans, specifically those who are subject to gift and estate taxes when they transfer parts of their fortunes to their children and others.
. . .
Sharyn Phillips, a veteran I.R.S. estate tax lawyer in Manhattan, called the cuts a 'back-door way for the Bush administration to achieve what it cannot get from Congress, which is repeal of the estate tax.'[which benefits the wealthy]"
. . .
Over the last five years, officials at both the I.R.S. and the Treasury have told Congress that cheating among the highest-income Americans is a major and growing problem.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
President Bush's 2005 budget request for the Internal Revenue Service would seriously shortchange the agency's tax collection activities, leaving a half-million delinquent tax accounts uncollected, 15 million service calls unanswered and nearly 46,000 audits unscheduled, according to the president's own IRS oversight board.
A strongly worded special report, to be released today, says Bush's $10.7 billion budget for the IRS falls at least $230 million short of the agency's immediate needs and fails to match the administration's tough talk on tax law enforcement.
The DOJ:
http://www.boston.com/...
The title of the course was Constitutional Law, but the subject was sin. Before any casebooks were opened, a student led his classmates in a 10-minute devotional talk, completed with "amens," about the need to preserve their Christian values.
. . .
Regent University School of Law, founded by televangelist Pat Robertson . . . has had no better friend than the Bush administration. Graduates of the law school have been among the most influential of the more than 150 Regent University alumni hired to federal government positions since President Bush took office in 2001, according to a university website.
One of those graduates is Monica Goodling , the former top aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who is at the center of the storm over the firing of US attorneys. Goodling, who resigned on Friday, has become the face of Regent overnight -- and drawn a harsh spotlight to the administration's hiring of officials educated at smaller, conservative schools with sometimes marginal academic reputations."
...
"It used to be that high-level DOJ jobs were generally reserved for the best of the legal profession," wrote a contributor to The New Republic website . ". . . That a recent graduate of one of the very worst (and sketchiest) law schools with virtually no relevant experience could ascend to this position is a sure sign that there is something seriously wrong at the DOJ."
. . .
Not long ago, it was rare for Regent graduates to join the federal government. But in 2001, the Bush administration picked the dean of Regent's government school, Kay Coles James , to be the director of the Office of Personnel Management -- essentially the head of human resources for the executive branch. The doors of opportunity for government jobs were thrown open to Regent alumni."
. . .
Their path to employment was further eased in late 2002, when John Ashcroft , then attorney general, changed longstanding rules for hiring lawyers to fill vacancies in the career ranks.
Previously, veteran civil servants screened applicants and recommended whom to hire, usually picking top students from elite schools.
In a recent Regent law school newsletter, a 2004 graduate described being interviewed for a job as a trial attorney at the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division in October 2003. Asked to name the Supreme Court decision from the past 20 years with which he most disagreed, he cited Lawrence v. Texas, the ruling striking down a law against sodomy because it violated gay people's civil rights.
"When one of the interviewers agreed and said that decision in Lawrence was 'maddening,' I knew I correctly answered the question," wrote the Regent graduate . The administration hired him for the Civil Rights Division's housing section -- the only employment offer he received after graduation, he said.
The graduate from Regent -- which is ranked a "tier four" school by US News & World Report, the lowest score and essentially a tie for 136th place -- was not the only lawyer with modest credentials to be hired by the Civil Rights Division after the administration imposed greater political control over career hiring.
The changes resulted in a sometimes dramatic alteration to the profile of new hires beginning in 2003, as the Globe reported last year after obtaining resumes from 2001-2006 to three sections in the civil rights division. Conservative credentials rose, while prior experience in civil rights law and the average ranking of the law school attended by the applicant dropped.
http://www.boston.com/...
The Bush administration is quietly remaking the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, filling the permanent ranks with lawyers who have strong conservative credentials but little experience in civil rights, according to job application materials obtained by the Globe.
The documents show that only 42 percent of the lawyers hired since 2003, after the administration changed the rules to give political appointees more influence in the hiring process, have civil rights experience. In the two years before the change, 77 percent of those who were hired had civil rights backgrounds.
In an acknowledgment of the department's special need to be politically neutral, hiring for career jobs in the Civil Rights Division under all recent administrations, Democratic and Republican, had been handled by civil servants -- not political appointees.
But in the fall of 2002, then-attorney general John Ashcroft changed the procedures. The Civil Rights Division disbanded the hiring committees made up of veteran career lawyers.
For decades, such committees had screened thousands of resumes, interviewed candidates, and made recommendations that were only rarely rejected.
Now, hiring is closely overseen by Bush administration political appointees to Justice, effectively turning hundreds of career jobs into politically appointed positions.
The profile of the lawyers being hired has since changed dramatically, according to the resumes of successful applicants to the voting rights, employment litigation, and appellate sections. Under the Freedom of Information Act, the Globe obtained the resumes among hundreds of pages of hiring data from 2001 to 2006.
Hires with traditional civil rights backgrounds -- either civil rights litigators or members of civil rights groups -- have plunged. Only 19 of the 45 lawyers hired since 2003 in those three sections were experienced in civil rights law, and of those, nine gained their experience either by defending employers against discrimination lawsuits or by fighting against race-conscious policies.
Meanwhile, conservative credentials have risen sharply. Since 2003 the three sections have hired 11 lawyers who said they were members of the conservative Federalist Society. Seven hires in the three sections are listed as members of the Republican National Lawyers Association, including two who volunteered for Bush-Cheney campaigns.
. . .
At the same time, the kinds of cases the Civil Rights Division is bringing have undergone a shift. The division is bringing fewer voting rights and employment cases involving systematic discrimination against African-Americans, and more alleging reverse discrimination against whites and religious discrimination against Christians.
Federal watchdog/regulatory agencies in general:
http://newstandardnews.net/...
As the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) advances its "Management Agenda" for overhauling or extinguishing public programs it has deemed unproductive, members of Congress are introducing complimentary legislation to "streamline" regulatory agencies.
...
Agencies tasked with monitoring corporations are feeling heightened pressure from the executive branch. The OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs published a report last month that activists have dubbed the "anti-regulatory hit-list." It targets 76 federal regulations for "reform." The list is derived from the OMB’s annual "Report to Congress on the Costs and Benefits of Federal Regulation," which provides a financial analysis of how various regulations impact economic growth.
. . .
Meanwhile conservative members of Congress are backing the Bush administration by promoting unprecedented changes to regulatory policy.
The Federal government's civil service:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Today's NY Times reports that Bush issued a new executive order intended to undermine our civil service:
...each [government] agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president's priorities.
This strengthens the hand of the White House in shaping rules that have, in the past, often been generated by civil servants and scientific experts. It suggests that the administration still has ways to exert its power after the takeover of Congress by the Democrats.
. . .
This power grab is not simply a feature of George W. Bush's personal, monarch-esque tendencies.
It is the foundation of how Washington conservatives believe our government should be managed, or more accurately, mismanaged.
In January 2001, when Bush was assuming the presidency, the right-wing Heritage Foundation issued a white paper: Taking Charge of Federal Personnel.
That report effectively counseled Bush to suffocate the ability of our civil servants to provide objective and factual information, making it impossible for the public to make informed decisions and communicate our will to policymakers in Washington.
Etc. etc.
For years, the Republicans have been busy trying to enact a self-fulfilling prophecy on a national scale - working to hamstring government, thus showing that government "can't" work.
This, of course has many rippling effects which further primary Republican goals: (1) cripple the government's oversight ability in regard to the environment, securities regulations, civil rights, fair enforcement of tax laws, etc.; (2) pushing out relatively non-political career civil servants in favor of less qualified people who just happen to be right-wing idealogues; (3) helping the GOP maintain political power by ensuring that government agencies don't give them bad PR (by stacking them with right-wingers who won't diverge from right-wing talking points), by warping the DOJ so that it supports GOP voter suppression efforts and brings "well-timed" investigations/indictments against the GOP's political enemies, by taking away the IRS' ability to investigate tax fraud by the wealthy and corporations, thus ensuring that they have more money available to "re-invest" in GOP causes and politicians; etc.
Welcome to the GOP's America . . . a banana republic in the making.