NetRootsMass » Incompetence

400. An absent President

Hugh — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 00:56:02 +0000

Of the 2922 days Bush was President he spent all or part of 1,020 on vacation (35% of his time in office). This includes 487 days at Camp David, 490 at his ranch in Crawford, and 43 days at his family’s compound in Kennebunkport. If there is one word which typifies this and Bush, it is AWOL. The man has been AWOL his whole life. You have only to look at his academic career or his lack of it. It nails his experience with Vietnam where he never took a strong position for the war and went, or against it and protested. It was the essence of his time in the National Guard (whether it was technically the case or not). It marked his approach to his business failures. As for the governorship of Texas, it looks good on a résumé and is a useful political springboard but it is a weak position, tailor made for an AWOL man. Unfortunately for us, the Presidency is a real full-time job. In it, Bush stayed true to form. He was not just physically absent from it much of the time. He was intellectually and morally absent from it all the time.

The results we can see all around us. He did not keep us safe from 9/11. He mired the nation in stupid wars he waged stupidly and interminably. He was not there for Katrina. He took a piratical financial industry and negligently set it loose on the economy to wreak havoc in the housing and oil markets and eventually bring the whole system to the point of collapse and the country to the edge of depression.

But the blame does not belong to him. It never does with an AWOL man. No, it belongs with us who, as a nation, for 8 years took a vacation from our ourselves and our responsibilities. We had not just an AWOL President with Bush but an AWOL age. Now Bush is gone, as AWOL as ever, and we are left to deal with his legacies.

399. The cockamamie FBI investigation of the Madrid train bombings and Brandon Mayfield

Hugh — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 21:36:32 +0000

On March 11, 2004, a series of bombings took place in Madrid which killed 191 people and injured 2,000. A fingerprint lifted from a bag of detonator caps was erroneously identified by the FBI as belonging to Brandon Mayfield, a 37 year old lawyer in Portland, Oregon. Although Mayfield was living more than 5,000 miles away from Madrid and there was no evidence that he had been outside the country, and despite the doubts of Spanish authorities about the fingerprint match, what sealed the deal for the FBI was that Mayfield’s wife was from Egypt and he had converted to Islam and had Moslem clients. As far as they were concerned, he had to be a terrorist. As a result, the FBI began a highly intrusive surveillance of Mayfield including wiretaps and searches of his home and office which culminated in his arrest on May 6, 2004 as a material witness, a detention which lasted two weeks. As Mayfield described his ordeal

The days, weeks and months following my arrest were some of the darkest we have had to endure. I personally was subject to lockdown, strip searches, sleep deprivation, unsanitary living conditions, shackles and chains, threats, physical pain and humiliation.

It is important to realize the intensity of the government’s pressure on Mayfield. They were hanging death penalty offenses over him and generally terrorizing both him and his family. In this, the government’s investigation recalls the heavy-handedness and sloppiness of its anthrax investigations (see item 366).

Nevertheless, a January 6, 2006 report by the Justice Department’s Inspector General Glenn Fine, in a fairly typical whitewash characteristic of IG reports, found that the FBI had not misused any provisions of the Patriot Act although it noted that the government’s sharing of information on Mayfield to other agencies had amplified the effects of its “mistake”.

On November 29, 2006, the government settled with Mayfield for $2 million. It issued him an apology, and allowed his case challenging the Constitutional validity on 4th Amendment grounds of the Patriot Act to go forward.

With great power comes great responsibility. Along with understanding a lot about human nature, the Founders understood this. They knew from their own experience that there were plenty of fools and zealots who would abuse and misuse any power that was given to them. It is why they were so careful to make sure that no power went unchecked. Post-9/11, the Bush Administration went on a bender and with considerable help, or complicit silence, from the Democrats undid many of the simple lessons that the Founders struggled so hard and sacrificed so much to bequeath to us. Bush and the political leadership on both sides of the aisle thought they were considerably smarter than the Founders gave them credit for. What they did not understand was that they were the ones the Founders were warning us about.

388. Religious profiling at the DHS

Hugh — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:26:08 +0000

In the run up to the 2004 Presidential elections the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division (ICE) of the Department of Homeland Security targeted some 2,500 foreigners living in the US. The goal was to disrupt potential pre-election terrorism. Although the government denied it, religious profiling was the primary criterion for investigation, not any suspected terrorist affiliation. 79% of those targeted came from Moslem countries. Huge resources were committed to the effort. Around 500 arrests were made, essentially for minor offenses, such as overstaying one’s visa. This had all the hallmarks of a classic DHS operation: expensive, ineffective, and intrusive.

386. Failure to outfit planes to fight fires in Southern California

Hugh — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 01:43:32 +0000

Despite the increasing threat of wildfires, the Bush Administration has failed for 5 years to outfit 8 Coast Guard C-130s for firefighting duty in Southern California. Problems with the contractor have been cited.

379. The GSA opposes 9/11 safety changes in building construction

Hugh — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 05:18:25 +0000

In September 2008, the General Services Administration (GSA) came out against safety requirements for tall building construction adopted the previous year by the most commonly used building code, that of the International Code Council. The changes to the code were the result of a report by the National Institute of Standards and Technology in response to the 9/11 attacks. They include a third stairwell for buildings over 420 feet (40 stories) to make it easier for occupants to evacuate and improved fireproofing to give them more time to do so. For building taller than 75 feet, the code calls for glow in the dark markings in stairwells in case the electricity goes as often happens in fires. While the GSA is exempt from following these requirements, it usually adheres to local codes.

The requirements are also opposed by real estate developers and building owners who say they will increase building costs and decrease revenues by reducing the amount of space available for rent. In other words, in this post-9/11 world we keep hearing about, they are willing to put the lives of the occupants of the buildings they construct and own at risk to maximize their profits. And in this most anti-regulatory of Administrations, the government is perfectly willing to let them do so.

However, neither the GSA nor the building and landlord groups are the last word on this. The 2009 version of the code will be voted by building code officials from around the country in mid-September 2008.