Thursday, February 17, 2011

Chutzpa of Leon and Ken...




Washington DC reminds me of the Emerald City in the wizard of Oz, its inhabitants all hiding behind their particular screens venting like they are all powerful and mighty. Any moment I expect winged monkeys to start flinging their poo around... One particular piece of poo was slung by CIA Director Leon Panetta while testifying before Congress. He was probably embarrassed from telling them another intelligence lie, that Egypt's Hosni Mubarak would announce he was stepping down, when in reality Mubarak hunkered down and said no way am I leaving of my own free will.

I guess that Leon felt he had to puff out his chest and show just how tough he's become since becoming head of the CIA, that despite believing all of the bs his employees tell him, he still has some macho mojo going for him. The Denver Post reported that: "CIA Director Leon Panetta told Congress on Wednesday that if Osama bin Laden or his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri is captured, he will be held by the military and probably will be sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It was the first time any senior administration official has outlined a detention plan for al-Qaeda's top leadership.


Panetta's statement was some indication that the administration is contemplating the future use of the military detention center in Cuba even though it says it is still committed to closing the facility." So now he wants to make a liar out of Obama, who had promised to close the place down. Next, we'll learn the Fannie Mae has turned Guantanamo into a bunch of townhouse units, sold as low income housing to the victims of Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme, to be elegantly named The Cells at Guantanamo...

I used to have good feelings towards Leon, thought he was an above average honest bureaucrat. Sadly how quickly and far the wise have fallen. Another czar that I am losing respect for, is Colorado's own Ken Salazar, head of the Interior Dept.

OK, Ken had a tough row to hoe before him, what with some of the previous employees snorting cocaine off of their desks and having sexual orgies with female "lobbyists" hired by the oil companies. And he didn't handle the oil spill in the Gulf all that well, looks even worse now that reports are coming out saying, gee, if only regulations had been followed the entire oil spill and loss of of life could have been avoided...

His predecessors had neglected to collect the tax money owed to the government from leases made to the oil companies for drilling on Federally owned lands. As explained by the General Accounting Office: "The Interior Department’s management of oil and gas leases and royalties, which are among the largest sources of non-tax revenue to the federal government. One reason this area is at risk is that the department does not have reasonable assurance that all revenues are being collected. Indeed, in 2008, the G.A.O. reported that the Interior Department had not conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the federal oil and gas revenue system in more than 25 years, despite significant changes in the oil and gas industry.


We have also pointed out that royalty collection relied too heavily on company-reported oil and gas production figures. In fiscal years 2006 and 2007 we found that much of the data reported by oil and gas companies appeared erroneous, resulting in millions in uncollected fees. And the proportion of revenues that the government collected for oil and gas produced in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a major study, was lower than for 93 of 104 other owners of such resources..." So Ken was specifically hired to clean up this mess and to start collecting the money that's been owed us for some 25 years. Which he hasn't done, not one bit. Maybe we need to replace his spinal column with some bionic material, so we can program him to become an advocate who would go after the money like a pit bull on Michael Vick. Or tell him that from now on the funding for his staff are to come out of those revenues...


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