(Illustration found here).
Just when you figured Decider George’s blundering for near-eight years was all in the big stuff — Iraq, Katrina, the economy — think once, and maybe even think twice more.
According to Raw Story this morning, the Center for Public Integrity (CPI), a non-profit investigative journalism group which recently “set out to document just how off-track things have gone,” assigning thirteen reporters to document the worst failures of the last eight years.
In a snapshot: For example, the country might want to do something about its massive backlogs in various essential government functions — including 730,000 backlogged patent applications, 760,000 Social Security disability claims, and 806,000 Veterans Affairs disability claims.
The nation might also resolve to avoid a recurrence of the recent losses of hundreds of laptops containing sensitive law enforcement information, or to rethink the decision to keep plowing $12.5 billion into a joint civilian-military weather satellite system that is still incomplete and may leave gaps in crucial climate monitoring as older satellites fail.
And from usnews.com:
- Governmental dysfunction became endemic during the Bush administration and touched such areas as education, energy, justice, and the military…
The investigative group finds more than 125 examples of government breakdown, ranging from a NASA inspector general who allegedly blocked multiple investigations to a cabinet secretary who “encouraged his staff to consider political affiliation when awarding contracts.”
…
“Many of the failings are tied to Bush appointees who appear to have been selected primarily on the basis of ideology and loyalty, rather than competence. Every administration has its share of political cronies, of course, but the examples of the past eight years seem especially stark.”
A good blog account of the CPI report can be found here and a lengthy examination at the Washington Post from yesterday.
The legacy tour Decider George is currently running will lose energy by year’s end.
History judges on the now nowadays and this has been the worse US governmental work since…since… since I don’t know when…