Even Moreso (4.00 / 4)

As Jed L noted at DKos "Out with the old, in with the new":

But...it turns out despite throwing a tantrum, W-crew's outrage was way overdone. The General Services Administration reported it was much ado about nothing:

According to the terse GSA statement that formed the basis of Ungar's conclusion, "the condition of the real property was consistent with what we would expect to encounter when tenants vacate office space after an extended occupancy."

Republicans threw a fit, and ordered a GAO investigation that ultimately cost more than $100,000 and interviewed no less than 150 separate individuals.

What'd the investigation find? Turns out, not much: overall, there was about $15,000 in damage, typical for a transfer of office space involving about one thousand people. (Think about it as $15 per person.)

So, the damage done--typical of your average situation, with no evidence of anything more than random pranks: $15,000.  The GOP investigation--a deliberate, partisan-fueled waste of taxpayer money in an attempt to score political points against an Administration no longer in office--cost an order of magnitude more: $100,000.

But that's not all, Jed notes:

As for pranks, there were a few -- about two dozen, though they were so minor that the GAO didn't bother to detail them. To give you an idea of just how small the things were, Alberto Gonzales freaked out that the GAO had failed to consider examples such as these:

In a letter to the GAO comptroller, White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales criticized the report for minimizing the number of pranks-which the GAO put at two dozen-and for failing to detail them. Notes in desks or affixed to filing cabinets allegedly left by Clinton staffers reading "GET OUT," "Hail to the thief" and "W happens" were shown to investigators but were not included in the report, the letter said. Other pranks included stickers in the West Wing depicting President Bush as a chimpanzee and a photograph in an Executive Office Building safe showing a blank election ballot with the word "chad" spelled out in punch holes.

Keep in mind those are merely the allegations made by Alberto Gonzales, so let's not make the mistake of assuming that they actually happened. But even if they had happened, just ponder for a moment that Gonzales wrote his whiny letter in June, 2002, about nine months after 9/11.

You'd think he'd have had better things to do than flog a non-scandal about whether or not somebody left a picture of Bush as a chimp.

This one incident contains within it, in miniature, everything you need to know about the Bush Administration.  The lies, the witch-hunts, the waste of government resources, the perversion of public institutions for partisan gain, and the totally misplaced priorities that leave the most vital and basic functions of government lying around as mere afterthoughts... of people who don't have very much thought going on in the first place.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

---

by: Paul Rosenberg @ Sat Jan 17, 2009 at 18:20:24 PM UTC

And we all know (0.00 / 0)

that Clinton did not, and Obama will not, engage in "lies, witch-hunts, waste of government resources, perversion of public institutions for partisan gain", leading to "the totally misplaced priorities that leave the most vital and basic functions of government lying around as mere afterthoughts...".  No, of course that will never happen :-P

It is dangerous for a national candidate to say things that people might remember.
 - Eugene McCarthy

---

by: miketty @ Mon Jan 19, 2009 at 09:59:40 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Don't let the facts... (0.00 / 0)

get in the way of a perfectly good story.

---

by: sammy1 @ Sat Jan 17, 2009 at 21:15:29 PM UTC