{"id":11010,"date":"2007-06-04T14:00:07","date_gmt":"2007-06-04T18:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/11010.html"},"modified":"2007-06-04T14:00:07","modified_gmt":"2007-06-04T18:00:07","slug":"what-is-bob-novak-talking-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/what-is-bob-novak-talking-about\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Bob Novak talking about?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Obviously, the notion that a person is innocent until proven guilty is a bedrock principle. But when it comes to General Services Administration chief Lurita Alexis Doan and alleged Hatch Act violations, she looks about as guilty as a political figure can.<\/p>\n

This has always been a second-tier Bush administration scandal, but it’s still highly entertaining. In January, Karl Rove’s office conducted a partisan political presentation for GSA higher-ups, after which Doan asked GSA political appointees how they could “help ‘our candidates'” in the 2008 elections. After several credible GSA employees came forward to report this, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee called Doan to testify about politicizing her non-partisan government agency.<\/p>\n

It was a disaster<\/a>. GSA employees were apparently shown a series of slides detailing which seats Karl Rove considers “vulnerable” or “targets,” and the Republicans’ chances of winning the seats. Doan said it was “a team-building meeting.” A lawmaker on the committee asked, “This was a partisan political briefing; it occurred on GSA property, during work hours, and it had nothing to do with the GSA mission. You identified ‘team building’ as one of the purposes of this meeting. Can you explain to the taxpayers of this country how holding this partisan political briefing helped with team-building?” Doan couldn’t.<\/p>\n

The Hatch Act explicitly prohibits partisan campaign activities on federal property and Doan’s GSA obviously violated it. (After the hearing, Doan became so paranoid, she told an aide to take her water glass with her, because she didn’t want anyone to “have any fingerprints.”)<\/p>\n

And as far as Bob Novak is concerned<\/a>, the real problem is that Republicans refuse to rally to Doan’s defense. Seriously.<\/p>\n

A year ago Lurita Alexis Doan, an innovative African American entrepreneur from Northern Virginia, took a big government job: chief executive of the General Services Administration (GSA). After 12 months she is on the ropes. She is the victim of a fiercely partisan Democratic congressman, an obscure government official trying to vindicate himself and a lame-duck Republican White House unwilling to protect her.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even by Novak standards, this is hilarious.
\n
\nNovak complains that Doan is accused of “violating the 68-year-old Hatch Act.” One rarely sees reporters list the age<\/i> of a law — as if it’s relevant. Perhaps Bush administration officials should only follow the newer laws? Are 68-year-old laws somehow less important than the recently-passed ones?<\/p>\n

With the GSA’s 13,000 employees and $56 billion in annual contracts (to construct and maintain federal buildings), Doan was naive in thinking it enough to institute businesslike procedures. “Ever since I made the decision to restore fiscal discipline to all divisions within GSA,” she has said, “I have had to face a series of personal attacks and charges.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She politicized her agency, misled lawmakers about her conduct under oath, and got caught. This isn’t about “restoring fiscal discipline.”<\/p>\n

Doan was taken by surprise that day to find Waxman concentrating instead on a Jan. 26 political briefing about the 2006 elections by Scott Jennings, deputy White House political director, to 30 GSA political appointees — including Administrator Doan. Such briefings were delivered by Jennings throughout the federal government and are not viewed by the White House as violating the 1939 Hatch Act.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

First, there’s that age of the law again. Second, Novak argues, without a hint of humor, that the White House doesn’t believe its own partisan political briefings constituted partisan political briefings. In other words, the Bush gang has looked at its own conduct, and concluded that they’re doing everything right. Convinced?<\/p>\n

[T]he Jan. 26 meeting targeted no candidate for support, solicited no GSA employee for political activity and resulted in no follow-up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The meeting targeted dozens<\/i> of candidates for support and prompted the administrator for the GSA to ask all<\/i> of her top employees that they could “help ‘our candidates'” in the 2008 elections. There wasn’t follow-up because her staffers complained and an investigation began.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the Office of Special Counsel, headed by a Bush partisan, concluded that Doan violated the Hatch Act. It seems pretty straightforward — to everyone except Novak.<\/p>\n

I don’t expect much from Novak, but this column is truly an embarrassment. I know that columnists must occasionally struggle for content, but there had to be something else to write about. This just makes him look ridiculous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Obviously, the notion that a person is innocent until proven guilty is a bedrock principle. But when it comes to General Services Administration chief Lurita Alexis Doan and alleged Hatch Act violations, she looks about as guilty as a political figure can. This has always been a second-tier Bush administration scandal, but it’s still highly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11010\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}