{"id":8330,"date":"2006-08-30T09:10:22","date_gmt":"2006-08-30T13:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8330.html"},"modified":"2006-08-30T09:10:22","modified_gmt":"2006-08-30T13:10:22","slug":"the-hackiest-hack-of-all-the-hacks-that-ever-hacked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-hackiest-hack-of-all-the-hacks-that-ever-hacked\/","title":{"rendered":"The hackiest hack of all the hacks that ever hacked"},"content":{"rendered":"

And I thought [tag]Ken[\/tag] Tomlinson’s partisan<\/a>, ideological<\/a>, and generally ridiculous<\/a> work as Bush’s chairman of the [tag]Corporation for Public Broadcasting[\/tag] was bad before. As it turns out, it was even worse than I realized<\/a>.<\/p>\n

State Department investigators have found that the head of the agency overseeing most government broadcasts to foreign countries has used his office to run a “horse racing operation” and that he improperly put a friend on the payroll, according to a summary of a report made public on Tuesday by a Democratic lawmaker.<\/p>\n

The report said that the official, Kenneth Y. [tag]Tomlinson[\/tag], had repeatedly used government employees to perform personal errands and that he billed the government for more days of work than the rules permit.<\/p>\n

The summary of the report, prepared by the State Department inspector general, said the United States attorney’s office here had been given the report and decided not to conduct a criminal inquiry. The summary said the Justice Department was pursuing a civil inquiry focusing on the contract for Mr. Tomlinson’s friend.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is actually the second<\/i> instance of Tomlinson getting caught breaking the law. Last November, we learned<\/a> that he violated the Federal Broadcasting Act, which prohibits the use of “political tests” in employment.<\/p>\n

We’re dealing with a man who has lied, schemed, and politicized his way through nearly three years of government service. But let’s not forget one key detail: he’s still working in the administration, in a key diplomatic post.
\n
\nNearly a year ago, Tomlinson resigned<\/a> from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, after a series of amateurish scandals. Yet, despite all of his humiliating hackery at the [tag]CPB[\/tag], [tag]Karl Rove[\/tag] also made Tomlinson the head of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, an independent government commission that oversees the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe\/Radio Free Liberty, and Radio Sawa and its sister TV network, Alhurra — making Tomlinson a key person in America’s international diplomacy.<\/p>\n

As Franklin Foer explained in a very good TNR piece<\/a> a year ago, Tomlinson has run the [tag]BBG[\/tag] just as he ran the CPB, “purging the bureaucracy of political enemies, zealously rooting out perceived ‘liberal bias,’ and generally politicizing institutions that have resisted ideological intrusions for decades.”<\/p>\n

And now he’s been caught, again, misusing government resources and violating government personnel policies. How long will the White House stand by this clown?<\/p>\n

As Nico noted<\/a>, Reps. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) and Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) and Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) wrote [tag]Bush[\/tag], urging him to immediately remove Tomlinson from his position. Given what we know, it seems like the least he could do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And I thought [tag]Ken[\/tag] Tomlinson’s partisan, ideological, and generally ridiculous work as Bush’s chairman of the [tag]Corporation for Public Broadcasting[\/tag] was bad before. As it turns out, it was even worse than I realized. State Department investigators have found that the head of the agency overseeing most government broadcasts to foreign countries has used his […]<\/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-8330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8330","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=8330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8330\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}