Obama tries to fire an Inspector General for investigating his political allies, then finds out he doesn’t actually have that power when Congress slaps him down.
Somehow, whenever I read about Obama lately I can’t get this out of my head.
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But Bush is the Devil!
Just thought I’d preempt the usual suspects who’ll change the subject away from Obama’s Chicago Way sleaze.
I think there is far less here than meets the eye. Here is some background on the case.
Short version is that the acting US Attorney for the region, a Bush administration appointee, refer Mr. Walpin’s conduct to the Integrity Committee of the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency. Mr. Walprin’s report to the US Attorney on St. HOPE Academy and Kevin Johnson overstated the evidence and omitted important information.
The US Attorney found that while some money had been spent improperly, most of the money was properly spent. As far as I can see, the basic charge Walprin was making is that Johnson sometime used AmeriCorps paid employees to run personal errands for him. This is improper, but Walprin never documented how frequently this took place and the US Attorney found that this was rare and most of the time the AmeriCorps paid employees were doing the tutoring the grant called for. The US Attorney then found out that Walprim had all the same information, but left it out of his report.
The US Attorney declined to file criminal charges, and St. HOPE Academy and Kevin Johnson settle the civil matter by paying back a substantial amount of the grant money.
Well, thanks for the DKos spin, but St Hope won’t be paying back anything because they’re bankrupt, and it’s pretty clear Obama is trying to protect his contributors. It’s extremely rare for a President to try to fire an IG this way.
Of the $400,000 settlement, Johnson personally paid $72,836.50 according to the Sacramento Bee, and that payment has already been made. Also according the Sacramento Bee, St. HOPE made a $125,000 payment April 1, 2009 and their next payment is due in Sept 2009.
I could not find anything in the Sacramento Bee about St. Hope being bankrupt, but that does not mean it is not.
LOL, I love to watch people like mikeca SPIN a story. I mean just IMAGINE if this had been Bush firing a IG for any reason at all. I mean mikeca’s head would have exploded.
I love rank, base, monumental, partisan hypocrisy. It cracks me up. Watching people like mikeca try to spin stories like this is one of the few things that gives me a chuckle as I watch the American dream systematically dismantled.
Let me be a little more direct and literal than CC.
mickeca, it doesn’t matter that Johnson paid back part of the money. It wouldn’t matter if Johnson had paid back all of the money plus admitted guilt. What Obama did was not to simply ignore it but to can the guy who opened a legitimate investigation that produced results against his friend.
Obama is a thug politician. He cleans up nice, but his buses are starting to have trouble climbing over all the bodies he’s thrown under them.
If a Republican had done what Obama did here, the howls of rage in the press and the cries for impeachment in the Congress would be deafening.
But, hey, it’s Obama. Corruption is cool when it’s Obama.
CC: “Obama is a thug politician. He cleans up nice, but his buses are starting to have trouble climbing over all the bodies he’s thrown under them.”
And you claim that Bush drove liberals crazy…
Are we going to have an Obama body count site now like this?
If you read the links I gave above, you will see that your statement is incomplete and misleading.
Mr. Walprin did a lot more than open a legitimate investigation into an Obama supporter. He also wrote a misleading report that omitted important facts and overstated the seriousness of the violation. Mr. Walprin, on his own authority, took the rarely used step of having St. HOPE and Johnson placed on a list of parties suspended from receiving federal funds. Walprin took this action without consulting with the US Attorney and while Johnson was running for mayor of Sacramento. The US Attorney found out about this action from a Walprin press conference. It is a violation of IG ethics to hold press conferences announcing your finding to the press. IG are suppose to submit their findings to the US Attorney. This is especially egregious when the target is a politician currently running for office and the IG’s report is incomplete, sloppy, and does not support the seriousness of its conclusions or the charges leveled in the press conference.
The US Attorney subsequently found that there was insufficient evidence of criminal violation to purse a criminal case, and refered Walprin ’s conduct to an ethics panel.
mikeca: If you could be 1/20 as forgiving and reasonable when a Bush event like this occurred, you might have a shred of credibility.
We’ll see how the ethics investigation turns out, and revisit, OK?
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