San Diego: Poster City/Child for Republican Competence?
By Lee Russ
Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 08:42 PM
San Diego, the city which was literally run aground by its Republican Mayor and several other officials who underfunded the city's pensions and kind of forgot to be honest about it when reporting the financial details to the public, rating agencies, etc. San Diego, central to the Southern California fiefdoms of corrupt Republican legislators like Duke Cunningham, Jerry Lewis, and a cast of...others. San Diego, city who's Republican Party, according to Raw Story, made a software pirate its Chairman.
This episode appears to simply be a case of gross incompetence, which is a step up from gross corruption. As Raw Story asks, how hard would it have been for the San Diego GOP to do some minimal backkground checking on this person before putting him in charge of the whole damn local party? All the necessary information was publicly available.I'm not going to belabor the details here--you can check out the link to Raw Story for that. I simply want to ask what the hell is wrong with the Republican Party? Have the shallow, dishonest "philosophies" voiced first by Ronald Reagan then by the endless stream of Reagan wannabes so corrupted the judgment and perception of the party as a whole that its members are incapable of seeing sleaze where sleaze is obvious, of smelling rot where rot pervades the entire substance, of recognizing shysters even when they wear nametags identifying themselves as such?
The only remotely good thing you can say about the current San Diego joke is that the GOP Chair, one "Tony Krvaric," is an immigrant who first entered the US under an H1B visa. Which I guess proves that the Republicans aren't anti-all immigrants. They're apparently perfectly willing to make exceptions for the ones who look like 21st century Republicans. You know, like the "energy traders" from Enron who joked about squeezing the life out of old and poor people on heir way to getting fat paychecks from that corrupt company. Or the myriad financial investment types who came up with the idea of writing absurdly risky mortgages, then packaging them as securities to be sold as good, solid investments.
Corruption and incompetence. Who said the GOP was a one-note party?
Comments
Corruption and incompetence. Who said the GOP was a one-note party?
In many instances the so-called "incompetence" of the GOPher/lemming party is pre-planned much like the planned obsolecense of many manufactured products.
"Designed to FAIL" would be another way of putting that and then when caught in their perfidy they merely say that it was down to their inability to see the obvious. These people are not incompetent in the standard definition of that word they are simply so corrupt that they think they can use incompetence and ignorance as an excuse later on if ever dragged into a court of law.
Spud calls it the "Oh, Dopey me" defense.
"No one could have imagined"
Etc.
Or the myriad financial investment types who came up with the idea of writing absurdly risky mortgages, then packaging them as securities to be sold as good, solid investments.
There's a good bad example right there.
These are financial professionals.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the fact that loaning high risk individuals full price on a house mortgage (in some cases up to 120% of the value of the home to be purchased) replete with teaser rates destined to become unsupportable w/i a couple of years is a pretty bad move that's designed to FAIL massively.
And FAIL it has.
That sed, the folks making and approving the loans all got paid big time and all the way up the chain of corruption big assed bonuses were handed out to reward this so-called incompetence. Even when the other shoe dropped wot was the down side? Some of the worst and most responsible corporate criminals got fired but got to keep their massive golden parachute payouts in the process.
Gosh, I'll never do THAT agin!/snark> they said.
A massive, multi-billion dollar tax payer funded crutch was then purchased fer the benefit of Big Biz while folks are being chucked out in the streets.
That is, essentially, the problem these days, in a nutshell.
Government underwrites risks and pays R&D funding fer BigBiz but the profits are privitised thus making the corporate world more powerful and the government weaker every time one of these incidents happens.
Corporate over-influence is not a new concept to the Amreican power structure. Indeed it's been around longer than anyone reading these words has been alive. That sed, they playing field has continued to tilt further and further away from level, year after year.
This cannot continue indefinitely.
The San Diego Zoo of crass corporate corruption and negligable penalties is merely a microcosm of a much larger problem.
Ben Franklin once sed...
"He will cheat without scruple, who can without fear"
These folks have nothing to fear and everything to gain.
Meanwhile, the corporate media, in the main, reports some of the particulars without really bothering to inform the populace of the massive pattern that recurs time and time again.
And so it goes.
Be Well.