“Would you live with ease, Do what you ought, and not what you please.”Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac, 1734
2003: President Bush announces the recess appointment of Clark Ervin to serve as Homeland Security Inspector General. Ervin would expose serious lapses at this critical agency (calling it “a huge, dysfunctional bureaucracy” in a USA Today story). He reported on millions of dollars in wasted spending. One of his reports, about a D.C. awards banquet that cost almost $500,000 (including $1,500 spent on cheese displays alone) received widespread publicity. Another Ervin report showed a surprising number of TSA executives getting cash bonuses ("about 76 percent of the senior [TSA] executives” he said in the USA Today story). Asked in that story to name what was wrong at Homeland Security Mr. Ervin said, “It’s difficult to figure out where to start”. When Ervin’s appointment lapsed President Bush refused to reappoint him, despite Ervin wanting to stay on. Ervin found this strange, telling USA Today that his dismissal “will be an enduring mystery to me”. Ervin had worked for then Governor Bush in Texas, and had worked for the first President Bush as well. Could it be that the president does not want an Inspector General who does his job a little too well? Better to paint a rosy picture for the public than to expose them to the truth.
2006: President Gerry Ford dies today. Shortly after, the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward published excerpts from a Ford interview that Woodward had agreed to keep secret until Ford’s death. The former president was critical of Bush’s Iraq invasion, saying he “very strongly” disagreed with the Bush administration’s reasoning for the war. Ford added that “Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake” when they “put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction”. When no WMDs were found, President Bush would claim that the Iraq invasion served to free the Iraqi people. Ford said, “I can understand the theory of wanting to free people”, but he added, “I just don’t think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security”.
Excerpted from the 2008 Bush Calendar: http://www.PoorGeorgesAlmanac.com/onThisDate.htm
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