Letter 2 America for June 7, 2013

Dear America,

I happened upon C-Span late last night as I searched for something to watch, and there, as usual lately, was the House Oversight Committee inquiring of some poor IRS supervisor who had been involved in the decision making for a conference that is in the news lately.  The conference was in Anaheim, California even though it was for 2600 supervisors from around the country.  It was for a legitimate purpose it seems, but it cost $4.1 million...better than $1,500 a head.  Of course the Republicans on the committee are trying to spin this into some partisan scandal--after all, the current president is a democrat and the employee of 32 years is his responsibility by some Republican axiom--but that isn't what caught my interest last night.  You probably saw the film of IRS personnel dancing on the news, especially if you watch Fox, but try as they would to make that look like high times, it turned out to be just an exercise directed at team work or some such thing.  And the rooms they stayed in were $135 per night, at least for the witness testifying, and they seemed to want to make that an issue, but the question of how much congressmen's rooms cost when they go on "fact finding missions" is bound to come up, and I have no doubt that the IRS got a very good deal by comparison; I do, however, doubt that Darrell Issa stays at the Motel 8 when he travels on business.  Once again, the Republicans are trying to make a big one out of a little one, though the price of this conference doesn't seem so outlandish to me, so the point of interest was for me wasn't the issue itself.  It was the involvement of the usual suspects.

I had never seen Jason Chaffetz before, but I did see him last night.  What is interesting about him is the first and last time I had heard his name.  You may remember the testimony on Benghazi given before the committee by a disgruntled State Department employee named Greg Hicks.  He was billed as some kind of whistle blower, but his testimony turned out to be more about the failure of the military to respond to the assault on the Benghazi mission by radicals and his personal displeasure about the statements of Susan Rice about the reasons for the attack.  We all know by now that the attack was not a function of the Cairo protest over an anti-Muslim film as Rice erroneously said it was on Meet the Press and other Sunday talk shows, but was rather an enterprise of the local Al Qaeda affiliate, and we also know that the Republicans have failed to roil up any frenzy over the CIA's mistake in reporting that for a few days...especially since the Republicans have failed to find any significance to the misbelief involved and their attempts to roil up anti-Democrat sentiment have fallen flat.  The American public has largely had Hillary Clinton's reaction...what difference does it make?  But you may also recall that they tried to make something of the fact that his superiors told Mr. Hicks not to meet with Congressman Chaffetz without the presence of a State Department lawyer.  At first they wanted to make it into an attempt to silence Hicks, but even he said that he later did meet with some committee without a lawyer because security issues were implicated and the lawyer didn't have security clearance.  And as to Chaffetz, even Hicks, who was obviously trying to precipitate pressure to neutralize the dissatisfaction of his State Department superiors with his performance during the crisis, had to admit that no one told him he couldn't meet with Chaffetz; they just said he had to have a lawyer present.  The reason for the lawyer was sheer speculation, but it seemed logical to believe that the State Department wanted to be aware of everything said so as to avoid attempts to twist Hicks' words...a reasonable precaution, but I didn't know what had precipitated it until I saw Chaffetz in action last night.

He is one of those guys in congress who was probably a prosecutor or a personal injury defense lawyer before he got himself promoted to the national stage.  The truth isn't what is important to those guys.  All they want is to win the argument, even if the only way they can do it is to prevent the opposing voice from being heard.  That was Chaffetz's strategy with Mr. Fink, the IRS supervisor he was upbraiding at the committee hearing yesterday.  He would ask a question like this: "When did you decide that something was wrong with the conference in Anaheim?"  Fink would look at him with a combination of dismay and confusion, and then, before he could give an answer, Chaffetz would ask the same question in a different form: "Were you aware of the cost of the conference?"  And before Fink could answer that question, the next one, also laced with Chaffetz's highly indignant tone and expression, would be let fly.  And now I know why the State Department wanted a competent witness with Hicks when he met with Chaffetz after Benghazi.  This guy doesn't care about the truth or what happened.  He is a political hack looking for a partisan advantage so that he can get reelected.  This is a man without scruples who pretends that butter wouldn't melt in his mouth...a prerequisite for election to congress as a Republican these days.  If it weren't so dangerous in that there are many Fox News watchers who buy that kind of stuff, it would be laughable.  Chaffetz is an amateur witch hunter, and he is becoming a Republican star along with that McCarthy epigone from the Texas Tea Party in The Senate.

I'd love to say that I can't wait for the 2014 elections so that these guys can be purged from both houses of congress, but I can't help remembering the last mid-term elections in 2010.  Mitch McConnell and John Boehner made gains, not losses, and we wound up with a paralyzed congress for the past three years, soon to be four.  It all makes me wonder who was right.  Was it whoever said that no one ever went broke underestimating the American public or was it Alexander Hamilton who thought that The Senate was necessary because it would prevent the popular majority from having its way...or was it both of them.

Your friend,

Mike