Czar Crazy
My latest post is up at the American Issues Project. In it, I take on the subject of the Presidential obsession with czars and note that when Robert Byrd writes a concerned letter to a Democratic President, things aren’t good at all. Here’s an excerpt:
By now I’m sure you’ve heard that the White House is accumulating czars the way a fuzzy sweater collects cat hairs. The Taxpayers for Common Sense organization counted 31 as of the beginning of June, Fox News has the count at “almost three dozen”. At best, since none of the czars carry the actual title of czar, we don’t know exactly how many there are. What we do know is that they oversee such pressing government concerns as health care to the Great Lakes to the country of Sudan (putting the remaining six or so residents of Darfur at east, no doubt). Most, if not all the czars, operate outside the department(s) they oversee and answer directly to the President. Energy and Climate Czar Carol Browner seems to have taken her relative freedom from the constraints of accountability to heart and has decided to operate under a strict “don’t write anything down” policy. My guess is, as a relatively observant veteran bureaucrat, she’s realized that if you never write anything down, you can’t be called on it when your memory conveniently strays from what actually happened.
Hey, who knows? Perhaps the President’s real economic stimulus plan is to eventually make us all czars in his administration!
Other Posts of Interest:
Category: President Barack Obama, The Rise of the Nanny State
