Optics

By Jim Killebrew

[July 11, 2014]  Each week we see the Administration making its way through issues, front-page stories, news worthy items and sometimes scandals. This week has been no different. Since this is a Friday edition we have the perspective to look back over the week and examine a few featured items that bubbled up. This week it was the issue on the Southwestern border of the United States and the optics of some of the Presidential activities.

More money needed

The President is asking Congress for almost four billion dollars to deal with the influx of unaccompanied children and mothers and children arriving in massive waves on the Southwest border of the United States. Keep in mind we don’t have the money to enforce the laws regarding the border; nor do we have the money to effectively treat the veterans who should be receiving services through the federal Veterans Administration Hospital system. But the President wants to give Homeland Security and other federal bureaucracies a couple of billion dollars with likely little or no accountability for the spending of that money.

Keep in mind that bureaucracies are like galaxies in the universe: They are relatively independent of each other, yet interrelated; they are fighting for independent survival and constantly growing, but competing for the same space or resources as all the others; and they are in the process of protecting their own, especially those in the hierarchy that are closer to the top or at the center. Once formed the bureaucracy must consume resources just for survival; and the larger it grows the more resources it needs.
 

This President has always been about redistribution. Remember when he first entered office the multiple billions of dollars he used for the stimulus? There was never any accountability for that money; many think it was simply a slush fund used to buy votes. From the time he entered office he has never stopped campaigning. Remember, never let a crisis go to waste; with each new crisis it produces a boatload of cash.

The thing we must remember, however, is the bureaucracy does not produce any product to generate independent resources; it only takes from those who do produce and redistributes those resources to those who did not produce it. So when the government bureaucracy uses money to focus on a crisis situation or to stimulate economic growth, much of that will be used to maintain or grow the bureaucracy.

VA Hearings

Beginning the evening of 7/8/2014 a Congressional Hearing on the Veterans Administration Hospital scandal took testimony. Apparently the VA Director had wanted to silence the “whistleblowers” by ordering them to be quiet and not to speak to anyone about the inside workings of the VA system. Essentially he wanted the people to wait for the talking points to filter through the administrative structure so they could be consistent with the information they shared with the public. We have heard for a long time about the “Culture of Corruption” and the shoddy services, including the long waits for the service from the VA system. As the investigation proceeds perhaps we will hear about some of the inside workings of how the system has worked during the past few years. Let’s just hope the Administration has not teamed the VA up with the IRS as mentors to teach the proper way of losing emails that might be needed in the VA investigation. Given the track record we have seen in a long string of scandals; don’t be surprised if there is not another one coming to be exposed through these hearings.

Optics

We talk about optics created if the President visits one of the detention centers in South Texas where the unaccompanied children are being held as they enter illegally into the United States via a long trek from Central America through Mexico; or perhaps the optics of the President playing pool in a bar in Colorado with one of his followers offering him a “hit” on a “joint” while the President roars in laughter at the idea of taking a puff; while at the same time the Middle East is waging war in multiple places.

Optics must seem important to Senator Mark Udall of Colorado as well. While the President is on a trip to Colorado for the purpose of attending a fundraiser for the Senator, the Senator chose not to attend so as not to be seen with the President who is falling in the approval polls. Other democrats who are trying to be re-elected to their respective seats in Congress are likewise widening space between themselves and the President’s falling popularity.

If the President and his supporting staff are so worried about the optics of a situation or issue, why is it they don’t seem to think of the optics of dozens of veterans dying because they are on waiting lists for medical services in the Veterans Administration Hospitals? Why would they not think of the optics when the President’s IRS Director stammers and makes excuses about his agency losing two years of emails connected to Lois Learner and six other of her employees related to a Congressional investigation into criminal activity? Finally, does the President consider optics when a Congressional member from his own party was critical of his refusing to visit the Texas/Mexico border but instead played pool in a bar in Colorado; and was told by the Party leaders to “Stand down?”

[By JIM KILLEBREW]