Talking Sense

 

Arnold Beichman

 

Arnold Beichman, a Hoover Institution research fellow, is a columnist for The Washington Times. His updated biography Herman Wouk, the Novelist as Social Historian, has just been published.

 

Gift to the GOP

The greatest gift to the Republican Party since the left-liberal Democratic Party nominated George McGovern for president in 1972 has been the choice of Howard Dean as the party’s national chairman and Democratic Party spokesman. Indeed, how lucky can you get?

Richard M. Nixon’s opponents used to ask about him: “Would you buy a used car from this man?” Listening to the ravings and rantings of Howard Dean, M.D., I thought of an updated version: “Would you allow this doctor to take your temperature?” My answer: I would not. Boom Box Dean has ignored the most important warning to doctors, an ancient warning which applies even more so to ambitious politicians: Primum Non Nocere, in English, “First, Do No Harm.”

When Dr. Dean, Vermont’s five-term governor, ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, he began his campaign speeches with these words: “You don’t know me.” And as it turned out, Democratic voters nationally not only didn’t know him, they didn’t want to know him.

On many American college campuses, there is a period in the fall semester called Fraternity Rush Week when prospective members are invited to visit fraternity houses for a look-see. Antisocial members are hidden away in the fraternity house basement so as not to discourage prospective rushees.

Instead of hiding Boom Box Dean in the basement before the next election, Democrats, blessed with a fine suicidal instinct, handed the Republican Party a gift: they chose Dr. Dean as its chairman and fund-raiser. At a time when as partisan a Democrat as Hillary Clinton, dreaming of 2008, has piped down, hoping thus to persuade the electorate she is a moderate, Boom Box Dean comes along and fouls up her campaign.

To put it simply: While the Republican Party today controls all national levels of government: House, Senate, White House, Supreme Court, the one political “institution” they don’t control, fortunately, is Dr. Dean. And why should they want to control him? Democrats like John Edwards know and reputedly have said that with Boom Box Dean at the pilot’s wheel, they are headed for rocky reefs and down to the vasty deeps.

But Boom Box Dean goes right on claiming “people want us to fight. We are here to fight.” That’s not how other Democrats see it. The Associated Press reported June 11 that Donna Brazile, A1 Gore’s campaign manager, whose political past includes being fired during the Michael Dukakis’ presidential bid against George Bush 41, was 100 percent behind Dr. Dean, which figures since she is another Boom Box. Or is she?

Ms. Brazile said:

Privately, people have said they don’t want Howard Dean to become the story because we have more important issues to talk about. But publicly, we will continue to give Howard Dean our strong support.

Mrs. Clinton better clean up this mess if she can, or she won’t have much of a party to support her in 2008.

She might benefit from remembering that in the 1945 British elections, a Howard Dean precursor, Harold Laski, a left-wing pro-Soviet intellectual who was doing a character assassination job on Winston Churchill, was told by Clement Attlee, Labor Party leader and future prime minister: “A period of silence from you would be welcome.”

Waste, Fraud and Personal Use

Would you believe skilled, very professional auditors cannot account for $25 billion in taxpayer money spent by persons unknown, somewhere unknown for unknown items?

You will find this unsolved mystery in the Treasury Department’s 2003 Financial Report of the United States Government in a section titled “Unreconciled Transactions Affecting the Change in Net Position.” The Justice Department could have been funded an entire year with this $25 billion.

In a Heritage Foundation report, Brian M. Riedl, a Heritage fellow, came up with revelations of waste, fraud and abuse that should shock and startle even the most hardened challenger of government expenditure practices. To express an obvious truth, a private corporation run like the federal government would be seeking bankruptcy protection. The Heritage Foundation should be congratulated for this study, one Congress should have done but never would.

Here are examples of government waste I found almost incredible:

(1) Purchased and unused airline tickets, totaling $100 million. Between 1997 and 2003, according to an audit, the Defense Department bought and then did not use about 270,000 commercial airline tickets. These were fully refundable tickets, but the Pentagon never exercised that privilege on behalf of American taxpayers.

(2) Between 2001 and 2002 auditors found 27,000 transactions in which--you won’t believe this--the Pentagon paid twice for the same ticket. The department would purchase the ticket directly and then inexplicably reimburse the employee for the ticket cost. One employee put in a claim for seven nonexistent airline tickets and professed not to have noticed $9,700 was deposited to his bank account. Another example of your tax dollars at work.

(3) A supposed money-saver--giving 55,000 Agriculture Department employees credit cards to acquire basic supplies and avoid a lengthy procurement process--became a glorious opportunity for some employees to buy bebop concert tickets, tattoos, lingerie, bartender school tuition, car payments and cash advances. Cost to taxpayers: $5.8 million. A private-sector employee who took advantage of a company credit card would be fired. In the federal bureaucracy, he is promoted.

(4) Credit card abuse at the Defense Department over an l8-month period included entertainment admissions, covering gambling debts, pleasure cruises and--really, this is too much--$73,950 for exotic dance clubs and prostitutes.

(5) In 2002, the Education Department received an application to certify the student loan participation of the Y’Hica Institute in London. The department approved the application and soon disbursed $55,000 in student loan applications. All the documents were faked. It was a sting operation set up by congressional investigators to test Education Department verification procedures.

(6) Medicare wastes more money than any other federal program. It pays up to eightfold what other federal agencies pay for the same drugs and medical supplies. Medicare paid, for example, $8.26 per liter for saline solution compared to $1.02 by the Veterans Administration for the same product. Medicare also overpays for drugs. The Heritage study shows Medicare reform could save taxpayers and beneficiaries between $20 billion and $30 billion annually without benefit reductions.

(7) One of the worst offenders against the American taxpayer is the Army Corps of Engineers, which spends $5 billion annually in dam construction and other projects. The Army Corps, says the Heritage study, “has repeatedly been accused of deliberately manipulating its economic studies to justify unworthy projects.”

In an era of trillion dollars budgets, you would think Congress would try to stop to profligate spending, no?     *

“The reality is, if we tell the truth, we only have to tell the truth once. If you lie, you have to keep lying forever.” –Rabbi Wayne Dosick