Creeps 'n' crooks from the Bush regime keep crawling out of the woodwork: Remember Lurita Doan?

Former GSA adminstrator Lurita Doan

"Washington's special charm is much like Hollywood's: It doesn't matter what they write about you -- or how you performed your role in government -- as long as they spell your name correctly. A fine future as a consultant or at least a newspaper or television pundit awaits you."

-- Al Kamen, in a WaPo "In the Loop" item yesterday,

"Accentuating the positive"

by Ken

At the top of anyone's list of Bush regimistas who used their invaluable experience as a stepping stone to bigger and better things would be our old pal Michael "Heckuva Job, Brownie" Brown, the man who presided over FEMA's spectacular nonresponse to the Katrina disaster. As our pal Al points out, our Brownie "went into the disaster recovery consulting business and is now a radio talk show host quoted frequently in the media on disaster matters," adding: "Well, despite somewhat limited experience in this field -- we're not counting his time as judges and stewards commissioner for the International Arabian Horse Association -- he did spend four years at FEMA."

Now Al has tidings of another of our favoritest regimistas, onetime General Services Administration administrator Lurita Doan, "bounced [according to Al] in 2008 by the White House amid allegations that she tried to award work to a friend and misused her authority for political ends." All indications were, and are, that in her tenure at the helm of GSA she had been unhesitating in adopting Karl Rove's mission to turn the entire executive branch into a propaganda arm of the regime.

Actually, the story turned out to be even stinkier. As I wrote back in May:

So here we were the other day, jumping ugly on poor Lurita Doan as she slinked out of her post as administrator of the General Services Administration--in disgrace, we assumed, for the conversion of the GSA to an arm of Karl Rove's Right-Wing Political Bulldozing Machine and the mounting murmurs of money diversion that took place on her watch.

Now word is that Lurita was made to walk the plank, not for being corrupt, but for not being corrupt enough! Apparently even as the Bush regime's days dwindle, it's never too late for the powers that be to be ramming more of their partisan hacks and cronified Republicrooks into gummint employment. And it seems that Lurita actually stood in the way, and so had to go.

Congress Daily's Dan Friedman reported that he was told by then-Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA), ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and a Doan supporter, that she "rejected a series of White House candidates for the jobs of GSA general counsel and chief acquisition officer." According to Davis, backed up by "GSA officials," "That seems to be the straw that broke that camel's back."

Yesterday Al reported:

A Washington Post investigation of Doan's activity turned up, among other things, a no-bid procurement order she had approved for a friend's firm. This led to a House oversight committee investigation, another by the GSA inspector general and one by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). The U.S. Office of Special Counsel urged President George W. Bush to discipline her "to the fullest extent," including canning her.

So on Tuesday we got an e-mail from a local public relations company.

"Lurita Doan is a former administrator of the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) and former small business owner; she is an expert on the principles of small business and can give a unique background on how government affects it," the note said.

"These include fiscal discipline, good government, leadership, and the execution risks inherent in most government initiatives. Ms. Doan can bring her keen insight to your organization in perhaps a weekly column. Her writings have previously appeared in USA Today, LA Times, Roll Call and others."

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Would you believe our Lurita Doan was forced out of the GSA, not for being too corrupt, but for not being corrupt enough? Welcome to Bushworld!

So here we were the other day, jumping ugly on poor Lurita Doan as she slinked out of her post as administrator of the General Services Administration--in disgrace, we assumed, for the conversion of the GSA to an arm of Karl Rove's Right-Wing Political Bulldozing Machine and the mounting murmurs of money diversion that took place on her watch.

Now word is that Lurita was made to walk the plank, not for being corrupt, but for not being corrupt enough! Apparently even as the Bush regime's days dwindle, it's never too late for the powers that be to be ramming more of their partisan hacks and cronified Republicrooks into gummint employment. And it seems that Lurita actually stood in the way, and so had to go. Congress Daily's Dan Friedman reported yesterday (note the role played by departing "moderate" Republican Rep. Tom Davis):

Doan Done In By Battling White House

General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan was fired Tuesday almost a year after her actions drew heavy criticism from Capitol Hill Democrats, but her ouster was triggered by more recent friction with the White House, officials briefed on the matter said.

According to House Oversight and Government Reform ranking member Tom Davis, the headstrong administrator angered White House officials by refusing to abide by their wishes on several matters, including her recent rejection of suggested political appointees to fill senior-level vacancies at GSA.

"That seems to be the straw that broke that camel's back," said Davis, citing a conversation with White House officials regarding Doan's ouster.

"At the end of the day it was that kind of thing," added Davis, who has been a staunch backer of Doan and who criticized her removal.

According to Davis and GSA officials, Doan rejected a series of White House candidates for the jobs of GSA general counsel and chief acquisition officer. Both posts, while recently filled by political appointees, are held by career civil servants serving in an acting capacity.

A senior House aide said Doan, who joined the agency after success as an entrepreneur and founder of a technology firm, appeared to misstep when she attacked Kenneth Kaiser, chairman of the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency's Integrity Committee and assistant director of the FBI's criminal division.

Doan repeatedly criticized Kaiser after he dismissed whistle-blower complaints against GSA Inspector General Brian Miller, with whom Doan has battled for nearly two years.

In a letter to Kaiser, Doan called the council "a hollow shell . . . that exists only as a fig leaf to provide the illusion of oversight over IG misconduct, but, in fact, its real purpose is to whitewash any wrongdoing, avoid responsible action and ensure a blind eye to IG misconduct," GovExec.com reported last month.

In attacking the council and vowing to continue her feud with Miller, Doan butted heads with OMB Deputy Director Clay Johnson, who is the titular chairman of the council and longtime associate of President Bush, the aide said. Sources said Doan has long been at odds with Johnson and has refused to attend a regular meeting he convenes.

Such battles apparently lost Doan the White House backing that allowed her to survive blistering attacks last year by House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry Waxman, congressional Democrats and others.

The independent Office of Special Counsel, in a report in June, recommended President Bush remove Doan for violating the Hatch Act, which bars use of federal resources for partisan politics. Democrats in the House and Senate called for her resignation.

Though the White House publicly refused to address the attacks and Bush took no action, Doan was privately warned to avoid controversies, sources said.

Davis said Doan's recent clashes with the White House led officials there to conclude that she was not worth keeping on as head of what they consider a "third-tier" agency.

"She's too temperamental," Davis said, summarizing the White House view.

Davis said he had warned Doan unsuccessfully not to fight the White House over the general counsel position.

But late Tuesday afternoon, Doan was summoned to the White House, where she was asked to resign her post, sources said.

The White House and OMB declined to respond to questions Thursday about the reason for Doan's ouster.

Weren't we just talking about the regime rats pushing one another over the side of the sinking U.S.S. Mission Accomplished? As long as we're on that subject, I can't resist taking another look at this cartoon from the great Mike Luckovich:

Bye-bye, Lurita! Life is unfair. Once upon a time, disgracing yourself and your country the way you did could have earned you a Medal of Freedom

Actually, the Bush-regime rats aren't so much deserting
this sinking ship as shoving one another over the side.

Remember the good old days of the first term of the Bush regime, when there seemed to be no malfeasance a regimist could commit that could get him/her fired? By and large, the more egregious your misdeeds, the likelier you were to find Chimpy the Prez draping a Medal of Freedom around your neck. (Personally, I don't think I would want the world's most maladroit human being getting anywhere close to my neck, especially not when he's wielding an object capable of strangulation. But hey, it was probably better than the shit-canning they deserved.)

Well, those were the old days. Now the steady outflow of regime lackeys being frog-marched out of government service in disgrace is coming to resemble a stampede. The misconduct has become so egregious that instead of the usual image of rats deserting a sinking ship, we've got the rats pushing one another over the side of this leaky tub.

Latest ejectee from this squalid swamp: the unspeakable Lurita Doan, who devoted her time as administrator of the General Services Administration to turning the GSA into just another shameless enclave of the Right-Wing Political (and Money-Siphoning) Machine. Here is the Politico's account:

Lurita Doan Finally Forced Out At GSA

By John Bresnahan

Lurita Doan, head of the General Services Administration, was forced to offer her resignation tonight, according to an e-mail she sent out this evening.

Doan was appointed in late May, 2006, becoming the first woman to serve as GSA Administrator. With 12,000 empioyees and a $20 billion annual budget, GSA has responsibilty for overseeing the thousands of building and properties owned by the federal government.

Doan became the subject of congressional scrutiny last year for allegedly using GSA to help Republican lawmakers win re-election. Doan denied the allegation, but her appearance before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee was disastrous. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the panel, called on Doan to resign over the allegations, but Doan refused to do so.

Here is the text of the e-mail that Doan sent out earlier this evening announcing her forced resignation:

"Dear Friends and Colleagues at GSA,

Early this evening I was asked to submit my resignation, and I have just done so. It has been a great privilege to serve with all of you and to serve our nation and a great President.

The past twenty-two months have been filled with accomplishments: together, we have regained our clean audit opinion, restored fiscal discipline, re-tooled our ability to respond to emergencies, rekindled entrepreneurial energies, reduced bureaucratic barriers to small companies to get a GSA Schedule, ignited a building boom at our nation's ports of entries, boldly led the nation in an aggressive telework initiative, and improved employee morale so that we were selected as one of the best places to work in the Federal government.

These accomplishments are made even more enjoyable by the fact that there were lots of people who told us they could never be done.

Best of luck to all of you, it has been a true honor."

As fellow flopperoos Gen. Tommy Franks and Iraq-occupation bungler L. Paul Bremer III look on, former CIA director George Tenet is rewarded for his bumbling by Chimpy the Choker.

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GIANT BUSH REGIME TAXPAYER RIP-OFF UNCOVERED?

A couple weeks ago Peter Welch (D-VT) went ballistic when he caught the Bush Regime in its latest blatant attempt to transfer billions of dollars in taxpayer money to its corrupt campaign contributors and financiers. Since then, Welch and Henry Waxman have been on the move via the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The short version is that the Regime surreptitiously inserted a loophole into plans to protect taxpayers from avaricious contractors like Halliburton, KBR and Blackwater, who are raking in billions as war profiteers.

The Committee wants to get to the bottom of the skullduggery and has informed the Regime that if they don't have the relevant documents by April 4 they will issue a subpoena. They want to know exactly why the loophole was slipped into the plans. "The controversial loophole has irked Democrats and Republicans alike. But it has the support of a trade association that lobbies on behalf of giant global government contractors, including Blackwater USA, KBR Inc., Boeing Co., CACI International Inc. and Lockheed Martin."

Even a proven Bush shill like Attorney General Mukasey says he can't understand why this was done and he has objected. In a letter to Secretary of Defense Gates and a gaggle of Regime operatives and hacks, Waxman and his colleagues say they are "concerned about a proposed change to federal contracting rules that would exempt overseas contracts from a requirement that the contractor detect and prevent fraud and report it to the government."

At a time when the United States is engaged in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, conducting extensive redevelopment programs in both countries, and employing the services of an unprecedented number of private contractors, preventing fraud by contractors overseas should be a high priority. Instead, the exemption for contracts to be performed overseas appears to have been inserted in the rule late in the process and against the wishes of the Department of Justice, which raises serious questions as to why and how such a policy was developed.

On May 23, 2007, the Department of Justice (DOJ) requested that the Federal Acquisition Regulation be amended to “require contractors to establish and maintain internal controls to detect and prevent fraud in their contracts, and that they notify contracting officers without delay whenever they become aware of a contract overpayment or fraud, rather than wait for its discovery by the government.” DOJ believed such a rule was necessary because few government contractors voluntarily disclose suspected instances of fraud. DOJ proposed specific changes to the Federal Acquisition Regulation.

Welch represents Vermont, a frugal state where concern for government waste and fraud is palpable. He didn't mince any words. "Who snuck this in at the eleventh hour and why? No contractor should be given a free ride to defraud taxpayers, at home or abroad." Anyone remember Lurita Doan over at the GSA? She wasn't fired for her breach of government ethics last summer and DWT sources inside an investigatory agency are telling us to expect another set of damaging revelations that could drive Bush's job approval ratings into the single digits, courtesy of Ms. Doan.

The potential proportions of this scandal are causing mainstream conservatives to serve notice on the Bush Regime inner circle that they're on their own on this one.

The Justice Department and the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction have asked the exemption be eliminated before the rule becomes law. Additionally, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has threatened to block the loophole in the federal budget if the administration does not do away with it.

OMB's Office of Federal Procurement Policy has repeatedly declined to comment on the loophole or how it was added to the overall fraud crackdown.

The House inquiry is looking at whether the exemption was added at the request of private firms, or their lobbyists, to escape having to report abuse in U.S. contracts performed abroad.

Meanwhile, as Crooks & Liars points out, the vaunted and much hyped "success" of the Bush-McCain "surge" is a fraud-- and a collapsing fraud at that. Whether venal like Fox or lazy like CNN, the media doesn't want to do the kind of investigative reporting that makes journalism worthwhile, at least not when it comes to the Iraq War.

At Bush Central, the comedy never stops. Coming up next: Tiny George decides to discipline a regime slug for breaking the law. (Just kidding! Ha ha!)

I can see why Howie's all worked up over poor Lurita Alexis Doan, whom he characterizes as "yet another postergirl for Republican corruption." Well, of course, she is that! But the question I think it's important to ask, as the Bush regime continues its transmogrification into a 24/7 comedy outlet, is: But is the bit funny?

At first glance you'd think material like this is made to order for, say, The Daily Show. Then it occurs to you that maybe it's like trying to do a parody of a soap opera. How do you parodize something that is inherently parody?

Still, if I were Jon Stewart, I wouldn't take this sitting down. The damned Bush regime is trying to put him out of business by converting the government into a sequence of comedy bits.

Personally, I thought I'd bust a gut when I read the opening graf of Robert O'Harrow Jr.'s account in this morning's Washington Post ("Bush Is Asked to Discipline GSA Chief in Hatch Act Inquiry"):

The U.S. special counsel has called on President Bush to discipline General Services Administration chief Lurita Alexis Doan "to the fullest extent" for violating the federal Hatch Act when she allegedly asked political appointees how they could "help our candidates" during a January meeting.

Man, I was laughing so hard, I was almost in tears. It's hard to say what's most preposterous about this, but surely the most hilarious joke is Tiny George, the Tiniest George of them all, disciplining anybody.

Oh, I don't doubt that as a budding sociopath the Tiny One tortured way more than his share of small and especially helpless creatures. But when it comes to creatures of the human sort, can anyone imagine that he is anything but the torturee--i.e., the M rather than the S in S/M? It seems to me just a matter of time before some investigation or another turns up the confidential files of one of the personal dominatrix services His Tininess has patronized. I expect we'll find that the role-players he requested most often were:

* the Monster from Outer Space Momma who harangues, belittles, ridicules, and humiliates her oldest child--and also expects him to ease the life pain of being serially humiliated by a philandering, emotionally vacant husband whose DNA tests show that there is actually nothing there.

* the "Mousy Liberrian" who finally gets fed up with her bad, bad boy and warns him that if he doesn't shape up, she's going to have to squoosh his teeny-tiny balls and have them made into refrigerator magnets.

(What I'll be personally most curious to learn is whether the Tiny One had a gender preference for the service professionals who were cast in these roles. There's plenty of precedent here. In their screechingly funny Seven Deadly Sins, didn't Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht cast the Mother as the bass of the all-male quartet that makes up their heroine Anna's family? At the time Barbara Pierce, not yet Bush, was still a wee child.)

I suppose the more serious absurdity, though, is the idea of anyone in the Bush regime punishing anyone else in the regime for breaking the law--in particular some cockamamie law against politicizing government activity. The fundamental principle of this regime is that you get punished for failing to make every action by everyone under the power of the regime an attempt to perpetuate the power of the regime or use those powers for the benefit of friends, cronies, and ideological cohorts of the regime.

Do I hear . . . Medal of Freedom?


CONFIDENTIAL TO LURITA

Just in case, you might want to get the names of some good Washington lawyers--a good one, mind you, not one of those high-priced clowns like Irving "Lewis" Libby saddled himself with. You especially want to steer clear of all those Regents U. "law grads" stumbling around D.C. Unless you're planning to just plead guilty.

You might also want to see if you can get some kind of legal defense fund going. You probably think of yourself as the ultimate team player, but again unless you're cool with the idea of just taking one for the team, you may be spooked to find out just how alone it's possible to feel. (If only you'd had the foresight to get yourself elected to something, rather than just accept appointment to a job for which you were so manifestly and uniquely unqualified. At least then you could be converting your reelection war chest into a defense fund.)


ONE NIT TO PICK: TOO MANY SCOTTS

Confidential to the White House head comedy writer: One thing you may want to watch in your sketches is the pile-up of characters named "Scott." In this story, for example, the special counsel who did the GSA report and wrote the letter to the president is named Scott J. Bloch; the White House political aide who conducted the famous staff briefing exhorting the boys and girls of GSA to do it for the GOP is named J. Scott Jennings; and the White House spokesman who issued the ritual "fuck-off" statement ("It's an internal deliberation, and we don't talk about internal deliberations at the White House") is named Scott Stanzel.

In making up and naming your imaginary characters, there are books of names you could consult. For example, there are many books of the "what shall we name the baby?" genre, filled with men's and women's names. Meanwhile, here are some names other than Scott--all proven comedy gold--you could consider:

Burt (or Bert)
Stan
Lou (or Lew)
Ezekiel
Alberto
John
Henry
Nehemiah