The Anti-Noise Machine

[Octafish]

113. That's why shining a noise generator at the press is SO troubling.

Keeping what is said to the rich people who benefit so much from government action secret is undemocratic. Since we don't know what was said, we can't tell if there's anything criminal to worry about.

Here's why I think that there may be something to think about:

The Clintons Have Not Changed: The Clintonian War on the IGs

By William K. Black
February 23, 2016 Bloomington, MN

Secretary Hillary Clinton is asking Democratic voters to believe that she has experienced a “Road to Damascus” conversion from her roots as a leader of the “New Democrats” – the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party. When exactly this conversion occurred is never stated, but an interesting fact has emerged that demonstrates it did not occur during her service as the Secretary of State. A Wall Street Journal story provides the key facts, but none of the analysis.

Newly released emails indicate that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her top staff were involved in the selection process for the State Department’s internal watchdog, a position that ultimately went unfilled throughout her four-year tenure.

The WSJ’s angle is that such involvement in the selection of the Inspector General (IG) is a threat to the IG’s vital independence. True, and also true as the story notes that Hillary was far from rare as an agency or department head in seeking to select behind the scenes the supposedly independent IGs.

The function of the IG is to “speak truth to power.” Naturally, “power” hates IGs with a purple passion. Government leaders are most likely to hate having its abuses made public by IG when the government leader is secretly acting in concert with immensely powerful private leaders for their mutual benefit at the expense of the public.

What the WSJ missed is that the Clinton’s, for decades, have sought to destroy the independence and effectiveness of the IGs precisely because of the threat that they pose of blowing the whistle on these abuses. The Obama administration, of course, is famous for its prosecutions of those who blow the whistle on such abuses. The real story is not that Hillary attempted to select a lap dog as IG – the real story is that for her entire tenure as Secretary, four years, she left unfilled the leadership position of the only institution in the State Department dedicated to maintaining integrity and preventing the abuse of public power to aid cronies. That aid, of course, comes with the clear expectation that the cronies will make the head of the State Department wealthy as soon as she or he steps down. There is no possible defense for that, and it does not happen accidentally. The primary blame goes to President Obama, who made no nomination for the position for the entire four years. It wasn’t Republican intransigence that explains this scandal.

CONTINUED...

http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2016/03/clintons-not-changed-clintonian-war-igs.html#more-10101

Bill Black is one of "those" economists who won't play ball with the money crowd. Why? He does things in the open. Coincidentally, of course.