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Sunday, January 09, 2005

Something To Believe In

It looks as though the Bush Administration has a problem following the law. This is a big surprise to all of us, I am sure. What could they have possibly done? Well, to start the story off, according to USA TODAY it appears that they have paid Armstrong Williams, a prominent black pundit, $240,000 to help them gain support amongst black families for their education reform law.

The legality of this is apparently in question. But, what many think makes this illegal is that it is supposedly prohibited for the US government to use taxpayer dollars to produce propaganda. Now, they didn't actually produce any of the programs that this guy was on, but they, through the contract(upon the signing of which he received $240,000), required him:"to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts," and to interview Education Secretary Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that aired during the show in 2004. He also used his contacts in the black media to help promote this "thing", and got Rod Paige two more interviews on another show.

Why did he do it? His response is simple:"I wanted to do it because it's something I believe in."

One more thing: he never once mentioned to his audience that he had been paid to promote the program. What an ass blaster!!

Now, the story above wasn't the only instance of questionable behavior by the Administration in this area. As you will see below, this type of behavior - of putting another face on their message to deceive it's audience of the message's origin - is very common with them. And this time it has been deemed IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW.

New York Times
Jan. 6 - The Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, said on Thursday that the Bush administration violated federal law by producing and distributing television news segments about the effects of drug use among young people.

The videos were declared to "constitute covert propaganda" because they appear to be from an INDEPENDENT news source - and are not clearly marked as being produced by the US government. Listed in the same New York Times story, we have one more instance of unlawful action:

In May the office found that the Bush administration had violated the same law by producing television news segments that portrayed the new Medicare law as a boon to the elderly.


So, what have we learned? That it's OK when you are the President to disregard the Law.

Well, he is the "President of everybody". Fuckin' Idiot!!