"Government" is meaningless without impartial oversight…always and everywhere.

In an unusually candid look at how meaningless "government" anywhere can be when there is no real and impartial oversight of the "governors" tonight’s New York Times is priceless.  We have a solid reinforcement of the various levels of deceit and manipulation that the rich, powerful and/or influential exercise over all citizens simply by reason of their personal and organizational connection to raw power.

First up is a piece entitled Officials Hid Truth About Immigrant Deaths in Jail where we find that U.S. Immigration officials worked hard to cover up the deaths of illegals who had died in their custody. These people are human beings protected by our laws, not animals brought in from the desert to die while caged. 

Here is an excerpt:

"Silence has long shrouded the men and women who die in the nation’s immigration jails. For years, they went uncounted and unnamed in the public record. Even in 2008, when The New York Times obtained and published a federal government list of such deaths, few facts were available about who these people were and how they died.

But behind the scenes, it is now clear, the deaths had already generated thousands of pages of government documents, including scathing investigative reports that were kept under wraps, and a trail of confidential memos and BlackBerry messages that show officials working to stymie outside inquiry.

The documents, obtained over recent months by The Times and the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act, concern most of the 107 deaths in detention counted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement since October 2003, after the agency was created within the Department of Homeland Security. "

Ahh yes! The good old DHS!  What a Nazi outfit that is!

The next article is entitled A Fox Chief at the Pinnacle of Media and Politics  and shows how powerful one specifically placed individual can be relative to manipulating information for millions of people in order to reap personal and organizational profit from slanting the news.   There, I said it.  Fox News is not news at all.  It is a mouthpiece for the extreme right of the GOP.  And it is much too powerful to have the role of information and data interpreter for Americans with no sense that they are being manipulated by the rich and powerful.

In news from Ulster in Great Britain’s slice of the island of Ireland, a piece entitled Government Is in Peril as Scandal Rocks Ulster we read that a 59 year old conservative fundamentalist Unionist politician has had to deal with her boy toy speaking out.  Two years ago, at 19, she took him as a lover. 

Oddly enough her name is actually Mrs. Robinson!  Who would believe it?  Her husband Peter Robinson runs the Belfast Assembly.  Both he and his wife Iris hold seats there and in Parliament in London.  His ultra-conservative government coalition is now expected to break apart.  But these are very powerful and connected and wealthy people.  Any bets nothing really bad will happen here?

In what could be a very important story, Courts Roll Back Limits on Election Spending , we find that the long sought after limiting of corporate money for election financing is being crippled even before it is born.  Imagine that?  Corporations will be allowed again to finance big money candidates with little or no restrictions on their contributions.  It is big business as usual. And it is one more example of how Big Business buys government compliance with whatever agenda it might have at the moment.

Sometimes I just want to give up and move to Canada.

CWO3 Tom Barnes, USCG (Ret.)