Issa “is not a serious person”
Wrapping up a fevered week of activity in which Darrell Issa officially took the Oversight gavel, there's still more reaction to his stated agenda and letter inviting corporate interests to shape the committee agenda.
~ Sounds like "the E.P.A.’s air quality regulations were high on the list" of responses from that letter, which lines up with Issa's running battles with the EPA, including regulations to contain major polluters.
~ Issa also got the attention of legendary EPA analyst Hugh Kaufman, who's been at the EPA since its 1971 founding:
But he objects to Issa's planned hearings because he believes the Oversight panel's chairman is turning a committee that is supposed to serve as Congress' watchdog into a panel for partisan witch hunts."He is not a serious man," Kaufman said of Issa. "He is powerful and he is dangerous, so he has to be taken seriously, but he is not a serious person."
Kaufman wasn't done. He's been a part of many high profile whistleblower cases and seen every shade of government corruption and meddling in 40 years.
But Kaufman said Issa's comments in a television interview Sunday that the Obama administration is one of the "most corrupt" in modern times, is a clear indication that the House Oversight panel is in the hands of a man for whom politics trumps integrity."Obama and his administration are politicians but they are hardly corrupt," Kaufman said. "I worked in the Nixon administration. I know what corrupt is. These guys aren't corrupt."
~ CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) sent a letter to Issa calling on him to "post all the letters he recently sent to corporations, trade groups and research organizations regarding government regulations." Given Issa's enthusiasm for transparency in other parts of the government, this should be a no-brainer for him. We'll see what happens.
~ Also in Washington, Issa continued battling with Rep. Elijah Cummings, this time over the scope of foreclosure investigations:
"I asked Mr. Issa for the foreclosure hearing and it sounds like it's going to turn into a Freddie Mac-Fannie Mae hearing, as opposed to the robosigners, as opposed to the failure of banking institutions to modify loans," Cummings (Md.) told The Huffington Post.
For his part, Issa shot back a 17-page response (pdf) including a full February report in all its 84-footnote glory. The cover letter made it explicitly clear that Issa's target is the Obama Administration, not a full investigation into what has and has not worked.
6 comments
posted by Lucas O’Connor at 7:10 pm