Investigative reporter and essayist Russ
Baker is a longtime contributor to TomPaine.com. He
is also the founder of the Real News Project , a new not-for-profit
investigative journalism outlet. He can be reached at russ@russbaker.com.
Are you staying abreast of developments on
the cuckoo crony circuit?
The latest involves our good friend Ken Tomlinson, brought
into the federal government to rid public broadcasting of bias
in favor of the downtrodden, the poor and the voiceless.
Ken apparently was an excellent choice. We now learn of
a new inquiry into Ken’s baronial
lifestyle at the public trough. Investigators say that while
heading the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the outfit that
oversees U.S. foreign broadcasting, including the Voice of
America, Tomlinson ran a ''horse racing operation.'' He seems
to have been using his office to oversee a stable of horses he
named after Afghan leaders who fought the Taliban and the
Russians—yet another example of someone who believes that
heroism may be appropriated to confer honor on one’s own
dubious doings.
Tomlinson’s misdeeds weren’t limited to the sexy sport of
horseracing. He also indulged in good ol' fashioned cronyism,
such as improperly putting a friend on the payroll, repeatedly
tasking government employees to run personal errands, and
overbilling his hours to the government.
If you missed Tomlinson’s spaghetti western, don’t feel
bad: Deluged with outrages, scandals and tragicomedies, the
media must have felt compelled to only push stories of
political corruption when the guilty party is in Congress or
the White House. Corruption further down the food chain
doesn’t merit their attention, being so common it's akin
to “dog bites man” headlines.
As a result, the public neither knows about most incidents
nor understands how they are part of a larger pattern of
cronyism, self-dealing and flat-out madness in this
administration. My personal favorite, as regular readers will
know, is the FEMA director Michael Brown. A year after
Katrina, the full story of his personal history as a
small-time ne’er-do-well up until he came to Washington has
still never been shared with the American people. The only
thing most people know about Brown is that, like Tomlinson, he
spent a lot of time worrying about horses. With the
anniversary of the Katrina cataclysm, Brown has been all over
the tube, posing as an “expert,” with nary a question about
what a man with no credentials and no experience was doing
overseeing disaster relief nationwide in the first place.
Then there is Bush’s former domestic policy adviser. That
sounds like an important job. Yet when Claude Allen was busted
for an ongoing shoplifting scheme, the White House put out the
word that the African-American had really just been a token
figure, not actually doing anything important. Perhaps that
explains why Allen, who was earning $160,000 of taxpayers’
money annually, had so much time to fraudulently return for
cash $5,000 worth of items he had never purchased. After 18
months of probation, Allen’s record will be expunged—thanks to
a kindly judge.
There’s David Safavian, the former head of the White House
Office of Federal Procurement Policy. An ex-lobbyist and Hill
staffer with no prior experience in government contracting and
an old friend of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, he was
hauled out of the White House in handcuffs and recently
convicted of obstructing justice and lying about his ties to
Abramoff. And how much do we know about what Safavian actually
did in the course of his job, why he was appointed in the
first place, and what his relationship with Abramoff could
tell us about decision-making at the highest levels? Nearly
bupkis .
Meanwhile, back at the Tomlinson ranch, we should have
plenty of questions. Tomlinson, a good friend of Karl Rove
(quite a recommendation in itself) was hired to supervise
broadcasting following a career spent almost entirely
working his way to the helm at the politically conservative
magazine Readers’ Digest. Fascinatingly, Tomlinson
was a Vietnam correspondent for the Digest, a concept
in itself a little hard to swallow.
Tomlinson resigned from the Digest in 1996 to work
on the presidential campaign of Steve Forbes, whose philosophy
centered on the inherent pride in inheriting wealth.
His eventual rise to U.S. broadcasting czar was undoubtedly
smoothed back in 1995 when PBS foolishly agreed to accept $75
million in Readers' Digest-developed programming,
part of a desperate effort by the network to replace dwindling
federal contributions.
Even before the horse business reared its head, Tomlinson
had been forced to resign (in November 2005) from his other,
more visible job, overseeing the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting, home of "Sesame Street," NOVA, "Frontline," "All
Things Considered" and their ilk. Upon his arrival at CPB,
Tomlinson had set himself on a campaign to uncover enemies of
the state at the Public Broadcasting System, and soon focused
on Bill Moyers and his program “Now with Bill Moyers.”
An internal investigation by CPB’s inspector general into
his crusade to root out latte-drinking, Volvo-driving,
Teletubbies-loving liberals at PBS charged that he had hired a
crony to improperly “investigate” Moyers’ program, plus other
radio and TV programs, for “bias.” In doing so, Tomlinson had
violated rules designed to protect the independence of public
broadcasting programming. He also put inappropriate pressure
on programmers creating new shows, and improperly applied
political tests when considering top executive hires.
Tomlinson’s inquiry into alleged bias at the Moyers program
included commissioning a $14,170 study that subjectively
classified guests as "liberal" or "conservative" and gave
segments labels like “anti-Bush," "anti-DeLay," and
"anti-corporation." Meanwhile, he raised $5 million to air
"The Journal Editorial Report," a program with unfailingly
pro-Bush, pro-DeLay, pro-corporation Wall Street
Journal editorial board figures. (Earlier this year, with
few PBS stations opting to air the "Report," it jumped
to—quelle surprise —the Fox News Channel.)
Tomlinson has yet to resign from the Broadcasting Board of
Governors, and the government says it will not be pressing
charges. It’s safe to say that if his shenanigans at the OK
Corral get further attention, Tomlinson will be allowed at
some point to quietly resign to “spend more time with his
family.”
Then he can join Michael Brown—and David Safavian and
Claude Allen (when they get out of jail or off
probation)—along with countless other temporary so-called
“public servants” in think tanks and plush offices around the
corporate world. Then all the self-righteous, anti-government
ideologues can say: “See, we told you so: government doesn’t
work,” while they shut down more federal programs and
“outsource” more business to their friends and cronies. And
Fox’s Rupert Murdoch can pick up a more red state version of
Teletubbies called Beerbellies and add it to the roster along
with “Then with Sean Hannity,” and Clear Channel can
do a “fair and balanced” makeover of NOVA, which will feature
programs about the flaws in the theory of
evolution.
As the legendary and straight-talking CBS anchorman Walter
Cronkite liked to say back in the pre-Katie Couric era:
And that’s the way it is.
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