Many leftists embedded in the federal bureaucracy were discouraged after the FBI failed to recommend indicting Hillary Clinton over her willful violation of the law pertaining to handling classified information.
It wasn’t that they thought Hillary should’ve been indicted. Are you nuts? They were depressed after concluding that if one has to be a cabinet secretary or presidential nominee to avoid the FBI, what hope is there for an assistant to the Assistant Undersecretary for Toner Replenishment when an investigation starts?
Little did they know that just working in the Obama administration conveys a comforting blanket immunity, as long as your ideology is in the right place.
A bureaucrat doing Gaia’s work is safer from public scrutiny than the size of Hillary’s yoga pants if he works for the proper agency.
A brief glance at the result of the Environmental Protection Agency’s “investigation” into the Gold King mine disaster last summer provides illustration.
Right now the EPA is locked in a death struggle with the Commerce Department to determine which agency will have its clammy hands around the economy’s throat in the future. Commerce is losing because it can’t come up with a sufficiently frightening threat that can only be defeated by aggressive bean–counting.
Slow GDP growth doesn’t cut it when matched against the dire threat posed by the promised advent of “Global Warming.”
But even with a nifty disaster looming, the EPA still can’t afford a PR crisis that calls into question the agency’s competence in something as basic as, say, protecting the environment. Yet that’s what happened.
Last summer the EPA’s Keystone Regulators took a backhoe to a dam that’s successfully contained dangerously polluted water for 92 uneventful years.
Scientists at the EPA may have been gratified to learn water still flows downhill, but the Navajo weren’t. Three million gallons of water burst from the dam after it was breached and cascaded 11,458 feet down the mountainside contaminating water in three states and the Navajo Nation.
EPA scientists called the “test” a success, proving toxic water filled with heavy metals like lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic flows just as fast as Perrier.
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy wasn’t overly concerned either. Just as Obama assures us Obamacare is working and skyrocketing premiums are “growing pains,” the water downstream of the mine is “restoring itself” and any pains residents get after drinking it should stop growing after you see your doctor.
Assuming you still have one.
Prior to the Obama administration, after a disaster of this scope, taxpayers just assumed heads would roll, but that was a more innocent age. Now the more optimistic hope is for at least one head to be slapped around a bit.
The more realistic remember Lois Lerner retired with a full pension and the number for James Comey’s direct line.
That precedent is being followed in the Gold King “investigation.” One year after the toxic tide, the on-scene coordinator is still gainfully employed by taxpayers and his boss has retired to a comfortable post “government service” existence.
Although the EPA proved incapable of keeping a plug in a mine, it is proving adept at plugging up any chance for agency employees to be held accountable. Covering up a disaster of this scope required two “investigations.”
The Daily Caller reports the first was conducted by the EPA itself and the second by the Dept. of the Interior, which is also involved in both the Gold King and other abandoned properties in the area.
To put this in context, when a police officer is under investigation, Obama leftists want his or her department subject to investigation by a police review board composed of random citizens, angry activists, ex–cons and hacks appointed by politicians.
None of whom has the law enforcement expertise of Walter White.
But when Obama’s EPA releases a poisonous flood on downstream communities the agency and administration investigate itself.
The good news is neither investigation found any evidence of negligence! This could be due to the fact there was no negligence — unlikely — or that both investigations were specifically directed not to investigate negligence — which is what happened.
The Daily Caller explains, “One peer reviewer was highly critical of the review, particularly of its failure to investigate negligence — as McCarthy promised it would — and had to threaten withholding his signature from the report before DOI agreed to include his criticism. He was also told DOI was ordered to "stay clear" of "investigating the negligence."
This no doubt explains the lack of indictments. If the EPA investigates and finds no wrongdoing, how can the FBI be expected to uncover criminality?
Obama is fond of saying the “arc of history bends toward justice” but in his administration what’s past is forgotten.
Michael R. Shannon is a commentator, researcher for the League of American Voters, and an award-winning political and advertising consultant with nationwide and international experience. He is author of "Conservative Christian’s Guidebook for Living in Secular Times (Now with added humor!)." Read more of Michael Shannon's reports — Go Here Now.