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1. Comment by Bob Reed on 6/12 @ 7:11 am #

   How can Obama fire the IG..? Does he have authority to do so..? I guess that there is more corruption than Joey B. knew about; maybe this stuff is above his pay grade too…

   I thought the President was simply the chief executive, and not the Monarch of his own personal fiefdom…

   This is definately a Stalin-esque kind of move, just without the gulag to send him to. That’s probably earmarked in the next budget somewhere though…

   Where’s the Outrage!, like when Booosh! asked for the resignation of the 9 of 100 US attorneys..? You know, the same US attorneys that Clinton replace All 100 Of! when he took office in 1992…

   I guess we can expect the same level of furor as in 1992 also…

2. Comment by Dan Collins on 6/12 @ 7:12 am #

   As Grassley pointed out, Bob, he falls afoul of his own rules.

3. Comment by LTC John on 6/12 @ 7:17 am #

   Unfortunately, many won’t ever hear a word of this. It is really necessary for everyone to make sure the low information voters who put this type of crew in get to see this type of “change” in action.

   Normally a free press would do this….

4. Comment by McGehee on 6/12 @ 7:22 am #

   How can Obama fire the IG..? Does he have authority to do so..?

   Unless the law establishing the position says otherwise, if the IG is an executive branch employee shit can roll downhill in the government too.

5. Comment by Bob Reed on 6/12 @ 7:33 am #

   So, as futile as it may sound, it’s up to us to express our dissatisfaction over this to our representatives. Since, as LTC John noted, I don’t think we’ll hear this ballyhood very much in the MSMSRM…

   Really, first that whole Kabuki dance with the “lobbyists” ban, now another set of rules he helped write that he’s freely violating…

   Maybe he’ll just appoint a Political Payoff’s Czar and cut to the chase!

6. Comment by Rob Crawford on 6/12 @ 7:41 am #

   Akshually, according to the Washington Examiner:

   Last year Congress passed the Inspectors General Reform Act, which added new protections for IGs, including a measure requiring the president to give Congress 30 days prior notice before dismissing an IG. The president must also give Congress an explanation of why the action is needed. Then-Sen. Barack Obama was one of the co-sponsors of the Act.

   No mention if the bill was signed, but I can’t imagine it wasn’t. (CONFIRMED: It was.)

   So Obama’s firing of this IG violates the law. A law he sponsored and presumably voted for.

7. Comment by Rob Crawford on 6/12 @ 7:46 am #

   More goose-stepping on the Road to Serfdom:

   Russell Sullivan, the top staffer on Finance, and Jon Selib, Baucus’ chief of staff, met with a bloc of more than 20 contract lobbyists, including several former Baucus aides.

   “They said, ‘Republicans are having this meeting and you need to let all of your clients know if they have someone there, that will be viewed as a hostile act,’” said a Democratic lobbyist who attended the meeting.

   Ho-boy.

8. Comment by Topsecretk9 on 6/12 @ 7:47 am #

   wanna bet the “voting present” president doesn’t even know he sponsored the protect IG’s act?

9. Comment by SarahW on 6/12 @ 7:48 am #

   Rob Crawford - Is he giving notice now? Did he give notice to congress already? Or Is the IG position Walpin holds grandfathered in some fashion?

10. Comment by Dan Collins on 6/12 @ 7:49 am #

    TSK9, maybe he could go to a burger joint and find that out.

11. Comment by Topsecretk9 on 6/12 @ 7:51 am #

    I’m starting to feel like we have the Kwame Kilpatrick president.

12. Comment by Rob Crawford on 6/12 @ 8:02 am #

    I’m starting to feel like we have the Kwame Kilpatrick president.

    Really? I’m getting a Mugabe vibe, myself. With the New Black Panther Party in the role of the “veterans”.

    SarahW — read the stories. Sen. Grassley, in a letter to Herr Obama, said, “your staff reportedly issued an ultimatum to the AmeriCorps Inspector General Gerald Walpin that he had one hour to resign or be terminated”. One hour doesn’t sound like 30 days.

13. Comment by Topsecretk9 on 6/12 @ 8:05 am #

    Dan, I was thinking maybe he needed a long over due date night.

14. Comment by Joe on 6/12 @ 8:16 am #

    The First Lady is firing the Americorps Inspector who uncovered corruption? Because it could uncover the kick backs that Chicago style politics thrive on? That is like Hillary and Bush AG firings all rolled into one delicous package of graft!

15. Comment by SarahW on 6/12 @ 8:43 am #

    Rob - AP quote, via Malkin :

    “On Thursday, Obama said in a letter to Congress that he had lost confidence in Walpin. Neither the president nor deputy White House press secretary Josh Earnest would give details. The president must give Congress 30 days’ notice before removing Walpin, who is being suspended with pay for the 30 days. Earnest said, “The president will appoint a replacement in whom he has full confidence as the corporation carries out its important mission.”

    So Walpin didn’t cave and resign, at least. Perhaps that bill needs to be re-written so that no suspension can take place without 30 days notice?
    It would seem the spirit of the O- sponsored IG protecton bill would call for O to explain WHY he has “lost confidence” in his IG.

16. Comment by Rob Crawford on 6/12 @ 8:45 am #

    Perhaps that bill needs to be re-written so that no suspension can take place without 30 days notice?

    How would re-writing the bill help? Obama would ignore that text, too.

    Laws cannot stop the lawless.

17. Comment by SarahW on 6/12 @ 8:47 am #

    I think they hoped to coax a resignation with the abrubt notice. I’m glad Obama failed.

18. Comment by SarahW on 6/12 @ 8:50 am #

    Walpin’s investigations bore fruit and forced repayment of improper expeditures. For this he is asked to quit or be canned - very disturbing.

19. Comment by Bob Reed on 6/12 @ 8:53 am #

    Note that the “acting” US attorney involved is of those appointed bythe Obama DOJ…

    Sans outrage, of course…

20. Comment by SarahW on 6/12 @ 8:53 am #

    I don’t know if it’s a good idea to bar suspensions of IG’s until Congress has had 30 days notice. I just hope the situation gets the review it deserves.

21. Comment by The Monster on 6/12 @ 9:10 am #

    Most ethical administration evar!

22. Comment by LTC John on 6/12 @ 9:40 am #

    So the President cites the fact that one of his recent appointees didn’t like what the IG was doing as the reason he is giving him the boot… self serving to the nth degree, but gets a pass in the press….

23. Comment by Bob Reed on 6/12 @ 9:49 am #

    Colonel,

    Maybe you forgot; he’s a good man…

    *snort*

24. Comment by Chairman Hussein on 6/12 @ 9:57 am #

    Most transparent and ethical administration in history: K.Olbersham.

25. Comment by geoffb on 6/12 @ 10:01 am #

    “So Obama’s firing of this IG violates the law. A law he sponsored and presumably voted for.”

    As with Clinton singing the act which criminalized bosses having sex with their employees. With Clinton this was at least on the smaller personal scale. Obama will do every rotten thing done by a Democrat President and take it all to a wider, more public level.

26. Comment by Kevin B on 6/12 @ 10:53 am #

    I can’t see why the I.G. was getting his knickers in a twist. It seems to me that the Americorps program was being run on perfectly normal lines. Just like the Chicago Annenburg Challenge for instance, or any other piece of community organising.

27. Comment by Barack Motherfucking H. Obama on 6/12 @ 11:10 am #

    “So Obama’s firing of this IG violates the law. A law he sponsored and presumably voted for.”

    The law is whatever judges like Sonia Sotomayor say it is.

    Oh, yeah…. I won.

28. Comment by Kevin B on 6/12 @ 11:20 am #

    Anyway, what’s up with a King getting rid of a ‘turbulent’ priest who’s getting all ’scriptural’ on him. That’s what Kings do. And if the Queen wants to send one of her favorite courtiers to look after things for her, well God Bless Her Majesty I say.

    So if the Lords and Ladies in the Congress want to whine about it, let them explain to the subjects why they’re going against the most popular King ever.

    Cheez, with all the lese majestie on this site you guys seem to think you’re living in some sort of republic or something.

29. Comment by Brad Lidge on 6/12 @ 12:19 pm #

    What country am I living in? Dave Bing is mayor of Detroit and Kevin Johnson is mayor of Sac’to? Is the main requirement for political office these days a complete understanding of the pick and roll?

30. Comment by Bender Bending Rodriguez on 6/12 @ 12:21 pm #

    Sam Cassell for mayor of Houston!

31. Comment by mojo on 6/12 @ 12:24 pm #

    He not only has to notify Congress 30 days before the firing, he has to state the reasons for it.

    That could be interesting, if only in a humorous way.

32. Comment by JD on 6/12 @ 12:27 pm #

    mojo - I suspect the reason will be “I won”.

33. Comment by Carin on 6/12 @ 12:31 pm #

    Hey, did you folks hear that Kwame is living in a million dollar mansion in Texas? Apparently he didn’t fall very hard.

34. Comment by Silver Whistle on 6/12 @ 12:52 pm #

    Has anyone seen this plan by Dear Leader - “US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive“? Is that what he meant by shovel ready stimulus projects?

35. Comment by sdferr on 6/12 @ 1:35 pm #

    SW, I’ve long long kept a secret hope that every city planner gets to meet up with Rhamnousia in a dark dank alley one day. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any evidence that if such a meeting has taken place that word of the transpiring events has gotten out to the wider community.

36. Comment by Silver Whistle on 6/12 @ 1:58 pm #

    sdferr,

    Retribution towards city planners is a fine thought, but as you say, I’ve yet to hear of it. Lord knows there are enough British examples of ghastly town planning. But have you heard anything of this story in the US media? “Dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic “shrink to survive” proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline.” Strikes me if a Republican administration proposed such a thing, comparisons with Israeli house demolitions and “ethnic cleansing” would be made. Social engineering under Dear Leader, however, well, just another day in Obamalot.

37. Comment by sdferr on 6/12 @ 2:03 pm #

    No I hadn’t heard of it until your linked post just now, SW. It comes as no surprise to me at all though. This is what our betters were born to do, after all. And god knows, no Republican administration will ever be confused for “our betters”.

38. Comment by JD on 6/12 @ 2:07 pm #

    I cannot get that link to work. What cities would they bulldoze?

39. Comment by sdferr on 6/12 @ 2:11 pm #

    It starts with this JD:
    

    The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint.

    Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country.

    Mr Kildee said he will concentrate on 50 cities, identified in a recent study by the Brookings Institution, an influential Washington think-tank, as potentially needing to shrink substantially to cope with their declining fortunes.

    Most are former industrial cities in the “rust belt” of America’s Mid-West and North East. They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis.

40. Comment by Silver Whistle on 6/12 @ 2:12 pm #

    The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature.

    Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.

    The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint.

    Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country.

    Mr Kildee said he will concentrate on 50 cities, identified in a recent study by the Brookings Institution, an influential Washington think-tank, as potentially needing to shrink substantially to cope with their declining fortunes.

    Most are former industrial cities in the “rust belt” of America’s Mid-West and North East. They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis.

    In Detroit, shattered by the woes of the US car industry, there are already plans to split it into a collection of small urban centres separated from each other by countryside.

    “The real question is not whether these cities shrink – we’re all shrinking – but whether we let it happen in a destructive or sustainable way,” said Mr Kildee. “Decline is a fact of life in Flint. Resisting it is like resisting gravity.”

    Karina Pallagst, director of the Shrinking Cities in a Global Perspective programme at the University of California, Berkeley, said there was “both a cultural and political taboo” about admitting decline in America.

    “Places like Flint have hit rock bottom. They’re at the point where it’s better to start knocking a lot of buildings down,” she said.

    Flint, sixty miles north of Detroit, was the original home of General Motors. The car giant once employed 79,000 local people but that figure has shrunk to around 8,000.

    Unemployment is now approaching 20 per cent and the total population has almost halved to 110,000.

    The exodus – particularly of young people – coupled with the consequent collapse in property prices, has left street after street in sections of the city almost entirely abandoned.

    In the city centre, the once grand Durant Hotel – named after William Durant, GM’s founder – is a symbol of the city’s decline, said Mr Kildee. The large building has been empty since 1973, roughly when Flint’s decline began.

    Regarded as a model city in the motor industry’s boom years, Flint may once again be emulated, though for very different reasons.

    But Mr Kildee, who has lived there nearly all his life, said he had first to overcome a deeply ingrained American cultural mindset that “big is good” and that cities should sprawl – Flint covers 34 square miles.

    He said: “The obsession with growth is sadly a very American thing. Across the US, there’s an assumption that all development is good, that if communities are growing they are successful. If they’re shrinking, they’re failing.”

    But some Flint dustcarts are collecting just one rubbish bag a week, roads are decaying, police are very understaffed and there were simply too few people to pay for services, he said.

    If the city didn’t downsize it will eventually go bankrupt, he added.

    Flint’s recovery efforts have been helped by a new state law passed a few years ago which allowed local governments to buy up empty properties very cheaply.

    They could then knock them down or sell them on to owners who will occupy them. The city wants to specialise in health and education services, both areas which cannot easily be relocated abroad.

    The local authority has restored the city’s attractive but formerly deserted centre but has pulled down 1,100 abandoned homes in outlying areas.

    Mr Kildee estimated another 3,000 needed to be demolished, although the city boundaries will remain the same.

    Already, some streets peter out into woods or meadows, no trace remaining of the homes that once stood there.

    Choosing which areas to knock down will be delicate but many of them were already obvious, he said.

    The city is buying up houses in more affluent areas to offer people in neighbourhoods it wants to demolish. Nobody will be forced to move, said Mr Kildee.

    “Much of the land will be given back to nature. People will enjoy living near a forest or meadow,” he said.

    Mr Kildee acknowledged that some fellow Americans considered his solution “defeatist” but he insisted it was “no more defeatist than pruning an overgrown tree so it can bear fruit again”.

41. Comment by Silver Whistle on 6/12 @ 2:13 pm #

    Oops - feel free to delete me. Sorry.

42. Comment by mojo on 6/12 @ 2:24 pm #

    Flint?

    Can we start with Mikey Moore’s ancestral tenement?

43. Comment by Obstreperous Infidel on 6/12 @ 2:45 pm #

    What, no Cleveland? Cleveland sucks so badly, they don’t even want to demo it? And to think I talked my wife into moving to this shithole. I was a lifer, but she was a Georgian, who was transplanted to Chicago. Kill me now.

44. Comment by Obstreperous Infidel on 6/12 @ 2:46 pm #

    What country am I living in? Dave Bing is mayor of Detroit and Kevin Johnson is mayor of Sac’to? Is the main requirement for political office these days a complete understanding of the pick and roll?

    I thought the same thing. Too bad that KJ is a typical dem mayor, though. He was a helluva player.

45. Comment by Silver Whistle on 6/12 @ 2:47 pm #

    The article says 50 US cities are targeted, OI, so maybe Cleveland will get that American Idol makeover.

46. Comment by Obstreperous Infidel on 6/12 @ 3:02 pm #

    Cleveland has to be scheduled for a makeover. Have they not seen the place? BTW, I’m not agreeing or advocating for this dumbshit idea. Not at all.

47. Comment by McGehee on 6/12 @ 4:51 pm #

    Too bad that KJ is a typical dem mayor, though.

    Sacramento will elect nothing else.

    Ever. Or until the state capital is finally moved to Tijuana and all those politicians and bureaucrats and clueless interns leave town for good.

48. Comment by Christopher Taylor on 6/12 @ 8:01 pm #

    Gee who was the last guy who thought we had to wipe out areas and force everyone into smaller urban areas… hmm yeah that was Pol Pot. Oh and that and Ceausescu guy. Urban renewal, you know. Sort of the opposite of Maoist rural Socialism.

49. Comment by Merovign on 6/13 @ 11:34 am #

    I’ve long thought that City Planning should be illegal. It certainly seems to me from the horrible traffic flow and idiot ramp and entry designs and cut-off neighborhoods around here that they can’t manage traffic, and they don’t seem to be doing any better in any other areas.

    Note that the author described something they thought was impossible as fighting against gravity (flight is, after all, impossible), and decried as “sad” the belief in the rather obvious contention that a community’s growth is success and it’s shrinking is failure. The City Planning cult does seem to want civilization to be in decline.

    Also, for some reason, they expect people to spend most of their spare time sitting on patios watching plants. Not sure I get that one.

    I think that when someone’s career path starts with the contention that they’re going to be deciding how everyone else lives their lives, nothing good comes from it.

    That being said, yes, Obama is breaking the law, yes, it’s to hide corruption, and no, people who get their news from the MSM won’t understand this.

50. Comment by McGehee on 6/13 @ 6:38 pm #

    The City Planning cult does seem to want civilization to be in decline.

    Well, it’s easier to plan when you don’t have to build anything new. ‘Cause building new stuff requires… planning.

51. Comment by Bob Reed on 6/14 @ 12:27 pm #

    OT, but Obama’s health care Czar appointee smells like lobbyist/conflict of interest all the way…

    http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/23688.html

    Enjoy

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