Dick Cheney "has privatized the job of vice president of the United States"
Based on the revelations garnered from CREW's lawsuit seeking records of visitors to the residence of Vice President Dick Cheney, The New York Times blasted Cheney's penchant for secrecy in an editorial yesterday:
Americans are accustomed to Vice President Dick Cheney’s waiting out a terrorist threat in a “secure undisclosed location.” Now it seems that Mr. Cheney wears the cloak of invisibility in secure disclosed locations.
The Associated Press reported that Mr. Cheney’s office ordered the Secret Service last September to destroy all records of visitors to the official vice presidential mansion — right after The Washington Post sued for access to the logs. That move was made in secret, naturally. It came out only because of another lawsuit, filed by a private group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, seeking the names of conservative religious figures who visited the vice president’s residence.
This disdain for accountability is distressing, but not surprising. Mr. Cheney has had it on display from his first days in office, when he refused to name the energy-industry executives who met with him behind closed doors to draft an energy policy.
The Times editorial states Dick Cheney "has privatized the job of vice president of the United States." But, it's not a private job. Dick Cheney is a public servant. And, CREW wil continue to challenge Cheney's consistent efforts to prevent the nation's laws from applying to him.
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Dick Cheney "has privatized the job of Vice President"
The NY Times puts it in a nice way, but it points out that Dick Cheney has made $ millions in options he holds on Halliburton stock, and has also been on the Halliburton payroll the whole of his first term of office, receiving in cash more than his VP salary during that period.
It is a matter of public record that he has reaped rich profits by the Iraq war, and it now appears that Cheney used his office to abet a fraud that put the US into that war and that he has worked to prolong it.
The NY Times, nice people that they are, do not bluntly claim that Cheney is profiteering on his office, but the quote above says it plain enough. Privatization, of course, is public function performed for private profit.
The implications of the forgoing may be too strong for some, but this nation needs very badly some strong demarcation between private profit and public corruption.
It would be of the Greatest Benefit if the nation were provided some examples of what is not allowed.