Here's mine:
After reading the news today it struck me how changed the U.S. Government has become in my short lifetime, but especially in the last four years. For most of my life government (the steady Civil Service) was an authority whose expertise on any given issue or subject was mostly to be trusted. This is no longer the case. From the FDA to the OMB to NASA to the National Archives, whose ranks are filled by men and women who have spent their lifetime in bureaucratic service to changing administrations, there's been a perverted and perverting influence asserted by the Bush Administration.
I'm not naïve enough to believe there hasn't always been attempts to use these agencies for political purposes, but the wholesale change I've witnessed is certainly extraordinary. In short, they've bent and are bending the whole government apparatus to serve their policy, rather than depending on it for facts, figures, and expertise. Don't like the numbers issuing from the Social Security Administration?... well, then just change them. Don't like the science behind findings issued by the government's own commissioned studies?... get an ex-oil lobbyist to change the wording. Don't like the CIA giving you accurate intelligence information that conflicts with your political policy?... appoint a political hack as director and remove him from primary access to the president. The UN giving you fits?... appoint a paranoid sociopath as ambassador. And these are just some of the most egregious efforts. Am I nuts? I don't think so. There's not a single agency in government affecting citizen's welfare, from health and safety to economics, that hasn't come under the pervasive and manipulative influence of this heartless administration.
What's yours?: