Howdy, Jason! Can I call you Jason? Of course I can. Jason, after doing my early morning reading and pondering what I’d read, I decided I wanted to have a word or four with you. And since you won’t respond to phone calls or emails from anyone who isn’t in your district, that means I have to take to the intertubez to offer a few thoughts. And really, that might be the best course, because what we need to chat about are ethics. Your ethics. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, they say. Let’s get some sunlight up in here, whaddya say?
During my reading, this article at HuffPo caught my eye. It reveals that all the while you’ve been excoriating the director of the Office of Government Ethics on the TeeVee and in print under cover of your exalted position as Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee for supposedly not showing up for a meeting with you, it was actually YOU that didn’t show up for that meeting. And now, after lying about what took place, you want to meet with this official behind closed doors, away from the prying eyes of a worried public. This, after your republican congressional caucus tried to kill this office in secret while no one was looking, got caught immediately and had to back away pouting.
That’s not very ethical of you.
This isn’t all that surprising considering you spent the last few years digging around with your pitchfork looking for email motes in Hillary Clinton’s eye instead of hiring a tugboat to drag the log jam out of the collective eye of you and your party. Or how you vowed to spurn Trump on account of your daughter and the message that would send, only to turn around and vote for our new Con Man in Chief. I guess your daughter wasn’t that important after all, eh? SAD!! So it isn’t surprising that you’ve been working overtime to kill oversight of our government since the Great Trumpening.
But what is surprising, given the technological advances in communication and the rising panic of a majority of Americans both inside and outside our government that our country is on the verge of becoming some hellish marriage of an oligarchy and a banana republic, is that you think you can do these things in the dark and no one will notice.
Surprise! You’re being watched!
Yes, Jason, you are being watched by an anxious and dubious public. But more importantly, you’re being watched by folks sprinkled throughout our government who fear the worst is coming. That’s right, Jason, it’s coming from inside the house!
Now, I know what you’re thinking, Jason. You think you have the upper hand, what with holding both houses of Congress and the Presidency as well as having a stranglehold on many a state government. And you’re right! You do! You and your ethically challenged cohorts in crime can ram through just about anything. The problem for you, Jason, is that despite your best efforts, you can’t really do it in the dark, away from the prying eyes of the rest of the world. And while you might be thinking you can rid our government of all those pesky watchers and tattletales out there through some kind of purge or something, that’s likely to leave a mark on you, not them, especially if they refuse to go quietly.
So you might want to take a peek at your ethics, Jason. Perhaps your present course isn’t the wisest course. This quote from the movie Backdraft seems like something you should heed:
“You see that glow flashing in the corner of your eye? That's your career dissipation light. It just went into high gear.”
Be careful, Jason. The world is watching.