Why we must be ever-vigilant against goonery by our "leaders"

The New York Times is reporting that Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York has suspended his communications director for 30 days, as well as reassigned to Outer Siberia his Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security, after a report from the New York Attorney General's Office found that the men were guilty of playing political games with public resources.

The report confirmed that Darren Dopp, the governor's lead mouthpiece, and William Howard, the aforementioned Homeland Security guy, had nothing better to do with their time than browbeat the State Police into keeping "special records of Senate majority leader Joseph L. Bruno’s whereabouts when he traveled with police escorts in New York City and to recreate records if they did not exist,", in an effort to drum up an "orchestrated campaign by the governor’s office to obtain and provide information to the news media, with the help of the State Police, to essentially discredit Mr. Bruno, the state’s top Republican."

Governor Spitzer, who had a penchant for suing anyone and everyone that he thought had the slightest whiff of taint and mismanagement while Attorney General himself, promised when he was elected governor that he would "bring a new dawn of ethical responsibility to state politics". He's off to a great start, isn't he?

"As governor, I am accountable for what goes on in the executive branch and I accept responsibility for the actions of my office,"

But not enough responsibility to fire the goons involved, though, huh, Guv? If a private business didn't ax the executives that were guilty of similar behavior while you were A.G., you'd be screaming holy hell about sleazy businesses protecting their officers, and you would be condemning their despicable business practices. Well, put up or shut up. When you dump these morons, then we'll know that you're serious about cleaning up your office.

(Unless, of course, you were behind the scheme the whole time, as the local Republicans were insinuating in the article, in which case you'd have to keep the men on somehow, lest they start dropping a dime on your dictatorial rear end. Either way, we again find that no act short of homicide is enough for public employees to lose their jobs.)

This event solidifies my take that the Homeland Security departments on both the state and federal levels have been given entirely too much power, and too much latitude to use that power on the peasantry. This concentrated power has now been hijacked by political hacks in order to play "gotcha" games on each other for their own gain, instead of doing their job of protecting the population that they supposedly work for against terrorist attacks.

The sad part is, we shell out our hard-earned dollars for this incompetence and skullduggery. Feel like you're getting your money's worth?