Archive for the ‘Jake Tapper’ Category
BREAKING: White House Officials to Make Sure ‘Inappropriate’ NEA Conference Call ‘Never Happens Again’
Posted by Big Hollywood in Featured Story, Jake Tapper, Politics on September 22nd, 2009
Jake Tapper of ABC News:
White House officials say they are enacting specific steps to make sure such a call never happens again.
Today White House officials are meeting with the chiefs of staff of the executive branch agencies to discuss rules and best practices in this area, a conversation during which they will be told that that while White House lawyers do not believe that the NEA call violated the law, “the appearance issues troubled some participants,” Burton said. “It is the policy of the administration that grant decisions should be on the merits and that government officials should avoid even creating the incorrect appearance that politics has anything to do with these decisions.”
After listening to the transcript and the audio posted at the conservative website BigHollywood.Breitbart.com — secretly recorded by Los Angeles filmmaker Patrick Couriellech — Melanie Sloan, executive director of the good-government group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), told ABC News that the call was “disturbing.”
“Government agencies are not supposed to be engaged in political activities,” Sloan said. “Here, because they didn’t veer off into ‘This is about the election,’ where you’d get into violations of the Hatch Act, it’s not illegal. But it doesn’t look good — it looks terrible. It’s inappropriate.”
The Hatch Act restricts the political activity of executive branch employees of the federal government.
Said Sloan of the conference call: “It’s not what the NEA was created for, it’s not supposed to be helping the president’s agenda; that’s not the point.”
Burton added that the White House will be issuing a formal memo for White House staff “to that effect and will be doing training sessions and personal visits with staff here to make sure the message gets across.”
Sergant seemed to have some indication on the call that maybe he was coming close to the line of inappropriateness if not crossing it.
You can read the piece in full here.
BREAKING: White House Officials to Make Sure ‘Inappropriate’ NEA Conference Call ‘Never Happens Again’
Posted by Sullivan in Jake Tapper, Politics on September 22nd, 2009
Jake Tapper of ABC News:
White House officials say they are enacting specific steps to make sure such a call never happens again.
Today White House officials are meeting with the chiefs of staff of the executive branch agencies to discuss rules and best practices in this area, a conversation during which they will be told that that while White House lawyers do not believe that the NEA call violated the law, “the appearance issues troubled some participants,” Burton said. “It is the policy of the administration that grant decisions should be on the merits and that government officials should avoid even creating the incorrect appearance that politics has anything to do with these decisions.”
After listening to the transcript and the audio posted at the conservative website BigHollywood.Breitbart.com — secretly recorded by Los Angeles filmmaker Patrick Couriellech — Melanie Sloan, executive director of the good-government group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), told ABC News that the call was “disturbing.”
“Government agencies are not supposed to be engaged in political activities,” Sloan said. “Here, because they didn’t veer off into ‘This is about the election,’ where you’d get into violations of the Hatch Act, it’s not illegal. But it doesn’t look good — it looks terrible. It’s inappropriate.”
The Hatch Act restricts the political activity of executive branch employees of the federal government.
Said Sloan of the conference call: “It’s not what the NEA was created for, it’s not supposed to be helping the president’s agenda; that’s not the point.”
Burton added that the White House will be issuing a formal memo for White House staff “to that effect and will be doing training sessions and personal visits with staff here to make sure the message gets across.”
Sergant seemed to have some indication on the call that maybe he was coming close to the line of inappropriateness if not crossing it.
You can read the piece in full here.
ACORN Story Grows But Mainstream Media Refuse to Cover It
Posted by Publius in ACORN, Hannah Giles, Jake Tapper, News, Obama, Politics, Van Jones on September 14th, 2009
This story has everything you could ever want – corruption, sleazy actions at tax-funded organizations, firings, government ties, sex, hookers. It is a network news director’s dream. Imagine the ratings. But almost no one is covering it.
Bruce Springsteen once wrote: “From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come).†I doubt he expected that story of love gone wrong would become ideal political commentary for the group known as ACORN.
The small scandal showing an embarrassing video of Baltimore ACORN staffers looking like they were giving tax advice on how to set up a brothel, is now national news. — This story has everything you could ever want – corruption, sleazy actions at tax-funded organizations, firings, government ties, sex, hookers. It is a network news director’s dream. Imagine the ratings!
Only almost no one is covering it.
This is the news media in the era of Van Jones and President Obama. The major outlets cover what they want and create the themes they want. When they find something inconvenient, they let it pass. They didn’t like the Van Jones story, so they ignored it. The network news media liked the financial entity known as Fannie Mae, so they ignored that scandalous organization for years. ACORN is getting the same treatment.
But it isn’t working any more. The ACORN fiasco has now impacted three offices – Baltimore, Washington and New York – with laugh-out-loud videos reminiscent of the hookers and pimps from the 1970s “Starsky and Hutch†show. Huggy Bear returns! Four employees have been fired, with more likely to come. And the controversy was so laughably bad that the Census Bureau cut off all ties to the group known formally as the “Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.” — They called it the “tipping point†to shed themselves of ACORN. More nuts for someone else, I guess.
And yet. And yet it’s still been ignored by the network news. Nothing on ABC, CBS or NBC. The only thing any one of the three broadcast networks has done appeared in a blog post by ABC’s Jake Tapper. It’s hardly worth noting except to show that the networks know about what’s going on. They just don’t care to report it. Only FOX News has bothered to report on the controversy.
Read the full article here.