Report details Bush admin Hatch Act violations

[James48]

Source: http://www.govexec.com

'Put your pom-poms on': Report details Hatch Act violations
By Robert Brodsky [e-mail] January 25, 2011

Some folks might need to reacquaint themselves with the 72-year-old Hatch Act.

Perhaps it should be those senior officials in President George W. Bush's administration who repeatedly violated federal law by hosting political pep rallies in federal facilities and on government time in an effort to drum up support for Republican congressional candidates in the lead-up to the 2006 midterm elections, according to a long-awaited report issued on Monday by the Office of Special Counsel.

The 118-page document, in the works for nearly half a decade, revealed that staff for the White House Office of Political Affairs, as well as several agency political appointees, violated the Hatch Act's prohibition against engaging in political activity while on duty, or in a federal workplace.

The report also implicated at least 10 top agency appointees, including several Bush Cabinet secretaries, for spending "untold" taxpayer dollars to travel to battleground states to campaign for endangered Republican opponents. In each instance, the agency classified the travel as official government business despite a wealth of private correspondence and public documentation showing the trips were political and the candidates should have reimbursed the costs.

Read more: http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=46947&oref=todaysnews

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Hatch Act prevented partisan political activity by federal employees, and was widely respected, right up until the Bush Administration destroyed all semblance of non-partisanship.

This report details illegal activity of Bush Administration executives.