Special IG For TARP, Neil Barofsky, At The Top Of Obama's Enemies List

From The American Thinker:

October 30, 2010


Special IG for TARP Neil Barofsky at the top of Obama's enemies list

Ed Lasky

Neil Barofsky is a lifelong Democrat who was appointed by George Bush to be the Special Inspector General of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP). He has done superlative work over the last two years in uncovering vast waste of taxpayer dollars. He also has started looking into whether the car closings ordered by the Obama administration were influenced not by efficiency or economy but whether dealers were chosen to be saved based on their minority status. His latest report - buried by much of the media - was highly critical of how the Treasury was using suspect methodology to trump the success of the TARP program as it was being run by the Obama team.

Hence, the lifelong Democrat has now become a lifelong enemy of Barack Obama.



Barron's Jim McTague reports in "Running Afoul of Obama's Adding Machine":



... Barofsky dared give the Treasury a thrashing in print a week before the midterm election for its management of TARP. He said that the bailout was falling far short of many of its goals, like preserving home ownership and stimulating the economy.



Sigtarp faulted the Treasury for overreliance on self-reporting by TARP recipients on their use of government funds. The special inspector's office recommended direct Treasury oversight to assure that the cash isn't being wasted or stolen. And it faulted a recent Treasury projection showing that taxpayers likely will profit from their stake in insurance giant AIG. The Treasury employed pro forma accounting that projected future gains based on current prices for AIG stock and representations from AIG that it will exit the TARP program sooner than expected. Previous Treasury estimates, including one last March, used a different methodology-one approved by its auditors-- that predicted a $45.2 billion loss from AIG. Sigtarp said that the Treasury, in the name of transparency, should have compared the pro forma and audited numbers.



What happened next? The Obama team trashed Barofsky in a blog on its site written by Jen Psaki, a holdover from the Obama campaign who now serves as the deputy communications director and who, like her boss in the Oval Office, has never left the campaign rhetoric aside.



"Some people don't like movies with happy endings," she wrote. "How else to explain this week's report by Sigtarp? Rather than focusing on the growing evidence we've seen in recent months that TARP will be far less costly than anyone expected, Sigtarp instead sought to generate a false controversy over AIG to try and grab a few, cheap headlines."



The name calling and vilification continued for seven more paragraphs.



As McTague notes, the desire by the Obama team to use faulty methodology ("Enron-style Accounting") is not just apparent in their disparaging of Barofsky but in their entire approach towards governing: in their huge deficits, delusional projections regarding the costs of Obamacare, their views that green schemes are a job panacea, and that high taxes won't harm growth. This is an administration filled with ideologues who not only have scant real-world business experience (and those that do, such as Larry Summers, are bailing out of this Ship of Fools) but have an animus towards free-enterprise and a disregard for any hints of reality that might intrude on their fantasies.



Their rage is again on display in this unjust and intemperate attack on Neil Barofsky, a man who has served the people by prosecuting financial miscreants and drug dealers.



Barack Obama is notoriously thin-skinned - as is true of many narcissists. Obama loves the idea of government workers. He and Michelle have glorified in their speeches to college students the honor that comes from working for the people. We have Inspectors Generals throughout the government who are working for the people and saving taxpayers billions of dollars at very little costs (see my blog " The Unsung Heroes of the Federal Government"). Do you think Barack Obama respects those government workers?



After all, his team has dismissed and disparaged one Inspector General who had the temerity to take on one of Barack Obama's friends and political allies and also wanted to set up and have taxpayers fund a new $30 Billion Dollar lending program that was to be shielded from any Inspector General looking over its books (see "Obama, the Chicago Boys, and their 30 Billion Dollar Slush Fund").





The stimulus program is filled with waste; the latest example to come to light as a taxpayer rip-off is the $242 million weatherization program for Obama's hometown of Chicago that paid for shoddy and fraud-ridden work.





No wonder Obama abhors Inspectors General: they protect taxpayers and show us how poorly his administration is run and thus threaten the B+ average he humbly (for him) bestowed upon himself a few months ago. Well, the taxpayers will be grading him on a different curve come Tuesday.



And he won't be getting a B+.







Posted at 09:50 AM