Incompetence? During the Bush administration?

Do tell:

Complaints are beginning to pile up against the U.S. Interior Department. And they're coming not just from outside critics but also from people in the agency. The problems surfacing are serious: managerial incompetence, bureaucratic snafus that are costing taxpayers billions of dollars, and a pervasive forgive-and-forget attitude toward senior department officials who cross ethical lines.

The Project on Government Oversight, a private watchdog group, released a study this week charging that Interior's Minerals and Management Service (MMS) has become far more lax the past four years in collecting unpaid royalties from the land it leases to oil and natural gas companies. From 2002 to 2005, MMS's auditing and compliance division collected $48 million not paid on mineral leases, which is "less than half the average $115 million collected annually in the division's first 20 years," according to Beth Daley, the watchdog organization's director of investigations. The drop in collections, Daley says, came after the auditing and compliance division cut its staff by 26% and began relying more on a computerized checking system of the leases "based upon information provided from the industry."

But the watchdog group's beef with Interior is tepid compared with the blast delivered a day earlier by the department's own inspector general, Earl Devaney. In scorching testimony before a House Government Reform subcommittee the no-nonsense Devaney charged that during his seven years as Interior's IG his revelations of misdeeds and foul-ups have been routinely "disregarded by the department." Numerous IG reports on regulations circumvented, procurement irregularities, project failures and bureaucrats being awarded bonuses despite their failures have been met with "vehement challenges" by Interior officials "to the quality of our audits, evaluations and investigations," he told lawmakers.

Amazing what is coming out now about the Bush years... I guess someone unclicked the mute button.

Quick! There is no time to lose!

Bush must complete the total ruination of the United States before he runs off to Paraguay to avoid impeachment or a war crimes tribunal! Squeeze every dime from every national resource to go into their cronies' pockets. There is so much to be done and so little time left!

“The Interior Department will announce a proposal Monday to allow oil and gas drilling in federal waters near Virginia that are currently off-limits and permit new exploration in Alaska’s Bristol Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. … The Virginia shore is dotted with barrier islands and lagoons, most of them largely unspoiled. The Virginia coast has been designated a World Biosphere Reserve by the United Nations, and a National Natural Landmark by the Interior Department.”

Democrats look at oil royalties

" House Democratic leaders vowed Friday to pursue a broad overhaul of tax breaks and other subsidies to oil companies in January, saying that their first target would be an investigation of how the government collects billions of dollars in royalties on oil and gas produced on federal property.

“The Interior Department has a background of mismanagement, to put it mildly, in the collection of these royalties,” said Representative Nick J. Rahall II of West Virginia, a Democrat who will become chairman of the House Resources Committee next year.

Mr. Rahall said he planned a sweeping investigation of the Interior Department’s enforcement of royalty payments as well as the possible repeal of a 10-year-old law that allows energy companies drilling in deep coastal waters to avoid billions of dollars in payments.

“The oil and gas royalties system has never worked,” asserts a written summary of the committee’s top goals in the new Congress. “Instead it has proven to be a form of corporate welfare that has enabled oil and gas producers to undercut payments due the American people."