The Slow Death of Accountability

“Lack of accountability always produces things or agendas that work poorly, don’t work at all, or end in disasters.”

Although the words are often tangled up in everyday conversation, responsibility and accountability are two distinct concepts. We have legions of supposed leaders, experts, and managers in the private, institutional, and government sectors who clamor for responsibility alone. They’ll beat their drums with what they can or will do with the power that responsibility will confer.  

Yet we have a mighty few of them willing to accept, or even acknowledge, accountability for stillborn accomplishments, or less-than-promised results, or worse yet, disastrous outcomes. Accountability is the lonely outpost that rarely sees visitors.

In the corporate and institutional realms at least, this wasn’t always so. Until the 1970s, middle and senior management were frequently held accountable for the results of their responsibilities. However, the rise of the business expert and consultant class undid much of this, especially for middle management, and with it, the essential concept of accountability crumbled.

Whatever remained of accountability was further eroded with the rise of equity raiders, asset management experts—and way too many Ph.D.s. without practical experience—where the only important result became what could be taken, rather than what could be built. This attitude too often takes precedence over larger outcomes, customer satisfaction, safety, service, and the very premise on which the companies and institutions were created in the first place.

The lack of accountability turns everything on its head.  

In the muck and mire of government bureaucracies, accountability was never a required goal, except for the political class, which is only occasionally held accountable at the ballot box. That modern governments never hold their functionaries to standards of accountability for their responsibilities is by design.

The demands created by law and regulation are the lifeblood of government power – and power holds for itself privilege – the privilege to disregard outcomes, leaving the citizens and taxpayers generally powerless and intimidated into accepting what the lack of accountability always produces – things or agendas that work poorly, don’t work at all, or end in disasters. This phenomenon, which has been the defining characteristic of socialism, is now all too evident in the US and the West.  

Paradoxically, the bureaucracies internally are held to strict accountability to protect their procedural and ritualistic rules, often petty, and customs that shield the bureaucracy itself against programmatic accountability.   

The lack of corporate, institutional, and government accountability in just this young century has been shocking.

9/11, the Anthrax scare, the Boston Marathon bombing, Fort Hood, Fast and Furious, are but a few on a very long list of bewildering catastrophes where there was virtually no accountability on the part of the government, which failed in its basic responsibilities before and after the events. There was a long trail of missed or ignored intelligence before the events, botched investigations, and even the railroading of unlikely suspects.

And, of course, every public policy disaster – and there are many – simply continues, regardless of its damage. In the absence of accountability, it is front-page negative news if a useless or counterproductive program is cut, much less eliminated.  

In the joint public and corporate world, there has been zero accountability for the corporate and government officials responsible for the earth-shattering events that occurred in 2008 and 2020.

Instead, the financial collapse of the housing market in 2008 and the subsequent government financial rescue required trillions of dollars to save both the corporations and public administrators responsible for the meltdown, as millions of ordinary citizens were financially destroyed with no recourse.

Only one solitary executive from Credit Suisse went to jail for concealing $37 million in losses in the bank’s mortgage-backed securities portfolio.

The manufactured COVID pandemic was a wholly preventable crisis that killed millions and ushered in devastating financial, psychological, and medical ramifications as the economy was locked down and schools closed. The county, state, and federal government went into a binge of authoritarian insanity.

The FDA and CDC were being led by what their correspondence revealed to be liars and corporate shills instead of the expert health professionals portrayed in the media, and they pushed bogus science down everyone’s throat. Well-known and successful drugs were banned, while untested therapies posing as “vaccines” were prescribed and even mandated. You could go to a bar, but not to church or school. You could go to Wal-Mart, but not to the gym.

In addition, a 500-page report by the US Congress of “lessons learned” (here) suggests that there was massive fraud and abuse, perhaps $250 billion, in the trillions of dollars thrown around by Washington.

While there have been several thousand citizens charged with loan fraud during the government’s payroll loan coverage programs no one in the corporate or government axis has been held accountable for the needless catastrophe, or the lies and cover-ups used to escape accountability.

But the absence of accountability may have finally reached a critical mass in one crucial event. Former President Obama and his minions are once again being exposed for leading what can only be called a coup against the incoming President, Donald J. Trump, during 2016 and 2017. The sitting President assembled the government intelligence and legal functions to derail and paralyze an incoming, elected administration and negate a national election.  

The question is, will anyone be held accountable?                                                

This past week, the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, has been releasing documents that demonstrate, again, that Obama administration officials lied and manufactured much of the information released to the public about the intelligence surrounding the Russian interference hoax during the 2016 election. In her comments, Director Gabbard discussed Mr. Obama disregarding an intelligence briefing that candidate Trump had not colluded with Russia. Instead, the Director said, “The evidence that we have found and that we have released directly points to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment [of Russian collusion]. There are multiple pieces of evidence and intelligence that confirm that fact,” Director Gabbard added.

While we can be glad that further evidence of the corrupt Obama-Clinton machine is being officially disclosed, it is further confirmation, not original news.

In February and March of 2017, using then available evidence, I wrote, “The invention of the Russian meme was a brilliant stroke by the Obama-Clinton media cabal, born within 24 hours of [Clinton’s] defeat, we now learn – it has been driven by repetition deep into the public mind. But a meme is not a fact. So far, after nearly four months of intensive “investigation,” there is not one single item, or even a fragment of one item, that constitutes evidence of [Russian] collusion, much less a crime.”

And in a followup article, I stated, “Whereas we know for a fact that former President Obama spent taxpayer money in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat Bibi Netanyahu in Israel (among other elections the US tried to influence), you can rest assured that if there was any evidence, no matter how insignificant, that the Russians and the Trump Campaign colluded to impact the election, that it would have leaked from the sieve that is our government immediately. There simply is not one identifiable fact that there is any there, there.”

Now, thanks to Director Gabbard, it’s clear that the insurrection declared and led by the Obama-Clinton-Corporate Media Cartel against the Trump Presidency went into high gear in the Oval Office itself.

Will there ever be any accountability?