Oops

We’ve just realized that we failed to say something nasty about the President in our last post. So, via The Carpetbagger Report, here goes: the President mismanaged money intended to help small businesses recover from the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The Small Business Administration, which, we cannot stress enough, is part of the executive branch and therefore accountable to the President, was supposed to grant loans to small businesses that lost money because of the attacks. This was called the Supplemental Terrorist Activity Relief Act (or STAR Act). We at the Blasphemy Blog have read Steven Brill's After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era, and you can take it from us: there were lots of mom-and-pop operations that needed some help after 9/11. If the government were actually going to help them, that would be cool with us.

Instead, the Small Business Administration gave the money to places like a radio station in South Dakota, or, incredibly, a company in Wyoming that did not even exist on September 11, 2001.

The small businesses in question aren't at fault; they applied for regular, non-9/11 small business loans. The Small Business Administration just gave out those particular funds because...well, they're corrupt. Less than eleven percent of the STAR loans went to small businesses in Washington, D.C., or New York City.

Congress will be investigating.

Now, the executive branch is huge, and the President, even if he weren’t always on vacation, could not be expected to know every time one of his hirees messes up. But come on. This is no small thing. This is helping out people who were adversely affected by a national tragedy.

The President has not been shy about calling himself “decisive” with regard to how he handled 9/11. But as near as we can tell, all he’s been decisive about is giving speeches and having his picture taken with firefighters. He’s not so much into that thing called “governance.”

There. Something nasty. We feel we've done our duty.