Did You Know...

**Written by Doug Powers

A shorter way to phrase the message being sent to federal agencies is “whatever you do, don’t make liars out of us”:

The Obama administration denied an appeal for flexibility in lessening the sequester’s effects, with an email this week appearing to show officials in Washington that because they already had promised the cuts would be devastating, they now have to follow through on that.

In the email sent Monday by Charles Brown, an official with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service office in Raleigh, N.C., Mr. Brown asked “if there was any latitude” in how to spread the sequester cuts across the region to lessen the impacts on fish inspections.

He said he was discouraged by officials in Washington, who gave him this reply: “We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that ‘APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs.’ So it is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be.”

They break promises all the time and this is the one they want to keep?

I’m thinking of a slight alteration to the script for The Longest Yard — one where at halftime Paul Crewe writes a letter to his teammates telling them “don’t try too hard in the second half because it would contradict a promise I just made to the warden.”

J-Nap is dutifully obliging, however. Now she just needs to turn some of these green dots red.
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**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe