Remember when I said we can’t trust Russia? Right. Let’s go back to that.

Last month, Russia shut off the gas supply to all their neighbors, leaving Eastern Europe with 1/4 of their gas supply. According to Russia, Ukraine was stealing gas. Whatever. The point is that Russia promised to keep the supply to other European nations, and only cut off Ukraine’s supply. Guess what actually happened.

Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia, Romania, Croatia and Turkey all reported a halt in gas shipments. Croatia said it was temporarily reducing supplies to industrial customers and urged consumers to use gas sparingly in their homes. Bulgaria said it had enough gas for only “for a few days.”

Things have changed from the days of the Cold War, and Russia is flush with cash. It changes your attitude towards the rest of the world when your officials and company bosses become accustomed to hanging around in Phuket 5 star resorts. In short, Russia does what it wants to. So where does that leave Ukraine? At the mercy of Russia and their own officials who can’t seem to get themselves together. Battles between President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko have escalated, leading to yesterday’s raid of Ukraine’s state-owned natural gas company Naftohaz.

Anyone else nervous about Eastern Europe?

So Obama tried to talk to Russia this week. It went sort of like this:

Obama: Hey Russia, stop giving Iran nukes and we’ll stop surrounding your country with missiles.

Medvedev: No.

From Fox:

The Russian president welcomed the “positive signals” coming from the Obama administration with which he said he hoped to reach “agreements.” “Haggling,” however, was “not productive,” added Medvedev on Tuesday, March 3.

By “haggling” he apparently meant “negotiation”. Bush set the missiles in place. They need to stay there. Why do I not have hope that Obama will keep them in place? Because he says things like this:

“What I said in the letter was that, obviously, to the extent that we are lessening Iran’s commitment to nuclear weapons, then that reduces the pressure for — or the need for a missile-defense system,” he said.

Designed to unite Russia and the US against Iran, no doubt. Will it work? No. Even if Russia complies with Obama’s letter, do we really think that Iran won’t try to go somewhere else for nukes? Do we know how much technology has really been given to Iran already? They’re going to continue whether Russia helps them or not. Iran has completely bucked UN Security Council orders (which Russia is a member of…) to halt uranium enrichment. In short, Russia’s “compliance” should not give us a sense of security about Iran – we can’t use it to justify removing protective forces.

I have a better idea: how about we just don’t trust Russia?

So the Tennessean had an article in yesterday’s paper about the $330.5 mil in the stimulus to aid in tracking the money. The investigative arm of congress is getting a $25 million shot in the arm. Makes sense right? I mean, after all, there’s around a trillion dollars floating around – we should have some idea of where it’s going.

Here’s some of the breakdown on that oversight money, from the Tennessean:

$25 million: Government Accountability Office

$84 million to create an accountability board within the administration

$221.5 million to the inspectors general who will serve as department watchdogs.

A few problems with this. The GAO’s $25 million will be spent to hire 100 lawyers, economists and policy analysts. Anyone else think that’s a little excessive? I’m willing to bet that half of these guys probably can’t even manage their own finances well enough to qualify for a personal loan. In addition, there are few guidelines on what exactly all these watchdogs are supposed to be looking for. What exactly is the stimulus money supposed to accomplish? There are no specific goals for these funds, which mean there are no standards by which to measure them. Having watchdogs is all well and good but if they have no quantifiable red flags or mistakes to look out for, it’s going to be ineffective.

There’s also no oversight board. Even the initial bailout “financial rescue” package had a Congressional oversight board that reported everything to Congress. The spending stimulus package leaves that with federal agencies. Rep. Kevin Brady from Texas says it well:

“I don’t know that the American public believes that the White House holding the White House accountable is really good for them. The federal government is getting set to simply rain cash down on America, but it’s the equivalent of a bad credit loan. We want to know where these dollars land and whether it grows jobs as promised.”

So let’s get this straight. Both our President and Vice President railed against Bush’s lack of accountability with the bailout packages… and then fail to even set up an oversight board, letting $330.5 worth of “oversight” run around in circles with no official leadership or guidelines. Awesome. I’m encouraged. Everyone else going to sleep better tonight?