The Wrecking Crew [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION Follow This Dime Washington is the city where the scandais happen. Every American knows this, but we also believe, if only vaguely, that the really monumental scandais are a thing of the past; that the golden âge of misgovernment-for-profit ended with the cav-alry charge and the robber barons, at about the same time présidents stopped wearing beards. I moved to Washington in 2003, just in time for the come-back, for the hundred-year flood. At first it was only a trickle in the basement, a little stream released accidentally by the presi-dent's friends at Enron. Before long, though, the levees were fail-ing ail over town, and the city was inundated with a muddy torrent of graft. How are we to dissect a deluge like this one? We might begin by categorizing the earmarks handed out by Congress, sorting the foolish earmarks from the costly earmarks from the earmarks made strictly on a cash basis. We could try a similar approach to government contracting: the no-bid contracts, the no-oversight