Bővebb ismertető
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