Corruption is alive and well, in DC and across the good ole USA

The last couple days worth of Posts had a bunch of articles about egregious municipal waste and contracting corruption. I didn't write about it because I am cynical. That's the way things are.

In fact, the Post did an editorial about the series today, "On the Mayor's Watch," which starts out with this quote: "The city loses $30 million to $40 million each year, budget analysts estimate, because contracts are poorly written, are not competitively bid and are plagued by cost overruns. " This is from a 1997 editorial!

The more things change, the more they don't....

So I think of it as deliciously ironic that Mayor of DC Tom Davis, oops, I mean local Virginia Congressman Tom Davis, in today's Post article "U.S., City Officials Demand Spending Probe," states that: "The violations could set back efforts to give the District more independence from Congress" when the front page of the Post has an article about a Congressman pleading guilty to accepting bribes, said bribes leading to a defense contractor winning over $122 million!!!!!!! in contracts. (See "Congressman Admits Taking Bribes, Resigns.")

MZM owner Mitchell J. Wade's yacht, the Duke-Stir, foreground, is part of a probe of Wade's relationship with Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.). (By Sarah L. Voisin -- The Washington Post)

I don't justify corruption, but there's an awful lot of it, at all levels of government. Halliburton? All the various contracting scandals? Taking shortcuts in New Orleans levee construction? The levee districts spending money on things like promoting casinos rather than maintaining and improving levees (see "Holes in the Dike: Long Before Flood, New Orleans SystemWas Prime for Leaks," from the Wall Street Journal), etc...

This is why I am skeptical of claims for smaller government on behalf of "conservatives." It's really merely a matter of who benefits most from the government trough.

By the way, the same Post Metro section today has articles about "corruption" in planning in Clarksburg, Montgomery County ("Planners Set Clarksburg Fines at $2.11 Million but Urge Mediation") and in Baltimore ("Md. Businessman Mentioned In Probe of Former Senator "). The latter article has this great quote from a major developer-businessman in Baltimore, John Paterakis:

"You try to be good to the political people. They make the laws."

They also manage a big revenue stream and hand out a lot of contracts.