"Ex-Officials Benefit From Corporate Cleanup"

Source: Carrie Johnson, The Washington Post, January 15, 2008.

I quote:

Federal prosecutors are steering no-bid contracts to former government officials who earn millions of dollars by monitoring companies accused of cheating investors and other schemes.

A consulting firm led by former U.S. attorney general John D. Ashcroft recently won an assignment, valued at more than $25 million, to ensure that a medical equipment maker stops paying kickbacks to doctors who use its products. Other former government officials with ties to the Bush administration have secured similar deals, which are paid using corporate funds and entail few, if any, checks on spending.

The lucrative arrangements are known as "monitorships," unusual contracts in which an outsider comes into a troubled company with vast power to expose corruption and change business practices. The deals allow scandal-plagued companies to avoid criminal charges -- and they give prosecutors a way to ensure businesses keep their promises and clean up abuses. But legal experts and lawmakers are expressing growing concern about inconsistency and secrecy surrounding the appointments.

Comment: The Bush administration has discovered another way to bypass the checks and balances of our system, this time using the law to make corporations pay for services given not by people the corporations choose, but by people the administration chooses.

I have noted that the informal arrangement by which the U.S. administration in power is allowed to name people to key jobs running United Nations programs or other intergovernmental organizations (of which there are many thousands) also provides a means to appoint loyalists to desirable posts outside of civil service and Congressional oversight.

I bet there are more ways that the administration is putting its supporters in remunerative and influential jobs without oversight. JAD