Well, plainly the Patrick administration submitted to Sal's heavy-handed pressure tactics in buying Cognos' software. I do find it strange that a.) you'd ever buy software that you didn't already have a real need for, and b.) that the Speaker of the House would be the chief salesman.
How much was really riding on getting that software in there? What was Sal threatening to hold up if this didn't happen? Good questions all.
But always beware of a news story that goes directly from a fact pattern straight into implication-mongering: “Yet the scandal, one of the biggest to roil Beacon Hill in decades, has the potential to create political problems for the governor as he pushes forward on ethics law changes and lays the groundwork for a reelection campaign.” (My bolding.) Well, says who?
It's important to remember that no one in the administration is charged with anything illegal at all. So far, the worst one can say is that they may have acted with passivity, until they discovered something was amiss with the contract award. Pretty ordinary — maybe not Profiles in Courage, but ordinary.
I don’t see the difference between buying unnecessary software and phantom employees or mafia trash trucks. Businesses would always rather spend a few bucks bribing access to government procurement than actually work to sell their products on the open market.
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p>One inevitable effect of massive government expansion, especially into economic development, will be for more companies to bribe their way into the government money stream. By the end, you will see companies from every kind of do-good sector, be it solar power, health care, affordable housing, doing this kind of thing.
the Cognos episode had nothing whatsoever to do with “massive government expansion”. Its seed took root during the prior administration, a Republican administration loudly dedicated to “shrinking” and “downsizing” government.
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p>My experience, in my 35+ years in the private high-technology sector, is that corruption is as common in the private as the public sector — if not more so. It is harder to blow the whistle on corrupt practices (it is generally impossible to find anyone to listen), harder to identify what is and is not corrupt, and there is generally a great deal more money in play.
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p>For the past thirty years — since the election of Ronald Reagan — the rightwing has been selling greed, avarice, and un-mitigated self-interest as a magical cure for all that ails us. They have wrapped it up in the flag, the Bible, and apple pie. Several generations of business people have grown up in that culture, and we now see what it means as it plays out.
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p>I don’t believe that people, especially business people, are more greedy today than they have ever been. I do believe that too many of them, today, are under the delusion that they have some God-given entitlement to do whatever they choose, regardless of the consequences to their communities, co-workers, neighborhoods, and our nation. In my view, this is a common thread that joins the disgraceful Bechtel abuses during the Big Dig, the obscene behavior of Wall Street, the flagrant corruption of Halliburton and Blackwell in Iraq, and the rest of the pieces on display in the rightwing wall of shame.
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p>I think that right now, we need MORE, rather than less, government. We need MORE, rather than less, regulation. We need MORE, rather than less, government investment in transportation, education, and healthcare. We need MORE, rather than less, government investment in economic development.
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p>We need MORE, rather than less, government leadership in providing for and protecting basic human rights and constitutional protections.
“they have some God-given entitlement to do whatever they choose”
— because they are serving power and can claim that government power is doing good.
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p>As for the rest of it, it’s like the guy and the banks, he went where the money is. The crooks will go where the money is, and if it’s in government, that’s where they’ll be. The difference in corruption is businesses fail, but government never closes down.
You wrote:
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p>Are you kidding? The last time I checked, Bechtel, Halliburton, and a gazillion similarly corrupt companies were doing just fine (financially speaking). Do you think Exxon/Mobil doesn’t participate in bribery, graft, and kickbacks? Such practices are, after all, absolutely required in large areas of the Middle East, not to mention Asia and Indonesia. Do you know anyone who does business with virtually anybody in Russia today?
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p>Corruption absolutely does not inevitably cause negative financial results, especially for the corporation that allows or encourages it. Your assertion that it does exemplifies the mythology that, in my opinion, is at the core of so much of our current problems.
Trying to convince a free marketeer that regulating business is a good and necessary thing is like trying to persuade a Creationist that the world is more than 6K years old. Your reality-based arguments won’t shake his faith. The fact that there still are any FMs after the collapse of their grand experiment is proof that they aren’t open to changing their minds.
And that’s how Sal after Sal gets away with ripping you off.
Yes you get it, Halliburton is corrupt because it’s doing government business! You expand the government business, more companies will try to get into it and win the contracts by bribing the officials! You’re just surprised by it or blind to it because they’re doing Democratic business. “Health Care Information Technology” sounds so much more benign than weapons. Don’t you think Halliburton will get into the business of building wind farms? and then forcing electric customers to buy their energy at above-market rates?
The heavily-subsidized public transit systems of Germany, Swiss, Austria, and even the UK are many times better than the MBTA at moving people affordably, efficiently, and safely.
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p>If “expand[ing] the government business” causes corruption, and — by implication — interferes with the above three priorities of any public transporation system, then how do you explain the success of these heavily-subsidized government operated transit systems?
George Washington Plunkitt became a millionaire by getting inside information about development including municipal train lines, and then buying up real estate along the route.
Mr. Plunkitt sounds like a successful entrepreneur to me. Right?