The White House has decided that several thousand political appointees across the federal government will be eligible for cash bonuses, abandoning a Clinton-era prohibition that grew out of questionable practices in the first Bush administration.
Administration officials said the policy shift, ordered by the White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., earlier this year but never publicly disclosed, seeks to correct the inequity of political appointees' working side by side with civil servants who routinely receive bonuses.
The new policy is being instituted at many federal departments, and a few agencies have already begun distributing awards of several thousand dollars each to political appointees. For example, the Justice Department has given bonuses to political appointees who were deemed to have played important roles in counterterrorism* and the Sept. 11 investigation, officials said. [...]
For the first time in eight years, cabinet-level officials and agency chiefs have been authorized to approve annual awards of up to $10,000 — and possibly more — for the influential senior attorneys, policy advisers, confidential assistants and other appointees who are brought onto their political staffs. Awards can total $25,000 — or higher with approval from the White House.
Here's an extra fifty grand, Henry, for helping out with Pinochet, bombing Cambodia, and legitimizing the administration's lack of a grasp on Al Qaeda. In Junior's world, crime has a whole new payscale.
*In the private sector, the Vice President of Counterterrorism would be receiving a pink slip instead of a cash bonus after the fuckup of 9/11.
Former Ambassador to Yemen Barbara Bodine? Former interim FBI director Tom Pickard? Did you receive your retroactive bonuses yet? Meanwhile, John O'Neill, the FBI counterterrorism expert who knew, is still dead, along with nearly 3,000 others.
Death for the competent, bonuses for the toadies. It won't fly as a slogan, but it's making a hell of a party platform and an administration policy.
