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How family values are destroying America. Put corruption and cronyism inside a family and you've got a dynasty. A parent giving a child an unfair advanatge is the ultimate abuse of "affirmative action" — look in the White House if you want to see what I mean.

Dynasty behavior is screwing everything up on every level. Watch as billions vanish because Darleen Druyun's kid had asthma (WSJ):

Darleen Druyun's acid tongue and hardball negotiating style were famous among Pentagon contractors when she was a top Air Force acquisition official. But it was family loyalty that helped send Ms. Druyun to prison and set off the biggest Pentagon procurement scandal since the 1980s.

Even as she hammered out multibillion-dollar weapons deals, Ms. Druyun took time out to keep bedside vigils when her elder daughter, Heather, was hospitalized for asthma and her other daughter broke both arms in a horseback-riding accident. At the Pentagon, where she browbeat generals and defense-industry executives alike, former co-workers recall Ms. Druyun pausing during meetings to beam with pride over a framed charcoal drawing of an eagle in her office. "That's Heather's work," she would say.

Ms. Druyun, 57 years old, admitted in October that she steered billions of dollars worth of contracts to Boeing Co. out of gratitude for Boeing's hiring of Heather, Heather's future husband and eventually herself. That confession, in a signed statement to the court, came as a shock to many because previously she had admitted only to breaking conflict-of-interest rules in her job talks with Boeing -- the crime for which she has been sentenced to nine months in prison. Ms. Druyun pleaded guilty partly to protect her daughter, whom prosecutors had threatened to charge over her role as a conduit in the illegal job talks.

The government is now conducting its biggest Pentagon corruption investigation since bribery marred Ronald Reagan's defense buildup in the 1980s. Investigators are scouring dozens of contracts, trying to determine how many of Ms. Druyun's deals were tainted. They're also trying to figure out how to stop civil servants from building fiefdoms as Ms. Druyun did over a decade.

[...]

In late 2000, Ms. Druyun's professional and personal lives began to overlap. According to court statements by Ms. Druyun and others, she contacted Mr. [Michael] Sears, Boeing's chief financial officer, and asked him about a possible job for Heather's then-boyfriend and future husband, Michael McKee, who had a doctorate in aeronautical engineering from Ohio State University. Mr. Sears promptly met the young man, and he was hired into Boeing's prestigious Phantom Works defense research unit in St. Louis.

Within two months, Ms. Druyun sought Mr. Sears's help again, this time to find a job for Heather. In a puzzling move, Ms. Druyun called Mr. Sears a few days later attempting to withdraw the request, according to the Air Force general counsel's office. But Mr. Sears had already set the wheels in motion. Heather, then 24 years old with a degree in communications, was hired by Boeing's defense unit as a college recruiter.

Around the same time, Ms. Druyun approved a $412 million contract modification for Boeing's C-17 -- the same plane she had helped save a decade earlier when it was a McDonnell Douglas project. She dealt with Mr. Sears on the contract modification. Then in June 2001, Ms. Druyun awarded Boeing a $4 billion upset win over Lockheed to upgrade Lockheed's own C-130 cargo planes. She now admits she "was influenced by her perceived indebtedness to Boeing" and that an "objective" decision maker "may not have selected Boeing." It is illegal for government officials to allow personal benefit to impact their official duties.

In 2002, Heather became afraid that she might lose her job -- it's not clear why -- and she conveyed those fears to her mother, according to Ms. Druyun's court statement. Ms. Druyun again contacted a high-ranking Boeing executive with whom she was negotiating contracts. Heather was transferred to another post in the human-resources department.

Lockheed and other Boeing rivals didn't protest the now-suspect contract decisions while Ms. Druyun was in power, and officials of those companies say they didn't suspect favoritism. Nonetheless, Ms. Druyun made clear to associates that she admired Boeing. In 2001, she briefed Air Force Secretary James Roche on the contest between Boeing and Lockheed to build the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a multipurpose plane slated to be the biggest Pentagon program ever. She started by extolling the virtues of Boeing's management, says a participant at the meeting. "After 20 minutes, Roche interrupted and asked her, 'Are you going to actually talk to me about the airplane?' " this person says. The Air Force chose Lockheed a few months later on the strength of its airplane design.

"She started by extolling the virtues of Boeing's management."

That is so fucking sad. The chief procurement officer of the Air Force is a billion-dollar shill so her asthmatic daughter Heather can get a job. It was June when I first took a look at Dragon Lady's daughter, Heather McKee.

The long article (3,000 words!) in today's Journal by Andy Pasztor and Jonathan Karp is good reporting with a lot of details I haven't seen before, and I'm tempted to excerpt a lot more. But despite all the hand-wringing about the family's medical conditions (Druyun has diabetes; her husband has a heart condition), Druyun was the sole reason that billions in taxes were wasted in diverted contracts. Those billions belonged to Americans, millions of whom also have diabetes and asthma and heart conditions. And they don't have the US Treasury at their beck and call as Druyun did.

The cost of dynasty behavior is incalculable. Billions from taxpayers in the case of Boeing; thousands of lives in the case of Iraq.

Family values will kill us all — until we realize that the family is the human species itself.

HANDY LINK LIST
Darleen Druyun's $5.7 billion surprise (with photo)
Spawn of the Dragon Lady: Heather McKee
Dragon Lady's multibillion dollar retirement party
Stealing through turbulence: Boeing CFO Michael Sears's book on business "ethics"

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