POGO! Yesterday when the story broke about Dragon Lady Darleen Druyun's firing, this site got a flurry of hits from Google and boeing.com. So I googled "darleen druyun" and, yay for our team, Skimble was the #3 listing, with Boeing at #1.

But #2 was POGO, The Project on Government Oversight, which "investigates, exposes, and seeks to remedy systemic abuses of power, mismanagement, and subservience by the federal government to powerful special interests. Founded in 1981, we are a politically-independent, nonprofit watchdog that strives to promote a government that is accountable to the citizenry." Of course, they were all over the Druyun story first.

With the current market rally in "systemic abuses of power, mismanagement, and subservience by the federal government to powerful special interests," could anybody be busier than POGO these days?

{ 11:54 AM }

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Adultery still sacred in France. While his brother blathers on about the holiness of heteromarriage in the United States, Neil Bush wines and dines with his new squeeze in France (society columnist Shelby Hodge in the Houston Chronicle):

First stop Paris (make that France), where Houstonians Neil Bush and lawyers Laura and John Spalding joined Houston transplant Maria Andrews for a week of birthday celebrations at eateries that included the Ritz and Alain Ducasse. The Spaldings also celebrated the 40th birthday of Bracewell & Patterson lawyer Warren Harris at famed Taillevent restaurant, the "gazillion-course dinner" hosted by his wife, Lauren Beck Harris.

While Neilsie cavorted at the Ritz, jilted ex-wife Sharon Bush stayed home with the kids and stuck pins in her Barbara Bush voodoo doll.

{ 11:51 AM }

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Victory, irony, tragedy. As John Ashcroft plans his next attack on domestic "narco-terrorists" (via the so-called Victory Act, his planned sequel to the Patriot Acts designed to nab pot smokers with cell phones and any swarthy-looking Arabs with cash), the irony is that his petulant boss has set the stage for the biggest opium crop ever — by ignoring the aftermath of his fruitless excursion into Afghanistan.

{ 9:55 AM }

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Blame the salesman, the auditor, someone, anyone. The irregularities in the mutual fund industry have a new scapegoat. Here's the logic: the president of the company is stealing, so senior management intends to pin the blame on the people who sell the products (this Investment News link probably won't last long):

Some mutual fund companies are looking to pass the buck to broker-dealers over potential liabilities stemming from market timing and late trading of funds, brokerage executives say.

Over the past two months, many mutual fund companies have been sending additions and revisions to selling agreements to broker-dealers that sell their funds.

In the revised agreements, the fund companies often ask brokerage executives to sign off to ensure that no adviser or broker is engaging in late trading, which is illegal, or market timing, which is loosely defined and supposedly discouraged by the industry.

[...]

The mutual fund companies are looking to put a potential legal burden on the broker-dealer networks that sell their funds, says another brokerage industry executive, also asking not to be named. "They want to limit their liability, and place it on the shoulders of the broker-dealer," the executive says.

Shifting responsibility to the salesman does nothing to stop the thievery carried out by insiders in senior management.

The solution to the mutual fund crisis is the same as the solution to the Enron crisis: put those responsible in jail, with sentences that are proportionate to their crimes. Make the convictions substantial and humiliating.

More than half of federal prisoners are imprisoned for drug offenses. But white collar CEO crime, which arguably is much likelier that drug possession to victimize innocent people — by stealing their money, health or livelihoods — is punished with the gentlest of reprimands.

Blaming anyone else is all the rage right now. Bush's top contributor Ken Lay is still at large because the Department of Justice blamed the auditor instead of the perpetrator.

Note that all this deflected responsibility comes from the people who promised to bring accountability back to America. Ultimately, your view of this issue depends on your relative definition of what corruption is. Would you rather your president lie about accepting $2 million from Enron, or a blow job?

{ 8:50 AM }

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Dragon Lady's pink slip. Darleen Druyun, enemy combatant in the war against US taxpayers, is gone. At issue is the potential $5.7 billion overcharge for Boeing refueling tankers she helped orchestrate while still a US Air Force acquisitions officer (WSJ, sub. req'd):

CHICAGO -- Boeing Co. fired its finance chief over the improper hiring of a former Air Force official and covering up the circumstances during an internal investigation, the company said.

Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Mike Sears violated company policy by communicating with the official when she hadn't disqualified herself from acting in her official government capacity on matters involving the company, Boeing said.
American taxpayers,
I really hate all of you.An internal review found that both attempted to conceal their misconduct, the company said.

The official, Darleen Druyun, was dismissed from her position in the company's missile-defense unit.

"Compelling evidence of this misconduct by Mr. Sears and Ms. Druyun came to light over the last two weeks," Boeing Chairman and Chief Executive Phil Condit said in a prepared statement. "Upon review of the facts, our board of directors determined that immediate dismissal of both individuals for cause was the appropriate course of action."

Boeing said it has informed the Air Force of the actions taken and will continue to cooperate with the government in its probe of the matter. The company said it couldn't predict the outcome of the Air Force investigation or what action the government might take against the company or the individuals.

[...]

Ms. Druyun had several personal ties to the aerospace giant while she was negotiating on behalf of the government a controversial plan valued at over $20 billion to lease Boeing jetliners as airborne refueling tankers.

During her tenure as deputy acquisitions chief for the Air Force, she agreed to sell her Virginia home to a Boeing attorney working on the tanker-lease arrangement, according to information compiled by a conservative nonprofit research group in Washington. In addition, her daughter and her son-in-law were employed by the company.

Evidence of misconduct "came to light over the last two weeks"? You could have read all about Druyun, affectionately known as Dragon Lady, right here last week and way back on September 12, thanks to Paul Krugman via Arms and the Man.

{ 8:12 AM }

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Iraq occupation "going well." Corpse desecration and attacks on civilian aircraft are apparently now the measures of a successful US occupation (Yahoo News):

MOSUL, Iraq - Iraqi teenagers dragged the bloody bodies of two American soldiers from a wrecked vehicle and pummeled them with concrete blocks Sunday, witnesses said, describing a burst of savagery in a city once safe for Americans. Another soldier was killed by a bomb and a U.S.-allied police chief was assassinated.

[...]

About a dozen swarming teenagers dragged the soldiers' bodies out of the wreckage and beat them with concrete blocks, the witnesses said.

"They lifted a block and hit them with it on the face," Younis Mahmoud, 19, said.

[...]

Television video showed the soldiers' bodies splayed on the ground as U.S. troops secured the area. One victim's foot appeared to have been severed.

The frenzy recalled the October 1993 scene in Somalia, when locals dragged the bodies of Marines killed in fighting with warlords through the streets.

[...]

In Kirkuk, 150 miles north of Baghdad, a bomb exploded at an oil compound, injuring three American civilian contractors from the U.S. firm Kellogg Brown & Root. The three suffered facial cuts from flying glass, U.S. Lt. Col. Matt Croke said.

KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton, also has a significant presence at Baghdad's Palestine Hotel, which was rocketed by insurgents Friday, wounding one civilian.

"We all know that Americans are being threatened," Croke said.

Kimmitt told reporters in Baghdad that witnesses saw two surface-to-air missiles fired Saturday at a cargo plane operated by the Belgium-based package service DHL as it left for Bahrain.

The plane was the first civilian airliner hit by insurgents, who have shot down several military helicopters with shoulder-fired rockets.

DHL and Royal Jordanian, the only commercial passenger airline flying into Baghdad, immediately suspended flights on orders of the coalition authority.

Despite the ongoing violence, U.S. officials insisted the occupation was going well.

Is Halliburton the new flypaper? And was there any strategically significant cargo on that DHL flight to Bahrain?

{ 4:16 PM }

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