To the Americans I mean. Why? Here's why. We keep hearing about the contractor-politician nexus in our country. It sometimes appears to be a problem very unique to us, though it isn't. For instance, it happens in the US too, which has strict rules and laws about everything including politicians accepting money from others. But all those laws and rules just ensure that the people involved do things extremely ingeniously.
This story is doing the rounds in Democratic areas of the blogosphere. There is this Republican politician, call him Duke (his actual name). He is on an important government subcommittee dealing with Defense and another committe on Intelligence. (Government work in the US gets done by committees - instead of by ministries as in India - though this is a simplification.) Then there is this Defense contractor, call him Wade. The latter wants government contracts. Of course , that is his bread and butter.
Mr Wade seeks to influence Mr Duke, who is a sitting member on all those powerful committes. How to do it without raising eyebrows? Well, offer to buy his house for a certain sum of money. $1.65 million, in fact. The stated reason is to 'flip' the house - buy it for $ X and then sell it to someone else quickly for $X + y, y becoming his (Wade's) profit. But in this case, Mr Wade puts it back for sale immediately - for the same price. But the house lies unbought for nearly nine months. And when the house is finally sold, it goes for less than a million dollars. A loss of $ 700,000 for Mr Wade!
But everything that happens, happens for the good. For, Mr Wade, who was finding defense work difficult to come by till then, suddenly starts 'reeling in tens of millions of dollars in defense and intelligence-related contracts'. Now that is a coincidence! And Mr Duke cannot say anything about the contracts awarded, since they are in the areas of Defense and Intelligence - highly, highly classified. Thank god for terror and the communists and conspiracy theories.
Another cog in the wheel, the 'independent' real estate broker who arranged the transaction, contributed $11,500 to Mr Duke's election campaign in 2004! A nice, close, vicious circle. The latest here. There is a yacht in the picture too it seems - of course, the yacht belongs to Mr Wade and Mr Duke is renting it from him!
This story is doing the rounds in Democratic areas of the blogosphere. There is this Republican politician, call him Duke (his actual name). He is on an important government subcommittee dealing with Defense and another committe on Intelligence. (Government work in the US gets done by committees - instead of by ministries as in India - though this is a simplification.) Then there is this Defense contractor, call him Wade. The latter wants government contracts. Of course , that is his bread and butter.
Mr Wade seeks to influence Mr Duke, who is a sitting member on all those powerful committes. How to do it without raising eyebrows? Well, offer to buy his house for a certain sum of money. $1.65 million, in fact. The stated reason is to 'flip' the house - buy it for $ X and then sell it to someone else quickly for $X + y, y becoming his (Wade's) profit. But in this case, Mr Wade puts it back for sale immediately - for the same price. But the house lies unbought for nearly nine months. And when the house is finally sold, it goes for less than a million dollars. A loss of $ 700,000 for Mr Wade!
But everything that happens, happens for the good. For, Mr Wade, who was finding defense work difficult to come by till then, suddenly starts 'reeling in tens of millions of dollars in defense and intelligence-related contracts'. Now that is a coincidence! And Mr Duke cannot say anything about the contracts awarded, since they are in the areas of Defense and Intelligence - highly, highly classified. Thank god for terror and the communists and conspiracy theories.
Another cog in the wheel, the 'independent' real estate broker who arranged the transaction, contributed $11,500 to Mr Duke's election campaign in 2004! A nice, close, vicious circle. The latest here. There is a yacht in the picture too it seems - of course, the yacht belongs to Mr Wade and Mr Duke is renting it from him!
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