Vic Socotra

05 January 2009

Pay to Play

(Bill and the President Elect in happier times. Photo copyright NYT)

It seemed simple enough- if you want to get a seat at the table, or maybe some preferential treatment, all you have to do is grease the right palm. We are taught about it in our annual compliance training, one of the things the government requires us to do and is quite insistent about auditing.

Accordingly, we are quite prim and place it high on the list of things that are tracked and reported within the company. The Corrupt Foreign Practices Act is the governing legislation, since most of the problems come when Americans have to deal with the Third World, like Chicago and New Mexico.

It is normal business practice overseas for Governments to have their hand out for bribes in exchange for contract awards. In order to ensure that other nations enjoy a competitive advantage against us, Congress has explicitly forbidden us from acknowledging human nature.

I’m OK with that. A good product at a competitive price ought to rule the day, even if that is not the way it works in a lot of places. An analysis of Chicago politics and the Governor with the Amazing Hair should serve as a note that Congress might want to eliminate the reference to “foreign” in the corrupt practices Act.

The antics in the Windy City penetrated right into Big Pink. I knew it was going to be an awful Monday, and sent a nice note to my business associates late Friday, telling them that the Government was going to be placing out some raw meat on trays, first thing Monday. Then I did my level best to forget about work for two days. This morning I awoke to the alarm, set for the first time in weeks. It was raw and piercing and painfully familiar.

I padded into the kitchen and made the coffee, wondering at how truly awful things can feel at 0445. This is no way to live, I thought, clicking onto the New York Times.

The Israelis apparently have decided to cut Gaza in half, and have quite lost the information operations component of the campaign, regardless of how successful the military aspects might be. The reality is in there, someplace, and that is that Hamas thugs have been lobbing increasingly sophisticated Iranian-supplied rockets into the south for months, a provocation that is impossible for a democracy to bear.

I’m not much for quid-pro-quo in these things, since in my experience for each quid comes a worse quo, but I am an American, and no one is threatening to push Arlington into the Potomac. All of us who live with our beds safe at night have a different perspective on things.

I had my own problems. It appears that I am not going to be a senior official in the Obama Administration after all. As a committed pragmatist, I had contributed to the Bill Richardson presidential campaign each time he had asked. It is something you have to do if you expect to share some of the gravy at the end of the day. It is politics. It is the way things are done. I was paying to play.

Naturally, I was devastated when his campaign went on the rocks of Hillary and Change, but as a pragmatist, I adjusted my sights. So I lost my shot at being Secretary of Defense. I could deal with it, and really, my schedule is pretty tight as it is. I figured he would get State as a consolation prize after his early endorsement of the President Elect.

I thought about “Chief of Investigations and Research,” State’s little intelligence organization, trying on the title in my mind. It would be low-profile but sort of fun.

Then Hillary aced out Bill for SECSTATE, and I’ll tell you, when he accepted Commerce I really had to do my homework to find something that would enable me to build a little empire downtown. I was working on a white paper and everything, and wondered why I had not heard back from Bill’s Chief of Staff to set up an office call.

Well, of course, now we all know. While Bill was planning his run for the White House, an outfit called CDR Financial Products, out of Beverly Hills, was given two contracts worth a total of $1.4 million bucks to advise the State of New Mexico on a large infrastructure bond issue.

The president of the company is named David Rubin, and he is the guy who screwed up my chance to join the Administration team to crush traffickers in illicit technology, the best sinecure job I could find in the Plum Book. David was like me, only richer. He donated about $110,000 bucks to the various committees that supported Bill’s political activities.

It is all a matter of scale. I kicked in $25 bucks every time Bill asked. It is all legal, but I was not doing business in New Mexico, not that I hadn’t tried. But really, a contract for a million and a couple bucks is so inconsequential that we would call it “decimal dust” here in Washington, a rounding error in something big.

Oh well. I checked the Blackberry as I put some eggs on the griddle. There were three new messages since I went to bed. I blinked warily. They were from the government, and they announced the release of five contracts for competition. I checked the time of transmittal and groaned. The solicitations had been released between midnight and one AM. Someone was determined to pee in our Cheerios.

Since Bill is going to have to deal with the Grand Jury, and won’t be coming to Washington any time soon, I could stop work on the White Paper. That might save some time.

I flipped the eggs over and broke a yolk, which spread in yellow glory across the pan.

If I am going to get paid, I have to go play. No damn story this morning. Happy New Year, I thought, and deliberately left out the modifying adverb.

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