In the past, when President Bush 
got a free ride for this or that form of wrong-doing, the answer was usually press craveness. Now, though, there’s so much scandal and criminality, maybe it’s just hard for most administration wrong-doing to make the cut, what with the Cunningham bribery investigation creeping into the CIA and DHS, Rove about to get indicted, etc.
All day I’ve been getting emails about this piece in the Dallas Business Journal about how HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson publicly admitted killing a major government services contract because the head of the company in question wasn’t a Bush supporter.
(Thinkprogress explains why this almost certainly violates federal law.)
Just as interesting was Jackson’s follow-on statement in which shows his understanding of how government contracting works: political supporters get contracts so they can pump a percentage of the profits back into the political party. Standard machine politics, at best. Organized bribery, at worst. And whatever you want to call it, the guiding principle of all contracting and government spending in the second Bush administration.
Said Jackson: “He didn’t get the contract. Why should I reward someone who doesn’t like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don’t get the contract. That’s the way I believe.”
