Updated: That brings us back to the definition of corruption. In that case one could say Cantwell as a politician is just doing the very best for her constituency. What Cantwell is doing is not illegal. That wouldn't negate it's smell of corruption, but it does come to the definition of the word itself.
Your post actually dovetails into an article i'm getting ready to post. In fact now i will post it as a reply to yours and include the other intended recipient-post as a See also.
Won't be long.
Update: Oh. Just a thought. How to get over the mess of the competing companies e.g. there. Give them each say $4 billion.
In any case government appropriation as that is yet another good example of corporate welfare in America. Welfare is cool for corps. And farmers. But not for ordinary individual people in need. That's political America.
Americans Think ‘Corruption’ Is Everywhere. Is That Why We Vote for It?
"Faug, Here is a current, specific, example of DC corruption..."
None of which takes away from the fact that not all politicians are corrupt. And not all government is either. Any suggestion all politicians are corrupt, and all government (including all those in government) is corrupt, is simply lazy thinking. It's just not true.
Photo illustration by Linda Huang. Source photograph by Shana Novak/Getty Images.
By Charles Homans
July 10, 2018
At one of the last rallies of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, I found myself speaking with a pair of middle-aged women who emigrated years ago from the Philippines. We got to talking about Rodrigo Duterte, the belligerent strongman who was elected president there six months earlier, and I asked them if they thought Duterte and Trump would get along. “Oh, my gosh!” the first woman said. “Probably — they are the same!”
Duterte had won in a landslide on his promises to extrajudicially exterminate the nation’s drug dealers and users, a pledge understood by Filipinos as a proxy battle in the country’s long war against endemic corruption. In 2006, Transparency International ranked .. https://www.transparency.org/research/cpi/cpi_2006/0#results .. the Philippines 121st out of the 163 countries on its Corruption Perceptions Index (that’s the bad end); a similar ranking the following year by the Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy rated it the most corrupt .. https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/13/business/worldbusiness/13iht-peso.4891792.html .. nation in Asia.
“I came from the Philippines, right?” the second woman said. “When corruption sets in, it doesn’t stop at the top. It goes down. Every appointee will be somebody that is corrupt or can be corrupted, can be silenced. Look at now. If you have a corrupt judicial system — I think the only thing that’s standing now in America that isn’t so very corrupted is the military.”
“And you think Trump can stop that?” I asked.
“I will take him,” she replied. “Because I know what Hillary did already.”
Of all the apocalyptic prophecies on offer at Trump rallies, this was in a way the most familiar. An obsession with corruption is an American tradition; it dates back to the founding fathers, who declared independence in part on the conviction that the British monarchy was wielding its expanding financial and patronage power to subvert the independence of Parliament. In a 1994 essay, the historian John Murrin observed that after the revolution, “anxiety about corruption, instead of receding in the republic designed to destroy it, acquired unprecedented force in American public life, sometimes almost enough to overwhelm all other concerns.”
You could argue that Americans have been well served by this anxiety. By international standards, we live in a cleanly run country, and always have.For all but two of the 23 years that Transparency International has published its index, the United States has appeared in the Top 20 least-evidently-corrupt countries. It’s true that we have had our share of spectacular episodes: the Whiskey Ring and Boss Tweed in the 19th century; Teapot Dome and Abscam in the 20th. In 2006, the Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff was convicted of felony corruption, bringing 20 people, including a congressman, down with him. In 2011, Rod Blagojevich, the Democratic former governor of Illinois, went to prison for trying to auction off Barack Obama’s old Senate seat. But the fact that these incidents remain so memorable is the point; they were seen as unacceptable aberrations, with consequences in the courts of law and public opinion. People went to prison, lost elections and, in Abramoff’s case, were played by Kevin Spacey in a biopic. - No other country has done so well at containing corruption while leaving so many of its people convinced that it has done poorly. - And yet, in a Gallup poll released three years ago, 75 percent .. https://news.gallup.com/poll/185759/widespread-government-corruption.aspx .. of American respondents said that corruption was “widespread” in the country’s government. Among the other countries in Transparency International’s Top 20 that were also surveyed by Gallup, none were remotely as pessimistic about corruption as the United States. No other country has done so well at containing corruption while leaving so many of its people convinced that it has done poorly.
Is it even worth distinguishing between this unseemly-but-legal stuff and true corruption if the outcome is, arguably, not much different? It’s an interesting question, but one you would only think to ask in a country, like the United States, where illegal corruption is relatively rare. The true cost of illegal corruption, in countries where it is rampant, is rarely the direct one; it is the way even the most banal and minor forms of it erode the rule of law, introducing uncertainty into every dealing with the state and reducing it to the self-interest of its human agents: not just politicians but also customs inspectors, permit issuers, police officers, anyone vested with enough power to extract a dollar. Sign up for The New York Times Magazine Newsletter: The best of The New York Times Magazine delivered to your inbox every week, including exclusive feature stories, photography, columns and more.
Eventually the idea of reforming institutions starts to seem bewilderingly difficult — harder than just tearing them down. This is why anti-corruption crusades are expedient platforms for demagogues and authoritarians who, like Duterte, have no serious interest in corruption — the Philippines had generally improved under his predecessor and has slid back down the rankings during his presidency — but are eager to tear down institutions for very different reasons.
Trump’s invocations of corruption, like Duterte’s, have rarely been far from his own open pining for unchecked authority. “You look at the corruption at the top of the F.B.I. — it’s a disgrace,” he told the hosts of “Fox and Friends” in April. “And our Justice Department, which I try and stay away from — but at some point I won’t.”
What is incredible about this is not just that so many Americans now accept the sort of drastic rhetoric that usually only flies in countries with actual, existential corruption problems. It’s the fact that so many people accept it from, of all people, Donald Trump. “The Democrat I.T. scandal is key to much of the corruption we see today,” he tweeted on June 7. This was a week before New York’s attorney general filed a lawsuit .. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/14/nyregion/trump-foundation-lawsuit-attorney-general.html .. seeking to disband Trump’s philanthropic foundation following a two-year investigation, alleging extensive campaign-law violations and extravagant self-dealing. (Trump blamed the lawsuit on “sleazy New York Democrats,” but the state’s evidence included a note in Trump’s own handwriting diverting foundation funds to his personal legal expenses.) - Many Americans now accept the sort of drastic rhetoric that usually only flies in countries with actual, existential corruption problems. - “Total corruption — the Witch Hunt has turned out to be a scam!” Trump tweeted about the F.B.I. on June 20, two days after Forbes reported that his commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, had lied to the Office of Government Ethics .. https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2018/06/18/lies-china-and-putin-solving-the-mystery-of-wilbur-ross-missing-fortune-trump-commerce-secretary-cabinet-conflicts-of-interest/#fb45a8a7e879 .. about his stakes in companies co-owned by the Chinese government and allies of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. “So many questions, so much corruption!” Trump fumed about the F.B.I. (again) on June 28, the day after the Environmental Protection Agency’s chief ethics officer reported .. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/30/climate/pruitt-epa-ethics.html .. that he was assisting in investigations of his own boss, Scott Pruitt, the target of 13 federal inquiries into his spending and management as the agency’s administrator. (A week later, Pruitt resigned.)
And that’s just in June. With each new revelation, reporters dutifully observe that it would be, for any other presidency, a defining scandal. This is a country where, as recently as 2009, failing to account for the use of a borrowed limo on an income-tax return, as Tom Daschle did .. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/04/us/politics/04obama.html , could force you to withdraw from a cabinet appointment. How did we get from there to Wilbur Ross, let alone Trump himself?
It’s possible, however, to see Trump not as an exception but as the logical conclusion of a national fear of corruption that long ago curdled into a self-satisfied conviction that everything and everyone in politics already is corrupt. Trump campaigned on the idea, after all. He has always had a knack for channeling Americans’ fundamental cynicism about politics, no doubt because he shares it. In May, he mused .. https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/31/politics/martha-stewart-rod-blagojevich-trump-pardons/index.html .. that he was considering commuting Blagojevich’s 14-year sentence; the governor, he argued, had really only been convicted of “being stupid and saying things that every other politician, you know, that many other politicians say.” Most Americans would probably agree. If you believe all politicians are crooks, it no longer seems to matter much whether a particular one among them is: The answer to “This guy?” becomes “Why not this guy?” And in the end, you get the country you thought you had all along.
Charles Homans is the politics editor for the magazine. He last wrote about the rallies Trump has held since becoming president.
It's what most of us at Tornado Alley said during and after Trump's successful election to the presidency. IF you are concerned with a so-called swamp how could you? And IF you are truly concerned with corruption at the top then how in Hades could you ever consider electing one of the most corrupt and selfish men in America as president. How could you? We asked. And said.
Tuesday: This article was updated to include a statement from the company Dynetics.
Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, two of the richest men in the world, both with dreams of leading humanity out into the solar system, are fighting over the moon.
On Monday, Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by Mr. Bezos, who will step down as Amazon’s chief executive later this year, filed a 50-page protest with the federal Government Accountability Office, challenging a $2.9 billion contract to SpaceX from NASA to build a lander for American astronauts to return to the moon.
Dynetics also filed a protest with the G.A.O. on Monday.
NASA acknowledged it had been notified of the protests. “NASA cannot provide further comment due to pending litigation,” the agency said in a statement emailed by a spokeswoman.
The dispute highlights that whatever the outsize ambitions of Mr. Musk and Mr. Bezos for the future, the present fortunes of their space companies and the ability to generate the profits needed to pay for their grandiose dreams depend on mundane business concerns like jousting for government contracts.
Bob Smith, chief executive of Blue Origin, said NASA’s decision was based on flawed evaluations of the bids — misjudging advantages of Blue Origin’s proposal and downplaying technical challenges in SpaceX’s. He also said NASA had placed a bigger emphasis on bottom-line cost than it said it would.
“It’s really atypical for NASA to make these kinds of errors,” Mr. Smith said in an interview. “They’re generally quite good at acquisition, especially its flagship missions like returning America to the surface of the moon. We felt that these errors needed to be addressed and remedied.”
He added that in any case, the space agency should have stuck with a desire it had stated many times, of wanting to hand out awards to two companies.
In explaining why Dynetics had appealed the award, the company said in a statement released on Tuesday that it “has issues and concerns with several aspects of the acquisition process as well as elements of NASA’s technical evaluation and filed a protest with the G.A.O. to address them.”
SpaceX did not reply to a request for comment, but in a tweet directed at a Times reporter .. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1386825367948644352 , Mr. Musk made a remark that played off the fact that Blue Origin has not yet achieved orbit with any of its rockets.
A year ago, NASA selected three lunar lander designs, by SpaceX, Blue Origin and Dynetics, for further study. NASA would then decide which designs it would finance to be built for lunar landings.
The Blue Origin proposal was a collaboration known as the National Team with three more traditional and experienced aerospace companies — Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper. The lander they proposed looked somewhat like a bigger version of the one used for NASA’s Apollo moon landings of the 1960s and 1970s.
Elon Musk, SpaceX’s founder and C.E.O., speaking near the base of a Starship spacecraft prototype in Boca Chica, Texas, in 2019. Loren Elliott/Getty Images
SpaceX, by contrast, proposed adapting a giant rocket called Starship that it is developing for trips to Mars. SpaceX has been testing Starship prototypes at its site in South Texas, often with explosive results.
During previous trips to the moon, NASA was in charge of designs and operations, an approach that triumphantly beat the Soviet Union to the moon. But it was expensive, and when interest in the moon waned, the technology had little value to the private sector.
In recent years, NASA has turned to private companies to design and operate spacecraft as a way to reduce the costs of space travel and spur commercial enterprise off Earth. That has proved successful for missions to send cargo, and now astronauts, to the International Space Station.
SpaceX, in particular, has thrived in this new entrepreneurial approach to spaceflight. Its Falcon 9 rocket, used for the space station missions, is now a workhorse for launching commercial satellites. And its Crew Dragon capsule, which carried a third load of astronauts for NASA to the space station on Friday, will also be used for rides paid for by wealthy space tourists.
Blue Origin lags behind SpaceX’s accomplishments. Its small, successfully tested New Shepard spacecraft is meant only for short, suborbital jaunts. A larger New Glenn rocket currently under development will compete with SpaceX and other rocket companies for sending satellites to orbit, but it will not make its maiden flight until at least 2022, two years later than originally announced.
Blue Origin’s partners have decades of space experience, however.
NASA announced the lunar lander competition in 2018, and officials had repeatedly said they wanted to choose more than one company to ensure competition to spur innovation and redundancy. Last September, Jim Bridenstine, then the NASA administrator, testified that he would worry if NASA chose only one lander design.
“When you eliminate the competition,” he told a Senate subcommittee, “you end up with programs that inevitably get dragged out, and you end up with cost overruns and schedule delays.”
However, for the current fiscal year, Congress provided only $850 million — a quarter of what Mr. Bridenstine and NASA were requesting for the development of lunar landers.
When NASA officials announced SpaceX as the single winner, they suggested that limited budgets influenced the decision. Kathy Lueders, NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said selecting one company to build the first moon lander was the “best strategy” at the current time.
In its rules for the competition, NASA did not promise it would choose two companies or even any at all. Instead, according to the document, the agency said it was planning to select up to two companies.
Ms. Lueders said a follow-up competition to build subsequent landers would be open to Blue Origin, Dynetics and other companies.
Mr. Smith said Blue Origin would put in bids on a future competition. But he added, “The idea that we’re going to be able to restore competition with something that right now is completely undefined and completely unfunded doesn’t make a lot of sense to us.”
When Bill Nelson, a former senator from Florida whom President Biden has nominated to be the next administrator for NASA .. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/19/science/nasa-bill-nelson.html , testified at a confirmation hearing last week, Senator Maria Cantwell, Democrat of Washington and chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, asked him to commit to providing Congress with a plan for how NASA would ensure commercial competition in the moon lander program.
“I do,” Mr. Nelson said. “Competition is always good.”
Mr. Smith said that with similar programs in the past, like the space station missions, NASA had hired more than one company even though it lacked certainty on future budgets.
The Blue Origin-led bid, at $6.0 billion, was more than double the price of SpaceX’s. But Mr. Smith said NASA had gone back to SpaceX and negotiated the price of its proposal, even though it did not have similar discussions with the other two teams.
“We didn’t get a chance to revise and that’s fundamentally unfair,” Mr. Smith said.
Less than $9 billion would have paid for two landers, and that is comparable to the $8.3 billion cost of the commercial crew program that now provides transportation to the space station, the protest argued.
“NASA is getting some great, great value from these proposals,” Mr. Smith said.
NASA’s evaluations of the bids gave ratings of “acceptable” on the technical aspects of Blue Origin’s and SpaceX’s proposals. Dynetics’s rating was lower, at “marginal.” SpaceX’s management was regarded as “outstanding,” while Blue Origin and its partners were judged, “very good,” as was Dynetics.
Mr. Smith said NASA misjudged aspects of its proposal, like the communications system and redundancy in guidance and navigation, as weaknesses. He also said it downplayed the risks in SpaceX’s design like the need to refuel Starship in orbit, which has never been tried before.
The NASA evaluators “largely dismissed the difficulty in the number of launches and rendezvous required in SpaceX’s proposed solution,” Mr. Smith said. “The risk of SpaceX development is high.”
The Government Accountability Office has 100 days to make a decision on the protest.
This is not the first time that Blue Origin and SpaceX have battled over a NASA contract. In 2013, NASA chose SpaceX to take over Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which had been used for Saturn 5 launches during Apollo and then launches of the space shuttles.
Blue Origin argued that its proposal, which would allow the launchpad to be used by multiple companies, should have been favored. But the G.A.O. said NASA had not expressed a preference for multiple companies using 39A and denied the protest. SpaceX now uses the launchpad for missions to the space station, and that is where the Starship trips to the moon would likely start from.
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