Maybe these bozos aren't entirely clueless

VA Bonus Winners Sat on Review Boards - RedOrbit: By HOPE YEN

WASHINGTON - Nearly two dozen officials who received hefty performance bonuses last year at the Veterans Affairs Department also sat on the boards charged with recommending the payments.

Documents obtained by The Associated Press raise questions of conflicts of interest or appearances of conflicts in connection with the bonuses, some of which went to senior officials involved in crafting a budget that came up $1.3 billion short and jeopardized veterans' health care.

The documents show that 21 of 32 officials who were members of VA performance review boards received more than half a million dollars in payments themselves.

Among them: nearly a dozen senior officials who devised the flawed 2005 budget. Also rewarded was the deputy undersecretary for benefits, who manages a system with severe backlogs of veterans waiting for disability benefits.

Remembering I.F. Stone: OSHA Leaves Worker Safety in Hands of Industry

From The New York Times: By STEPHEN LABATON

...That response reflects OSHA’s practices under the Bush administration, which vowed to limit new rules and roll back what it considered cumbersome regulations that imposed unnecessary costs on businesses and consumers. Across Washington, political appointees — often former officials of the industries they now oversee — have eased regulations or weakened enforcement of rules on issues like driving hours for truckers, logging in forests and corporate mergers.

Since George W. Bush became president, OSHA has issued the fewest significant standards in its history, public health experts say. It has imposed only one major safety rule. The only significant health standard it issued was ordered by a federal court.

The agency has killed dozens of existing and proposed regulations and delayed adopting others. For example, OSHA has repeatedly identified silica dust, which can cause lung cancer, and construction site noise as health hazards that warrant new safeguards for nearly three million workers, but it has yet to require them.

“The people at OSHA have no interest in running a regulatory agency,” said Dr. David Michaels, an occupational health expert at George Washington University who has written extensively about workplace safety. “If they ever knew how to issue regulations, they’ve forgotten. The concern about protecting workers has gone out the window.”

World Bank Weighs Response to Chief’s Actions

From The New York Times: By STEVEN R. WEISMAN

WASHINGTON, April 13 — The World Bank’s executive board was deliberating today what action to take regarding its president, Paul D. Wolfowitz, amid new evidence that he had not been entirely candid about his role in giving his girlfriend, a World Bank employee, a raise and transfer.

Documents released today by the executive board called into question Mr. Wolfowitz’s earlier assertions that bank ethics officials had been kept informed about the new post for his companion, Shaha Ali Riza. The papers also indicated that Mr. Wolfowitz was more involved in securing the new post for his companion than he has let on.

What is it with these characters? These are the prerogatives of elite members of a medieval Royal Court, not a modern democracy. Is that what Leo Strauss had in mind? Say it ain't so, RaMBaM!

Re: Hiding posting on Iraq under comments to law school lounges:

Think of it as a scavenger hunt, where you don't know what you're looking for, or even, necessarily, that you're in the game.

Yes, dear reader(s), I guess I do like playing with myself. Have since adolescence.(Sorry if that embarrassed my kids.)

As I.F. "Izzy" Stone (where is he when we need him?--which is always!) once famously said about the Times (more or less; maybe a reader can fine tune the precise quote): the interesting thing is, you never know where you will find that day's front page story...

Stone is a personal hero; I did get to encounter him once when I was in school. His range extended well beyond the Vietnam War reporting that first brought him to my attention, from a book on his travels with Jewish D.P.s from war torn Europe to Palestine, to his reconsideration of the trial of Socrates (after teaching himself Greek in his later years, if I remember the story correctly).

See comments for a suggestion that Stone was a proto-blogger, and his Weekly the first blog by a citizen-journalist.