“Find The Brownie”
Wow, an interesting blog game making the rounds is “Find The Brownie” — suggested by NY Times author Paul Krugman:
The objective in Find the Brownie is to find an obscure but important government job held by someone whose only apparent qualifications for that job are political loyalty and personal connections. It’s inspired by President Bush’s praise, four days after Katrina hit, for the hapless Michael Brown, the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency: “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”
There are a lot of Brownies. As Time magazine puts it in its latest issue, “Bush has gone further than most presidents to put political stalwarts in some of the most important government jobs you’ve never heard of.” Time offers a couple of fresh examples, such as the former editor of a Wall Street medical-industry newsletter who now holds a crucial position at the Food and Drug Administration.O.K., enough joking. The point of my games - which are actually research programs for enterprising journalists - is that all the scandals now surfacing are linked. Something is rotten in the state of the U.S. government. And the lesson of Hurricane Katrina is that a culture of cronyism and corruption can have lethal consequences.
Being the quick minded entrepreneur type, I thought– WOW, I wonder if findthebrownie.com is up for sale!? And YEP, someone has swooped in on this one and began naming people and their credentials… pretty funny stuff. I guess ANYONE can have a fancy title, huh? www.findthebrownie.com
September 28th, 2005 at 9:53 am
From wandering around that site a bit, I found that the GSA (General Services Administration that seems to provide office supplies to the departments that might actually do work) has an auction site… so I go, and what do I see right on the front page? A 1970 Coupe Deville… you’ve just got to see this…
linking is difficult on that page, so here’s a link to the font page, hopefully the car will still be there (it’s sale # 41FBPI05436001): http://gsaauctions.gov/gsaauctions/gsaauctions/
What the hell is a government agency that I don’t think has authority to seize property doing with a car like that….
September 28th, 2005 at 10:03 am
Sweet lord! Bob needs that Car!
September 28th, 2005 at 5:33 pm
“…all the scandals now surfacing are linked. Something is rotten in the state of the U.S. government.”
Where has he been for the past couple hundred years? There will always be people who will unscrupulously try to work the system to their benefit. Just be glad we don’t live in the mideast, or even europe for that matter. Seriously, people getting mad at cronyism is a really good sign; I only hope more people start spotting brownies and raising hell.
September 28th, 2005 at 6:44 pm
The New York Times Online has changed its policy — charging for op ed pieces. So I have to wait until Krugman’s essays are archived on his fan site before I can read them. So maybe I’ll get to this one next week, if I remember . . .
Krugman is a lone voice in the wilderness.