Krugman--"Find the Brownie"

[Inland]

Times Select, you need a subscription or to pay for something.

http://select.nytimes.com/2005/09/26/opinion/26krugman.html?hp



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." I guess it depends on the meaning of the word heck.
******
Jack Abramoff is a lobbyist who was paid huge sums by clients such as casino-owning Indian tribes and sweatshop operators on Saipan. Two Degrees of Jack Abramoff is inspired by the remarkable centrality of Mr. Abramoff, who was indicted last month on charges of fraud, in Washington's power structure.

The goal isn't to find important political players who were chummy with Mr. Abramoff - that's too easy. Instead, you have to find people linked by employment. One degree of Jack Abramoff is someone who actually worked for the lobbyist. Two degrees is a powerful Washington figure who hired someone who formerly worked for Mr. Abramoff, or who had one of his own former employees go to work for Mr. Abramoff.


********
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.

[Up2Late]

1. Any idea how long until this goes to the public archives?

I saw this last night, but couldn't view it.

[Inland]

2. No idea.

I'm not sure there IS a *legal* public archive.

[Up2Late]

3. Sorry, what I meant was, do they eventually move the NYTimes "Select" ...

...articles out of the "select" section to the regular, "anyone who has signed up for the NY Times website can read this" section of the NY Times web site?

[Inland]

9. I don't know abou that, either

It's a new restriction, just a week or two old.

[mcscajun]

10. They won't be moving anything from Select into Free Content

This is the way it is now.

They've also cracked down on websites of those newspapers that picked up the columns on syndication: they can print the columns in their papers, but not publish on their websites. This impacted, among others, the TimesUnion.com, which carried Krugman, Dowd, and others we don't necessarily want to read.

The Unofficial Paul Krugman site has also had to remove Krugman's columns.

If you find a link, it pays to send it by private message...the Times is being very aggressive in searching out "illegal" postings.

[Demeter]

6. When My local paper Reprints, I will try to post link

The NYT (for which I am a subcontractor) has screwed over its own workforce and suppliers for so long, it was only a matter of time before it got to the readers. Now you can't even read the garbage they print.

[furman]

4. You can find the article at this link

http://www.topplebush.com/oped2209.shtml

[Up2Late]

8. Thanks, I knew some rouge website would eventually have it...

...which is exactly why this is a bad business move by the NY Times.

[yellowcanine]

5. How about Karen Hughes as assistant secretary for "what was it again"?

Does anyone think she is a diplomat? Apparently she can't even tell who the players are in Egypt without her flash cards and her state department minder.

[Demeter]

7. She Doesn't Even Get Name Billing!

They didn't identify the "State Dept. Diplomat" til paragraph three!