Der Spiegel: Want To Become Bush's Next Ambassador? (Pony up first.)

[seafan]

Thom Hartman was talking about this today. This administration is nothing short of obscene. (emphasis added)


Embassies for Sale

Want To Become Bush's Next Ambassador?

By Georg Mascolo


Want to become a US ambassador? It's not as hard as you may think. Just donate a couple of hundred thousand to President George W. Bush's campaign coffers and pick your city. The president's new cadre of diplomats tend to be generous campaign donors, including the wealthy Ohio ball-bearing manufacture who is expected to run the US Embassy in Berlin.

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In the coming months, Rangers, Pioneers (starting at $100,000) and Super Rangers ($300,000 and up) will be beginning their new jobs as diplomats all over the world. According to the most recent count, 30 of the Republican Party's biggest donors have been rewarded with posts in sun-drenched island nations like Mauritius and the Bahamas, or in prestigious European capitals.

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Yet hardly any of Bush's new additions to the diplomatic ranks is especially gifted when it comes to foreign languages. Instead, America's new crop of diplomats bound for the old continent reads like a Who's who of Bush' biggest supporters, financial and otherwise. Ronald Spogli, a "Pioneer" and an investment advisor from California, is going to Rome. Craig Stapleton, a "Ranger" married to one of the president's cousins, will be moving to Paris. Great Britain, accustomed to such hobby ambassadors like no other country in Europe, will be trading in horse breeder William Farish for car dealer Robert Tuttle.

Bush's future man in Berlin is an especially well-deserving patron, a man who already played an important part in bankrolling Bush Senior's election campaigns. Republican presidents like to use his factory in Canton, Ohio as a backdrop when promising tax cuts or conjuring up America's economic might in election campaigns. The current president was there just last October, when Ohio was considered a swing state. At the Republican Convention in New York, Timken was one of the delegates casting his ballot for a second Bush term.

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http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,druck-362387,00.html