Nothing new here — joec meet Tammany Hall. Tammany Hall, meet joec.
Oh yeah, and the Army Beef Scandal … more soldiers died from contaminated food than bullets in the Spanish-American War. Americans have always been willing to throw taxpayers and their fellow citizens under a bus (or a stagecoach) for profit.
Institutionalized corruption is as American as baseball and likely even older. Transparency won’t cut it unless it’s total, since it’s easy to hide kickbacks in payments to corporations, especially if the kickbacks are a comparatively small % of the total.
There should be a Buy American mandate for construction of critical infrastructure, which would make the firms involved subject to the reach of US law. And either criminal prosecution or personal lawsuits against the people who received favors should also be options.
Lastly, TSOR on Mr. Anziano doesn’t show a professional engineering license. The man is apparently an attorney who was California state counsel before he was appointed manager of this project. This type of department should really be headed by a seasoned engineer, not by a political hack appointee.
