Wolfowitz's Slide Down the Drain

Wolfowitz puts himself at the mercy of the World Bank board after he arranged a sweetheart job for his personal penis puppet.

[quote]Paul D. Wolfowitz, the president of the World Bank, apologized today for his role in arranging a highly paid job at the State Department for a woman with whom he has a personal relationship.


Mr. Wolfowitz, 63, has said that he arranged for Ms. Riza’s transfer because World Bank rules bar the institution’s employees from supervising anyone with whom they have a personal relationship, and that he consulted the bank’s executive board. But the transfer — and Ms. Riza’s salary, which the Government Accountability Project, an independent watchdog group, said is $193,500, about $10,000 more than Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s, even without tax breaks enjoyed by bank officials — only fueled more resentment among bank employees.[/quote]

[quote]
Another Bush Joke: Wolfowitz to Head World Bank

Paul Wolfowitz: Strausscon Banker

“Wolfowitz, seen as a driving neoconservative voice behind Bush’s controversial strategy of pre-emptive military action and spreading democracy in the Muslim world, pledged to serve the bank’s multinational membership and to build consensus,” writes Adam Entous for Reuters.

Ah, yes, “spreading democracy” in much the same way depleted uranium is spread by the wind. As for “consensus,” Wolfowitz will certainly not bring this to the World Bank or its multinational members. If anything, Wolfowitz and the Strausscons are anathema to anything multinational–except of course multinational corporations. It is interesting Bush–or I should say Cheney and the Strausscons–chose Wolfowitz who is about as appropriate as Bolton is for the United Nations.

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In the hypocritical Republican world, it’s a “boondoggle” if a former ambassador is sent to famine-struck Niger to conduct an investigation in the midst of blowflies and death… but it’s perfectly acceptable for neocons to arrange special pay raises and jobs for their personal sex servants.

Couldn’t happen to a more deserving person

In the Republican Bizarroworld playbook, everything is reversed. Anybody who exercises rights as a citizen to question the Iraq War is tarred as a traitor by the Republicans with suggestions that we “hate America” or “want the terrorists to win”. Meanwhile, their contribution to the war effort has been to:

  1. Lie to our nation about going into Iraq and what we’ve done since being there

  2. Put our troops into a quagmire with no planning going in and no planning on how to get them out

  3. Equip our troops poorly relative to our society’s industrial capability to do so

  4. Decimate our nation’s tradition as a human/civil rights leader and harm our reputation internationally

  5. at a time when we should be building consensus around our anti-terror efforts, the Bushies have done everything possible to alienate allies and potential allies

Now with the Wolfowitz situation, I am not surprised that he is continuing the tradition of Bushies who are “playing the fiddle while Rome burns”. In their corrupt party culture, it is no mystery that so many of the Republicans have actively sought illegitimate perks for themselves, their cronies and their personal sex service providers.

well said mofangongren

Bank Information Center: The Wolfowitz saga: a guide to all the angles

[quote]SOURCE: worldbankpresident.org

Now that the media pack has turned on Wolfowitz, it’s open season. Much commentary – and the formal World Bank board process – are limited to the Shaha Riza pay deal. But we’ve now counted ten specific allegations on the World Bank president and some new conflict of interest claims that emerged today. Here is a guide summarizing the main angles with links to posts with more detail.

10 counts and you should be out.

Since we revived this blog last Thursday we have been scouring the internet, and receiving regular tips from people inside and around the World Bank. Most commentators have focused on Wolfowitz’s role in deciding the pay of his partner. One well-placed Bank staff member told me yesterday that this was just the “tip of the iceberg”. Many more allegations have come to light and more are emerging daily. The counts against Wolfowitz and the Wolfowitz Bank now amount to ten.


Details & links at bicusa.org/en/Article.3266.aspx[/quote]

Characters like Wolfowitz PERSONIFY Neoconservative Pride.
Have to wonder if Neocon GOP recruiting efforts will soar again.

The GOP is corrupt to its core – despite all their pretence at being “good at business” or “good for the business community” they can’t even fake running the World Bank for 5 frickin’ minutes without being caugtht out with their penises in the nookie jar.

Remember when Time and Newsweek were running all those post-2000 election sweetheart articles about Bush, “our MBA president”? How he would run his cabinet like a “corporate board room” and so on?

More like he runs it the way toddlers might run a railroad delicatessen.

Another one bites the dust.

[quote]Paul Wolfowitz has often been blissfully unaware of the full extent of his unpopularity. That was evident recently when he walked into a lift at the World Bank headquarters in Washington with another member of staff.

Making small talk, he asked her the significance of the blue ribbon she was wearing. The employee bravely told him it was being worn by staff seeking his dismissal or resignation. The lift ride continued in silence.[/quote]
business.guardian.co.uk/wolfowit … 83,00.html

:laughing:

latimes.com/news/printeditio … -a_section

:bravo:


:astonished:

Too bad such high standards will not be implemented with regard to ALL the staff at the World Bank, IMF and UN. Hey, let’s get those enterprising reporters out there to look at how many others are making “more money than Condi.” I believe the figure that I saw was 20 percent to 30 percent of the ENTIRE staff. Also, it was my understanding that the Bank (unlike in many other examples) asked her to resign and offered her the higher salary as she was on a fast track for promotion. IF this had been any other case, she would have been allowed to stay on DESPITE the apparent conflict of interest. There are many many cases of spouses, boy-girlfriends working together at these institutions. So sorry. Exult but don’t pretend that this is based on anything morally objective. It is partisan gloating pure and simple. Hey, I get that and fully sympathize. Just here to set the record straight.

What’s that smell? Is it inter-charity sour grapes, or has Fred been drinking cheap plonk for lunch again?

The deeds this fucker has gone down for are as good an indication as you would ever need of the man’s fundamental morality. Fuck him and all like him.

HG

Why? Has Wolfowitz been boinking other people?

Are you saying that 20-30% of the World Bank staff is making more than Condi because Wolfowitz has been having sex with them and compensating them with better jobs?

She was a on a fast track for promotion once she volunteered to hammer Wolfi’s spike.

Yes, there are spouses, etc. working at these institutions. However, as numerous articles have already mentioned, they’re not allowed to supervise one another in their positions. As the president of the World Bank, Wolfowitze was basically the boss of everybody else there, as he was “working over” everybody … especially his personal sex servant, who was getting “worked over” more than everybody else.

Wolfowitz got the job after utterly botching the Iraq War, so I don’t know if the expectations should have been all that high for him. However I’m sure it didn’t help him that he was so widely disliked for his poor management skills, leading to the exodus of the World Bank’s managers. Perhaps the Bush administration will reward his incompetence with a Freedom Medal and a new job as director of FEMA just so he can hit the loser trifecta… but I’m not even sure if the Arabian Horse Show people will want him now.

You maybe also slowly get a clue as to why it is that Bush’s administration becomes more and more vulnerable to that? Couldn’t be because of a most shoddy PR job that administration has run, right?

After all with you as a cheerleader … what could have gone wrong?

Anyhow … your point is basically that it is half as bad with Wolfie, right? Completely unwarranted and highly unjust what happened now to him.

Well, point taken … on you go in your “PR effort”. :bravo:

:unamused:

“Paul [Wolfowitz] is one of the most able public servants I’ve ever known.”

  • Dick Cheney

And I believe that he was telling the truth, considering the public servants he knows.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Anytime someone says, regarding something that is not a business, “I want to run it like a business”, you know disaster awaits.

In the GOP world, we’re all supposed to cry about how unfair it was that Paul didn’t read the rulebook before he started rockin’ out with his cock out. I can’t say that the World Bank hired him for either his big or little heads, but given the outflow of HR since he took over it seems his decisionmaking has been guided with his little one.

20 years from now, we’ll hear that he was simply pumping Shaha Riza “for information” as part of an anti-terror investigation every bit as dumb as the other ones.

Let’s see what she has to say for herself:

I don’t know either, but that’s probably because I’m no good at yoga and lack the canine DNA evident in Wolfowitz’s heritage (“witz” being a patronymic name suffix indicating “son of”). However, that’s not at issue here – the issue is whose trumpets has she been blowing?

Well, go figure. She spends long evenings showing her commitment to the rights of women to lick the balls of Paul “Inept Conquistador of Iraq” Wolfowitz and she isn’t thanked for that? Oh the horror!

I still do not understand how this is such a big deal. I think that the World Bank staff was out to get Wolfowitz before he even showed up. Why involve Wolfowitz in getting him to sign off on the termination agreement, including the benefit of increased salary, and then come back later and make it sound as if this were his idea.

Finally, IF anyone thinks that this infraction is of such a serious nature, let’s take a look at what goes on in all of these institutions. I mean it seems as if the left has been awfully quite about the $70 billion in corruption involving the Oil for Food program. Let’s look at the World Bank, IMF and UN with the SAME standards that are being applied to Wolfowitz and then take out everyone who fails to meet them. I have no problem with Wolfowitz going if this is done. How many of you are up to that little proposition? haha

As to the salaries of the World Bank staff, it was revealed that roughly 25 percent make salaries that are higher than Condi Rice. I brought this up to answer the OUTRAGE that Wolfowitz’s girlfriend would be getting such a big pay increase. Also, since she was on the fast track for promotion, had she not been forced to leave the World Bank, she would have qualified for an amount that was in a band of roughly $170,000 to $240,000. I believe then that her final settlement based on what? $180,000 was not so unreasonable in light of this. And again, IF the World Bank had a problem with this, why then did they propose such a settlement and then ask Wolfowitz to sign off on it as president? He tried to recuse himself and they still asked him to approve this. Why?

After all the noise that the Republicans made about Clinton’s activities? Oh my, how the Republicans were screaming their little heads off over that one! Once the Flynt report showed how ridiculous the GOP posturing was, then they tried to claim it was because they were so worried about “perjury” … a view that has also slid to the wayside with their recent crying over Scooter Libby.

How so? By all accounts, Wolfowitz was a pretty bad, divisive manager once he got in.

Wolfowitz had a ton of options. Giving his personal sex toy a big raise wasn’t a smart idea in the long or short run. If he was making decisions like this throughout his tenure, he probably wasn’t doing a good job.

Do you mean “these institutions” in the way that Perot referred to “you people”? Is there some basis for your generalization that you care not to say? If you’re in favor of lots of investigations, then of course you’ll be strongly in favor of thorough, independent investigations into the Bush administration’s actions. Let’s put it all out in the sunlight, shall we? Rove’s emails all the way back to Cheney’s energy task force – let’s get it all out.

Nobody’s happy with graft and corruption. However, considering how the “Money and Troops for Invading Iraq” program has been going over the past 4 years, as well as the lax accounting that the “Coalition Provisional Authority” program did with their literal bales of cash, one can figure that new questions have been arising faster than old questions. Now, I can imagine that Republicans would like the American people to focus on past shenanigans to distract them from the neck-deep-in-horseshit situation that we’re in now. With the blowflies are a-stingin’ and most Americans are sharp enough to figure that they’d like to deal with the emergencies of today involving our nation and our troops … it’s just a matter of priorities.

I suppose, as usual, the Republicans would like to defer anything regarding the troops. We saw how the Bush administration sat on the armored-humvees issue for ages, and we can tell how pretty much anything from Terry Schiavo’s noggin through to the president’s brush-clearing vacations take precedence over ensuring our troops have the equipment and medical treatment they need. That Republican congressman who stopped going to Walter Reed to avoid seeing the shitty hospital situation was classic.

Absolutely. These organizations should be clean, and it seems that getting rid of Wolfowitz is a great way to continue their enforcement of these rules.

The problem is not that she was making more money – if you want to recruit skilled people into a bank you will normally have to pay a premium over what the State Dept. pays. However the problem appears to be Wolfowitz arranging for a huge raise for his personal penis plaything.

Clearly she was on the “fast track” once Wolfowitz started shouting her name at night…

Or Wolfowitz could have simply chosen to take a different job than the World Bank. After absolutely f*cking up on the Iraq War, it seems he didn’t really deserve this sort of a “soft landing” for his career. Stil, based on the World Bank’s ethics committee findings, it would seem that he broke a rule in getting her a new big salary.

Probably the amount of money Wolfowitz put on her dresser each morning as he left to go to the office?

I guess you haven’t bothered to read the findings by the panel looking into his conduct released on May 14:

[quote]“[Provisions of] Mr. Wolfowitz’s contract requiring that he adhere to the Code of Conduct for board officials and that he avoid any conflict of interest, real or apparent, were violated”

“The salary increase Ms. Riza received at Mr. Wolfowitz’s direction was in excess of the range established by Rule 6.01”

“The ad hoc group concludes that in actuality, Mr Wolfowitz from the outset cast himself in opposition to the established rules of the institution”

“He did not accept the bank’s policy on conflict of interest, so he sought to negotiate for himself a resolution different from that which would have applied to the staff he was selected to head.”[/quote]

Nice… Anyway, to my knowledge, this was reported in the Wall Street Journal a while back. I cannot post that editorial here but it satisfied me that this was more of a hatchet job against Wolfowitz and oh yes he is and was very unpopular at the World Bank. I imagine for the same reasons that any such person would be at the UN as well. I think that you are making far more of this than it merits. Just admit it. It is a political thing and you are out for revenge. I get that. I also don’t mind Wolfowitz going but then I would like the same standards to apply to each and every person at the IMF and World Bank and UN among other such bodies. Surely, if you are so eager to see Wolfowitz go for the reasons that you have stated and given that I am not willing to defend him, then cannot we agree that we would like to see more such investigations take place across the board? I guarantee you that if such a mass investigation were to take place that I would be far happier than you. Wanna bet?

I prefer you on Saturdays… despite your suburban location…

WSJ editorials are usually pretty weak on the facts and strong on the Republican hyperbole. I can imagine you would be easily persuaded by that.

Sorry, but I don’t work at the World Bank. It’s not really in my power to do anything to inflate or deflate the situation.

Again, sorry … I don’t work at the World Bank. I can’t do anything to Paul Wolfowitz in this situation that he hasn’t been doing to himself. If he can’t keep it in his pants, that’s his problem.

Just a second ago, you were claiming this was a “hatchet job” against poor Wolfowitz. Make up your mind whether you’re going to stick by the man or not.

I’ve already stated that I’m glad to see mafeasance investigated. Looks like the World Bank has done so and has taken care to follow the policies that have, ultimately, led to Wolfowitz’s ouster. Actually, several of the husband-wife couples working within the World Bank have been interviewed. They don’t get to work in the same departments or to supervise each other. Unfortunately, when Wolfowitz went in as the World Bank’s head cheese, there wasn’t anybody who wasn’t under him … although by no means should that be deemed to limit the positions that his girlfriend is physically capable of taking when Wolfowitz is giving the high hard one.

Then, there is this…

[quote]$30,000. That is the sum at the heart of the nasty dispute that is consuming the World Bank, as an assortment of Democrats, journalists and World Bank officials work together to smear Bank president Paul Wolfowitz. The facts are as follows: Wolfowitz, even before arriving at the World Bank, disclosed his personal relationship with Bank employee Shaha Riza to the Bank’s ethics committee. At first he tried to handle the conflict by offering to recuse himself from all personnel matters pertaining to Riza. But the committee advised Wolfowitz to reassign her to a position outside the Bank — for example, the State Department, which is where she ended up. This was done in order to give her a promotion for which she was due, and to resolve the matter with an eye toward compensating her in a way that recognized “her record and career perspectives.”

No one disputes any of these facts. The arguement, rather, concerns the size of the raise that accompanied Riza’s promotion. Wolfowitz says the ethics committee instructed him to compensate Riza for the disruption to her career, so he gave her what amounted to a 35.5-percent raise, bringing her yearly pay to $180,000. Notably, no one is arguing that $180,000 is an unusually high salary for a World Bank employee at Riza’s grade. What they are saying is that World Bank rules should have limited Riza’s raise to 12 percent, or $30,000 less than Wolfowitz agreed to.

Wolfowitz’s accusers — chief among them Ad Melkert, chairman of the ethics committee — now argue that the committee never approved a pay increase as large as the one Riza got. But Melkert doesn’t explain why he took no action when he received an anonymous e-mail over a year ago detailing the pay raise and objecting to it. Nor has Melkert offered an explanation of why, if the raise was so troubling, he wrote to Wolfowitz after receiving the anonymous e-mail and explained that, following “a careful review,” he had concluded that the allegation “did not contain new information warranting any further review by the committee.”

Wolfowitz’s accusers have also criticized him for his involvement in working out the details of Riza’s raise and promotion. But he says he had no choice.
The ethics committee informed Wolfowitz that it could not take part in staff interactions, and that he would have to resolve the matter himself
.
Wolfowitz says that he protested, sensing the appearance of conflict this would create, but that the committee gave him unambiguous written instructions that “Xavier [Coll, the Bank’s vice president of human resources,] should act upon your instruction.”

After Wolfowitz publicly offered this defense, a spokesman for Melkert said: “Charges that Mr. Melkert somehow ‘made’ Mr. Wolfowitz get involved in Ms. Riza’s pay and promotion package are also false. The ethics committee presented Mr. Wolfowitz with options for avoiding a conflict of interest. Which option he chose, and how he chose to implement it, was completely up to Mr. Wolfowitz.”

Message: It was your choice to take our advice, and it’s our choice to use it against you now. Of course, it’s not difficult to imagine the storm of criticism that would have ensued if Wolfowitz had rejected the committee’s advice.

This looks suspiciously like a deliberate coup against Wolfowitz: First float the absurd charges against him, then argue that, whatever their merit, there is such a “cloud” over Wolfowitz that he can’t continue. Wolfowitz’s original sin, in the eyes of his critics, was supporting the Iraq war. He compounded this sin by campaigning against corruption in regimes to which the Bank lends money, thus challenging the Bank’s practice of judging its performance simply by how much money it shoves out the door.

This is not to say we endorse every aspect of Wolfowitz’s World Bank presidency. He has called for huge increases in foreign aid, even though such aid — good intentions notwithstanding — historically has done nothing so much as subsidize the world’s worst kleptocracies and backward economies. Like other forms of welfare, foreign aid fosters dependency. As long as the World Bank keeps writing the checks, broken governments in the developing world have little incentive to implement the difficult reforms needed to break the cycle. Cajoling countries to curb corruption or liberalize their markets, as Wolfowitz has done, is a commendable strategy, but it is not nearly as effective as turning off the aid spigot would be.

Europeans couldn’t care less about that, of course, as they pursue their power play against Wolfowitz. Several European nations are considering withholding their funds if Wolfowitz remains in office. The New York Times quoted a senior European development official as saying, “We are seeing countries becoming more hesitant. They are saying that they have a lot more options available for their money.” If it becomes impossible for Wolfowitz to remain at the World Bank, Bush should consider putting America’s money where the Europe’s mouth is. We certainly have “a lot more options” — and better ones — than the World Bank on which to spend it.
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article.nationalreview.com/?q=Yz … NlM2QzMzg=