Washington Examiner, please define "linked"
July 09, 2009 3:36 pm ET by Eric Boehlert
From this misleading headline:
Hoyer-linked firm wins $18M Recovery.gov contract
The item's written by David Freddoso, who authored a get-Obama book last year. The premise is that Smartronix, a Maryland-based company located in the Congressional district of House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, just landed a sizable government contract to re-design the Recovery.gov website.
That's a rather pedestrian development. Where's the news? Where's the link? Turns out there is none, other than the fact that the company is based in Hoyer's district. Hoyer had nothing to do with the firm landing the contract and didn't even know about it until after the fact. Quite a "link", eh?
Actually, there is one link. According to the report, over the last ten years three execs at Smartronix have donated, on average, $600 per-year to Hoyer, their local (and influential) Congressman.
I kid you not. That's the newsworthy "link."
UPDATED: I love conservative 'journalism.' Note this passage from Freddoso piece [emphasis added]:
ABC reports this morning that the Maryland firm Smartronix has won what seems like an enormous $18 million contract to re-design the Recovery.gov website.
What does that highlighted section even mean? Is Freddoso suggesting the contract "seems" to be for $18 million, or that the contract "seems" to be enormous? If it's the latter, on what planet does a government contract worth $18 million (that's million, not billion) suddenly pass for "enormous"?
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It's a classic example of "You get what you pay for."
It's not a tiny contract, for sure. But I'm sure that if we wanted to find examples of truly enormous contracts that actually *were* awarded through corruption, I'm sure they wouldn't be hard to find. I wonder if the Examiner is up to it.
However, I have to say that the $600 average figure is just as misleading. It could be up to $17,998 by one executive per year, and that would, in fact, be worth talking about. You'd think Freddoso would have led with it, though.