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A little neo-con nookie...

I thought this particularly interesting:

It also said she was given a pay raise that was more than double the amount allowed under staff rules.
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That says a lot from someone who likely agreed that the minimum wage shouldn't be raised. Actually, I'm still trying to stomach the idea that Wolfie is romanticaly-involved with ANYONE. Yeecchhh!
 
Mephisto said:
I thought this particularly interesting:



That says a lot from someone who likely agreed that the minimum wage shouldn't be raised. Actually, I'm still trying to stomach the idea that Wolfie is romanticaly-involved with ANYONE. Yeecchhh!
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I agree with the fact that minimum wage shouldn't be raised, but man, that's just bad.
 
Reminds me of the old mayor of Detroit, Coleman A. Young, who ruled for 2+ decades in the '70's and '80's. He got caught putting his girlfriend/mistress/wthever on the city payrole. A reporter asked him, "Your girlfriend is [newly on] the payrole." He responded, "So what?"

Ahhh, the good old days.
 
headscratcher4 said:
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N09323733.htm

Wolfowitz tries to explain how his girl friend from the world bank deserves to earn more money than the Secretary of State.

Note: grunts in Iraq...fighting the war that Wolfie helped get us into...earn a hell of a lot less than his girl friend.
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This gal ain't pretty. I am guessing Wolfie likes her because she gives good bottom line, but what she sees in him is still a mystery.

I can just hear the pillow talk:

"Farder currency, harder currency, faster returns, faster returns! Freclose me baby, jack up my earnings, oh baby oh baby oh baby!!!!" :p

PWD: kids, don't try this at home, I am a paid professional.

DR
 
Mephisto said:
I thought this particularly interesting:



That says a lot from someone who likely agreed that the minimum wage shouldn't be raised. Actually, I'm still trying to stomach the idea that Wolfie is romanticaly-involved with ANYONE. Yeecchhh!
Click to expand...

I looked at her too, it's romantic involvement, but not as we know it.
 
Anyone else surprised that GWB supports Wolfowitz here?
I mean, this is obviously doing a lot of good to the credibility of the Worldbank's drive against corruption, and credibility of US support for that... :jaw-dropp
 
Darth Rotor said:
This gal ain't pretty. I am guessing Wolfie likes her because she gives good bottom line, but what she sees in him is still a mystery.
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She's no dog, either. Change the lighting or makeup or perspective or the frame of the photo and you could have a totally different outcome.

Henry the K gives us the answer to your mystery: "Power is the ultimate
aphrodisiac." As you are an astute student of power, you ignore Kissinger at your own peril.
 
Obviously, Wolfowitz is none too sympathetic character here. Especially given his previous job where he played a key role in starting the Iraq war and a key role in its complete mismanagement.

Of course this kind of staggering failure could only lead to promotion in Bushco land. There seems to be a kind of filter over there, show any level of competence at anything and you're out.

But, I sympathize a bit with Wolfowitz's dilemma here. The World Bank had a policy against romantically involved people working together, so something needed to be done about the fact that his girl friend worked there if he was going to take the job. But it wasn't exactly fair to fire his girl friend so he could get a job, so he just arranged a kind of lucrative severance package for her. Of course he should have recused himself from any involvement in the negotiations, but I think it was the World Bank board that told him to handle this situation. So he did.

Unfortunately for him, for whatever reason, he had pissed off a lot of the World Bank staff and this little incident really gave them the ammunition to get him. So has he been an incompetent World Bank manager? Well he apparently brought in some fellow neocon cronies which didn't sit well with the World Bank establishment, but has he done a bad job? I don't know, but there is a lesson here. If you're going to take over an organization and shake it up, don't do things that are going to give your enemies the tools they need to bring you down. And maybe the fact that Wolfowitz did this should just be seen as one more example of the kind of incompetence that made him such a star with Bushco, but that isn't all that useful in other organizations.
 
There's a long -- and in my view, favorable -- profile of Wolfowitz in the latest issue of _The New Yorker_. It discusses this relationship and some criticisms from within the bank.
 
Cain said:
...and some criticisms from within the bank.
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From what I heard on NPR it was more than some criticism, those bankers are pretty good at trash talking their boss and supposedly the bank's intranet has become Wolfowitz b***hfest central.
 
The article does discuss the composition of the World Bank; it's an international institution, and many people, especially non-Americans, were either skeptical or hostile to Wolfowitz from the outset. Factor in nepotism leading to a higher salary and you're bound to outrage people. In the above I'm trying to connect "some criticisms" to that personal relationship, and it was just one part of a sprawling article. They're also critical of Wolfowitz's micromanaging, for instance. I wouldn't be surprised if the author emphasized or discussed the personal relationship in greater detail on the radio. It's the sort of thing that lends itself to more attention in that medium (and here).
 
And finally, Wolfowitz resigns. Personally, I don't think that Paul Wolfowitz's misdeeds approached the level of those of Gonzales, Cheney or any number of other officials tied to the Bush administration, but he was just so brazen about it. What the hell did he think would happen when he promoted his girlfriend right up into the upper circle?
 
a_unique_person said:
What I find interesting is his girlfriend, a feminist, Arab Muslim. Certainly blows the Wolfowitz neocon stereotype to pieces.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world...he-bank-scorned/2007/05/18/1178995412925.html
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Then you don't understand what a neocon is. In the words of Kristol, a neocon is:

"A liberal, mugged by reality."

What a neocon isn't is an old school conservative. It is a hybrid, and a busybody, and for that matter, a "conservative who likes big government." <== That last is a bit of an oxymoron.

Compare to "NuLabour" in the UK. A mutation of a strain.

Wolfowitz is well described by a recent piece in Newsweek (or maybe The Economist) as a guy obsessed by "the one great idea" that will improve/save the world. A True Believer.

DR
 
davefoc said:
...

But, I sympathize a bit with Wolfowitz's dilemma here. The World Bank had a policy against romantically involved people working together, so something needed to be done about the fact that his girl friend worked there if he was going to take the job. But it wasn't exactly fair to fire his girl friend so he could get a job, so he just arranged a kind of lucrative severance package for her. Of course he should have recused himself from any involvement in the negotiations, but I think it was the World Bank board that told him to handle this situation. So he did.

Unfortunately for him, for whatever reason, he had pissed off a lot of the World Bank staff and this little incident really gave them the ammunition to get him. So has he been an incompetent World Bank manager? Well he apparently brought in some fellow neocon cronies which didn't sit well with the World Bank establishment, but has he done a bad job? I don't know, but there is a lesson here. If you're going to take over an organization and shake it up, don't do things that are going to give your enemies the tools they need to bring you down. And maybe the fact that Wolfowitz did this should just be seen as one more example of the kind of incompetence that made him such a star with Bushco, but that isn't all that useful in other organizations.
Click to expand...


It wasn't a serverance package. Riza was seconded to the US State Department as a World Bank employee in order to get around the fraternization problem. No one is complaining about that.

The problem is that Wolfie arranged for her to get salary increases way above the normal scale, while dispensing with any regular process of performance-based salary review. Her salary was not only out of line with WB standards, but also paid her more than anyone at State except Sec. Rice. How can someone practicing that kind of nepotism lead an organization who is focusing on enforcing anti-corruption measures among its clients? It's blatantly corrupt.
 
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