Steve, you repeated the assertion that Risa's compensation was doubled. That is incorrect. It was increased by 50%, which meant that the amount of the increase was double what the Bank's standards allowed. That is enough to indicate favoritism by Wolfowitz now that he has admitted he was involved. My worry is that Wolfowitz's supporters can say that his critics have their facts demonstrably wrong and avoid addressing the actual transgression.

This is another perfect example of the false air of superiority, ineptitude, and nepotism that this Administration has emboldened. These peolpe need to be stopped before they completely ruin the United States. Maybe we can escape with only our reputation sullied...but we need to act now.

Caitlyn -- Good point. Thanks.

The new salary ($193K) is tax free (something about "diplomatic status"). One assumes the former ($133K) was taxable. So effectively, not having access to her 1040 ... "doubling" is in the ballpark.

I feel for Riza, though, she is being put through the meat grinder on this a bit. One has to wonder about the effect on their personal relationship.

There seems to be no scandal too small to find favor with these ego-inflated pirates that have taken over the ship USA. Every hour seems to bring a new layer of underhanded manipulation accompanied by lies and cover-ups, then woefuls, "Who me, why if I did anything wrong, I apologize."
What pity they cannot all be dumped in the street with a dollar in their pockets and told to pull themselves up by their boot strapes. They have their hands so deep in our pockets no child's piggy bank is safe.

Wolfowitz would not use the WB as a punishment tool for the B/C grifter system, all he did was pass a few coins to his girl-friend. Americans stick together.

McRove would not delete his own emails.

Gonzales never tells a lie, especially now that he spends hours everyday praticing pretending to tell the truth.

Federal Attorneys are not fired to "fix" the system anymore than the intelligence was "fixed" to invade Iraq.

Soon, one by one they will publish books, like Tom Delay's, telling us that they are just one of God's poor little mistreated creatures, victimized by mean democrats and female House Speakers.

Where did all the teddy bears go?

And Steve tells us there is more to come. Tomorrow I am going on a trip, no newspapers, no computer, no TV. Will it be heaven or hell?

The Cornell article was fascinating, not the least because I'm personally familiar with Wolfowitz's freshman roommate, David Bolotin, who teaches at my alma mater, St. John's College.

Wolfowitz was mesmerized by Allan Bloom's influence at Cornell, where Bloom confronted the students with questions of moral philosophy by way of the western canon.

This is all very close to my own educational experience, of course, and I can't help but wonder how you get from there to here and making such a colossal mistake as engineering the Iraq invasion. But then, I noticed a trend in how students responded to Plato's "Republic" that gives some clues.

Not having read any Strauss, I can't say how accurate are the media equations of his political philosophy with the Noble Lie in the the Republic. Perhaps this is facile. But given what I do know of Straussianism, it's easy to see that it fits. The thing is, though, that even on its own terms Republic isn't really clear on how seriously it is advocating its fascist city-state. More to the point, in my opinion, is that Republic stands apart from the body of Plato's work and the Socrates in Republic is quite different from the Socrates in other dialogs. For me, the skeptical, contrary, and often wily Socrates was replaced in Republic with someone distinctly different. The Socrates I knew would never be comfortable with the Noble Lie (though it's arguable that even the Republic's version is not) and, given the bulk of Plato's dialogs, I can't imagine coming away from them embracing an esoteric political philosophy founded on deceit, elitism, and authoritarianism. But some people fall in love with Republic and its political schema. I can't help but think they're seeing what they're predisposed to seeing.

And so back to moral philosophy. My experience with the canon leads me to feel very cautious about moral judgments. But there was no caution involved in arguing for the rightness of invading Iraq.

In response to Roland's question about Ms Riza's tax situation, all intergovernmental organization such as the UN and its dependencies (World Bank, IMF, UNESCO, UNDP, IAEA,etc) and their staffs enjoy a tax-free status for their employees' remunerations and pensions. I wouldn't be surprised if the Inter-American Development Bank and the Organization of American States (OAS) enoyed the same status.

Thanks, John. Doesn't surprise me - I stand corrected.

Aha! We have an address:

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Domain ID:D127637212-LROR
Domain Name:FOUNDATIONFORFUTURE.ORG
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Converger -- brilliant work.

Steve Clemons