Bad news at the OMB

Salon editorial fellow Aaron Kinney looks at an intriguing development in Washington.

This sure makes us feel better about the fact that Karl Rove will be overseeing the Hurricane Katrina reconstruction effort: The Department of Justice announced the arrest today of David Hossein Safavian, former administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy at the Office of Management and Budget, on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. The charges are related to an August 2002 golf trip Safavian took to Scotland with indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The golf excursion took place while Safavian was chief of staff of another offshoot of the executive branch bureaucracy, the General Services Administration. Safavian resigned from the OMB effective Friday.

So the man whom President Bush nominated to be the head of procurement for the Office of Management and Budget is now charged with covering up connections with Abramoff. We're already seeing cronyism at work in how the Bush administration is dispensing its contracts for Katrina rebuilding. With this latest news, is there any reason to think the corruption will stop?