Now This is a Breath of Fresh Air

Well, it looks like President Elect Barack Obama has decided to tighten ethics rules, and it will hit the pentagon hardest, "No political appointees would be able to work regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years. And no political appointee will be able to lobby the executive branch after leaving government service during the remainder of the administration."

It's a very good start. It will have the effect of reducing the so called "Tron Triangle."

Of course, you get the complaints:

“You can understand the motivation behind it, but it’s not clear that you will get the best and brightest people who understand what needs to be done to serve in the government. As you know previous administrations have had great difficulty attracting people under the existing guidelines,” a procurement expert with experience in and out of government told me this morning.

But the, "procurement expert with experience in and out of government," is the problem, not the solution.

It's this kind of self dealing that gets us a JSF that runs nearly $1/5 billion a plane.