At Harpers "No Comment," Scott Horton picks up on the "brazen politicization" of the Office of Juvenile Justice grant making process at the Justice department in More Corruption at Mukasey’s Justice Department?.
As we noted this morning, WSU's National Child Protection Training Center, which teaches law enforcement, teachers, social workers, prosecutors and others the best techniques for recognizing, reducing and preventing child sexual abuse. The center has received funding this year only because of earmarks requested by Senators Coleman and Klobuchar, as well as by Congressman Walz.
So what's the problem? Horton writes:
A Congressional probe has been launched by Henry Waxman’s House Oversight Committee into how Flores “bypassed the top-scoring bidders for National Juvenile Justice program grants, giving money instead to bidders that its staff ranked far lower,” Youth Today reports.
The probe was requested by Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), who was approached by administrators at Winona State University after the Youth Today story was published. The university’s proposal for its National Child Protection Training Center was ranked fourth by OJJDP staff, with an average score of 96.5, but it didn’t win a grant. The university is in Walz’s district, and he helped get the center $1.2 million in earmarks in the 2008 Justice Department budget, including $446,000 from OJJDP.
So the highly qualified, well-scored contenders didn’t get the grants. But who did? The Juvienation blog reports:
Meanwhile, Flores handed the bulk of the cash to lower-scoring organizations he deemed his favorites. Word has gotten out among organizations that scored high but didn’t win; some of them are furious and want OJJDP or Congress to explain the process. “We all play by the rules,” said Earl Dunlap, CEO of the National Partnership for Juvenile Services, whose losing bid ranked second out of 129. “The rules for Flores are pretty much whatever he decides when he gets out of bed in the morning.”
Flores, Boyle wrote, “has repeatedly pushed to get agency money to organizations that fit his priorities, which include faith-based programs and those that combat child sexual victimization.” Thus the low-scoring Best Friends Foundation (79.5), headed by the wife of right-wing moral crusader (and gambling addict!) Bill Bennett, won more than $1 million for its abstinence-only/anti-drug curriculum. Enough Is Enough, which combats sexual predation online–admittedly a worthy cause, but not quite in line with the historical mission of the OJJDP–took $750,000. The faith-based Victory Outreach Special Services got a windfall of $1.2 million but had to turn down the grant because, Boyle noted, “it doesn’t have the organizational capacity to carry it out.”
Horton observes:
The Flores contract awards help us understand once more exactly how the Justice Department defines “public integrity.” Doling out public funds to your political retainers and friends and circumventing a legally mandated public competition system is how the Republican Party and its minions understand the political game is to be played. It would be “corrupt” if Democrats played by these rules, of course, but the rules are suspended for the G.O.P. And what better venue to use to dole out contracts to political friends and retainers than the Department of Justice itself?
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