The Shaking Knee

The New Deal

Well, I guess I've neglected this thing long enough. Quick update on the new life of Dan Briody. After a 2-year stint as an editor at Ziff Davis, I've finally found something that makes me want to get up in the morning. I'm now doing freelance writing and contract work. My biggest client is IBM, and I'm working on a project called the Global Innovation Outlook. It's a very cool program. Basically, IBM collects thought leaders in a variety of fields, puts them together in a room, and conducts a free-flowing brainstorming session. There are three topic areas this year: Media and Content, Africa, and Security and Society. So we travel around the world conducting these regional "deep dives," talking to business leaders, legislators, academics, and others. It's been fascinating and utterly engaging. Click here for more on the GIO. Here is the blog that I'm writing for IBM.

Before you label me a complete corporate sellout (a term that I'm surprisingly comfortable with), I'm still doing freelance writing for a number of different publications, including Business Week, Golf Digest, Inc., and others.

The difference between this lifestyle (working from home, traveling to exotic locations) and my previous lifestyle (commuting 4 hours a day to New York to work in a dingy, depressing office), is, to say the least, stark. Though I take a lot of long overseas trips now, I see more of my family than ever before, mostly because I spend the rest of my time working from home. It's just a better life.

For updates on the GIO, go to the GIO blog. But going forward this blog is going to be more of a personal blog. I'll still push the books a bit, but for the most part, I'll be using this blog to update friends and family on my latest travel and career happenings.

How Halliburton Does It

I applaud the Wall Street Journal for picking up the rotten scent of cronyism at a time when most had left it for dead following the 2004 Presedential election. In an article on Tuesday, entitled Some Iraq Rebuilding Funds Go Untraced, Scot J. Paltrow notes that since the furor over no-bid contracts and wasted taxpayer money leading up to the election, virtually nothing has been done to recover the funds.

WASHINGTON -- More than 18 months after the Pentagon disbanded the Coalition Provisional Authority that ran Iraq, neither the Justice Department nor a special inspector general has moved to recover large sums suspected of disappearing through fraud and price gouging in reconstruction.

Earlier audits by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction -- a post Congress created in late 2004 -- found that oversight of contractors by the Authority was so lax that widespread abuse was likely. An audit in April 2005, for example, found "significant deficiencies in contract administration," which meant that "there was no assurance that fraud, waste, and abuse did not occur in the management and administration of contracts" the U.S. awarded with Iraqi oil money administered by the United Nations.

Nevertheless, there hasn't been a concerted effort to trace what happened to the money and make recipients pay back any ill-gotten gains. The inspector general's office said it doesn't plan to ask the Justice Department to file lawsuits or to conduct widespread audits of individual contracts to look for fraud.

If you've been wondering how companies like Halliburton get away with it, this is how. They simply weather the political storm, knowing it is merely temporary, and they've been through it before. After things calm down, investigations are dropped, and life returns to normal. These companies are in it for the long haul, and they know that p0litical disfavor is temporal. Sad but true.