Bill Richardson Out As Commerce Secretary With Shades of Blagojevich

What's strange about this whole Bill Richardson revelation is that it didn't happen sooner. As I wrote in my post when Richardson was first announced as Obama's pick for Commerce, we've known about the FBI investigation into his dealings with CDR Financial Products for several months now. What's more, Team Obama had been asking Richardson about it, but he apparently wasn't too forthcoming with details, the Politico reports. We probably won't know for awhile what details have changed in the investigation that have made it untenable for Richardson to continue.

Another interesting thing is that Richardson's problems came about as a result of a major transportation spending initiative in his state (CDR helped arrange the bonds the state sold to businesses to finance highway overhauls). Today, Obama is meeting with leaders in Washington to discuss his stimulus package that will in large part be about overhauling transportation. Richardson's experience in that area is probably one of the things that attracted Obama to him in the first place.

Richardson's decision to step down will avoid his past tainting Obama's project. But really, his "pay-to-play" philosophy is often the standard for how things are done in Washington, and Obama's infrastructure spending will be no exception. What are the billions of dollars of pork barrel spending plugged into each year's transportation bills other than "pay-for-play"? Sure, pork barrel is usually not illegal because it's usually not a blatant favor to someone who donated money to a campaign, but it still stinks of tit-for-tat cronyism all the same.  Here's just one recent example regarding soon-to-be Obama Cabinet member Senator Hilary Clinton (hat tip: Cafe Hayek.)

Richardson might be gone, but there's still all the reason in the world to expect the next administration's massive infrastructure spending to be dictated by politics instead of the public interest.