The Army Corps of Engineers has a small but vital job to do maintaining and enhancing key strategic infrastructure. Unfortunately they’ve grossly over-extended their role, in large part to keep politicians suitably lathered in pork. On its own that would be bad enough, but when they’re not even very good at being corrupt it’s close to criminal:

When the Army Corps of Engineers solicited bids for drainage pumps for New Orleans, “it copied the specifications — typos and all — from the catalog of the manufacturer that ultimately won the $32 million contract.”

It may not surprise you that the company in question used to employ Jeb Bush, and has many significant Republican Party contributors amongst its senior officials. I’m sure that’s just a coincidence though.