{"id":517,"date":"2002-04-30T19:33:28","date_gmt":"2002-05-01T02:33:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mossback.org\/archives\/2002\/04\/the-oracle-swindle\/"},"modified":"2002-04-30T19:33:28","modified_gmt":"2002-05-01T02:33:28","slug":"the-oracle-swindle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2002\/04\/30\/the-oracle-swindle\/","title":{"rendered":"The Oracle swindle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t&#8212; A couple of weeks ago, the Mercury News broke the story of a $95M no-bid, sweetheart deal between California and Oracle for some software that few agencies wanted or needed. Gray Davis, who&#8217;s established the reputation for being an autocrat who micromanages all aspects of state government, is now pretending to be outraged, as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/content\/politics\/story\/2436460p-2880957c.html\">Dan Walters<\/a> explains:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nIt stretches credulity to the snapping point for Davis&#8217; spinners to insist that the governor was completely unaware that his administration was signing a massive software deal with Oracle, especially because Oracle delivered a $25,000 campaign contribution to the Democratic governor&#8217;s treasury just days after the contract was signed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But the question that&#8217;s now begging an answer is who can investigate this deal that&#8217;s not already tainted by it. Probably not Att&#8217;y Gen. Bill (gasbag) Lockyer:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Davis, as part of his effort to deflect attention from himself, says he wants Attorney General Bill Lockyer to investigate what happened. But Lockyer received a $25,000 check from Oracle less than a month after the contract was signed last May, and leaving it to Lockyer is a surefire way to keep the matter bottled up until after the election.<br \/>\n<BR><br \/>\nThe Legislature should pursue this matter vigorously &#8212; as vigorously as it did the scandal enveloping former Republican Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush &#8212; but if it is unwilling to do so, perhaps the U.S. attorney&#8217;s office should be brought into the case.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I concur, and it would be nice if the indictments went out about Oct. 1 or so.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8212; A couple of weeks ago, the Mercury News broke the story of a $95M no-bid, sweetheart deal between California and Oracle for some software that few agencies wanted or needed. Gray Davis, who&#8217;s established the reputation for being an autocrat who micromanages all aspects of state government, is now pretending to be outraged, as &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2002\/04\/30\/the-oracle-swindle\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Oracle swindle&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbifyw-8l","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}