Larry Small's Legacy Is Not So Small

Larry Small is typical of the cronies that have weaseled their way into the Bush Administration by virtue of their great wealth placed in Republican hands. How does a guy who is basically anti-science end up head of the most venerable science institutions in the US? By green back hook and crookedness. Read on:
AlterNet

It's the tale of Larry Small, an Intelligent Design (and basically, anti-science) guy who has been running the most venerable of U.S. research and antiquity institutions since 2001 - the Smithsonian. How did Larry Small get his job, what kind of GOP skeletons are rattling around in his closet, and what did he do that caused him to lose his latest job? And his previous one, for that matter?


Fair warning: this has nothing to do with Fredo Gonzales, so if that's all you're interested in at the moment, move along, nothing to see here...


Larry Small has been kicking around the halls of power in Washington, DC for quite some time. In the 1990's, he presided over Fannie Mae, the organization which underwrites or owns the majority of home mortgages in the United States. During his tenure at Fannie Mae, Small was at the center of a securities fraud scandal that nearly sank the company:


[..]The report...by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, says the result was a company that engaged in "extensive financial fraud" over six years, doctoring earnings by $10.6 billion so executives could collect tens of millions of dollars in bonuses. Fannie Mae settled civil charges with OFHEO and the Securities and Exchange Commission by agreeing to pay a $400 million fine and to make vast changes in how it does business...


It would seem that after a scandal such as this, Small would have worn out his welcome inside the I-495 beltway. Not so. After all, he was a good GOP foot soldier, and a veritable font of money for the RNC. So, after he left Fannie Mae under a cloud of financial chicanery, Small landed on his feet as the head honcho at the venerable Smithsonian Institution - appointed by a GOP controlled Board of Regents - and promptly began to plunder the financial treasury and "fundie-ize" one of America's most revered and socially important public assets.


Fast forward to March, 2007:


The Smithsonian Institution announced Monday that its top official, Secretary Lawrence Small, has resigned amid criticism about his expenses.


Small resigned over the weekend, with the decision unanimously accepted Sunday by the Smithsonian's Board of Regents, the Associated Press reported.


Cristian Samper, director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, has been appointed acting secretary while the regents conduct a nationwide search for a permanent replacement. An internal audit in January found that Small had made $90,000 in unauthorized expenses, including private jet travel and expensive gifts.


Mr. Small contributed financially to such GOP congressional luminaries as Tom DeLay and Bob Ney. He knew which palms to grease. (In the interest of fair reporting, he did "seed" other side of the aisle, making a few contributions over the years to influential Democratic Party representatives.)