4 ms·
I think you're confused. "Acquire" is a process where a company buys another, usually much smaller company, and hires that company's employees as part of the ac
by enraged_camel 11y ago
I think you're confused. "Acquire" is a process where a company buys another, usually much smaller company, and hires that company's employees as part of the acquisition.
That is totally different than what is happening here, where a government employee gives preferential treatment to a business entity that he or she is supposed to regulate and keep in check in the hopes that he or she will be hired by them after they leave their government post. It's a clear conflict of interest.
- maxerickson 11y agoYou don't have any evidence that he gave the company preferential treatment.
- Retra 11y agoI think the fact that the company didn't get the same treatment as others under his watch is pretty much the textbook definition of evidence of preferential treatment.
- bmelton 11y agoWe don't yet know that other companies weren't treated with similar incompetence. While I'm skeptical of Zimmerman's actions here, and am inclined to believe that there is apparent corruption, that does not mitigate that corruption has not been shown to be apparent... yet. It's neither impossible nor unlikely that there are dozens of other companies working with similarly expired licenses, or under similar states of neglect. (Note, this is speculative. I don't honestly even know if the forest service has any others extracting water from them, so I could be totally off-base, but as bad as this looks, it's worth reserving judgement for something less circumstantial.)
- maxerickson 11y agoIt's not, there would need to be evidence that substantially similar permits did not receive the same treatment.