ABC News, The Blotter:
A major Texas fundraiser for President George Bush has made millions of dollars in profits from a federal reading program that critics say favored administration cronies at the expense of schoolchildren.
A company founded and owned by Randy Best, who raised $100,000 to qualify as a Bush "Pioneer" during the 2000 presidential campaign, received the lucrative contracts under a Bush administration initiative called Reading First.
After receiving the contracts, Best was able to sell his company, Voyager Expanded Learning, for $360 million. It was valued at only $5 million a few years earlier.
Congress is investigating and -- surprise, surprise -- the whole thing stinks of corruption. "They designed it for their friends and cronies, and they ended up not designing the best program for America's schoolchildren," said Congressman George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee.
"For example, one of the educators who gave approval to Best's reading testing program, Edward Kame'enui, was on Best's payroll at the same time," ABC News reports. "He also approved a reading program for publisher Scott Foresman at the same time the publisher paid him $400,000 in royalty and consulting fees."
Kama'enui denied any conflict of interest. If there's one thing you can say about these guys, it's that they've got balls.
