Let’s begin with an example from Wisconsin, where Teabagger Scott Walker is the Gubernator. Via the Journal Sentinel’s political watchdog columnist, Daniel Bice:
Just in his mid-20s, Brian Deschane has no college degree, very little management experience and two drunken-driving convictions.
Yet he has landed an $81,500-per-year job in Gov. Scott Walker’s administration overseeing environmental and regulatory matters and dozens of employees at the Department of Commerce. Even though Walker says the state is broke and public employees are overpaid, Deschane already has earned a promotion and a 26% pay raise in just two months with the state.
How does a college drop-out with a couple of DUIs and no environmental or management experience pull off a sweet deal like that?
Obviously, it’s because his father put in a good word for him:
“I put in good words for every one of my children in their jobs,” said the elder Deschane. “But that would be the extent of it.”
That and a lot of money.
Brian’s father is a lobbyist for Wisconsin Builders Association (WBA). (The WBA is roughly equivalent of our Building Industry Association of Washington.) The WBA’s PAC was one of the top five contributers to Gov. Walker’s campaign. Contributions from the WBA and its members totaled $121,652.
I’m sure it is totally a coincidence that Scott Walker’s campaign manager (and currently Walker’s chief of staff) personally recommended young Brian Deschane for the job.
And about that promotion cum raise (my emphasis):
…Secretary David Ross, a Walker cabinet member, named [Brian] Deschane the bureau director of board services, a job that paid $64,728 a year.
Not long after, lawmakers approved the governor’s plan to convert the Department of Commerce to a public-private hybrid in charge of attracting and retaining businesses, with its regulatory and environmental functions being moved to other agencies.
Commerce Secretary Paul Jadin then appointed Deschane to his new post there to oversee the changes.
“It was felt that he would be helpful in working through the transition issues,” said Commerce Department spokesman Tony Hozeny.
The move meant a pay raise of more than $16,500 a year for Deschane, even though he had put in only a couple of months with the state.
Ahhh, yes. Here we have all of the elements of Today’s Republicans at their “best”.
First, one needs an emergency. The projected budget shortfall made a great excuse for Walker and his cronies.
First course of action: Give tax breaks to businesses to the tune of $117 million. At the same time, eliminate $16 million in tax credits for the poorest of workers.
Follow this up by slashing services for the poor, disabled, and elderly.
Next, attack labor. Say…strip workers of their collective bargaining rights, even after state unionized employees were willing to make concessions.
And, for good measure, pass the bill through using either illegal or, at best, highly questionable, legislative manurers manuvers.
Next, fill political appointment positions with utterly unqualified cronies (and college-drop-out, DUI racking, unqualified children of cronies).
Add to this, privatization of some government services (like converting the Department of Commerce to a public-private hybrid) to “save money.” And then “save money” by giving crony appointees big fat raises.
The whole scam is a recipe for a sort of public-private hybrid campaign financing: (1) Patron donates, (2) Governor hires patron, (3) Patron gets big fat raise, and back to step 1.
The only thing refreshing about all this is how these Republicans have given up all pretenses.
Now, they openly flaunt being crooks.
I’m guessing even our trolls won’t touch this one. They’ll stay away in droves.
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No one, not Democrats nor the remaining small fraction of Republicans with 2 brain cells to rub together, will hold them accountable. They are robbing us blind while we point out the graft and corruption.
It sux to be an American tax payer in the 21st century.
2
You must really work and train at being a dumbfuck, because you’ve sure perfected the art. There is a huge difference between asking public employees to take a cut in wages and benefits because of a budget deficit and gratuitously depriving them of collective bargaining rights. But, I wouldn’t expect you to recognize that difference as no light shines into the closed mind.
It’s a nice example of what’s going on, but hardly surprising, or even one of the more egregious examples.
Perhaps the obvious incompetence of the person for the position is what makes it stand out? Perhaps, but that wouldn’t have made much of an impression compared with the appointments made under the administration of George W. Bush: they assigned a recent college graduate to be in charge of the new Iraqi stock market; they fired one assistant attorney general so one of Karl Rove’s aids could take the job; they hired recent Liberty University grads to write legal opinions saying it was okay; and of course you had the “Brownie” of Katrina fame.
But what really takes the cake is the way the Republicans found a way to use taxpayer money to finance their campaigns. In a way it’s just another example of the tendency of the “haves” to make sure that they use “OPM” (Other People’s Money” to make even more profit for themselves, with little or no risk.
Example 1: Take, for example, Blackwater. The founder was a former Navy seal, which gave him some qualifications to form a company to train private bodyguards for executives, but getting married into the DeVos family (of Amway fame) and having access to that family’s wall street financier connections gave him all the money, and the political contacts, to start a company from scratch and turn it into one of the three primary no-bid contractors for U.S. services in the Iraq war, all within less than five years. Huge sums of federal money were paid to Blackwater under no-bid contracts, a significant portion of which was recycled right back into campaign contributions for any number of Republican candidates and causes.
Example 2: Delay’s Texas “lobbying” scheme. Tom Delay had a great scheme going. He reasoned that the state of Texas needed a P.R. and lobbying office in Washington D.C. to make sure that it’s interests were being represented there. (Funny, I thought that was the role of Congressmen)!
So Texas opens up an office, funded with money from Texas taxpayers. But they don’t just budget enough to pay for a director, a couple of assistants, some clerical staff, copier, phones, etc. They also infuse it with millions of taxpayer money which then goes to hire professional lobbying firms to “represent the state’s interests”. Those lobbyist then, in turn, donate millions of dollars BACK to Texas Republican candidates and causes. Wholla! Taxpayer money turned into campaign contributions!!!!!
He might have been able to get away with it too, except that the primary lobbying firm he hired was headed by Abramoff (sp?), who attracted attention to himself only because he accepted lobbying fees from one tribe to get permits to allow it to open casinos on it’s reservations, and he also accepted lobbying fees from adjoining tribes to campaign against those permits.
And that’s not even touching where the really big money has gone – Halliburton & KPR for Iraq and Katrina no-bid contracts. It would be interesting to have a forensic accountant dig through those books and unravel all the funds flowing from the federal treasury to the Republican Party, it’s candidates, or it’s causes.
And you only have to look at the career of George W. Bush to see how money and Republican connections can make a first-class screw-up rise to the highest office in the land, all withough learning anything useful in the process.
…and Chris Christie just put his back-cracker on the Stae Board in New Jersey.
When the fuck is this gonna stop?
And more importantly…HOW can we stop it. These assholes are like drunken fucking sailors.
Here’s my observation…
…Michael Steele was a clown show. A diversion to make everybody think the Rethugs were completely incompetent and unable to get their shit together. Under the cover of the clown show…Rove, Norquist and the Koch Brothers and their evil henchmen at ALEC wrote the legislation…got the tea parties going…got these frauds elected to Congress and the State Houses and Legislatures (by outright LYING to their constituents) and then lowered the boom…knowing full well that they had only months to years to inflict as much DAMAGE as possible.
Scott Walker and pay raises for cronies? That’s nothing new. He did it when he was county exec as well. That time it was a 26% raise.
http://milwaukeecountyfirst.com/?p=1215
For a Republican there’s no better time than a budget crisis to hire your buddies, as well as their kids, and to give them all huge raises, even as you cut their taxes. heh- They must figure that can always pay for it by slashing services to poor brown people.
Stinking, reeking, Republican cronyism at its smelliest! Of course, it’s important to put a person in a sensitive job like this one who is not competent and doesn’t know anything about it. Makes it easier to boss them around that way.
How democrats work, in march alone, they spent 8 times what they took in
Little Iddy @ 9
Thank you for your ever insightful and original commentary. Always a delight to read your posts!
Id, you ignorant slut. No, Dems haven’t spent 8 times what they took in. You’re thinking of Dick Cheney and his sock puppet, W. When Dems have been in charge and not saddled with Republican generated Monster Recession/Depressions, they have ALWAYS been more fiscally responsible than the Rat Bastards they replaced.
Bill Clinton left office with a Huge Surplus, remember, having managed down the Reagan/Bush deficits. Obama would be doing the same thing, if it weren’t for the constant, unrelenting racism and obstuctionism of the Rat Party and the spinelessness of large segments of the Democratic Party (locals not necessarily included.)
Deschane will be living in his mother’s basement again next January when Walker takes a walk. What a fuckin’ deschbag.
This is what you’d have in Washington state with Dino in Oly.
@12
ya…instead we get the queen with $8 billion in budget shortfalls and dead corrections officers because of progressive touchy-feely policies…and thats just for starters…
just saying….both parties are TEH SUK.
http://cnsnews.com/news/articl.....eight-time
Read it and weep
We are now 28th in fiscal decline, with Greece being 36th. Per a Stanford study.
If Obama would get off his spendaholic ass and put the National Commission on Financial Responsibility recommendations in place, we would be 8th!
And what the Hell is being accomplished in Libya, Gaddafi is laughing his royal ass off.
@13 – Fuck you. The corrections officer isn’t dead due to “touchy feely” policies, progressive or otherwise. To take the death of a corrections officer and turn it into an opportunity for baseless snarky little dumbass political commentary is only something a dumbfuck like yourself would do.
Just sayin’.
“And, for good measure, pass the bill through using either illegal or, at best, highly questionable, legislative manurers.”
Legislative manurers? Are those really shitty maneuvers?
@16
go fuck yourself first.
All we heard after the incident was that it was caused by a lack of funding – then we found out that was nothing but BS…there is plenty of funding – it comes down to POLICY, made by people like Eldon Vail, who was appointed by the queen herself – where is the accountability? NOWHERE…
Fuck the progressives and their “Prisneyland”…hard time means fucking hard time – not conjugal visits and pizza nights.
assholes, get a clue douchebag.
the best way to prove you point is to show how everyone else is a hypocrite. aye.
March Madness: U.S. Gov’t Spent More Than Eight Times Its Monthly Revenue
http://cnsnews.com/news/articl.....eight-time
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21: “Well I’ll tell you he doesn’t stand a chance!”
Any chance you want to put your money where your mouth is, dumbfuck?
LD @ 20,
You stupid retarded brainwashed asswipe…please read the fuck bullshit you cite:
So…by that logic on any non-work day that you go grocery shopping you are spending infinitely more than your daily revenue.
Fucking bozo.
Richard @ 17,
Thanks…the price of blogging on my first cup of coffee!
The fact remains, Whimperer (no)Fax the -IV and your fellow clowns, there are budget deficits in all but a couple states- regardless of what letter the respective governor has behind his or her name.
There would be no deficits or bond market tap-dancing if it weren’t for the great Republican caused depression we’re in. Remember that.
Crony capitalisn ie GW Bushinomics at its finest.
@24, Darryl and Richard: Manurer is quite apt in any case.
Well done, Darryl.
We have gone back to Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall.
Thus, government services and programs must go…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammany_Hall