Tuesday, January 06, 2009

How hard can it be to get federal money?

Amateurs can do it. Ohio's former Attorney General Marc Dann was a crook and a philanderer. He was fired. Finally. But while in office he created a Washington job for Craig Mehall, a job unique among states' attorney generals, for $98,000. According to the Columbus Dispatch
  1. No other AG had a Washington liaison
  2. Mehall had no Washington experience
  3. Mehall had never been a lobbyist
  4. He was a lawyer, not licensed in Ohio
  5. He had been a volunteer for Dann
  6. He was from Chicago
  7. He missed deadlines due to his lack of experience
  8. He leaked information
  9. He borrow a private plane from one of Dann's other political buddies
  10. He continued to work for Ohio after Dann was fired

Mehall was just let go--due to budget shortfalls in the state, although his boss is long gone. Still, the governor's office says "he did a lot of good" by getting millions in law enforcement grants and representing Ohio in consumer rights and debt-relief. He would have been successful in getting a regional crime lab on behalf of a consortium of institutions, but someone backed away from it. Not too bad for someone with no experience, hired by a crook, who wasn't even from Ohio. Why do lobbyists need to do this? What are our elected representatives doing if not bringing home the pork?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Murray sez:
Extracting taxpayer dollars from the federal government is the best game in town. There seems to be no way of stopping it short of a taxpayer revolution. Unfortunately most citizens are hunkered down with the idea that THEIR party is the one that's going to save the country. As a result, both parties take turns running the country into the ground while promising to save it! The citizens fall for it every time.