Carter Wrenn posted on November 02, 2009 17:22
A lot of my Democratic friends and a fair amount of the media were raving last week about how cool and unflappable Mike Easley was at his hearing before the State Board of Elections;---but how many times can a fellow fall for the same con job?
Sergeant Shultz was German and pedantic while Governor Easley’s Irish and charming but their story’s the same, I know nuth-tink.
McQueen Campbell, the Governor told the Board, is a nice young man – but the Governor has no idea on earth why Campbell would send a bill to Easley’s campaign to pay for $11,000 in repairs to Easley’s house.
Nor did the Governor – who personally asked McQueen to make the repairs – ever give a second thought about whether Campbell was paid at all. He was, the Governor explained, too frantically busy worrying about passing the lottery (and making furniture in the basement of the Governor’s mansion) to fret over an $11,000 bill and figured someone would handle it.
As for all the free airplane flights Campbell gave the Governor, well, the Governor says without blushing his campaign paid for everything it was billed and Campbell was an imbecile for not sending more bills.
Now, whoever heard of a businessman who was so inept he didn’t know how to send an invoice? When a businessman doesn’t ask a politician to pay for $100,000 in airplane flights, what’s your guess about what’s going on – is it bungling or hanky-panky?
Finally, the Governor told the Board he just doesn’t like to get involved in his campaigns or his political fundraising because the whole thing just goes against how his mamma brought him up to be humble and self-effacing. Governor Easley is fifty-nine; over the last 27 years he’s run for office every four years and raised over twenty million dollars – while being uninvolved in his campaigns.
This is pure farce.
I remember back in 2000 when Mike Easley ran for Governor the first time – back then Attorney General Easley took hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayers’ money and used it to pay what he called ‘public service announcements’ – which did very little to combat consumer fraud but did give his campaign a huge boost at taxpayers’ expense. Would someone who’d do that hesitate to take a free vacation and a free plane flight from folks who wanted a state permit for a beach front development?
At the end of the day Easley’s lawyer wound up the hearing by arguing since it was perfectly legal (under elections laws) for Easley’s campaign to pay for the repairs to his house, McQueen Campbell’s claim Easley told him to bill $11,000 in repairs to his campaign as airplane flights was hooey. But he side-stepped the broader legal issue: Many of the people giving money to Easley’s campaign were state contractors and lobbyists and political appointees. Easley’s lawyer is saying it’s fine for them to give money to Easley’s campaign and for the campaign to turn around and give the money to Easley. So why not just have the lobbyists write checks directly to the Governor, personally, when they want a permit to build a boat ramp at a development and cut out the middle man? Would that be legal?
Mike Easley’s given us an example of what’s wrong with government and the Democrats, from the current Governor to the Attorney General to the folks who labor in the Democratic Party vineyards, aren’t doing one thing about it – instead they’re marveling at how cool and unflappable Easley is.