Thursday, April 24, 2014

Hey, Matt, Can I Get A Paycheck And Not Work Too?


Three and a half years into what thankfully is a single term, Secretary of State Matt Schultz looks like a classic case of the Peter Principle, in which people rise to their level of incompetence. His latest screw-up: keeping political crony Jim Gibbons on staff in a no-show job.

Excuse? Schultz "didn't want to fire Gibbons sooner because Gibbons' wife was recovering from a serious illness," said the guy whose first campaign pledge was, you guessed it, repealing Obamacare.

The icing on this irony came: just recently Schultz sent out a press release bragging about how much money he's saved with office re-organization. Some of us were wondering when this mystical $200 K was going to be used to repay the ""Help" America Vote Act money that Schultz misused on a "voter fraud" crusade that gave us a handful of plead-outs from frightened ex-felons, a Not Guilty in 40 minutes, and a dozen wrongly disenfranchised voters.

Not only did state auditor Mary Mosiman say Schultz should pay that back - oh, this keeps getting better - she was the one who got Gibbons' admittedly minimal job duties dumped on her when Gibbons switched to a "work from home" job.



Work from home.

Every so often, someone gets elected who's just in over their head from day one. Sometimes it's a fluke, sometimes it's an ideology over competence thing, sometimes it's just sheer voter ignorance. In Schultz's case it seems to be all three, and he's a classic cautionary tale of the risk.  The only good news here is that Schultz's reach for a congressional seat is exceeding his grasp and the public sector is likely to be done with him soon. And we'll all be better off when Matt stops coming in to work.

I'd write more but now that I'm done expressing my own opinion on my own time, a right guaranteed in my union contract, I actually have to show up to work. When I'm at work I talk more objectively, like this. See the difference?

And I help people vote.  Which you can do today.

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