Stupidity, Corruption and Whining

There are three things that really, really annoy me stupidity, corruption, and whining. The Herald-Leader had all three today.

Stupidity:

Democratic Party Chairman Jonathan Miller kicked off the day of dueling press conferences by lambasting the automated phone calls that the Republican Party made to constituents Monday, saying the move undermined Fletcher's request to put policy ahead of politics.

And the calls occurred precisely at the wrong time, Miller said, noting that voters got those messages at the same time Fletcher announced he would give lawmakers a three-week cooling off period to try to forge a compromise.

How dumb is Ernie Fletcher? Does he really think the Democrats in the House are going to let him off the hook in three weeks? The only way the Democrats won’t come out smelling like a rose from this is if they keep the money. They need to come back pass one bill, giving their pay back and dare the Republicans in the Senate and the Governor to kill it.

Corruption:

County employees were ordered out of their offices yesterday by a swarm of FBI agents who seized computer files, paperwork, receipts and other documents, apparently looking for information related to road-paving projects.

Judge-Executive Randy Thompson said agents did not tell his office what they were searching for, but they seized invoices relating to gravel and blacktop projects.

Besides the judge-executive's office, agents searched the offices of the county clerk, treasurer, finance officer and the county garage.

Maybe it would be easier not to arrest everyone in Knott County that isn’t in the corruption business. First vote buying, now we have highway contractors, the track record is not good.

Like many local governments in Kentucky, Knott County has a storied history of political shenanigans, almost all of them involving Democrats.

At least one former judge-executive, Tubby Calhoun, was indicted in the 1980s for allegedly spreading white gravel on private driveways.

More recently, Newsome's tenure as judge-executive brought repeated negative attention to the county.

Newsome refused to resign after he was convicted in 2003 of vote-buying in a 1998 Democratic primary. He ran the county from behind prison bars during his 16-month sentence. He resigned nine months after he was released.

Since then, the state auditor's office has issued scathing reports detailing misuse of money on Newsome's watch.

The fiscal 2005 audit revealed misuse of the judge-executive's credit card while Newsome was in prison and failure to disclose how federal grant money was spent. That audit and the one for fiscal 2004 questioned more than $1 million in spending, particularly on a small, 4-foot-deep county swimming pool.

Whining:

Poor Mike Krzyzewski. The Duke coach was complaining the other day about the media coverage given his Blue Devils of late, whining that the "I Hate Duke" mentality has become fashionable.

Seems we've hurt the poor guy's feelings.

I really hate a poor looser, but a poor winner is even more annoying.