Tuesday Thought #3

The Funny Papers

Jack Ohman, Bruce MacKinnon, Darrin Bell, Rick McKee, Steve Sack, JD Crowe, Bill Day, Pete Kreiner, Bill Bramhall, Nick Anderson, David Fitzsimmons, Mike Luckovich, Pat Bagley, Clay Bennett

GOP Congressman Uses Your Money To Settle Sexual Harassment Case

With so much focus on the RNC and the GOP and the Fat Bastard working to elect a pedophile to the Senate, we may have missed the story of Texas … because of course … Republican Congressman Blake Farenthold who used taxpayer money to settle a sexual harassment claim brought by Lauren Greene, his former spokesman.

Greene sued Farenthold in December 2014 over allegations of gender discrimination, sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment. She claims another Farenthold aide told her the congressman said he had “sexual fantasies” and “wet dreams” about Greene; she also maintains that Farenthold “regularly drank to excess” and told her in February 2014 that he was “estranged from his wife and had not had sex with her in years.”

But when Lauren complained about those kinds of comments, Farenthold fired her, and filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia; she dropped her case when Farenthold offered a cash settlement.

So where did Farenthold get the money to pay off his accuser? Perhaps from a little-known congressional account from the Office of Compliance.

House Administration Committee Chairman Gregg Harper revealed to GOP lawmakers in a closed-door meeting that only one House office in the past five years had used that account to settle a sexual harassment complaint, and that the settlement totaled $84,000.

Farenthold would neither confirm or deny that his office was responsible for that $84,000 payout:

“While I 100% support more transparency with respect to claims against members of Congress, I can neither confirm nor deny that settlement involved my office as the Congressional Accountability Act prohibits me from answering that question.”

Wait, how’s that for doublespeak? He supports transparency but won’t answer a question?

In a joint statement both Greene and Farenthold prepared at the time of the settlement but never released, both parties confirmed they reached a deal in part to save taxpayer dollars.

Except they didn’t because that little-known account is taxpayer monies.

Look at us, we pay their huge salaries and we allow them to work a few days a year, give them free health insurance and now we’re paying settlements in sexual harassment cases?

If only there was something we could ….

VOTE.THEM.OUT!

In an update, Blake Farenthold says he promises to pay back taxpayers for those funds from a special congressional account that he used to pay that harassment settlement. He says he "didn't do anything wrong" but would "do my best" to repay the settlement fee sometime this week, this time taking out a personal loan instead. 

Farenthold, who used $84,000 from that congressional account is allegedly worth $2.4 million.

Just sayin’.

Politico

South Carolina ... Where It's Not The Heat, It's The Stupidty: Are We Really Gonna Spend Five Million Dollars On A Confederate Flag Display

Earlier this year, on the heels of that mass shooting at a church in Charleston, and after much heated debate on both sides, the state of South Carolina finally removed the Confederate flag from flying over the statehouse.

I’d have hoped the flag would have been tossed out with the garbage, but, yes, it is a part of history, both in this state and the country, so the plan was that the flag would be put on permanent display where those who worship it, and those who abhor it, might look at it.

State legislators agreed to display the flag at the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum, and appointed a commission to come up with a proposal; the state budget office estimated the display could cost between $1 million and $15 million.

Wait. Fifteen million to display the flag in a museum? Well, luckily, that was the high estimate and now the commission has come up with a fee that state lawmakers — both Republicans and Democrats — find as offensive as many find the Confederate flag, and that proposal is that the state pay $5.3 million to display that flag in a state museum.

Never mind that the money could be used for our failing infrastructure, our failing educational systems, or even to help repair the state after the disastrous floods this fall, let’s pay five million dollars to display a flag. Oh, and that’s not all; the proposed exhibit will also cost $416,000 every single year to rent additional space to house it.

“Apparently, they’re [also] going to fly it around every day in a private jet.” — House Minority Leader, Democrat Todd Rutherford joked … kind of.

This five million dollars that we don’t actually have, would be used to display the flag taken from the statehouse grounds in a glass case, and on the wall behind it, a display of names of S.C. troops killed in the Civil War.

No. No. I suggest going to a local frame shop, getting a cheap plastic frame, and glass, I’m not a heathen, and slip the flag into the frame and put it on a back wall somewhere. Hell, I’d even cough up the thirty-five or so bucks I think it might cost.

I kid. I do think the flag needs to be displayed so we can remember where it came from, and what it means, on both sides, but is it seriously going to cost us five million bucks plus another half-a-million per year to do that when we have more pressing things to do with tax money?

Or … is it really is the stupidity down here.

source: The State