Corruption: Nebraska, Washington D.C. and Overcriminalization

By Michael Ramirez - April 12, 2012 via Townhall Daily Comics

I don’t have enough information here to do more than speculate, but. We write a lot here about leadership, and one thing we are all aware of is that what the boss does is what everybody else thinks they can do, too. In other words, “Monkey see, Monkey do”. So it would seem, to me, reasonable the GSA thought that if the White House (you know, where the boss works) can jet around the world wasting the taxpayers money; they can too. At least they didn’t forget the little people, you know, the interns. the only ones hurt were the taxpayers, and who cares about them. It’s called the “leadership culture”, or in Michelle Malkin‘s trademarked phrase The Culture of Corruption”.

A few articles that have come to my attention that I think you should pay attention to.

From Nebraska Watchdog:

LINCOLN — Lincoln is spending $24,000 a year in taxpayer dollars to a Lincoln company to maintain a promotional website and Facebook page touting the progress and merits of the $344 million arena project under construction downtown.

The Thought District was first hired in late 2010 to create the Haymarket NOW website and Facebook page. The initial contract paid the Lincoln firm $1,500 to create the Facebook page alone. The new contract allows the company to continue to be paid $2,000 per month to keep the website updated with new content and “provide high-quality marketing coy” to interact with website visitors.

The Thought District’s description of the purpose of the website and Facebook page said it provides an “up-to-date, transparent view of the project,” inform the public and “curb negative sentiment and excite supporters of the arena.” In other words, lots of promotion and cheerleading.

Thought District CEO and Founder Eric Dinger said he’s charging $100 an hour, which he said is below market value.

“We’re breaking even on it,” he said.

The contract does not allow his company to charge any more than $2,000 a month, so that works out to about 20 hours a month. The least amount of time his company has put into the job was 18 hours, and the most was 48, he said.

“People who build websites are not cheap people to have on staff,” he said.

Lincoln Pays $24,000 a Year for Arena Website and Facebook Page.

I usually am the one that maintains our company’s website, and I can tell you that while I don’t update all that often, when I do, I spend far less time on it than I do this blog, and my time isn’t billed at $100/hr ever. (Wish it was!!)  Nebraska has a problem with control of their agencies, at least in my opinion. I wrote about our local ones a while back here and here’s an except:

… I was out to the grocery store today to pick up some, well, groceries, and I noticed that the old Wal-Mart store next door, which was abandoned when they built the super Wal-Mart a few years ago, had a new sign. A really nice one too. And I was sort of thinking about it because Grassroots in Nebraska wrote about it in Lincoln back in September. They provided a tour also, so go see what they found (and found out). The link is here.Anyway about this sign. It’s one of Daktronics Galaxy full color models, with lighted signs above and below it. It’s about 4′ X 12′ in the LED segment which is a computerized message board, and double-sided, of course. Here is a comparable one in Illinois:

In fact, I was so impressed that when I got home I googled it and read about it, of course the website has no pricing (that protects their dealers, my manufacturers do the same thing) but I did find one on E-bay, a smaller unit and only single faced, the buy it now price was $12,000 without shipping. So it’s a really nice sign. In addition the entire structure and wiring for it has been replaced, parenthetically the wiring is not code compliant for a commercial location, the Wal-Mart sign was quite small and used little power. My guess for the price of that sign installed? Somewhere between $50 and 75 thousand dollars, maybe more.

One would think a really thriving business must have taken over that store, wouldn’t one? It’s one of the prime retail locations in town with several thousand square feet of newly remodeled space, it’s really nice inside.

So who is the lucky merchant, you ask. Let’s see, there are several.

• The Chamber of Commerce tourism office
• The local Community College
• The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services
• Job Service
• The County Development office

Not a business in the lot. Every one of these (with the possible exception of the Chamber of Commerce) is tax supported and in all cases had offices in town before, so now there are several storefronts (all in marginal retail locations) abandoned to put these in one (very expensive) location. Of course the owner of the building is politically connected and has had trouble finding a tenant but, that was probably true in their prior location, also. …

I should also note that Grassroots in Nebraska has written about this too. That link is here.

On a somewhat related matter

Montana Corruption is writing on the criminalization of just about everything.

Over the past few years, the political right and left have joined forces to counteract the “overcriminalization” of daily life. 

The titles of recent books, such as Three Felonies a Day by civil libertarian Harvey Silvergate, One Nation Under Arrest by Paul Rosenzwieg and Brian Walsh of the conservative Heritage Foundation, and Go Directly to Jail: The Criminalization of Nearly Everything, edited by Gene Healy of the libertarian Cato Institute, give one a good sense of the current climate of opinion.

Federal criminal law, once reserved for serious misconduct that required the greatest punishment, is now used to punish a broad scope of conduct. In fact, many federal laws today impose steep mandatory punishments even in cases where the defendant acted without criminal intent.

With conservatives, liberals, and libertarians working together, the remedy for reform seems obvious: roll back some of the approximately 4,500 federal crimes Congress has added to the books. The first step, of course, is to convince Congress to stop passing new federal criminal laws with harsh penalties.

If this sounds easy, think again. Or, better yet, ask Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).

Paul has come under fire recently for insisting that the full Senate debate and consider amendments to three new crime bills.  The bills add certain chemicals, which are being used by some to make synthetic marijuana and other synthetic drugs, to Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA).

Paul believes most drug offenses should be handled by state and local governments, a view held by those concerned about overcriminalization, as well as by conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who recently testified before Congress that the federal courts were being clogged by routine drug cases.

Continue reading CONVICT PARENTS THAT HAVE HOUSEHOLD CLEANERS IN THEIR HOME?

There is a very old saying that goes, “More law=Less Justice”.

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