I don’t think BondageGate or any of this is a scandal, but it is incompetent:
At the Republican National Committee, the term “office supplies” seems to have taken on a whole new meaning. If you take its recent filings with the Federal Election Commission at face value, the RNC, it seems, requires thousands of dollars worth of pricey clothing and more than a splash of booze to run its office.
Listed on the report in the category of “office supplies” are purchases from a New England winery and a Capitol Hill liquor store, as well as more than $3,800 from a Florida clothing store. The category of “meals” also seems to extend to the sartorial, with a $450 purchase from a high-end Manhattan boutique — one that has no restaurant or take-out shop on the premises — falling into that category, as listed on the RNC’s reports to the FEC. That purchase, as well as one for more than $500 from the Florida clothing store, are attributed to RNC Deputy Finance Director Debbie LeHardy, who, according to the report, was reimbursed for them.
Yutsano
Nothing screams get the donors to sign the checks like incompetent bookkeeping. The real question is how much of this is because of the Steele inanity and how much is mere institutional rot? My guess is this has been going on for years and is now just coming to light because everyone is focused on the RNC. These problems don’t come out of vacuums.
gbear
Speaking of Bondage and Republicans: TBogg does xtranormal.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Wingnuts doin’ their part to grow the economy.
Undercover FBI Agent DougJ
Me too.
gbear
Yusanto. I’d guess they started getting sloppy and outlandish about the same time that Rove & Co. felt they’d established a permanent repubilcan majority. Who was EVER going to check them? Haha.
Martin
Party of fiscal responsibility, bitchez!
Jules
This is excellent news for McCain. I can feel the polls tightening!
Warren Terra
I don’t know which alternative is worse: that they’re employing chiselers and thieves and not checking up on their charges, or that this spending was an approved praxtice of theft from their donors.
OriGuy
TBogg has started doing those xtranormal animations. His take on the Republican follies in West Hollywood.
srv
I don’t have anything important to add except I’m +4 Dogfish Head Burton Baton IPA and where the fuck is my RNC credit card?
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
I saw Rachel talking about this on her show tonight. I like the fact that they had the ‘balls’ (for lack of a proper term) to list the actual businesses while substituting innocuous legit items for the actual purchases.
Maybe their spreadsheet had a slight column alignment error? Yeah, that’s the ticket!
It seems that no matter how low they go the Republicans still get away with it. They are not a real political party any more. They are nothing more than a bunch of power hungry bitter racist white guys who have run out of options and are now running on the dregs at the bottom of their barrel.
Yutsano
I’d go back even further than that honestly. If you look at how the expenses are hidden and how well distributed they are, that suggests a SOP that goes back a very very long time. It took a buffoon like Steele to expose the real cracks in the organization. In fact, I’m dusting off an old memory of the RNC’s books being questioned not long after the first Bush
disasterelection. I could be wrong there however.jron
michael steele, ftw
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@gbear:
You know who else was overconfident, got sloppy and kept all kinds of records of their crimes? Eh? Eh?!
jenniebee
What do you expect? Their argument is that government is necessarily so corrupt that it’s not worth having, and you thought maybe they wouldn’t loot every political apparatus they possibly could? Why shouldn’t they, if they’re convinced that the looting is inevitable, each of them get as much as they can (after all, if Debbie doesn’t do it, it’s not like somebody else won’t just take it instead).
This is no different from the issue with them being convinced that government must be incompetent, inefficient and officious. They accept that as unchangeable, so they will never work to change it.
Democracy thrives in the care of realists, people who see the benefits of democratic government as well as the flaws and shortcomings and work to expand the former and minimize the latter. Democracy takes fragile flight in the care of idealists, people who challenge us to expand our idea of all the good that democratic government can do, but who sometimes overreach. Democratic government cannot survive the care of cynics.
Wag
Nothing to see here. Did heads roll after it was revealed how much was spent on Palin’s sartorial excesses?
No
IOKIYAR
wake me after Steele finds Karl Rove’s head in his bed, but not until then.
+3 Dale’s Pale Ale
Morbo
Funny you should mention this. Adult Swim plays a clip from the Taiwanese news animation (of Tiger Woods and John Edwards fame) every Friday night and tonight’s featured a bunch of Republicans gallivanting around throwing money everywhere, buying Reagan T-shirts, buying liquor, and visiting the bondage club. I laughed not only because it was ridiculous but also because of the percentage of the audience who would get what that was about.
danceswithwords
“My guess is this has been going on for years and is now just coming to light because everyone is focused on the RNC. These problems don’t come out of vacuums.”>My guess is this has been going on for years and is now just coming to light because everyone is focused on the RNC. These problems don’t come out of vacuums.”
Yep. I highly doubt that Michael Steele came in and imposed detailed new accounting standards; that doesn’t seem like his style. It’s more likely that organizational checks and balances were already pretty squishy. A lot of organizations have bookkeeping software that’s set up to flag certain kinds of expenses; hence the “office supplies” categorization. But they also usually have an approval chain, and I can’t imagine people were submitting expenses like that to an approval chain if they thought there was a chance that they’d be rejected.
AhabTRuler
He has got to be a deep-cover brother.
gbear
[email protected]
Enron?
burnspbesq
@Jules:
You sure that’s the polls tightening, and not Michael Steele’s sphincter?
petorado
Please people, can’t you cut the RNC some slack? If you worked every day with that class of people, wouldn’t liquor be a necessary office expense for you to get through the work week too? Hell, I’m amazed they aren’t billing for their liver transplants as well.