No Armani, no Louboutin, no service? Lindsay Beyerstein, at AlterNet, finds “Trendy Fashion Buys Reimbursed as ‘Office Supplies’ to RNC Finance Officials”:
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.
[…] n February, as the RNC’s finance chiefs gathered in Boca Grande, Florida, for their Finance Leadership Meeting — the meeting at which the RNC’s “fear” strategy for donors was revealed in a telling PowerPoint presentation — the RNC made purchases totaling $3817 at Fugate’s. On its report, the RNC labels the purchase as “office supplies,” but Fugate’s general manager Nancy Blank says her store doesn’t sell office supplies. Fugate’s sells men’s and women’s clothing and accessories, Blank told AlterNet. “We’re a specialty department store,” she said.
Okay, so I guess the upscale Boca Grande restaurants must be too exclusive to have a spare sports jacket and an couple of ugly ties stashed behind the hostess station for lowly RNC drones who show up in khakis and polo shirts. At least the Fugate’s customers didn’t have to catch their own dinners….
Records also show that LeHardy received reimbursement for $282 spent at Boca Grande Outfitters, which bills itself as “the area’s most complete saltwater fly fishing and light tackle outfitter.” The report designates the reimbursement for “meals.” Aaron Sutcliffe, a clerk at BGO, said the store doesn’t sell food.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
They would have been smarter to follow Larry Craig and stuck to fly fishing in Men’s bathrooms.
I wonder if they bought any snorkeling gear?
gbear
DougL, wetsuits.
Oh wait, that would be office supplies.
Martin
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him to fish and he will have food for a lifetime. For the party of personal responsibility, activities that lead to food are essentially food. The RNC isn’t big on giving credit to the chinese proverb to they have their own:
Give a Republican some chicken fingers and you feed him for a day, teach him to hit the strip club buffet on a donor’s dime and he will have food for a lifetime.
gbear
There seems to be a theme to all the BJ posts this evening.
I think this would be less of an issue with the front page if John would just break down and buy some new bedding.
28 Percent
Of course you do not get it the expenditures at Boca Grande were food but you would just expect that the food would be handed out by a waiter at an ELITE restaurant but that is not what REAL AMERICANS do we know that if you give a man a grilled fish with lemon caper sauce he will eat for a day but if you buy him tackle and take donors out for fly fishing trips he will eat for a lifetime and probably not have to pick up the check.
mcd410x
An octopus with 9 legs? Nonopus? Novopus? Enneapus?
Doesn’t it depend on the origin of the root? Wouldn’t that be Greek and therefore the latter?
Who’s with me?
Crusty Dem
Exactly right, the fishing gear is necessary to catch the fish that become “meals”.
Though I’m really not seeing the DC RNC headquarters as “A River Runs Through It”-type guys.
And who hasn’t considered liquor an “office supply”?
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@gbear :
Yup, same with the
dildospencils.jl
I notice serial pointless posting on this here miserable politically correct liberal blog, that coincidentally (I think not) beats up on the poor GOPicans.
You well know that one of the legitimate functions of the party central committees is training the leaders of tomorrow.
Does any rational person think that living high through grotesque malfeasance and fraud is just something any fool can do without some training and practice? No, any rational person realizes that is foolish.
Maybe some unpracticed untrained rube (probably an earnest liberal) can filch some pencils or some second rate tacky merchandise from Target or Kohls or some such seedy store, but no one can spring from honesty into outrageous malfeasance used to fund truly classy, elite, and luxe extravagance.
Hence, office supplies for training purposes. Simple.
And also, why do liberals hate fun?
This is good news for the Republicans. The voters want competence in their government.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@mcd410x :
If it has ‘pus’ in it then you know that the Republicans have something to do with it.
Paul
People abusing their expense accounts is not unusual. Just sayin’.
burnspbesq
Falsifying expense reports. That go to the FEC.
Is there an app for that? i18USC1001?
Yutsano
@ 28 Percent:
FAIL. Try again.
@ burnspbesq: Do you see any consequences coming out of all these revelations? Or will they just do the whole “BUT THEY DO IT TOO!!” whine?
Athenae
Nicest hotels on the planet are the ones that will, with minimal convincing, list your bar bills as “laundry.”
A.
JGabriel
LeHardy resignation in 4 … 3 … 2 ….
.
JGabriel
burnspbesq:
Yep. It’s called the liePad.
.
burnspbesq
@Yutsano:
The essential ingredient in order for something like this to blow sky-high is usually a politically ambitious U.S. Attorney (see, e.g., Rudy Giuliani and the Wall Street scandals of the late 1980s). This Administration hasn’t been appointing too many of those, more’s the pity.
burnspbesq
@JGabriel:
“Yep. It’s called the liePad.”
I’m guessing every Apple Store in the DC region will be sold out within an hour after it opens tomorrow.
Yutsano
@ burnspbesq:
Basically someone wanting a career outside their attorney’s office a la Andrew Cuomo. Too bad it’s a federal case and not something that would fall under New York jurisdiction or else Andy would devour this case like a medium rare porterhouse. I’m not entirely certain I join the lament about the lack of political ambition, I’ll take competence in those positions too. Of course if you get both I can live with that!
Ouch. You do hit below the belt. :)
burnspbesq
Anyone else not have a reply arrow and two sets of tag buttons (OS 10.6, FF 3.6)?
Cole, this is what happens when you hire Sanka and Makewi to maintain the site.
burnspbesq
@yutsano:
The politically ambitious part comes in handy when arrests start to be made. You get big-ass press conferences and suspects being walked out the front door of fancy office buildings in handcuffs when there are cameras around.
The type of U.S. Attorney whose career path runs to a seven-figure income as a BigLaw white-collar defense partner lets people come in the back door of the local FBI office at 5:00 a.m. to surrender, and issues dry-as-dust press releases. The outcome is the same, but the entertainment value is lacking.
burnspbesq
@ Yutsano:
Ammo is expensive. Always fire for effect.
Mike Kay
Hmmm,
Something smells fishy.
What did the blind man say as he walked pass the fish market — “hello, ladies”.
Luthe
Two things:
1. I have decided that the Beatles’ Revolution is the perfect song to describe the Teabaggers. I mean, look at the lyrics.
It’s got everything, even references to their signs!
2. I’m running Safari 4.05 on a Mac and the reply-to buttons have completely disappeared. Nothing next to the timestamp and no magically appearing button on the comments. Also, I have two sets of quicktags above my comment box. Just FYI.
Yutsano
@ burnspbesq:
Your attorney explanation makes a decent amount of sense. Really you want the peacock who’s also willing to take the higher risks to see the bad guys go down all while smiling pretty for the cameras. It really isn’t something everyone is suited to do. Am I wrong in thinking this has Cuomo written all over it?
BTW you can’t be THAT hard. Your son made it to 16 after all. :)
jl
“Boca Grande Outfitters, which bills itself as “the area’s most complete saltwater fly fishing and light tackle outfitter.” The report designates the reimbursement for “meals.” Aaron Sutcliffe, a clerk at BGO, said the store doesn’t sell food.”
Boca Grande might sell some mighty tasty high class live bait and chum, perfect for interns.
This is no scandal.
As for whether this will blow up and make a difference, it all depends on the marketing finesse of the opposition, and the interest of our professional media. Both of which is probably lacking here. Unless some one can come up with some fancy undies on the tabs.
Them law people and their goofy papers don’t make any difference.
arguingwithsignposts
Way OT, but MSNBC.com over the past few days has been giving me an option of which pre-roll ad to watch on Olbermann’s page. Walgreens or Bank of America.
I hope someone there realizes how much I hate BoA and doesn’t interpret it as Walgreens love.
Also, now I have two sets of quicktags and no reply to button (FF on a mac 10.6).
Anne Laurie
No REPLY buttons on FireFox either, not even for the second-level front-pagers. FYWP!
Yutsano
@ Anne Laurie:
I know, it’s been like that pretty much all day. I’m choosing not to complain about it though, I have every confidence our good host will get the issue resolved quickly. And even if not we’ll adapt, we seem to be good at that here.
Tattoosydney
Anyone still awake?
An early happy Easter to all (in the “Four days off to spend with your family” sense, not the “Jesus on a stick” one).
Dinner tonight is shaping up to be oven roasted honey chicken breasts, oven roasted beetroot with sour cream, stir fried beetroot leaves and a meatless larb salad with avocado.
Tattoosydney
@ Anne Laurie:
The reply button went away earlier today after someone broke the blog, and John called everyone “jackasses” again.
It was a good day.
Yutsano
@ TattooSydney:
Mmm..larb. Unfortunately I don’t know the Thai word for pork. I did learn though that larb is actually a method of preparing all kinds of different meats and seafoods and each family has their own way of doing it. It’s one of the great Thai culinary traditions.
I have a rather gruesome story involving larb and a couple of spare roosters I had. But if you just ate I’ll hold off on it for awhile. Haven’t heard from wifey for awhile.
Tattoosydney
@ Yutsano
Not eaten yet – still in prep mode, so fire away.
I’m leaving out the pork (although I made that recipe with it the other day and it was spectacularly good), and just stir frying some onion instead of the pork to give something as a base for the flavours.
Tattoosydney
She was chatting away this morning your time.
Yutsano
@ TattooSydney:
If you have it and you’re accommodating a dietary restriction, do tofu. It’s fantastic in larb, especially if you let it marinade for an hour or two.
Anyway, the crop of chicks that I got this last spring also happened to have three roosters. Well, three roosters is not a very smart idea, so I had to get rid of them somehow. My friends (the wine drinking buds I mentioned before) decided they wanted to get into the practice of backyard chickens, but they would only do so if, when the hen had reached the end of her egg laying days, that they could manage to actually slaughter her. They had nothing to practice on, and I had two spare roosters, so I offered up my birds and they accepted. I got a text a few days later saying one of the roosters had made great larb. So there’s my slightly disturbing larb story. Cookie?
mcd410x
@Anne Laurie: Being a discerning front-pager does not make you a second-level front-pager.
That and Weihenstephaner Hefe is totally awesome. (+3)
Also.
Yutsano
Methinks BJ has officially gone wacky on me…
fucen tarmal
booze,fishing gear, and all babe bondage, i am having a lot of trouble trying not to free associate here….and i want credit for the effort before it all blows up in my face.
Tattoosydney
@ Yutsano:
Yum. Gallicide.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@Yutsano :
I’m a manly-man, I don’t need no stinking reply to arrow ’cause I prefer to roll my own. :)
superdestroyer
Who cares? the last time I looked, the Republicans are irrelevant to politics and have zero affect on policy at the federal level. The last time I looked, every demographic trend was against the Republicans and that the Republicans were destined to fad away.
Too bad the left does not spend as much time worrying about actual policy and performance of the Obama Administration instead of worrying about an irrelevant polical party.
arguingwithsignposts
@superdestroyer:
The last time I looked, they had 41 seats in the Senate, and voted against everything the admin. was doing. They obstruct EVERYTHING. I’d hardly call that “zero effect.”
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
First, I’m pretty sure that plenty of people on the left have been doing plenty of “worrying about actual policy and performance of the Obama administration”. In fact, I have pretty much heard almost non-stop screeching from a lot of people on the left since before Day One for Obama. Are you saying that we need even more?
Funk dat.
Second, regarding the Repubs, like any wounded wild animal if you take your eyes off of them for a second it just might be your last. I’m here to fire endless rounds of ridicule and derision into that gray flabby pachyderm ass until I know that fucker is good and dead.
How about this; we will keep flogging the pachyderm while you worry about Obama. Deal? Works for me.
Lesley
When the RNC reaches the end of overspending and bankrupts the Party, they can trip on over to Wall Street Casino and borrow from its “creative accounting” types; the ones they still don’t want to regulate.
Of what usefulness is the RNC and the RP? They can’t run government, they don’t participate effectively, they destroy everything they touch… It’s only a matter of time before the Republican Party implodes.
Jamey
Excellent subject line?
Excellent. Subject. Line.
Jamey
3: every two years, raise funds to stop the “Democrat” party and their crusade to ban fishing rods and assault rifles.
asiangrrlMN
Yutsano, I was napping when you wrote your comment. My schedule is all fucked up (even more so than usual). Gr. I missed both FHs on this thread!
superdestroyer
Lesley
When the Republican Party implodes all of the former Republicans will start voting in the Democratic primaries. So, the real question is what will happen to politics and policy when the U.S. has one effective political party and everyone is voting in the primaries.
The real impact on fund raising is that as donor realize that the Republicans have zero effect on policy or politics, they will stop donating. That has laready begun and will soon the Republicans will totally incapable of raising funds. No business, no special interest group, no bloc of voters can afford to be in a position where they cannot affect policy.
The Other Steve
You can buy fishing gear at Wal-Mart. Why did they have to go to a specialty shop?
Gus
Some of this is pretty mundane stuff. My company considers beer office supplies. No one drinks to excess, just have a beer on the company at the end of a hard day.
Mac from Oregon
I could justify the expense at Big Mouth (Boca Grande) by saying that it was a cost saving measure for a bunch of high end donors. Sushi and sashimi on survival crackers.