Why hello Cam Savage story, what brings you here this morning? Meeting someone are you? Oh, the mainstream media! How nice.Jane Jankowski, Daniels' press secretary in the governor's office, said Savage worked for the governor from May 1 to May 22, and was paid $3,888.89 for 16 days of work. She declined to comment on the ethics complaint.
Savage denied any wrongdoing.
"I did a lot of stuff. I was at a lot of meetings. I worked on correspondence and communications-type stuff. I was working. I don't know how else to put it," he said.
The contract called for Savage to be paid $5,833 per month from May 1 through Oct. 31 -- about $35,000.
Savage said he took the job not knowing he would soon have the opportunity to work on the governor's campaign.
"I didn't know I'd be offered the campaign job, and I jumped at the chance to take it," he said. Let's take this one half-truth at a time.
We're talking about a contract that would have had Savage making much more than the average Hoosier. He received nearly $4,000 in our tax money, and when pressed on what exactly he did to earn it, he says: "I did a lot of stuff. I was at a lot of meetings. I worked on correspondence and communications-type stuff. I was working. I don't know how else to put it," he said. Hey Cam! I know how you put it: You put it in concrete terms.
This is classic Bush administration stuff, albeit on a lesser scale. This wasn't three years ago -- this was in May! Saying that you "did stuff" is an easily recognizable technique, because it's what 98% of all teenagers in this state tell their parents when they are trying to describe what they did at school that day. (Especially when, in actuality, they were skipping to go catch an afternoon matinée.) Savage said he took the job not knowing he would soon have the opportunity to work on the governor's campaign.
"I didn't know I'd be offered the campaign job, and I jumped at the chance to take it," he said.  First of all, if you were really so damn excited about your new taxpayer-funded position, don't you think you might have a slightly better recollection about what it was that you did during this two-and-a-half week period?
And furthermore: How dumb do you think we are? We're talking about a campaign team that was probably being assembled for months -- it's not like the re-election bid was a surprise to anyone -- and a well-known Republican political hack who just-so-happens to return to Indianapolis on the eve of campaign operations heating up.
Either his excellent and non-descript work doing "stuff" was so great that they just couldn't help but steal Savage away from the Hoosier taxpayer, or this is complete bullshit. And frankly, it doesn't smell all that great from this distance.
A lot of questions, and very little in the way of answers. I guess they just haven't figured out how to explain that while the rest of the state should be happy and content to accept the $9-10 an hour jobs that Mitch loves to tell us about, his friends on the inside of the political machine are taking two-week, all-expense paid vacations on the taxpayer dime. |
