COUNTDOWN! Worst
People of 2014
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[December 29, 2014]
By Watchdog Staff
In a year of videotaped beheadings, school
shootings, Russian invasions and annexations of eastern Ukraine (or, as
Valdimir Putin calls them, staycations), Ebola, deadly Mexican cops,
deadly American cops, Bashar al-Assad’s readiness to kill his Syrian
fellows, Kim Jong Un’s funny/creepy hack of Sony Pictures, the release
of those emails revealing that (a) Sony Pictures executives are closet
racists and (b) (when they pulled the offending comedy film that
irritated KJU) public cowards — in a year like this one, we’re saying,
it’s easy to overlook the myriad outrageous acts of your local
government bureaucrats. We’re not saying all those in government service
are evil, nor even many of them. But they’re out there, the bad or
merely incompetent. Watchdog.org’s national network of reporters find
them. Every day, we produce investigative stories that reveal what
Hannah Arendt famously called “the banality of evil” — the little ways
in which otherwise average bureaucrats and others participate in acts
that range from merely annoying or petty to downright homicidal. |
Every day until year’s end, we’ll reveal more of the worst people we’ve
encountered. Today, Nos. 15-20.
On Dec. 31, we’ll reveal our No. 1 choice — a person whose simple, everyday
cruelty shines out like a 12-gauge flare fired into a child’s brightly lit
birthday cake.
At a time when the saccharine of holiday spirit may sometimes overwhelm you, we
offer this pause, this respite, this refreshment: Watchdog’s incomplete guide to
some of our least-favorite fellow Americans. —The Editors
15. OHIO: Gov. John Kasich
Kasich was elected in 2010 as an anti-Obamacare crusader for limited government,
decided in 2013 he could be a quantum politician, simultaneously against
Obamacare and for the law’s expansion of Medicaid to able-bodied, working-age
adults with no dependents. He captured the hearts of Ohio’s legacy press by
asserting every vulnerable demographic in the state would benefit from his
Obamacare expansion — and he didn’t need to convince the Ohio Republican Party,
because he stacked party leadership with loyalists a year earlier. Kasich
circumvented Ohio’s Republican-led Legislature to expand Medicaid, and defends
the policy by lying about its funding and insisting Christ compels him. After a
landslide re-election win against a Democrat whose campaign redefined the word
“disaster,” Kasich is now basking in the sort of soft-focus spotlight the D.C.
press reserves for Republicans who grow government using rhetoric that makes
future reform even more difficult. MITIGATING FACTOR: If Kasich runs for
president, count on his thin skin and quick temper to betray him at the first
sign of an effective critique from a primary opponent. —Jason Hart
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2014/Dec/27/images/ads/current/mcquellons_lda_121313.png)
16. WISCONSIN: The GAB
When it comes to abuse of power, sometimes it takes an agency. Such is the case
with the “nonpartisan” Government Accountability Board, Wisconsin’s regulator of
campaign finance and election law. The GAB — including the six retired judges
who lead it and the 34 staff members who serve it — is embroiled in several
lawsuits, one alleging the agency abused its authority and sent the bill to
taxpayers. The state lawsuit charges that the GAB’s use of a secret John Doe
investigation created a “Frankenstein’s monster” of stitched-together
administrative rules and laws. And this monster was unleashed on dozens of
conservative organizations on suspicion of campaign finance violations. Two
judges have rejected the GAB’s legal theory. Attorneys for the plaintiffs
suspect the GAB may have altered documents related to its special investigators.
The allegation is that the agency may have attempted to hide its tracks, but got
caught in the process of legal discovery. The lawsuit against the GAB described
the agency’s alleged abuses as “terrible to behold” and called the “monster” a
“creature that covertly collects sensitive information on political activities
that do not — and cannot — constitute a crime, all while maintaining a nearly
impenetrable shield of secrecy.” That’s scary. MITIGATING FACTOR: The GAB’s
“labyrinthian” campaign finance rules are so contrary to the First Amendment
that they made easy work for a federal appeals court in ruling that the rules
are unconstitutional. —M.D. Kittle
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2014/Dec/27/images/ads/current/stacy_pharmacy_lda_121713.png)
17. WASHINGTON: Kshama Sawant
Virtually unknown a few years ago, this self-declared socialist led the campaign
to raise Seattle’s minimum wage to $15 an hour this year, and leveraged that
victory — and a proposed “millionaire’s tax,” “transit justice,” the
nationalization of major corporations (including Microsoft, Boeing, and
Amazon.com), and rent control – into a successful run for City Council. When
confronted with evidence that raising the minimum wage would kill jobs for the
very people Sawant claims she wants to help — minorities and young people — she
responded with a kind of inside-the-box idealism: “If making sure that workers
get out of poverty would severely impact the economy, then maybe we don’t need
this economy,” she told New Yorker magazine. Karl and Che would be so proud. In
her most recent proposal to spend other people’s money, she’s demanding
taxpayers fork over $100,000 to install public internet in Seattle’s tent
cities, raising electric rates on business, and blasting her colleagues for not
spending enough on welfare programs. MITIGATING FACTOR: She’s led protests
against police brutality in the wake of controversial killings by police in New
York and Missouri. —Dustin Hurst
[to top of second column] |
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2014/Dec/27/images/ads/current/llm_lda_120313.png) BOWEN:
Milwaukee County Supervisor David Bowen was seen by some as a
champion of low-wage workers, persuading his county board colleagues
to pass an ordinance requiring that all government-contracted
workers be paid a “living wage.” It turns out Bowen’s law produced a
side effect —boosting membership in the powerful Service Employees
International Union. Bowen wrote the law with SEIU-affiliated
individuals and accepted campaign contributions and continued
support from the union. Ironically, the law includes a provision
exempting county-contracted firms from the living-wage standard — if
they force their workers to join a union. The county’s comptroller
says the living wage will cost taxpayers more than $28 million over
the next five years and possibly shut down a county agency that
assists the elderly and disabled. And it could get even worse for
taxpayers come January. That’s when Bowen will be sworn in as a new
member of the state Assembly, a position he secured with help from
SEIU campaign endorsements and contributions. —Adam Tobias
Tim Larsen/Governor's Office
Does it get any scarier than President Chris Christie? In a meeting
with potential supporters of a 2016 run for the White House,
Christie was asked how he would deal with Russia’s Valdimir Putin.
Comparing himself to Barack Obama, Christie said, Putin would know
better than to mess with the New Jersey governor: “I don’t believe
that given who I am, he would make the same judgment,” he said,
mixing naivety with bluster. There’s a big difference between
radioactive mushroom clouds in the sky and mushrooms on the
governor’s pizzas. In the Garden State, the governor’s embarrassing
double-standards are pretty obvious. Despite vowing to fix the
public employee retirement system, Christie hired double-dippers
while the state’s deficit grew to $170 billion. After promising
transparency in government, he is playing hide-and-seek with his
travel records. And his administration says nothing and hides much
about a criminal investigation that implicated Lt. Gov. Kim
Guadagno, his running mate and second-in-command. Nationally,
Christie remains a strong contender for the GOP nomination, voters
fascinated by his tough talk and bombastic persona – just as TV
audiences are drawn to Tony Soprano, “Jersey Shore” and “The Real
Housewives of New Jersey.” —Mark Lagerkvist
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2014/Dec/27/images/ads/current/brickey_lda_061314.png)
During the Great Ebola Scare of 2014, when it seemed his agency had
mishandled the first Ebola case in the U.S., the director of the
National Institutes for Health did what anyone at the top of a
federal bureaucracy would do: he blamed someone else. Speaking to
the Huffington Post, Francis Collins said congressional budget cuts
were to blame for the lack of an Ebola vaccine and the NIH’s
ham-fisted response to the disease. He said the agency would
“probably” have developed a vaccine by now if it hadn’t seen a
“10-year slide” in support for research. Except the facts didn’t
exactly back him up. Yes, the NIH had been mostly flat-funded since
2004 — if “flat” isn’t an increase, it’s also not a slide — but the
agency’s budget has increased by 900 percent since 1970, and topped
$30 billion this year. It’s really a question of priorities. And
what have been higher priorities for the NIH over the past few
years? How about studies that included feeding cocaine to Japanese
quail, finding out why lesbians are fat and getting monkeys sexually
aroused. MITIGATING FACTOR: Ebola wasn’t as big a deal as some in
the media made it seemed, and has already mostly been forgotten
here. So the NIH is free to continue blowing money on comic stuff
with no real repercussions. —Eric Boehm
[This
article courtesy of
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