Hello Scapegoat

Lee Rude has an interview in the Des Moines Register with Tim Wheeler, the now-fired-and-indicted former manager of the Iowa Film Office, with Wheeler's lawyer sitting right there.

Like a post from a few days ago ("What Did The Iowa Media Say When The Film Tax Credit Scam Was Passed By The Iowa Legislature?"), my observation remains the same: Who Cares?

It's clear that Gov Culver and AG Tom Miller want a scapegoat. This guy was just doing his job poorly. It's not like he inflated his salary to $367,000 a year or took kickbacks from filmmakers. If he did, fry him, but there's no evidence of that. I'm sure it's not the first time that State taxpayer money was wasted.

What's interesting to me are the comments in the DMR story online:

The people responsible are voters, such as yourself, who ignored this program until it became a daily staple of the people.

Yes, it seems to me the law was loosely written, and the executive branch failed to figure out a way to administer it. For example, if it involves tax credits, why not assign that part of the program to the Revenue Department where they've presumably got accountants who are familiar with tax credits and expenses. The whole thing was a seat-of-the-pants operation destined for disaster and this poor guy is the designated fall guy. He takes the rap while the legislators, governor and others busily go about the most important job to them---covering their behinds.

Find a scapegoat and hang him while we push ourselves away from this. Typical political BS that continues to happen everywhere. The person who should be held accountable is the person who only gave them $118,000 to oversee a program that gives out credits worth $230 million and expect to go through every itemized receipt that is submitted. Funny how legislators have become used to their positions -- throw them in a non-public corporate world and they would get fired for implementing ideas and then walking away as a "hero" while not providing the resources to correctly do the job. I say fire them all and let's start over with new politicians who care enough about the programs they start to see them through rather than start it and blame everybody else.

See how nobody blames the Iowa media for letting this turd of a bill get passed in the Iowa Legislature?

The Des Moines Register did nothing but repeat talking points issued by former State Representative Mark Davitt, Wheeler himself, and State Senator Bill Ditzler when this bill was being debated.

The Iowa media, the ones who say "The information has been verified, has been scrutinized by editors, has been fact-checked and proofed." had zero information about what these tax credits could possibly do. They just rubber stamped it all. They didn't listen to any of those busy capitalist pig / tax blogger guys who expressed warnings.

You know why? Because they don't care, the reporters and editors.

And they're too stupid to care.

They don't know which questions to ask, despite being smarter-than-you.

All they care about is airing the dirty laundry afterwards and making money off of the scandal with feigned outrage and pious editorials rattling on about 'reform' and 'oversight' and 'transparency'. You just watch. They're coming eventually.