Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/04/15/huckabee-sanders-is-about-to-hunt-for-a-lamb-to-sacrifice-in-her-lecterngate-fiasco.html
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Don’t bury the lede by not including a picture! What does a 19k lectern look like???
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Disappointing, if you ask me. I’m expecting something much gaudier.
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I prefer Liz’s lectern also (I did not think I would ever type that sentence) but I’m left wondering why these people need to keep purchasing lecterns, or why they need to cost thousands.
Surely the one they already have is good enough? I noted Ms. Huckabee-Sanders required a travel case for hers, so presumably she can’t possibly be parted from it.
Anyway, she might be learning for the first time in her life that she’s not protected by Daddy’s name anymore
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It’s conspicuous consumption.
“Mine cost more than yours, so it is obviously better. And I’m a better grifter for paying that much for it. Suck it Taxpayers!!!”
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The gist is that she appeared to use the cost of the lectern to cover her friends’ travel to Paris with her.
Virginia Beckett and Hannah Salem Stone, who run Beckett Events LLC, have ties to Sanders: They were previously hired by Sanders’ office to help with advance planning on her gubernatorial inauguration and subsequent response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. They were also at the Paris Air Show in June. (Beckett Events did not respond to requests for comment.)
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Well, color me
to learn that hucka-sans is abusing and misusing funds.
The Grifting Oligarchs’ Party.
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That sounds pretty steep for a lectern but honestly $20K out of a state budget is still pretty small potatoes as far as mismanagement of public funds goes. This may end up being one of those scandals where the final price tag for the investigation is likely to cost more than the object itself. She should have just offered to pay for the damn thing out of pocket to make the story go away.
At least some small business owners made a decent commission off this thing. I have every confidence that Sarah Huckabee-Sanders is responsible for some way, way worse examples of failing to act in the public’s interest.
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is that real though. at that price, it sounds like cover for a grift rather than a purchase of a lectern.
@lastchance has it as possibly a trip to paris. that at least makes sense to me. ( illegal and unethical, granted. )
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I dunno, have you ever ordered a custom rush job from a master woodworker? This is an expensive piece for sure and I suspect someone stuck the governor’s office for as much as they could get away with, but it’s not orders of magnitude more than one might expect to pay an experienced craftsperson. If it’s some kind of grift it’s not exactly DoD-level grift.
Personally I’m much more concerned by her administration’s ongoing plan to build a so-called “monument to the unborn” on Capitol grounds. It’s a terrifying symbol of an encroaching misogynist theocracy (and it’s projected to cost at least two or three times as much as the silly lectern).
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I’m pretty sure that’s the result of a Dalek impregnating the Tardis.
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yikes. that’s awful. and you’re right, ultimately policy is more important than grift around the edges.
still, anything that might pry fascists out of office seems like a good thing. if regulating campaign contributions isn’t allowed, i’ll take campaign expenditures as a backup
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I think it’s a result of the decline of political government into a situation where performative presentation has replaced actual competence in formulating and carrying out effective policy.
In Liz Truss’s mind that jazzy new lectern confirmed her administration to be fresh, vigorous, and decisive. Two days later the Queen died. A week later the economy went into a tail-spin from her borrow to spend on tax reductions strategy. A month later her hold on power was being challenged by a lettuce.
I wonder where that lectern is now.
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EX-TOR-TION-ATE
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I have L. Ron Hubbard on line three.
He want’s to talk to someone about a stolen lectern?
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Holy fudge. That would have looked embarrassing on the set of a 1970s’ Dr Who episode (Podium of the Daleks).
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Yeah, replace that wood laminate which simply doesn’t go with the blue laminate with something a bit more techno and it looks like Kraftwerk could have four ot them on stage to check their emails at during a gig. Or a workstation in a Trek spinoff.
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And according to the extracts published last week her response was “why me?”
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