I mean, it is obvious this is not a good idea and certainly is dubious ethical conduct, but how could it possibly be legal:
Less than two weeks on the job, Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler says the $68,500 a year salary doesn’t pay enough.
That’s why Gessler, a Republican, says he is going to be moonlighting as a lawyer for his old law firm – a firm known for representing clients on elections and campaign law issues, the very areas Gessler is now charged with policing as secretary of state.
Nothing could go wrong here…
(via the always awesome Crooks and Liars)
SST
Well, yes, but if he works for both sides at the same time, it will mean he has absolute objectivity. Like a double agent in WWII. Those men were heroes. Why don’t you respect them?
Face
Say it with me! Gimmie an I…I! An O….K…..I….Y…A..R!
Pretty much how Jersey (I think…one of those dirty eastern shitholes, they all smell the same) put a ardent anti-union clown in the position of Sec of Labor. Yup.
robertdsc-PowerBook
Fucking gross.
Punchy
He’ll be representing both sides, ya see, so BOTH SIDES ARE DOING IT, SO SHUT YOUR FUCKING HOLE.
Also, too. Conflict of interest? Conflate of interest! Earning more interest!
Mark S.
Conflicts of interest, how do they work?
Origuy
According to this [PDF], Colorado’s SS is lower than most other states, but he shouldn’t have run for the job if he couldn’t live on the salary.
Bella Q
Whatever could be the issue?
Kryptik
What. The. Hell.
No, seriously, there isn’t a law against this? At all?
Currants
John Cole–you NEED to apply to Matt Taibbi’s Supreme Court!
Well okay, maybe you don’t need to, but WE would like it very much if you would do this please.
cbear
Legal, smegal. He’s a gooper, ordinary rules don’t apply, you should be thankful he’s not moonlighting for Diebold.
QDC
Beside the point, I know, but that’s a shit salary for a statewide holder. I wonder if he’s regretting the serious pay cut he presumably took. I wonder if he even thought about it before he ran.
Kryptik
@QDC:
But don’t you know that all public workers are overpaid hogs sucking off the teat of the American taxpayer?! They should be honored to be actually paid at all, since they should be working for us for FREE!!
General Stuck
Dear gawd, will you liberals never let up on good hard working Americans with anglo names. Being against trying to make a buck and feed his family Porterhouse instead of sirloin is the height of soshulism. And all yer conflict of interest braying is just another tune of the same ole nanny stating sung by the Soros collective mumbo jumbo.
AAA Bonds
@QDC:
Yeah, that’d be my guess – that he’s an ambitious guy, but a really poor planner.
PeakVT
but how could it possibly be legal
Generally, laws don’t get passed until somebody does something that everybody else wouldn’t ever think of doing. So it just might be legal. For now.
T.R. Donoghue
For those interested I looked into the Colorado Rules of Professional Conduct last night,
http://steampoweredopinions.blogspot.com/2011/01/what-professional-ethics-rules-might.html
and yes, I am a licensed attorney in Colorado.
Barb (formerly Gex)
I’ve never understood why you hippies always ask “Who will police the police?” Personal responsibility solves all.
Jules
That salary is $20,000 more then the median household income in CO and almost $30,000 more then my family lives on. If he could not live off of that amount of income then he should not have run for office.
What an ass….
I suggest he go screw himself.
Barb (formerly Gex)
Man, I’d love to be insulted by a salary like that. Some people need to be repeatedly cock-punched until they learn to recognize that they have it good, not bad.
TOP123
@Face: No, no, they don’t… You’ve got the right one. (Well, I’m not sure about the anti-union Labor Sec’y part…)
Southern Beale
Police alarmed over graffiti claiming Calif. Gov. Brown to be killed on Valentine’s Day
Some folks just can’t stand to have a Democrat in power. I don’t get that. I never wanted to KILL Bush, I just wanted him thrown in jail for war crimes ….
Ed Marshall
He can be disbarred for that according to the Colorado Bar Association rule 57.
AAA Bonds
You don’t get to be Secretary of State, usually, by making $68,500 or less beforehand.
dmsilev
Math FAIL.
dms
AnnaN
Just fired this email off to his contact page via the CO SoS web page:
“Dear Mr. Gessler,
I just read with dismay, disgust and not a small amount of outrage, the Denver Post article regarding your plan to moonlight with your old firm while acting as Secretary of State. Your intention to provide for your family is not noble, it’s the norm. It is also not an excuse for this horrible breach of trust to the people of Colorado.
I find this troubling on every level. First, you might certainly not have known what the salary of the position was prior to running for office, but not checking and making sure that you could support your family on the amount makes you appear too stupid to carry out the actual duties of the office to which you have been elected. The only other option is that you want to be a crook, work on the inside and give favoritism to those clients at the firm for which you will be working. And then used the excuse of being this extraordinarily compassionate husband/father/son to want to provide for his family. To think that this would fly either proves you to be, again, too stupid to carry out the duties of the office, or have a narcissistic personality disorder that makes you believe your desires are supreme and that things such as honor, duty, and even the merest of ethical standards don’t apply to you.
I will be working diligently on the upcoming campaign to remove you from office.
You are a horrid example of a public servant. And a horrible blight on the face of our state.
With utmost sincerity and irritation,
…”
Chad N Freude
@T.R. Donoghue: Excellent. Makes me regret dropping out of law school. BTW, your website looks pretty good. Why have you been hiding it from me?
handy
It’s true. Cheney’s the one I wanted to see ripped apart by a pack of rabid jackals.
eemom
@Face:
you may not believe this, but I was literally praying to God that no one would say that iokiyar thing on this thread.
And even as I prayed, I knew it was hopeless — not because I don’t believe in God, but because that stupid fucking thing is as inevitable as gravity.
It is NOT fucking okay that they do shit like this. Not, not, NOT. I know people who say iokyar don’t actually BELIEVE it is ok, but there is something about the resignation implicit in the phrase that really, really bothers me.
/end Neurotic Rant No. 7,346
BGinCHI
@dmsilev: Dude, he has four weekends a week. He’s not like a normal person.
wazmo
Seems to me that this yahoo should resign and go back to the job that pays better, if he’s that concerned about being ‘in the position’ he’s in.
Gravenstone
Fuckers’re getting more and more shameless by the day, ain’t they?
BGinCHI
@eemom: I always thought it implied “it’s ok with the media” if you’re a Repub.
Kryptik
@eemom:
It’s kind of hard not to be resigned over it, considering the blatant and seemingly impenetrable double standards it invokes.
I mean, christ, if this were a Democrat pulling this shit, we wouldn’t even be talking impeachment. We’d have a literal pitchfork mob out there wanting his head. You know, those dirty fucking hippies trying to game the government and all.
Chad N Freude
@eemom: It’s really a comment on hypocrisy.
T.R. Donoghue
@Chad N Freude: Thank you sir. My posting ebbs and flows with my real work but I try. I also post over The Faster Times news site and have been a guest on The Young Turks a few times. Tell your friends ;)
T.R. Donoghue
@efgoldman: Yes, besides elections the SoS also handles business filings for the State of CO. So there’s another landmine for Gessler and for his law firm. It’s not just election issues that will cause conflicts but potentially any corporate or business clients as well.
I’m still pretty dumbfounded by this whole thing. Brazen isn’t the half of it.
dmsilev
@BGinCHI: Sheesh. Where can I can a work schedule like that?
dms
BGinCHI
@dmsilev: Change parties.
TOP123
@QDC: The lower the pay for public office, the wealthier the officeholders will be. This has worked out for the upper class since at least the days of the Roman Republic, right?
NineJean
@eemom:
Thank you for saying that. While it’s pretty much true, the IOKIYAR thing has become something of an excuse — yeah we know that, nothing we can do. Need to get over that, I’m thinking. Because it ISN’T okay…
[…starting to collect pitchforks…]
eemom
@NineJean:
exactly. Thank you.
cmorenc
It will be interesting to see whether the Colorado State Bar will take some interest in Mr. Gessler’s situation under the bar’s Ethics rules. There are lots of things that aren’t particularly enumerated as illegal under state statute that will nonetheless risk ethics sanctions (with teeth behind them) under State Bar Ethics rules and proceedings. Such as, the duty to avoid even the “appearance” of a conflict of interest. Sometimes, between two purely private parties, they can choose to knowingly, voluntarily waive the appearance problem a lawyer involved in their transaction has, but that shouldn’t be an option where the lawyer involved is a government officeholder and is also partners in a firm with matters determined by that lawyer as a government official.
I cannot believe the Colorado State Bar will let Gessler get away with this. Even if the President of the State Bar and a majority of the Ethics committee are Republicans, these are nearly always held by people highly respected throughout the legal community who view it as their mission to preserve as much integrity of the Bar and lawyers in the public eye as possible. They are likely to take very seriously public complaints about Gessler, because there are no benefits whatever to the bar or legal profession from giving the green light to that sort of situation, and the legal profession is the primary allegiance for most of them, not rough-and-tumble partisan politics. They won’t simply let this go with a shrug, though they’re more likely to take a stance that preemptively puts Mr. Gessler on notice that he can’t both remain a partner in his old firm (or work for same) and be Secretary of State, before Mr. Gessler can get around to actually committing any serious ethics violation.
We’ll see. The Colorado State Bar could disappoint me.
Violet
@NineJean:
New phrase/acronym suggestion: It’s Wrong If You’re An American: IWIYAA.
That would apply to any of these bad things that Republicans, and Democrats, do. Like what this idiot is trying to do. It’s wrong. It’s wrong if you’re an American to do something like this. Ergo, he must be anti-American.
lol
@cmorenc:
Nailed it – screw him at the bar level.
Jeff
@T.R. Donoghue: Sounds like that courts will be busy in Colorado will all the lawsuits alleging conflict of interest, and what not. What blows me a way is that his law firm apparently doesn’t see or doesn’t care that this will blow up in their faces.
Ron
Okay, my mind just boggles here. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
pragmatism
the timeline of this is what gets me. why in the FSM wouldn’t someone plan for actually holding the office that they took so much time (and money) to achieve? the sos salary isn’t exactly a secret. was his plan something like campaign….win…..???…..profit!? someone misread the conservapedia entry for “wingnut welfare”.
T.R. Donoghue
I went ahead and posted about the impeachment process and the recall process here in Colorado.
JCT
Speaking of avoiding the appearance of impropriety, did anyone see the Thinkprogress piece on Justice Thomas’ little uh, failure of income disclosure re: his teabagger wife?
What a “convenient” oversight for him. WTF.
Yutsano
@JCT: The real question is what sanctions will happen because of him not reporting his wife’s income. IIRC those disclosure forms are sworn statements punishable by perjury charges. If all this is indeed true, Thomas is in a shit ton of legal trouble. And if his wife’s income didn’t make it on his 1040 either, he’ll be talking to some nice folks in Buffalo. And yes I’m being ironical there.
Nellcote
@cmorenc:
On the other hand, Orly Taintz still has a law license. Though it is only in CA.
Ija
I’m sorry, he has ONE child? I thought he was supporting a large family with 10 kids or something. Wouldn’t it have been better to ask his wife to get a part-time job or something?
Tax Analyst
@pragmatism:
the timeline of this is what gets me. why in the FSM wouldn’t someone plan for actually holding the office that they took so much time (and money) to achieve? the sos salary isn’t exactly a secret.
rikyrah
crooked is as crooked does.
Jason
Not that I think this is a good idea, but that really doesn’t sound like a large amount of money for a white collar managerial type job.
asiangrrlMN
Wow. What the fuck?
@AnnaN: Yes to what you wrote. Man’s either dishonest or stupid, and neither is what you want from a public servant.
Ija
This sounds like a blatant invitation to bribery. He has basically advertised to the whole country that he needs more money and is willing to skirt ethical boundaries to get it. I’m sure there are enterprising corporations and rich individuals out there thinking this guy would accept bribes and do their bidding. Someone in law enforcement should periodically examined his finances, just in case.
SFAW
Maybe not what YOU want, but there are plenty of voters in this great nation who might disagree with you.
Seeing as how so many of them (i.e. dishonest/stupid/both) have been elected.
Ash Can
@Gravenstone:
This. The argument that he shouldn’t have run for the office if he couldn’t get by on the salary is a righteous one, to be sure, but I don’t buy the idea that he disregarded how the salary would fit into his household budget. I believe instead that this was his plan all along — that the Sec. of State position would be an ideal fit with what he and his firm want to do. I think he’s so ethically impaired that he’s just trumpeting his conflict of interest for all to see and saying, “So what? What are you guys going to do about it?” He’s doing this because he doesn’t care what rules he’s breaking or how this looks.
I’ll be interested to see what, if anything, the Colorado bar does about this, and/or how far the recall petition gets.
Arclite
I don’t know the cost of living in Colorado, but out here in Hawaii, that salary $68K (a tad bit more than I make) for a family of four means I can make ends meet, but end up saving very little (I have no debt). But yeah:
1. He knew the salary going in
2. He should moonlight in an area of the law he doesn’t police. Or work nights at McDonald’s maybe.
Is this so hard to understand? Not that I expect the Colorado legislature to be able to pass a law preventing this.