Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) has been indicted for accepting all kinds of goodies in connection with a second story renovation and expansion of his home . . . goodies made at the behest of a company with big oil drilling interests. Stevens has protested his innocence, claiming he paid every invoice he received regarding the redo on his house.
What he didn't say is whether he recognized that whatever invoices he received totaled a great deal less than the actual supplies and labor of the work done. That isn't exactly difficult to calculate. If he got bills totaling, say, $5,000.00, one would have only to look at the work done to see how short that bill fell of covering the actual expense. One does not have to be a construction genius to figure this out. One needs only a Menard's ad showing its charges for materials like the ones used on Stevens' house.
OK--I know what you're going to say. If President Bush (I) had no idea about grocery scanners, and Sen. John McCain wears a pair of $500+ Ferragamo shoes while claiming to be "just folks," it's possible Stevens had no clue about the actual expenses of the work on his home. Possible, but not plausible. As I said, one does not have to be a genius to have a clue.
But even if he honestly did have no idea, are we sure we want such people voting on how our taxes are spent? Stevens has been in office a long, long time . . . methinks he got a little too comfy and cozy with being Alaska's designated "Senator for life," as he was (until now) regularly called in the Alaskan media.
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