This morning I'd like to propose a moment of silence for one Mitchell Elias "Mitch" Daniels, former Governor of Indiana, now a full-time lobbyist.* Or at least for the possible scrap of decency left in him that next morning when he went to the Fairgrounds. He didn't leave with any, after telling the assembled shorthand takers that the collapse was "clearly an act of God", an appropriately weaselly insurance salesman's word for when Grandma's about to find out what's really in her policy.
Daniels, of course, would make all the appropriate soothing sounds in the following days, secure in the knowledge that the victims were going to wind up fighting over the state's self-imposed $5 million liability cap, and his precious imaginary budget surplus would remain whatever the imaginary term is for intact.
It is the principle distinction between Mitch Daniels, Randian grifter and repentant hippie dope dealer, and Paul Ryan, Randian grifter and contemporary granny starver, that you could actually watch Daniels as he shoveled this foul stuff on the ground, and see that he, at least, knows exactly what he's doing. And that however much money he makes won't ever buy him a replacement soul.
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* Daniels will become President of Purdue University next year; his Official Government Ethicist recently declared that Daniels will be free to lobby the General Assembly, despite revolving-door laws, because, and I'm paraphrasing, words only mean what Mitch Daniels needs them to mean.
1 comment:
Hey,what was the deal when Daniels made the comment (in 2004, I believe) that Joe Kernan shouldn't talk badly about his employer, Lilly, when Kernan aired the commercials about the IPALCO stock debacle? Was there even a connection? And then we never heard another thing about it.
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