Yes I want him to do it the day after the election once it’s official Kamala has it.
2 Likes
Nope that’s better do that.
goofy
August 12, 2024, 9:01pm
2898
Surprise! Former Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) used his new job running the University of Florida to enrich his GOP buddies at the expense of Florida taxpayers. Great job by student journalists (this is the UF student paper)
In his 17-month stint as UF president, Ben Sasse more than tripled his office’s spending, directing millions in university funds into secretive consulting contracts and high-paying positions for his GOP allies.
Sasse ballooned spending under the president’s office to $17.3 million in his first year in office — up from $5.6 million in former UF President Kent Fuchs’ last year, according to publicly available administrative budget data.
A majority of the spending surge was driven by lucrative contracts with big-name consulting firms and high-salaried, remote positions for Sasse’s former U.S. Senate staff and Republican officials.
Amid protests over his conservative track record as a Nebraska Republican senator, Sasse promised during his ascension to the UF presidency in Fall 2022 that he would divorce himself from partisan politics under what he called a vow of “political celibacy.”
But the senator-turned-university president quietly broke that promise in his 17-month term at the university’s helm, hiring six ex-Senate staffers and two former Republican officials to high-paying, remote jobs at the university.
Under Sasse’s administration, two of his former Senate staffers — Raymond Sass and James Wegmann — were among the highest-ranking and highest-paid officials at UF. Both worked remotely from the D.C. area, roughly 800 miles from UF’s main campus in Gainesville.
Sass, Sasse’s former Senate chief of staff, was UF’s vice president for innovation and partnerships — a position which didn’t exist under previous administrations. His starting salary at UF was $396,000, more than double the $181,677 he made on Capitol Hill.
Wegmann, Sasse’s former Senate communications director, is UF’s vice president of communications, a position he works remotely from his $725,000 home in Washington, D.C.
Salaried at $432,000, Wegmann replaced Steve Orlando, who made $270,000 a year in the position and had nearly 30 years of experience in media relations at UF before he was demoted to be Wegmann’s deputy.
Sasse raised his former Senate staffs’ salaries at UF by an average of 44% compared to their Capitol Hill pay, contributing to a $4.3 million increase in presidential salary expenses over Fuchs’ last year in office.
Outside of his Senate staff, Sasse also tapped former Republican Tennessee Commissioner of Education Penny Schwinn as UF’s inaugural vice president of PK-12 and pre-bachelors programs. Schwinn, with a starting salary of $367,500, worked the newly-created position from her $1 million home in Nashville, Tennessee.
Additionally, Sasse hired Alice James Burns, former scheduler for Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), as Director of Presidential Relations and Major Events. Burns, salaried at $205,000, also worked for UF outside of Florida.
All but one of Sasse’s political appointees worked for UF outside of Florida and commuted to Gainesville on the university’s dollar when needed — a move reflected in his office’s travel expenses.
In Sasse’s first full fiscal year at the university’s helm, travel expenses for the president’s office soared to $633,000 — over 20 times higher than Fuchs’ annual average of $28,000. Sasse spent more on travel in his 17 months at UF than Fuchs’ entire eight-year tenure.
It is not unprecedented for UF employees to work outside of Florida, but out-of-state positions have typically been reserved for those representing the university as federal lobbyists in its Washington, D.C. office. It is virtually unprecedented for top UF officials and rank-and-file administrators to work outside of Florida.
During his presidency, Sasse spent $7.2 million in university funds to consultants for advice on his strategic planning and to fill leadership gaps — over 40 times more than Fuchs’ total consulting expenses over his eight-year term.
Sasse paid nearly two-thirds of the $7.2 million to McKinsey & Company, where he once worked as an adviser on an hourly contract.
2 Likes
Surf
August 12, 2024, 9:17pm
2899
Damn that is pretty wild from a public university
How did Sasse end up at UF anyway? Did he have some sort of connection?
And he was supposed to be one of those “reasonable Republicans”, right? Lol they’re all a bunch of grifters.
Jman220
August 12, 2024, 9:26pm
2902
The “reasonable republicans” are the bog standard ones who have a profit motive and realize that burning the entire government to the ground is bad for business.
4 Likes
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/12/us/politics/tina-peters-guilty-voting-machine-tampering.html
FAFO
Tina Peters, the former clerk of Mesa County, Colo., was convicted on Monday of tampering with voting machines under her control in a failed attempt to prove that they had been used to rig the 2020 election against former President Donald J. Trump.
After nearly five hours of deliberations, a jury in Grand Junction found Ms. Peters guilty of seven criminal charges connected to her efforts to breach a machine manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems. The jury determined that Ms. Peters had helped an outsider gain unauthorized access to the machine in May 2021 and obtain information that was later made public at a conspiratorial event held to undermine trust in Mr. Trump’s defeat to Joseph R. Biden Jr.
The conviction of Ms. Peters, who has become a celebrity in the world of those who have denied that Mr. Trump lost the last presidential election, is the first time that prosecutors have managed to hold a local election official accountable for a security breach of a voting machine used in 2020.
4 Likes
You have to give it to the guy, he has some funny responses to some of the comments.
1 Like
pvn
August 15, 2024, 3:11am
2907
goofy
August 15, 2024, 7:26pm
2908
pvn
August 17, 2024, 11:47pm
2909
2 Likes
