Friday, September 05, 2003

Sully and Sullibility

One of my favorite Andrew Sullivan bits is where Sully prints anonymous e-mails as though they contain the truth. Here's a good one today:

In the early 1990's, I watched a good friend of mine grab a 600 grand a year 'grant' from her friend, and fellow JFK Schooler, in the EPA. For the next ten years, my friend got 600 grand annually, (disbursed thru Las Vegas, aptly enough) for doing ... absolutely nothing. I mean nothing.

At the end of ten years, my friend had spent all the money, and had produced a series of annual reports, each one approximately 40 pages long, filled with pseudo-scientific booshwah so ridiculous that even her friends couldn't help smirking when they read it.

$600,000 times 10 is $6,000,000. That's a pretty big chunk o' change. Shocking!

70 percent of the money was spent flying to 'conferences' with other JFK grantors (always in gorgeous locales) where they gave 'papers' and mostly networked with each other to find more grants.

70 percent of $6 million is $4.2 million. That's some mad expensive airfare! It must have been first class and then some!

I know this sounds like miniscule potatoes - but multiply this 100,000 times, and over a thousand agencies... And she was never listed as a Federal employee!

$6 million times 100,000 times 1,000 -- that's $600,000,000,000,000! Damn, that's a ... uh ... a ... lot of money!

For the good of the country, Sully needs to forward this courageous e-mail to the White House, every member of Congress and every major news organization today! You've blown this scandal wide open, Sully -- now run with it!!!

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