Hey Al, Plan to Hire a Senate Staff?
Al Franken, head of Al Franken, Inc. - a corporation that doesn’t play by the rules, is once again passing the buck to his accountant for his multi-year tax evasion in California. Franken, one who claims that he wants to go to the Senate to look out for the working man, said, “we have people working on that as we speak.” Funny, I don’t think working men make five-figure errors like Franken’s accountant has repeatedly done and they do their own taxes. In fact, usually when working men make mistakes like that, they get fired. Sometimes they even get sued.
The real issue here, though, is that Franken apparently hired somebody to do a job and that person failed miserably. But paying his taxes is ultimately Franken’s responsibility, not his accountant’s. The buck stops with Al, or at least it should. Apparently, though, Al Franken hired someone who was either as crooked as William Jefferson or as incompetent as Ray Nagin. How does he make up for his error? He makes the accountant the scapegoat and keeps him on the payroll so he will have someone to blame in the future.
Unless Al Franken really thinks that he will be able to do his job as a Senator without any staff, can the voters of Minnesota really expect that he would do any better in hiring staff for a government office than he did hiring for his own corporation? Do they think he would be more careful, or would he just hire the first schmoe who comes along so that he has someone to blame for similar illegalities SNAFUs Can they trust that he would hold his staff and himself to a higher standard? What happens when Franken actually casts votes and then discovers years later that his staff actually misinformed him of what was in the legislation? In six years, when he gets blamed for something he didn’t realize he did (or did because he thought he could get away with it), will he look the voters of Minnesota straight in the eye and say, “It was my staff’s fault”?
Al Franken has some serious soul searching to do, which will be hard since nobody is actually certain whether this guy has a soul, and ask himself whether he is really fit to serve the people of Minnesota. It is open to debate whether Franken himself attempted to engage in illegalities or simply made some bad personel decision. What is not open to debate is that Franken himself bears a great deal of the responsibility for illegalities in two states and that he refuses to acknowledge any responsibility therefor. Most of us learned when we were young that we have to take responsibility for our actions. Apparently Al Franken has never grown up.