Your Stimulus Money at Work … Colorado Democratic Governor Bill Ritter Steered Stimulus Money To Ex-Employer

At some point some one is going to have to explain what changed!

Talk about stimulating … or is it called a conflict?

Blue said the attorney general’s office could have done the work for $75 an hour instead of the $450 hour Ritter’s office paid for the same work

Just another example of the “Hope & Change” that Barack Obama reiterated during the 2008 Presidential campaign. Your hard earned tax dollar funded “stimulus” plan at work. Colorado Democratic Governor Bill Ritter steered federal stimulus money to his former employer.

Yes, they sure can … can’t they?

Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter has awarded some of the state’s first stimulus money to his former employer in a no-bid contract

Ritter hired his former law firm, the Washington-based Hogan & Hartson, in a no-bid contract to review stimulus spending, The Denver Post reported Friday. It said the firm was paid $40,000 in stimulus money through June.

Aides to the governor insisted the contract was properly awarded. The state attorney general’s office deemed the contract necessary to allow the state to have speedy legal advice about stimulus money. The contract is too small to require competitive bidding.

Ritter worked for the Denver office of Hogan & Hartson in 2005, leaving the following year when he ran for governor. The law firm has about 1,300 lawyers across the country and specializes in public finance, real estate, white-collar litigation and environmental and governmental regulation.

Is it any wonder why the stimulus plan is not working? Instead we continue to lose jobs at a record rate as unemployment in the United States has reached 9.5%. Yet, the Obamamessiah has the audacity to say that the plan is working as planned.

I wonder how the MSM would have covered this “no bid” award to a ex-employer if it had been a Republican Governor? Oh BTW, the Gateway Pundit reminds us that the MSM article never mentions that Gov. Ritter is a Democrat. Think they would have done the same if they were discussing Sarah Palin?

NAME! THAT! PARTY! – Colorado Governor category.

They some how find a way to justify everything including paying more for a closed bid contract.

In this case, ‘who’ is a law firm full of political donors of Governor Ritter’s (D), including at least two “who work directly on the state’s stimulus issues.”  The Governor’s (D) office is claiming that the deal was righteous, as well as legal… although they didn’t go into explaining why they paid six times what they would have if they had run things through the Attorney General’s office:

Conflict of interest? How could there possibly be a conflict of interest? That only occurs when Republicans funnel monies to their ex-employers.

Geoff Blue, a spokesman for Suthers, said an attorney for Ritter never asked if there was a conflict of interest.

“They said, ‘Look, you’d have to do all the legal work involving stimulus dollars. We need to hire outside help because we don’t think you can do it,’” he said.

“We said, ‘OK, fine.’ We didn’t address who was hired, how they were hired or what the contract said,” Blue told The Associated Press.

Blue said the attorney general’s office could have done the work for $75 an hour instead of the $450 hour Ritter’s office paid for the same work.