I don’t know why I didn’t think of this earlier.
While we may not have a Christine O’Donnell in 2016, I can’t recall a year when there have been so many Stoopid Candidate Tricks. Or at least the kind of stories that make me want to scream.
Two such stories surfaced this morning in the News-Journal. Scream along with me.
First, we have another example of Mayor Dennis Williams’ solid personnel judgment. It turns out that his own bleeping Finance Director, one Sheila Winfrey-Brown, the person who oversees the city’s budget, is a serial tax deadbeat. She currently owes $28,000 in federal taxes and has consistently failed to pay her taxes:
The lien, filed in 2012, is the latest in a string of tax bills that were paid years past their due dates, records show.
In 2011, Winfrey-Brown paid off a $11,359.59 bill to the state of Delaware that was filed in 2002, according to a state judgment. She paid her 2005 personal income tax of $980.18 in December 2009, an assessment notice states. Over $39,000 in taxes from 1998 through 2001 went unpaid until 2006, according to an IRS lien notice.
Her record of tax issues stretches as far back as the 1980s, with a judgment filed in 1988 for the $445 she owed in income tax for the previous year, documents show.
The Miscreant Mayor admits that he was aware of the federal tax lien against her when he hired her:
“She didn’t hide it from me,” he said. “She told me, and I have great respect for her for being so honest.”
He’s a true empath:
“Look at all the other people that have tax problems,” he said. “People get laid off, things go wrong in their families. Some of the best people have issues with it. As long as she’s [paying] her debt to the federal government and responding to them and they’re content, there’s nothing wrong with that.”
Perhaps only someone as uniquely unqualified as Dennis Williams could say something like that. As if a serial tax cheat making obscene money is JUST LIKE someone who has just gotten laid off. Winfrey-Brown is in her 4th decade of being a tax deadbeat. Her 4th bleeping decade. She’s getting paid a bleeping six-figure salary to do whatever it is she allegedly does. Yet she STILL hasn’t paid the government what she owes it. WHO BETTER TO HANDLE THE CITY’S FINANCES? How about, um, ANYBODY??
Speaking of serial miscreants, disgraced former Smyrna Mayor Mark Schaeffer has moved downstate and is running for a seat on Sussex County Council, the seat currently held by the retiring Joan Deaver. Before we get to his latest misfortune, here’s how he disgraced himself. He stole an election through the blatant mishandling of absentee ballots. A Smyrna mayoral election that he won by only two votes back in 2005. He prevailed in court b/c the court ruled that the state statute only applied to the City of Wilmington and did not apply to the Smyrna skulduggery.
When F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that “There are no second acts in American lives”, he mustn’t have had disgraced politicians in mind. Which brings us back to Mark Schaeffer. And the song that summed up last Monday night for Schaeffer, who was apparently ‘having more than one’:
OK, so the guy was pulled over for driving drunk. That’s bad, of course, but not really in primal scream territory. But let’s just take in Schaeffer’s weasel words, shall we?:
“I take full responsibility for my actions and apologize if I have offended anyone.”
‘Apologize if I have offended anyone’? How about APOLOGIZING FOR DRIVING DRUNK AT 8 P.M. AND PLACING OTHERS AT RISK, YOU SLIMY CRETIN???
Thank you, doctor, I feel much better now.