Sarah Huckabee Sanders rose to national prominence in part during her time at the lectern as White House press secretary, but the purchase of a $19,000 lectern for the Arkansas governor is undergoing scrutiny and prompting claims that records about it have been altered.
A legislative panel next week will take up a lawmaker’s request for an audit to review the purchase of the lectern, which was bought in June for $19,029.25 with a state credit card. The Arkansas Republican Party reimbursed the state last month for the wood-paneled and blue lectern, which the state received in August.
“From my experience, where we’re at with this particular thing is we need to allow legislative audit go in,” Republican Sen. Jimmy Hickey, who requested the audit, said. “Everyone knows them, they do their work, they’re very thorough and then they produce a detailed report that comes to the Legislature through an open committee.”
Working as intended. Having the government overpay tenfold for goods and services is neoliberals favourite method of converting public funds into private profit.
Lord knows when I think of SHS and The Pentagon I think of neolibs.
I used to work in aerospace and we had a few government customers. Every single government part was sold to a contractor who then flipped it to the government for like 10x what they paid for it.
It was real annoying when they needed parts for old aircraft with deprecated specifications/components that were no longer available because the contractors had no engineering staff so we couldn’t ask them for clarification on which parts/specs to use beyond standard military supercessions which sometimes had no suitable replacements.