Yours are much cuter than ours and unfortunately they have become a pest here destroying the bush and spreading TB into our dairy herds.
Congressman Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) who blasted a “physically fit” couple for using food stamps at a suburban Virginia grocery store, collected 370,000 dollars in federal stimulus money for his Oklahoma plumbing company. Mullin who brags about turning the plumbing company into a successful business never mentions the government help he received to make it thrive. Or if he did not need the money to prop up his plumbing firm, he never mentions that his business was “physically fit” and that he did not actually need stimulus money to keep it afloat.
Mullin has become a text book case in Republican hypocrisy. He attacks food stamp recipients for collecting a couple hundred dollars a month in assistance needed to eat, but says no word about collecting 370,000 dollars in federal assistance to install toilets and lay pipes. To be fair, the projects that the stimulus money funded, which included building affordable housing in Northeast Oklahoma, are probably worthy projects. The problem is that Mullin is so quick to judge others for using federal money and that he espouses vehement anti-government rhetoric while he pockets federal money.
After winning his GOP House primary in 2012, Mullin remarked “government needs to have a limited role in our lives. We can take care of ourselves.” Of course, it is easier to take care of yourself after the federal government cuts you a few checks totaling 370 grand. No wonder Mr. Mullin looks so physically fit. Like Michelle Bachmann who enriched herself as a tax attorney for the IRS, Markwayne Mullin has gotten wealthy with the help of the federal government. Like Bachmann, Congressman Mullin then turns around and attacks federal spending in order to curry favor with the Tea Party base that feeds off of his rabid anti-government rhetoric. Mullin seems to think feeding people or providing relief for hurricane victims is wasteful government spending, but when there are hundreds of thousands of dollars available to subsidize his business he is at the front of the line with his hand out. Like so many of the Tea Party firebrands, Congressman Markwayne Mullin is a hypocrite of the first magnitude.
---------------------------------end first article.
The REALLY FUN part is that the money he received was part of stimulus money given to the Cherokee and Muskogee Creek nations for low-income housing construction and rehabilitation. Mullin is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and his plumbing business is a Native American-owned company, making it eligible for Indian preference in contract awards.
Here is the article from last year on that lucrative bit of government business:
Cherokee Phoenix
Okla. GOP candidate Mullin got $370K in stimulus
9/13/2012 8:25:30 AM
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) – A Republican congressional candidate who argues the federal government should rein in spending was awarded around $370,000 in federal stimulus money distributed through a pair of Oklahoma Indian tribes, records show.
Companies owned by Markwayne Mullin, the GOP nominee for a U.S. House seat in eastern Oklahoma, received the money under contracts with the Cherokee and Muscogee (Creek) nations, according to documents posted on a government website created to track recovery funds.
Records show some of the awards were made after Mullin, a Cherokee Nation citizen, entered the race to replace Democratic Rep. Dan Boren, who announced his retirement in 2011.
Mullin declined to answer questions about the contracts. His campaign released a statement in which Mullin criticized the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 as a “horrible waste of tax dollars” but defended his company’s acceptance of federal dollars.
“Mullin Plumbing is a plumbing business. When someone hires us to do a job, we don’t ask them where the money comes from,” the statement reads. “Plumbing is plumbing. These projects were Cherokee Nation projects, and our contract was with the Cherokee Nation. We just performed the services we were hired to do and moved on to the next job, like always.”
But Mullin’s opponent in November’s election, Democrat Rob Wallace, said Mullin was trying to have it both ways.
“To take as strong a stand against what he calls wasteful government spending as he has taken, and then to be taking stimulus funds for his business doesn’t actually seem to be consistent with one another,” Wallace said. “It does seem to be hypocritical.”
Mullin, 35, owns a number of Tulsa-area businesses, including Mullin Plumbing, whose red service trucks are a staple on city streets and whose local television commercials give the firm a high profile. His website highlights how he turned the firm around after taking it over from his ailing father more than 15 years ago.
Since he hit the campaign trail in 2011, Mullin has been a fierce and unyielding critic of federal spending and what he describes as an increasing role of the federal government in the lives of everyday citizens.
“Government needs to have a limited role in our lives. We can take care of ourselves,” Mullin told the AP after winning the GOP primary in the race to replace Boren in eastern Oklahoma’s 2nd Congressional District.
Records show Mullin Plumbing of Broken Arrow had five separate contracts totaling $335,000 for plumbing work awarded by the CN on two separate projects to construct affordable housing in eastern Oklahoma.
According to data posted at www.recovery.gov, Mullin Plumbing was awarded $83,000 as part of a $5 million project to construct energy efficient, affordable homes in Sequoyah and Adair counties in northeast Oklahoma. The company also was awarded four separate contracts totaling about $251,000 as part of a separate, $12 million CN project to modernize low-income rental apartments and privately owned homes for CN citizens.
A Mullin Plumbing subsidiary, Mullin Pumping, also was awarded a $34,700 contract on a separate $5.6 million housing project by the MCN.
All of the projects were funded by federal stimulus money administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The projects are all completed, and all of the vendors have been paid, said Edward Pound, a spokesman for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board.
Although the federal agency provided some accounting on the projects, the individual tribes were responsible for soliciting and awarding vendors, Pound said.
“The money would have gone through (HUD) directly to the tribe,” he said. “The tribe would pick the vendor, (but) a particular agency might do some oversight.”
The CN solicits bids through its website and applies tribal law, policy and federal funding requirements when awarding bids, CN Secretary of State Charles Head said. The tribe generally uses a formal sealed bid process for major purchases and then evaluates bids with the specific criteria needed to fulfill the project.
Head said the tribe also follows internal policies that allow Indian-owned businesses to receive preferential treatment in the bid process.
The CN has contributed $2,500 to Wallace, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Mullin, of Westville, captured 57 percent of the vote in the Aug. 28 GOP primary runoff over three-term state Rep. George Faught of Muskogee.
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Isn't this just too, too delicious? He rails against government spending yet benefits handsomely from stimulus money to construct and rehabilitate housing that he doesn't think people of his nation should have while he benefits from money that he thinks the government shouldn't spend. And people actually voted for this.
L
