A $19,000 lectern for Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders sparks call for legislative audit
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.”
https://apnews.com/article/huckabee-sanders-arkansas-lectern-audit-97d4173d485dd00291b1853ab339cf8aOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
Fellow Arkansan here. I love to get in on that Arkansas gossip.
Hold the fuck up, you can't just call yourself an "Arkansan" when your ass backwards state is pronounced "Arc-en-saw."
Oh I sure can! There is a reason we reside near the bottom in education. Leave us be.
It's pronounced "Arc-en-sawn"
"englishmakesnofuckingsenseanyway
Well because they represent more than half the population realistically.
Word on the street is that there are some rich jerks in Bentonville
I'm a mountain biker and people are always gushing over that place like it's some eden.
First off, I'm sure the terrain has nothing on the PNW, but also it would feel trained given that it's some resort paid for with blood money
This makes the most sense. I was wondering why so many people care about wood.
The republican state government blew 19 THOUSAND dollars on it, thats why people care. Its bullshit.
Even shitty states like Arkansas have budgets in the tens of billions of dollars; $19k is a rounding error. Nobody cares about $19k, unless it turns out to be a crime, which this might be.
Well that's the issue. A podium like that normally costs a few hundred dollars max. So why was this one so expensive? Fraud is a crime.
That's not to mention that podiums are mostly pointless anyways. You could just stand and talk just as easily without one.
If you paid taxes and are struggling to pay all your bills I could see why that would be infuriating
Hickey was pushed out as state Senate leader, he has an axe to grind and isn't afraid of a primary.
I've been slacking... I should've posted this over in /c/arkansas long ago.
Man they got fucking robbed. Amazon has it for only $944 The Amazon review though...
EDIT: Yes, I'm pretty sure they paid $1,000 for it and then reported $19,000 pocketing the difference. As someone who has lived their whole life in Tennessee (and has worked for a period of time in State Government), that's Southern politics 101. Days where they aren't fleecing the taxpayer are few and far between here in the Southeastern US.
Brent knows what's up.
The fact that this is on Amazon for under a grand is hilarious. These people are absolute morons. I hope they get nailed and the truth comes out.
They will not. They absolutely own Arkansas and nothing will happen this year, or the next 50 due to their corruption.
If you're American, you could be a second amendment person.
The problem with "guns are a counter to state tyranny" is that all the people who hate state tyranny got conned into hating guns
Wow... fucking blatant corruption. Just gross.
Yeah straight up corruption, lying and stealing. And will she ever be punished for her blatant abuse of power? Nope. Obviously this should ban her from ever being anywhere near public office but that won't ever happen and they'll continue to do it until there are consequences. I feel like I repeat that a lot nowadays but people get away with too much ridiculous shit these days and are never punished for it. George Santos anybody? How the fuck is he still in office? We need some fucking standards otherwise the country will continue to go to shit.
They didn't pocket the difference. Gov Sanders used state money to go on vacation and this is the cover.
That's what "pocketing the difference" is. She took the state money she said was used for the lectern and used it for personal purposes.
She went on the trip first and then bought the lectern when people started asking questions. Pocketing the difference doesn't apply because the theft happened first.
You're being very pedantic about something very unimportant. Sometimes it's best to just let it go.
If it is unimportant why are you replying? I disagree that it is unimportant because the crime is different than what was explained by that comment.
"Pocketing the difference" is not a legal term
you're pedantic AND WRONG, which is why people care
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Im not saying a crime never happened. Im saying the crime preceded the purchase so they aren't pocketing the difference. The expense is being justified by the purchase to cover for the crime
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lol, yhgtbsm. Unbelievable.
A ~$900 lectern for $19k. Fraud in broad daylight. I can’t call it “skimming off the top” because it’s so upside down.
I'll be honest.. I only clicked on this article because I was curious as to what a $19,000 lectern looks like. 🤷
Same. Thought maybe some local woodworker produced a beautiful lectern.
No, turns out it's from amazon with some spray paint and Arkansas is just being Arkansas.
It's auto cleaning since so much shit comes out of her mouth...well worth the 19k
You'll have to keep looking because this thing was <$1K on Amazon
Turns out, extremely yonic
Is this typical for the party to reimburse the state for an elected official? If it was reimbursed from campaign funds, wouldn't that be covered by campaign finance laws? Sounds like either the Republican Party is trying to cover it up by reimbursing for it, or they're doing weird accounting to get through a loophole of campaign finance laws.
It's a coverup. There only defense is "we made an oopsy. This was supposed to be bought with private funds and now it is after it became a clear case of grift. Nothing to see here, tee hee."
Is there ever a time where it is above board for these types of reimbursements to happen? Seems like it should be something illegal already, but maybe there's something I'm missing?
Sanders' entire job at the White House involved lying to the public on a regular basis. Is it any wonder she leveraged the same skill set at her next job?
So is this how Republicans are supposedly such responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars?
Sheesh, she's even giving the Pentagon a run for their money (no pun intended):
These Toilet Seat Lids Aren’t Gold-Plated but They Cost $14,000
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.
Why on earth would that cost 20 grand? That thing is ugly as fuck
You sound like someone that doesn't know shit about fancy lecterns.
I know a thing or two about fancy lecterns and that one couldn't cost more than 2 grand on a good day except if it was being used to cover up corruption and graft in the Humunculoid Huckabee Arkansas state government
I don't know anything about fancy lecterns, but looking at the Amazon link someone posted, I can certainly recognize particleboard with a wood-grain veneer on it... Honestly, $2k feels expensive for that, I'd say it should be about $500 at Ikea.
If Ikea made this it would be a lot less than $500. However there isn't enough demand for Ikea to make one. With both this and Ikea you are paying for both materials and all the jigs needed to get the particle board cut to the correct size - there is a lot of engineering costs in that, and they have much less sales to spread those costs over.
https://www.amazon.com/Lectern-Portable-Conference-Welcome-Preside/dp/B0CJF6TMPX
This one isn't that fancy though. I've seen some hand carved that are clearly more than that, but this doesn't those expensive features.
Of course it costs 20 grand, look at all that embellishment!
Sorry, I meant embezzlement.
The made in china version is $1000. Make it custom in the US with real hardwood and we are more like $5000. We can see that has a mic installed, which is $500 for a good mic (A $10 mic would work okay, but the $500 does sound better and isn't unreasonable), which we will pair with electronics to turn the audio into digital for another $500. While we are at it we will build in a computer with a presenters display all connected to the building video system - another $5000.
I'm trying to be generous by using the highest reasonable costs and the most complex feature set. I still can only come up with $11k.
Oddly enough, the ‘official’ presidential mic is a pair of Shure SM57s which cost $100 brand new.
There is nothing wrong with a SM57 in this application, but you can get a better mic for more $$$. Generally people going for a better mic first head to a studio and have an engineer try them on each one until they find one that sounds good with their voice. But in the end the difference from the sound of a SM57 is tiny so few bother, even the best professionals often choose a SM57 for their best recordings after comparing to more expensive microphones.
Except that it looks pretty much exactly like the picture on Amazon and ain't no custom job with real hardwood.
Sure, but give any good local craftsman a picture and they can build one that looked so much like the picture that you wouldn't be able to tell from pictures it wasn't. The craftsman version would be much higher quality, but you would need an in person inspection to tell that. Of course the craftsman version could make something look nicer for the same price, or for more many can make something a lot nicer, but style often demand ugly.
It's just 50x the price to go from 'okay' to 'good', fuck it why not 200x to get the 'great' model? It's only taxpayers money!
Shit, if I ran this country, everyone would be using $10 ikea end tables stacked 2x tall for their 'I'm important and need a fancy stand'. The microphone is your voice being louder. Want a chair, that's not in the budget sorry. You so much as take an Uber to a press conference and that's also coming out of your own pocketbook. Ain't showed up on Thursday? You ain't getting paid for Thursday. Govt shutdown? Oh I'm sorry, you thought you were getting paid for not doing your job?
But no, no, gotta pamper the idiots who think they matter. Damn country is fucked 8 ways from Sunday.
A $100 mic (the SM57 the president uses) is enough better than a $10 mic that speakers and audiences should care. The $500 mic is slightly better but most people can't tell outside of AB tests in a controlled environment. As you go over $100 in price microphones get more special purpose and often are worse than cheaper ones outside of their special purpose - each human voice is different, so $500 is about the most you can spend on a general purpose microphone and be objectively better than something cheaper. While you can spend $2000 or even $4000 on a microphone, they tend to be very fragile - as in breath on them wrong and you break them - so they are only used in studios where you can ensure nobody breaths wrong around them.
Remember, I'm trying to come up with the reasonable most you could pay for this. You really should be spending less. There is no reasonable justification for the 200x microphone. There is a reasonable justification for the 50x cost - if only just barely justifiable.
I could see a handmade, hardwood lectern by a local artisan reaching that price point, and I think that's totally reasonable for something that could be used for more than a century. Bonus, you're giving back to the residents of your state by buying local.
But nah, this thing looks like cheaper garbage than some of the furniture I owned in college. $900 is a stretch.
It’s called money laundering.
I'm not a lectern aficionado, but I feel very confident agreeing with you that this particular lectern is offensively ugly.
They bought it on Temu. She wanted to shop like a billionaire.
As a amateur furniture maker, I could totally figure out how to make this thing cost $20k. It'd look so much cooler than this shit though....
Haha so I guess "bold conservative reforms" is their new code phrase for hatred and intolerance.
And "we had to buy a $19k lectern...it was to good a price to pass up"
Some say money laundering??
Money laundering is taking dirty money and making it clean, this is taking clean money and making it dirty, in someones dirty corrupt pocket
A lot of people are saying it. Very smart people.
They didn't. This is graft in action
Someone paid $20.28 for that and $6.99 for a rattlecan of metallic blue, and then charged the other $19,000.00 for "labor". (I'm optimistically assuming they paid tax on the store bought items)
Oh it's even more blatant. She bought it from a friend, who then used the money to go on vacation. It's a blatant kick back.
That's the state that just wrecked child labor laws, right?
It should be removed one day and replaced with four empty boxes and a big lots desktop microphone.
4 boxes yes. However instead of microphone jut buy/rent a good wireless lapel mic system. It is what nearly every presenter wants anyway.
lol literally nothing will happen because literally nothing ever does. Everything is farce now.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The lectern’s purchase was first uncovered by Matthew Campbell, an attorney and blogger who has sued State Police for withholding records he had requested about Sanders’ travel and security.
Days after Campbell filed his initial suit, Sanders called a special legislative session and proposed broad exemptions to the state’s open records law.
Sanders signed into law a measure restricting the public’s access to her travel and security records after she and lawmakers backed off more widespread exemptions that faced backlash from media groups, transparency advocates and some conservatives.
According to Mars’ letter, the interference includes the governor’s office altering an invoice from Beckett Events LLC, the Virginia firm listed as the seller of the lectern.
“This is nothing more than a manufactured controversy by left-wing activists to distract from the bold conservative reforms the governor has signed into law and is effectively implementing in Arkansas,” Henning said in a statement.
Hickey’s request also asks for an audit of all matters regarding security and travel records for the governor or her office that were retroactively made confidential by the law she signed last month.
The original article contains 745 words, the summary contains 183 words. Saved 75%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
That thing is hideous.
As befits.
When you elect stinky fish, don't be surprised when it starts to rot. Let's be real, she should be nowhere in sight of a position of power.
Ok I thought Lizz Truss' podium was expensive.
I mean, it is made out of wood. Have you seen lumber prices?
Arkansas could have had an Urban Planner with a Master's Degree as their Governor but he was black and Republicans aren't Racist.
That wood grain on the front though.
It's one ugly-ass lectern - but I still wood.
Structural integrity and strength is required to support her gunt
Hopefully it's made with steel I-beams.