Job creation, Obama-style

First, Stimulate All the Lawyers Jas Taranto
Our continuing discussion of red tape and stimulus spending prompted a reader to send in this story, a couple of weeks old, from the Denver Post: Gov. Bill Ritter turned down a $75-an-hour offer from the Colorado attorney general’s office to handle legal matters regarding the disbursement of federal stimulus funds, instead hiring his former law partners for up to six times that cost. . . . Ritter hired Hogan & Hartson through a no-bid contract. So far, the firm has been paid $40,000 from federal funds. . . .//Myung Oak Kim, spokeswoman for the governor’s economic-recovery team, said Hogan & Hartson was the right firm for the job. ”We disagreed with the AG’s position that its staff could provide the help we required,” she said. “We needed deep legal expertise on the most complex federal legislation passed in decades, and we needed it quickly.”
So that’s the Obama administration’s plan: get the economy moving again by creating work for lawyers. These guys are more ingenious than we ever dared hope. ****When they said "shovel-ready," we should have asked "shoveling WHAT?"Making work through litigation is the American way, especially the way of American lawyers. We are reminded of the following two facts: (1) Some towns are too small to support a lawyer.(2) No town is so small that it cannot support TWO lawyers.****