More D.C. stuff, compliments of TMQ:
..."The bad: TMQ praised Washington, D.C., Mayor Adrian Fenty a while back for driving himself around the city without chauffeur or security detail. That's what Fenty claimed to be doing, at least, in a spring 2009 news conference, and born yesterday, I believed him. Steve Chaggaris notes that actually, Fenty has been having police close entire roads when he goes bike riding; worse, the D.C. police has spent $364,748 on travel expenses for Fenty's security detail over the past three years. That's just travel expenses -- the bodyguards' pay and benefits are extra, all money wasted to make the mayor feel powerful, rather than invested in reducing the city's violent crime. Why does a mayor need to travel with taxpayer-funded security when he goes to Denver to attend the Democratic National Convention? Which not only is a partisan political event, but an event surrounded by security to begin with. Don't think, "I don't live in D.C., so it's not my taxes being wasted." The District of Columbia is heavily subsidized by the federal government -- your children are being saddled with debt so the mayor of D.C. can have bodyguards part his path. American politics seems to have reached the point at which it is assumed to be normal for public officials to waste tax money on their own egos. And we wonder why there is a $12 trillion national debt."...
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story...mp;sportCat=nfl