Turns out the August 12 allegations from the Personnel Board meeting were true. Richie Farmer stole a refrigerator. He used a credit card that expends state funds to buy a refrigerator for his personal residence. But it’s okay, because since he’s been caught stealing, he gave one of the two refrigerators back.
Seriously. Having been caught stealing, he’s now claiming it’s okay because he returned it. If a thief is caught and returns the money, does that eliminate the crime?
Of course not. Richie Farmer is in deep. While some believe he should be forgiven because of his stupidity, there is no excuse for stealing. Would some think it is too strong a term to describe it as stealing? Readers can judge for themselves. From the Courier-Journal, who broke the confirmation story:
The state Department of Agriculture bought two small refrigerators within a period of a few months in 2010, one of which was kept in Commissioner Richie Farmer’s home office until earlier this year, a department official said.
Bill Clary, spokesman for the department, said one of the $179 Frigidaire refrigerators was in Farmer’s home from the day it was purchased in February 2010 until May of this year, when Farmer moved his belongings from that house after his wife filed for divorce.
It was then moved to the Department of Agriculture’s headquarters in Frankfort, where Clary showed it to a Courier-Journal reporter Thursday.
But Clary said Thursday, and again Friday, that he doesn’t know the whereabouts of the second Frigidaire.
“I haven’t found it yet,” he said Friday.
Farmer, who is near the end of his second term as agriculture commissioner, is the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor on a slate headed by Senate President David Williams, the GOP candidate for governor.
Clary defended the expenditure of taxpayer funds for a refrigerator at Farmer’s home, where, presumably, there’s also one in the kitchen.
“I would say that the commissioner believes that it helps him do his job better,” Clary said. “… It was in his home office from which he worked. It was not for his personal use. He also had a computer and a fax machine there too.”
Kudos to “Baghdad Bob” Bill Clary, who dutifully defends Farmers’ theft.
Between this, reports that David Williams made inappropriate physical contact with a tracker and lost his mind chewing her out in public, one has to wonder what that was on Friday evening.
The following photo was taken at 7:45 p.m. Friday, right outside the Lexington Cemetery on Main Street in Lexington. Sure, some will say it was simply the circus coming to town, but…elephants? Coming back from the cemetery, as if they were burying someone?
Yep!
un-farmer’s still trying, with the help of fellow republican’ts, to put pig on the lipstick.
In the final analysis, blue dogs try putting lipstick on pigs to disguise their conservatism, but at least they understand the procedure. The republican’ts on the other hand have the morally and procedurally wrong approach to EVERYTHING!