@ TA. I want to take some exception to your comment that “the recent stimulus infusions all over the country are funding hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

I think even Evan Bayh suggested that Congress wasn't creating any jobs. But, mostly the idea that government can “create” jobs is ridiculous. It can, however, move them in geography, industry and time. The only way government can really “create” jobs is to create the environment conducive to the private sector thriving (low taxes, low regulation, free markets, voluntary associations).

Otherwise, government is doing one of several things:

Taking money out of the private sector (destroying economic activity there) to create a job in the public sector.

Taking money out of the private sector to redirect it to some other project or activity. (moving jobs from where they might otherwise have been created to where the, clearly not omniscient, will of Congress and their competing jurisdictions, egos and biases desire the jobs moved to)

Borrowing against future economic prosperity to try and fuel current. Payment of this borrowing comes in the form of either reduced future government expenditures (a dip in the government portion of GDP) increased taxes or inflation of the currency (leading to overall price increases, destruction of wages and savings and more economic drag). You can only borrow against future economic activity so much before you create a no growth environment. Imagine borrowing against your future paychecks. You get the money now but you're going to suffer in the future and you can only do this so much before you start zeroing them out or falling below what you need to pay the bills.

So, although I realize that cognitive dissonance often comes into play with people who want to deny that big government is anathema to our dreams and our way of life, we must remember that government creates nothing it merely reallocates and does so without absolute and perfect knowledge. Sure, they may claim to create a highway job somewhere but who is measuring the three barista jobs, the accounting job or the small business owner they destroy in shifting the work?

Twice now it's been, “it wasn't within our jurisdiction”, or “you didn't complain when you should have”. The second really gets me. The reason the complaint came “late” was that the “evidence” wasn't required to be made public until long after the election campaign cycle had begun.

I don't know the particulars in the McAtee filing, but the Terre Haute filing came as sour grapes after a loss in a close election. Former Mayor Burke should never have filed the complaint. Ed DeLaney should have never litigated the complaint. And politicos all over Indiana should curse their names for a long time to come for ever bringing it up in the first place.

Now, every sore loser will be trying to trot the Little Hatch Act horse out whenever they feel slighted, cheated out of something or didn't get their own way.

And the result? A big, fat nothing, except election board futility and sometimes, attorney fees.

But who enforces federal Hatch Act violations, or accuastions thereto? A local election board? Seems wierd to me.

Don't worry. Election Boards will just continue the way they always have, until someone files suit and beats them in a long, drawn out legal wrangle. Burke's suit just guaranteed that the Little Hatch Act will continue to be mentioned into the foreseeable future, not that any election board will actually uphold a challenge based on such a claim.

I'm aware that if his district seat is vacant, Republican PCs fill it for the reminder of the term…and the Ping name is as good as any. But when the 2011 election rolls around, look for Democrats to try more aggressively. I hear the name Pat Andrews…she is a vice president of McANA, widely-known and respected…and everyone's tired of Plowman's nonsense so there could be some fireworks next year in that district.

The Hatch Act situation intrigues me. Does anyone know, if it takes a certain ratio of federal/local funds going toward your salary, to trigger the Hatch questions? If so, good Lord…the recent stimulus infusions all over the country are funding hundreds of thousands of jobs. How do you source those funds and where they end up? Just asking.