West Virginia State Auditor Glen Gainer makes the somewhat incomprehensible argument that because the state paid nearly two million dollars to someone, the two firms to whom the money was actually owed should just get over it:

At a news conference Monday, Gainer said the state has not lost any money because it acted in good faith when it paid the companies.

“My position is, the vendors are the ones who are out,” he said. “We’re not paying the vendors again.”

The state made the payments in March and April, after the perpetrator sent letters allegedly from the two companies requesting that payments be sent to new bank accounts. The letters included all documentation required for payment, including tax identification numbers.

Let me repeat that middle paragraph for you. “‘My position is, the vendors are the ones who are out,’ [Gainer] said. ‘We’re not paying the vendors again.’” Um, no, Mr. Gainer, you won’t be paying the vendors again, because you didn’t pay them the first time.

Let’s reverse this scenario for a minute. Let’s say that I get a letter on official looking letterhead telling me that my property taxes should be paid using a cashier’s check and should be mailed to Lagos, Nigeria. Suppose that I’m a pretty trusting sort of person, so I mail the money off to Lagos. Six months later, the state comes to my door demanding that I hand over my car, since I didn’t pay the government enforced rent taxes.

Does anyone really think that the state would honestly accept the argument that I’d already paid the money and that I wouldn’t pay it again? Heck, does anyone even think that Mr. Gainer himself would accept that argument? Of course not.

Unless Mr. Gainer would really be perfectly okay with the idea that the state wouldn’t have to pay him if it accidentally sent his check to someone else, then what Mr. Gainer’s words reveal is that he believes what far too many others who work in government jobs believe. He believes that these corporations and all the people who work for them are subjects. He believes that they… that we should simply cower and accept what Big Brother decides that we should get.

Of course, if someone at these companies is responsible, those individuals should be punished, and the State should make every reasonable attempt to try to recoup the loss of this money. That does not mean that the State should simply refuse to pay the money to these companies.

(WordPress Word Count: 334)

I don’t know about sugar vs. High Fructose Corn Syrup, but I’d happily buy some of the Mountain Dew Throwback if I could find it, if only to protest the stupid logo change that they made recently. Was it really too hard on most Mountain Dew drinkers to read the word “Mountain”? Did it really need to be shortened to “Mtn”?