According to The Zero, people from both parties are saying that Oregon gov. Retread's presser yesterday, apparently intended to dampen the controversy surrounding him and his First Squeeze, likely had the opposite effect. Even their usually reliable lefty columnist, Steve Duin, got some digs in:
It came to this Friday morning: John Kitzhaber masqueraded as the clueless, helpless, rudderless fool he has long derided.
In the painful process, he begged us to believe Oregon's governor and Cylvia Hayes are both officially engaged ... and legally disengaged.
Even as Kitzhaber reaffirmed his love for Hayes at Friday's press conference - in response to the charge he has long been blinded by it - the governor clumsily moved to distance himself from her on various legal, political, and tax-evasion issues.
Man, when you've lost Duin....
But over at Willy Week, Nigel Jaquiss has probably been "unfriended" because he keeps finding stuff:
State records show that the nonprofit, Rural Development Initiatives, saw its state funding grow from $25,000 in 2010 to more than $214,000 in 2011, the year Hayes went to work there.
RDI saw its state funding fall to just $2,500 the year after Hayes left.
The new information adds to the growing list of questions about all the ways Hayes has benefited from her relationship with her fiance, Kitzhaber.
According to Retread, his Squeeze is in Sweden, or maybe Berlin, right now. She might be looking for an offshore account to stash some of the cash she got from her "green energy consulting" gigs. Or she might be trying to land another "green energy consulting" gig. Or she might just be trying to get as far away from the west coast of the USA as she can; the other side of the planet's about as far as she can get for now.
Jim Moore, director of the Tom McCall Center for Policy Innovation at Pacific University, calls the timing of the non-profit's funding increase “suspicious.”
“You’d have to ask yourself, what did taxpayers get for that $215,000 of state money?” Moore says. “The amount going up and down when this independent variable Cylvia Hayes shows up definitely requires some explaining.”
Moore says it would require an investigation to find out what really happened.
“Unless there’s a smoking gun, we won’t know if Kitzhaber was involved in directing the money,” he says. “If it’s not Kitzhaber, then it’s probably somebody on his staff or in the bureaucracy who thinks it's a good idea to funnel money to wherever Cylvia Hayes happens to be.”
At present, it appears that the Oregon Ethics Commission is investigating, but they can't really do much. Of greater interest is that the FBI has reportedly launched a criminal investigation into Hayes' activities, although there's presently no word as to whether or not they've included Retread in their examination.
One interesting slip from Retread during yesterday's presser: he said that he had hired lawyers for his First Squeeze and himself, which is at odds with earlier reports. Since this is going to cost Retread several tens of thousands of dollars, his Squeeze may need to report a large gift on her tax return.
But then, she's just a girl with a box of tissues; she can't be expected to know how these things work.
