Bust Brodkorb and the elephant he rode in on

cross-posted from MNPP

image from thinkprogress

On Friday night’s edition of Almanac, there was a segment composed of former legislators who commented on current events and politics; the MN GOP was represented by Amy Koch and Steve Swiggum.  One of the topics, appropriately, given the guests, was the Michael Brodkorb settlement.
 
Brodkorb lost; badly.  He came away with nothing more than the same $30,000 too-generous severance package he was originally offered.  The notion he was wrongfully terminated, given he himself, through his own actions, made it impossible to do his job, was ludicrous.

 
As Swiggum noted, the lege acted appropriately because paying off Brodkorb when the lege was in the right would have been the wrong thing to do, and long-term, I don’t think it would have represented an actual savings to the state’s taxpayers.  There was a time when insurance companies paid off cases that were not cost-effective to litigate, even when they were being ripped off, on the premise that they were still being ripped off for less in the payout than legal costs would involve—- except that it didn’t work out that way.  There was an increase in pay-off cases, and in the long run they discovered it would have been cheaper just to fight the bogus cases, the frauds, the rip-offs, …and the bluffs.

This was a bogus claim by Brodkorb, a bluff, a suit which appears to have been brought for other than the stated reasons of gender discrimination.  Brodkorb ADMITS he could not prove his case, and knew he could not.  Therefore, this was arguably a frivolous suit without merit, designed wrongly to bleed the state of legal costs in order to play some kind of political black-mail like maneuver.  Presumably this was to frighten the party into thinking the possible embarrassments would adversely influence the outcome of elections.

Except it did not work.  The legislators did not blink — and good for them. Because it would have only been the beginning of more frivolous suits (possibly by Brodkorb, if not others).  It does NOT pay to reward this kind of bad behavior.

 
Rather, I think the state, under the leadership of the Dems, should spend a bit of the remaining budgeted $500k, and go after Brodkorb for those legal expenses, try to recover some of that money.  It is, per my early morning consult with one of my favorite attorneys, a valid move – and arguably far more legitimate litigartion than the suit Brodkorb brought.

 
More to the point, we would have, as taxpayers, the benefit of who funded that suit, if it was not Brodkorb (as seems likely).  I don’t know if Brodkorb has any assets worth pursuing; but any recovery would be better than no recovery.  And it would send an important message to anyone contemplating it, not to attempt to blackmail or extort the leadership of the lege, on either side of the aisle, with efforts to get a big, fat, juicy, UNDESERVED payout by attempts to embarrass past or present members of government.

 
If you want to let loos the shit-storm of a scandal, just do it.  If you are in no position to go all holier-than-thou, like Brodkorb and the bogus family-values-spouting right, or their equally fiscal-responsibility-position folks, then shut up and go hide under a rock until enough time has passed you can show your face again with only minimal shame.  That would appear to go for bully-boy big fat Tony as well as Brodkorb.  I’m wondering who had money that was out of power with these two out of the party and the lege leadership.

 
The ultimate irony of course is that the right falls on its face so regularly, tripping over their values and positions.  They point fingers at others for amorous behavior while engaging in the same thing themselves,  the prudes.  They go bankrupt and bankrupt their party to the tune of $2 million, after telling the rest of us how to spend money responsibly.  And now, just one more example, the notoriously litigious right wingnuts who wail and gnash their teeth over tort reform and frivolous law suits engage in them. 

It is time to recover those taxpayer dollars, it is time to push-back on right-wing do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do hypocrisy, in the only way I think they care about ——–money.  Let’s get the money back, and let’s see who was really behind the suit in the first place.

 
Because I find it highly unlikely that Brodkorb could afford similar legal costs to what the legislature paid out, and with a case that weak……it is highly unlikely that any prestigious law firm took that case on a contingency basis.  If they wanted to shine some bright spot light on the conduct of others, maybe those shadowy figures playing dirty should have that same light shone on them, so we know who was behind this law suit, instead of guessing.

 
And if poor I’m-a-victim-because-I’m-an-extremist-Republican-Brodkorb doesn’t like it, then he should get out of politics, and maybe spend a long think on his own conduct.  The ultimate irony, of course, would be if he was denied food stamps/nutrition assistance now.  Because I think Brodkorb has killed any hope he has of being a player anymore in politics, and given his track record of employer-suing, it can’t argue well for anyone else taking him on as an employee in another field.

Ah, the greedy short-sighted oh-so-Republican failed thinking; we’ve just seen it again.  Let’s not let it pass without a response, one that gets back some or all of that tax payer money.  Squeeze Brodkorb until he pops like….let’s use the nicer analogy, a balloon full of hot air. This suit represents a lot of what is wrong with the ugliest aspects of hyper-partisan politics generally, and the MN GOP and Tea Party specifically.

We'd all be better off, even the MN GOP, if we penalize this conduct.