Atwater Hates Ethics

Republican Jeff Atwater is paying a man, Robert "Budd" Kneip, to aid in his transition to Senate president six months in advance of taking office and prior to his strongly challenged re-election campaign is over. Traditionally, people like this are hired after the election. And usually, they have some experience with this type of thing. Kneip has no such experiences. He's getting paid $7,000 a month and the taxpayers are paying for it. In this time of budget shortfalls and a bad economy, it's good to see that Republicans can still give out sweetheart deals to their friends and stick the rest of us with the bill.