| D'Amato's young-enough-to-be-his-daughter new-model wife is a member of the town of Hempstead Zoning Board of Appeals.
She makes $38,000 for attending 35 or so meetings a year, about what many people make for a year of 40-hour/50-week work. (Like her daddy husband, she's also an attorney who presumably makes six figures at least in her day job.)
And she gets free health, dental and optical insurance (worth about $15,000 a year) for herself and her multi-millionaire husband on top of that.
The Republican-dominated Hempstead town board recently voted, along party lines, to keep the free health insurance benefit for the part-timers on the ZBA, who happen to be all Republicans.
Here's what a D'Amato hack on the town board said about his vote to give even more public money to his boss: "The zoning board works a great deal of hours. That board needs a level of commitment and expertise that warrants a level of compensation commensurate with that."
As if $500 or so an hour for a part-time, evening, easy-lifting, developer-promoting "job" is not enough!?
Hinting at D'Amato's likely seven-figures-a-year day-job income, the story mentions his infamous $500,000 phone call on behalf of a contractor.
As most Americans, with or without insurance, struggle with and/or worry about health care costs, hacks like D'Amato get a free ride from the taxpayers, aided and abetted by lower-level hacks who do what they're told.
This is a story that goes beyond Hempstead.
As Newsday reports: "Nassau and Suffolk counties and the Town of Brookhaven have voted to eliminate the practice in the wake of resident outrage."
Every town and/or county (whether Republican- or Democrat-controlled) that provides free health insurance for part-time hacks should face the same taxpayer outrage.
And, in this local election year, Democrats should be doing basic oppo research to see is any of their town/county Republican hacks are getting a quiet $15,000 a year in health insurance benefits for part-time "work."
When these hacks have to personally deal with the scandal of health insurance in this country, they will join with us in calling for national health care insurance.
Liberals and hacks of New York unite, and, for the hacks, do the right thing for once! |
