Politics: Lessons Learned

This one has been mocked elsewhere, including DailyKos and Think Progress, but it's too funny not to repeat. The National Journal has an article out today listing the salaries of the President's official aides. It's no surprise that those familiar faces who making the top dollar (now at $165,200 per year) hold the title of "Assistant to the President", but some of the lower positions might surprise you. My personal favorite is Stuart Baker, who gets paid $106,641 of the taxpayers' dollars per year to be the "Director for Lessons Learned."

I wonder how much his assistant, "Chief Advisor for 'My Bad!'", makes.

In all seriousness though, how come there isn't more scrutiny of the President's staff? Sure, we all hear the pundits going on and on whenever Bush shuffles around the Chief of Staff or whatnot, but what about the lower positions? It seems to me that it would be pretty easy to reward your political cronies with some trumped-up fake directorship, then hand them a 6-figure a year salary for watching their ass widen. Does nobody actually investigate who these people are and what the hell they're actually doing?

Oh right, I forgot that Republicans have become the party of big government and nobody cares.

Lesson learned.