Vanessa Niekamp is a registered Republican. However, when she went to Inspector General Thomas P. Charles about some suspicious activity relating to Joe the Plumber, she says she wasn't motivated by politics.
She was interested in protecting her $69,000-a-year job and avoiding potential criminal charges.
From the Columbus Dispatch:
Vanessa Niekamp said that when she was asked to run a child-support check on Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher on Oct. 16, she thought it routine. A supervisor told her the man had contacted the state agency about his case.
Niekamp didn't know she just had checked on "Joe the Plumber," who was elevated the night before to presidential politics prominence as Republican John McCain's example in a debate of an average American.
The senior manager would not learn about "Joe" for another week, when she said her boss informed her and directed her to write an e-mail stating her computer check was a legitimate inquiry.
The reason Niekamp said she was given for checking if there was a child-support case on Wurzelbacher does not match the reason given by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.
Director Helen Jones-Kelley said her agency checks people who are "thrust into the public spotlight," amid suggestions they may have come into money, to see if they owe support or are receiving undeserved public assistance.
Niekamp told The Dispatch she is unfamiliar with the practice of checking on the newly famous. "I've never done that before, I don't know of anybody in my office who does that and I don't remember anyone ever doing that," she said today.
...Jones-Kelley has revealed that her agency also checked to see if Wurzelbacher was receiving welfare assistance or owed unemployment compensation taxes. "Joe the Plumber" has said he is not involved in a child-support case.
About 3 p.m. on Oct. 16, Niekamp said Carrie Brown, assistant deputy director for child support, asked her to run Wurzelbacher through the computer. Citing privacy laws, Niekamp would not say what, if anything, was found on "Joe."
On Oct. 23, Niekamp said Doug Thompson, deputy director for child support, told her she had checked on "Joe the Plumber." Thompson "literally demanded" that she write an e-mail to the agency's chief privacy officer stating she checked the case for child-support purposes, she said.
For all the blathering the Left has done about the Patriot Act and warrantless wiretapping and infringements on civil liberties by the Bush administration as it conducts the War on Terror, I don't hear a lot of outrage over illegally accessing personal information about Joe the Plumber.
That's right.
Screw his civil liberties. He's Joe the Plumber.
Has Barack Obama condemned any of this?
If he has, I missed it.
1 comment:
Vanessa got nice kudos from the Ohio Inspector General in his report. Meanwhile when does Kelly-Jones get frogged marched?
http://www.watchdog.ohio.gov/investigations/2008299.pdf
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