Taxpayer Dollars Build Monument to Senator's Wife

I can almost forgive politicians for spending public money to ensure their own re-election.  But  this?  This I can't forgive.

Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell is an alumnus of the University of Louisville.  He recently earmarked $14.2 million of your money to build an addition to the U of L's library.  The University of Louisville repayed that expenditure of public funds by naming the auditorium in the new addition after McConnell's wife, Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao.  The Washington Post asks the relevant questions:

Why Chao? University President James R. Ramsey explained it was because she is a role model for students. "Elaine Chao is a national leader and a true friend of the university," Ramsey said. Chao also "is very positive in her comments about the University of Louisville when she speaks publicly," he wrote the school trustees, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal. Also, she "frequently attends sporting, cultural and social events that the university sponsors."

There are, of course, thousands of people who are true friends of the university, always speak well of it, and frequently attend sporting and cultural events.  They don't get university facilities named after themselves, however.

McConnell's wife does.  Anyone have any doubt at all about why that is?

Comments

[Girl X]

This makes perfect sense and doesn't seem at all like an abuse of power to me. I assume that Chao really wanted that library to happen and put out big time for her husband (twice daily blowjobs) to see it done, and if that's the case it damn well should be named after her.

[Leeq]

Maybe it's about multiculturism. With all those buildings on campus named after Dead White Men, an Asian woman adds diversity.