Kevin Fischer: As Lazy as He is Oblivious

There's a hysterical post up at Franklin's very own original King of Comedy this morning on the cost of Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen's recent lawsuit against the state GAB. Quoth Fischer:

Good for the Attorney General who informed mega liberals Miller and Pocan the cost of his lawsuit was $155.

Except there's a slight problem here: there's no possible way the lawsuit only cost the state $155. Remember, Van Hollen was suing -- wait for it -- the state of Wisconsin's Government Accountability Board. Had Fisher done a Google search his homework, he would have discovered that the GAB had to activate a special council at the cost of $175 an hour.

Now, the GAB spent $43,049 to defend itself. If we're to take Fischer and Van Hollen at their words and accept that DOJ spent only $155 dollars on this law suit, then the total cost to the state is $43,204, which is roughly 278 times what Van Hollen claims the total cost to be.

If that's the case, why even bother filing the lawsuit if it wasn't going to be taken seriously? If you're only going to spend roughly an hour on the case, why bother getting all worked up about it in the first place?

Either Van Hollen is a grossly incompitent allocator of resources or, which is more likely, he's being a bit disingenuous.

DOJ probably spent $155 on post-its and legal pads and used salaried attorneys already on the pay role, and while that may be convenient for a little accounting black magic it still means that these attorneys could have been working on other projects. So perhaps Pocan and Miller should ask a more specific question: what was the total cost to the DOJ in terms of lost manhours spent on working on the GAB lawsuit?