Dan Dunn

My friends and I play a silly game online.  We send each other news headlines on instant messenger under the headline of “Real or Onion.”  To win, you have to fool your opponent into mis-classifying the headline.  “Congressman Wants to Talk with Rodriguez” – it’s real, on nytimes.com right now.  “Genetic  Experiment Goes Horribly Right” – that’s Onion.

So, here’s today’s winning contestant: “Governor Appoints Spending Czar.” You and everyone else guessed Onion, right?  Sorry, it’s real.

The writers at Blue Mass Group, generally defenders of the governor, are as baffled as I am.  You can read the back and forth yourself – from “what the heck” to “it’s good project management” to “don’t we already have that?” and back.

The state has what, 100,000 employees and spends more than $50 billion dollars a year.  There are countless methods the state already uses to spend money.  I do not understand why we’d need a new, special person to spend more money.  It begs the question – what do the other state employees do?

This obviously isn’t the end of the world.  In the grand scheme of thing, this guy isn’t going to break the bank.  But it strikes me as tone deaf on the governor’s part.  Thousands of people are being laid off in Massachusetts this year, and the correct response is to hire someone with skill in spending money?

Real, not Onion.