Florida Senate President Mike Haridopolos Slammed for Using Taxpayer Money to Write Useless Book

​It was fodder for Florida columnists all week. By Saturday, the hypocrisy and intellectual ineptitude of Florida Senate President Mike Haridopolos was on national display via the New York Times' op-ed page.

Last week, the AP reported that Haridopolos, a so-called fiscally conservative Republican, received $152,000 from a community college in his district to write a book that was so useless, they never published it. So the guy who says things like
"the government is spending us into oblivion" got a pile of taxpayer money and produced a book that shed light on little more than the author's limited capabilities. 

Within days of the AP report, Brevard Community College made Florida Legislative History and Processes available in Kindle format for $9.99 on Amazon.com. That only led to more venom from local media.

The Times' Gail Collins, however, reminded Haridopolos that when you flirt with federal-level office, you could be battered beyond the blogosphere. As a likely contender for U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson's seat in 2012, the story cried for national attention. And Collins is kind of like the Jon Stewart of newspaper columnists, both brilliant and hilarious, so she couldn't pass it up.

She did provide one line in which Haridopolos can find some solace, however.

"[G]enerally, politicians are protected from their worst literary sins by the fact that nobody actually ever reads the books they produce."

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