Remember, in January 2001, when Bill and Hillary Clinton finally left the White House with wheelbarrows full of booty and we thought – or hoped, audaciously – that we’d seen the last of those two insatiable sucklings incessantly pawing at the public teat?
That glorious feeling of relief didn’t last long, did it?
It was much the same with Darrell McGraw and his wife Jorea (née Marple).
When old Quick Draw finally got the boot at the ballot box after five terms as state attorney general and Jorea lost her position as state superintendent of schools shortly afterward, we all got that “ah, at last it’s over” sensation and looked forward to savoring it for a long, long time.
As with the Clintons, it was not to be.
Darrell and Jorea seem to think they were meant to hold their positions of public trust in perpetuity – or, at least, the duration of their stay here on earth, i.e., for as long as they both shall live. Termination of their sinecures was a shock to their systems. The $180,000 they receive each year in combined state pensions is not enough. Still, they suffer.
So far, Darrell has maintained a relatively low profile. Not so Jorea.
The bitter if not better half of this professional foraging tag team has to date filed two lawsuits challenging the right of her superiors to determine the length of her employment.
Last year, she sued the State Board of Education for firing her and made a federal case out of it. This year, she dropped the first suit and filed another in Kanawha Circuit Court.
Marple claims she “has suffered an irreparable damage to her name, her reputation, and her ability for future employment.”
Someone needs to explain to the bewildered, belligerent Marple that people often get fired, that very few of them wind up with six-figure pensions, and that most of the damage they suffer is self-inflicted (and reparable).