Major General Jim Butterworth: Taxpayers Worst Nightmare

image via PoliticsBlog

Abuse of power is not a new problem in the military; Army General Ron Lewis was recently caught charging strippers to his government-issued credit card. But at least he had the common courtesy of trying to hide it -- it's not like he paraded the strippers around The Pentagon. It takes a special type of officer to abuse their power publicly on a repeated basis. And that's where Major General Jim Butterworth comes in.

In 2011 he was made the Adjutant General of Georgia and was in charge of the Georgia National Guard. What followed was four years of shenanigans that would make Peter Parker's uncle cringe.

image via caasirawr

"With great power, make money, get bitches."

Jim Butterworth was a sitting Georgia state senator when he was tapped for the job. He was a former officer, but he had left the Air Force in 2002 as a Captain. Nevertheless, he was promoted to Major General in the Georgia State Defense Forces and put in charge of approximately 14,000 soldiers and airmen of the Georgia National Guard. That's a promotion jump of five ranks, which would take any normal officer at least 20 years to reach, an unusual situation to say the least.

Butterworth began his new job with publicity stunts utilizing Blackhawk helicopters. Please note: these are helicopters that cost somewhere around $20,000 an hour to operate. That's all fine and good when they're being used to kill Bin Ladens or rescuing families from hurricanes. The problem was that Butterworth was using them to deliver game footballs to his old high school. No word on whether there was any grudges held.

image via Wikipedia

"Who's the loser low-life now Sharon??"

When he wasn't using them to deliver footballs, he was flying around in them as his own limo service. And while it must've been cool to arrive at ceremonies with your own private war machine, the Army had specifically banned their usage for that. The state of Georgia ended up having to foot the bill for the excessive Blackhawk flights. They also hired an assistant to prevent Butterworth from doing anything else stupid, which went as well as you would've expected.

Butterworth found new ways to waste money such as attending the 2013 Paris Air Show despite the US Air Force itself not attending due to government furloughs. Or increasing money to the "Tribute to the Troops" campaign with the Atlanta Braves MLB team in exchange for a free suite at home games. And if a news organization got wind of his lavish spending, he would simply ban them from attending any events where he was present.

image via flikr

"Get out."

All of this finally came to light when Butterworth attempted to fire his meddling assistant, and she came clean with his ridiculous expenses. But she still ended up fired, and Butterworth was given the head of Georgia Emergency Management job. Yeah, not everyone gets what's coming to them apparently.