Grifty Marco Rubio Got $69K To Teach Two Whole College Classes Once In A While

Cash Rules Everything Around Marco

Given that in Sarah Palin, the GOP has a person who is the all-time undisputed world heavyweight champion of grifting, we tend to overlook that some of the rest of them are also absolutely spot on in their abilities to get people to give them money for fuckall. Take, for example, young Padawan Marco Rubio. Though he is of relatively tender years, Marco has already managed to rack up some impressively shady feats of earning (we use that term loosely) and spending. Remember how he treated the Florida GOP's AmEx like his very own, except a cool AmEx where you got to decide what you wanted to pay for and what you didn't? Or his PAC that somehow ended up paying for personal meals and gas and employed Rubio's relatives?

See? Rubio is no slouch in the grift department. Why, just yesterday we learned more about one of his better achievements: getting Florida International University -- which, despite its weirdly shady-sounding name is actually a public university , so hey, Floridians! Your tax dollars at work -- to pay him $69,000 to teach two courses in a year.

[Those of you who are adjuncts, like yr humble correspondent, are permitted to take five minutes to smash every last item of furniture you own, remembering that you've never made more than about $12,000, tops, to teach two classes at a time.]

To be fair, sort of, apparently FIU often pays distinguished visiting professors, of which Marco was inexplicably one, $52,000 per year. [Adjuncts, feel free to re-commence the smashing if you have any furniture left and begin rending your garments.] There doesn't seem to be any real reason Marco got a $17,000 bump over and above the other distinguished types.

Now, it's an impressive grift to get 69 large to teach a couple classes, but Marco is better than that. He got 69K to only intermittently show up to teach those classes. Now THAT is how it is done.

As part of a deposition during an ethics complaint about Marco's sweetheart deal with FIU, his credit card problems, and his amorphous-yet-profitable "consulting" work, Rubio's pal -- and FIU co-professor Dario Moreno -- flailed his way through trying to explain Rubio's work ethic.

Moreno himself acknowledges that Rubio put in less than 10 hours per week of work on the course. Asked to estimate how many hours over the course of the semester Rubio spent "actually teaching and as well as planning the course," Moreno replies, "there was planning ahead of the course — maybe 10, 15 hours of planning."

"Then there was probably you know, teaching, it's 3 hours a week. And then he probably put in another 6 hours in preparation," Moreno added. In a later email to NBC News, Moreno said he meant six hours of preparation per week, as that's how long it takes him to prepare a new course, but "you need to ask the senator how long it took him to prepare." [...]

Moreno also states that Rubio attended just 70 percent of the classes they taught together that first semester, though he could only recount the reason for his absences for four of 28 classes

So, 10 hours a week, with maybe 10 hours prior to the semester doing some prep and planning. And skipping out on 4 of the classes you were required to teach. For 69K. [Adjuncts, please put the gun down.]

Apparently someone got wise to the grift (or at least realized this looked really really bad) and dropped Rubio down -- first to $40K and then to $24K. But -- he got that $24K to co-teach a class that met for a few hours a week. Co-teach. A few hours. Per week.

[Adjuncts -- you know what? Nevermind. Do what you gotta do, because you're never going to stop being mad about this, and rightly so.] Everyone else, just marvel at the skills of Marco and remember he's a full seven years younger than Sister Sarah so he has a lot of years to get even better at this.

[ Think Progress / NYT / NBC ]