DUMBARTON NOTEBOOK by BILL HEANEYKaroline Leavitt, at just 27 years old, has made history as the youngest White House Press Secretary, stepping into the high-profile role under President Donald Trump’s second term.
Her rapid rise in politics has drawn public fascination, not only about her professional achievements but also about her financial standing. While exact figures remain unconfirmed, estimates place her net worth at approximately $6 million.
This substantial sum is largely attributed to Karoline’s extensive political career, beginning with an internship at Fox News, later serving as a presidential speechwriter.
She eventually held roles such as Assistant Press Secretary during Trump’s first term and a national spokeswoman for his Super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc.
Press Secretaries Amanda Graham and Karoline Leavitt.
With her latest appointment, Karoline Leavitt’s salary is believed to be around $180,000, consistent with previous White House Press Secretaries like Karine Jean-Pierre and Jen Psaki.
Amanda Graham is Chief Communications Officer to West Dunbartonshire Council, an organisation with a dismal public reputation which receives little or no positive coverage in the national media and refuses to speak to The Dumbarton Democrat about even the most serious matters confronting the council.
Her salary was recently publicly revealed to be £129,000, which is more than Ms Leavitt receives.
Her only previous experience in newspapers is with the Lennox Herald, the local newspaper for West Dunbartonshire.
At the Council, Amanda Graham takes charge of a Complaints Column which regularly exposes all of the Council’s worst failings.
The column deals mainly with unemptied household bins, pot-holed roads, uncut grass in public places, including local cemeteries, and other matters relating to the environment, which have enraged the local public to the extent that 2,500 of them signed a petition to make the Council back down.
Embarrassingly for them, the Council has decided to drop the hubris and arrogance which has attached itself to them on so many, many matters, not least their grass cutting ban — but only on condition that funds set aside for social housing would be the victim of that decision.
In local government parlance, they have kicked it down the road until another committee puts a final stamp on it.
They have decided that the money for grass cutting will have to come at the expense and disadvantage of the most deprived section of the community, one of whom they have banned for being too straight with them in the Complaints Column.
They have also banned The Democrat on the back of a lie without going through the proper procedures of taking the matter to a committee. The accused has not been given a voice or any opportunity to state his side of the story.
It’s sad that senior members of the local Labour Party, including Jackie Baillie MSP and Douglas McAllister MP, have supported this disgraceful, anti-democratic decision by doing nothing about it.
Amanda Graham was appointed in questionable circumstances under the Council’s previous chief executive Joyce White who has now left Church Street with a golden goodbye to finance her retirement. Ms White’s salary and benefits were said to be in the region of £150,000 annually.
Amanda Graham refuses to discuss this matter or indeed anything else with The Dumbarton Dermocrat and refuses to lift the ban on us speaking to anyone in the Council’s Communications Department which at one stage was said to be costing council taxpayers in the region of £500,000 a year to run.
The Council, which has a track record for victimisation and bullying its staff, and indeed Amanda Graham, would rather we were not given the opportunity to hold them to account.
Maybe it’s time for them to justify their behaviour. They could start by telling the public why they believe their communications officer is astonishingly paid a salary equivalent to that of the press secretary for US President Donald Trump at the White House.
And why the public in West Dunbartonshire who pay recently hiked council tax to fund our cash-strapped council’s press officer’s salary at the same rate as the press officer for US President Donald Trump, who rules over the richest country in the world.
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Only in Dumbarton. I know a man whose wife has been seriously ill for the past year. Her condition means that her balance has gone and that she can only walk assisted by another adult because she is otherwise in danger of falling down and injuring herself further.
She has a whole list of appointments to keep, from seeing the practice nurse or GP from time to time; visiting the dentist, travelling to Glasgow and elsewhere to see hospital consultants, which requires her to be taken to the front door in order to walk the minimum distance.
The inconvenience of having to park in a space where that is not generally permitted and to worry about being fined adds to the woman’s anxiety. And to that of the carer who drives her around.
All this was supposed to be mitigated by the Blue Badge scheme, which makes it possible for drivers to park their cars where otherwise that is not permitted.
However, the administration for the Blue Badge scheme has been put in the hands of West Dunbartonshire Council, and predictably it’s the usual shambles in that quarter.
A carer called into Church Street this week to check on the progress of the cared person’s Blue Badge, which had been gathering dust on a file since it was submitted months ago after consultation with a lawyer to ensure it was properly filled in.
But since the carer had heard nothing back from the Council he decided to turn up personally and inquire about it.
“There’s a backlog,” said the receptionist, who phoned the department to check.
How long will it be until it arrives, he asked.
“About four weeks,” the receptionist told him.
They say that work expands to fill the time allocated to it. In West Dunbartonshire it seems they have all the time in the world.
And they don’t give a fig about the disabled person who has been abandoned to be a prisoner in her own home because there is nowhere her carer can find a place to park without risking a ticket.
It costs around £90 for the return fare in a taxi from Dumbarton to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital and the Royal Children’s Hospital in Glasgow.
To say the Council couldn’t run a bath is being kind to them.
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Responding to a new report which found that only around half of the 11,000 Scots who had a stroke last year got access to the appropriate care, Scottish Liberal Democrat leader and health spokesperson Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP said: “It is a complete scandal that so many patients are being deprived access to this life-saving care.
“By failing to invest properly in stroke care, the SNP are risking the lives of some of the most vulnerable patients. Scottish Liberal Democrats previously revealed that it took more than 1,000 days for the government to publish new stroke treatment guidelines. My party was also among the first to call for the universal provision of thrombectomy. We need a government that will fix our NHS and guarantee the right care for everyone; the SNP have proved they are not up to the task.”
- You can read the full report here
Top of the page picture is of the White House in Washington DC., USA.