Shocked. SHOCKED!
Posted on 04/03/2012 12:48:57 PM PDT by carriage_hill
An obscure federal agency may have set a new benchmark for lavish conferences on the taxpayers' dime.
Lawmakers are voicing outrage following a government report that found the General Services Administration held a blowout $820,000 conference near Las Vegas which grossly exceeded what the planners were allowed to spend.
The employees dropped thousands of dollars on luxury items and convention giveaways -- including more than $6,000 on commemorative coins, $8,000 on a "yearbook," and $3,200 for an in-house mind reader.
"It's unbelievable that red flags didn't immediately go up well before this junket," Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said.
In the wake of the report, the White House accepted the resignation of General Services Administration chief Martha Johnson. Johnson also dismissed two deputies and suspended other career employees over the affair.
The 300-person event at the M Resort Spa and Casino in Henderson, Nev., included a $95-per-person dinner and reception as well as several violations of federal laws and policies.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Aghast = Fearful their own lavish conferences will now come to light.
“Lawmakers aghast”.
I doubt that .. More like jealous..
Where is the outrage over Moochelle Obama’s Vegas Vacation?
And resigned Martha Johnson - how much will she collect in lifetime benefits, what will be her monthly pay via the U.S. taxpayer for the rest of her worthless life?
And the other two as well. Throw them on the heap.
And no government agency should be “obscure” - if people don’t know who they are and what they do - their budget should be eliminated.
Social Security Administration (SSA) did over 750,000 last year. What is the problem?
I think you've nailed it. A lot more heads need to roll for this.
TAXPAYERS aghast over continual reports of MASSIVE DEFICIT SPENDING by lawmakers!
It’s the tip of the iceberg-—every government agency and sub-agency has these worthless “conferences” and a disproportionate number of them are held in Las Vegas.
Read the whole thing. Appaling. Just like the private citizens obama is calways calling fat cats. These people are more like pigs at a trough. 3 grand to rent two tuxedos?
Criminal charges should be filed for stealing from the taxpayers. Boyrack would be all over this if it were republicans. Most unethical administration in America’s history.
How much have the taxpayers paid for Mooch’s vacations, her kids Mexican ‘get-away’ with 20+ of her closest friends? When I was 13, I never dreamed of taking a vacation without my parents, let alone going to a country that is on a ‘Watch List’ with 20+ of my friends.
This extravagance at the hands of Obama’s team, is just par for the course. It’s what they do, extragantly abuse the offices in which they hold, while threatening fence-sitters and accusing Republicans of doing the same thing.
Shocked. SHOCKED!
Somebody needs to redefine 'aghast"!
In Susan's world this GSA deal doesn't even rise to the level of chump change.
The lights are on and the cockroaches are scurrying. It’ll go nowhere in this govt-corrupted, poisoned atmosphere. Sadly.
That 100x worse, IMO, but the lib-media infers that “she’s entitled”, don’t they?
The GSA is in charge of getting the FBI a new building. Seems their old building (which many of us watched built since it was a 15 story deep hole in downtown DC) is crumbling into concrete dust ~ GSA managed that contract too.
The GSA does the federal court houses.
I still don’t know “exactly what” the GSA is/does, except spend our money.
750,000 “what”? Expenses? Parties? You got me stumped on that one. Googling it...
This?
http://www.opinion-columns.com/praguewriter/2007/10/750000-american.html
Or this?
Give me a hint, please?
It was just about the cheapest conference anyone had ever seen ~ done outside the tourist season I recall he got hotel rooms for $10 a day and free conference rooms ~ including the extension cords!
Air fare was dirt cheap that time of year too.
So, what did he do wrong? Well, it was in Puerto Rico. That was rather like holding a conference in Las Vegas.
Something really gets the dander up when bureaucrats discover a conference center and cheap airfare.
BTW, provable ~ if you have an average distribution of employees or other people you want to send to a conference, send them to Oklahoma City ~ your air fare savings will be incredible.
Oh, BTW, you do that through DFW. Flying to Dallas has been the cheapest deal for national draws for a number of decades, but OK City has cheap eats and cheaper hotels. There's a regular shuttle service back and forth between the two cities. Take advantage of it. Do it in August/September during the 110% humidity and 130 degree temperatures and they might even pay you to go there.
Your conference attendees will remember you for the rest of their lives.
How much goes on which never sees the light of day, on purpose hidden by accounting etc tricks?
I’d sure like to know the extent of it all. I think it’s pretty widespread and pervasive over the past 3+ years.
Imagine how long you'd stay in business in any building if you never cleaned the toilets nor provided toilet paper.
Most GSA employees are worker bees.
“Most unethical administration in America’s history.”
We once called the Clintons that, didn’t we? I think the 0bummers have easily surpassed them. I’d bet Hillary’s doing a slow burn at what they’re getting away with. Tape on the drool bucket, Your Thighness!
We can END IT on Nov 6th. If he gets 4 more years, we ain’t seen nothing yet!
that red flags didn’t immediately go up well before this junket,” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, -—————
Isn’t she on one of the committee’s supposedly overseeing the GSA?
I just knew that Casablanca pic was coming. Good movie!
Isn’t she *finally leaving*? Or is it Old Harpy Snowe? They’ve gotten filthy rich off of our hard-earned dime.
They do clean the toilets and provide toilet paper - all without an overarching federal bureaucracy.
Imagine that!!!! Can you?
Worker bees? Yeah - sure. When they aren't off in Vegas getting their mind read in a rented tux with a commemorative coin.
I am sure they are worth every penny of other people's money./s
That’s what I actually meant in my Post #5: I don’t know exactly what they do, as they try to do so much, so very badly. (I just didn’t express it very well.)
Seriously.
I know such people. Some of them work for companies that specialize in such matters ~ on contracts ~ others are in-house.
Those buildings don't manage and clean themselves.
In a small company you probably have your single resident PhD taking out the trash but he's gonna' give that up as soon as he finds a better job.
This kind of outing/conference is routine stuff for government employees, fed down to city and counties. These employees and their enabling politicians and unions are dregs on the ‘outlanders’.
” “It’s unbelievable that red flags didn’t immediately go up well before this junket,” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said.”
THIS you worry about ? Sue?
Not the 17 TRILLION in projected cost overruns for Obamacare?
Not a peep out of any of you on THAT.....go back in your cave.
Thus we could close the GSA completely and make each other Federal bureaucracy either subcontract out or hire their own janitors, building engineers, guards, etc.
Every individual function need not have its own federal department.
We hire another company to do our janitorial and food services work. That seems to work out better because they are not employees of our company with the same stock options and benefits - and if we were unsatisfied with their services we could hire someone else - rather than being saddled with incompetent lifelong civil servants.
I wonder how much waste, fraud, corruption actually gets outed publicly vs what’s well-hidden via accounting tricks and other methods/ops we know nothing/not enough about? I’m thinking the actual number(s) is beyond huge.
my relative who is basically an account clerk for the va regularly gets a week or two to go and commiserate with other clerks..why they have to be flown clear across the country and put up in hotels is beyond me....what are they talking about that they couldn’t email each other?
And the lawmakers will do . . . crickets.
And the lawmakers will do . . . crickets.
What a RINO hypocrite that loudmouth Collins (Snowe, too) skank is. I’ll bet she’s... no, I won’t say it.
Which are you trying to refute? The coming economic collapse?
Here’s an FR thread (Walter Williams) on it:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2843841/posts
” I’ll bet she’s... no, I won’t say it.”
You don’t have to..
The proponents always figure that if they can boot GSA out of their buildings then the vets will just go away and not bother them anymore.
Sorry, there are more issues surrounding the employment of janitors in the federal government than the convenience of the agency managers or the cost to the taxpayers.
Wars just never end do they.
USPS was set up to run its own facilities operations ~ and due to the need to protect mail you simply can't contract out the basic janitorial duties to private companies ~ they can't be trusted for one thing. On the other hand, postal administrative operations, where you have people in offices handling your complaints and phone calls, and planning various things ~ they can and do have contract help.
We were once housed in a building previously owned by the Defense Intelligence Agency. (In Rosslyn) Our janitorial contractor simply could not find Americans to work for him (due to his low pay rates) so all his help were illegal aliens. We were handing those people over to ICE all the time. They didn't realize 3/4 the people in the building were conversant in Spanish and the other 1/4 knew what they were talking about ~ mostly how to steal and their boyfriends.
CIA has to have people with serious clearances available to take out the trash, plough the snow in the parking lot and change burned out lights. There are thousands of people there. They are compartmentalized so if you work in certain sections you can never go into other sections, nor can you even have friends outside with the wrong connections.
The guys changing bulbs cross the lines ~ think of that management problem.
Then, there's the White House ~ my neighbor had the job of managing the guys who change their bulbs. He was given a quarterly examination (interrogation while hooked up to a lie detector) just to make sure he hadn't gone over to the bad guys somewhere.
He didn't work for GSA. He didn't work for the White House ~ Navy had the lightbulb job at the time.
When you get to the Department of Defense most of their facilities are managed by internal organizations, just like USPS.
Department of Education and other agencies with no real responsibilities could probably hire people off the street and nothing bad would happen.
Just as they’re doing now: cowering in fear of the POS-In-Chief. The more things change, the more they remain the same. They’re afraid of being called “racists” - or (((shudder))) - worse names.
Why is this news now?
As I recall, the conference took place two years ago...was reported upon at the time...raising a proper outrage on FreeRepublic...and then forgotten.
Is it now news because our elected public officials have only now caught up with the act?
No.
That Obama has added much more to the debt than Clinton or Bush
etc.
Thanks for your kind reply.
“Most GSA employees are worker bees.” muawiyah
Sure sure. Hard at work at graft and corruption apparently.
The inspector general for the General Services Administration said Monday that he is investigating possible bribery and kickbacks in the agency, as lawmakers accused the former GSA administrator of allowing a Las Vegas spending scandal to erode taxpayers’ trust in government.
Inspector General Brian Miller told a congressional committee scrutinizing an $823,000 Las Vegas conference that his office has asked the Justice Department to investigate “all sorts of improprieties” surrounding the 2010 event, “including bribes, including possible kickbacks.” He did not provide details.
Miller’s revelations of possible further misconduct by organizers of the four-day event, coming on the heels of a highly critical report, enraged Democrats and Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The lawmakers put GSA officials on the defensive during a tense four-hour hearing, with some Republicans loudly rebuking former administrator Martha N. Johnson and her colleagues
You find corrupt MANAGERS throughout the federal system.
Worker bees are generally out of the loop when it comes to being able to affect spending or budgets, or to decide who gets what contracts.
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