In the 32 years that I worked for Uncle Sam, I saw a good deal of government waste of tax payers dollars. Most of it was never intended to be wasteful but it was nonetheless. Things lke purchases of government equipment that were useless or unneeded, nicer than needed vehicles being bought for bosses and even working slugs, sending people on work details and having them standby without ever accomplishing the work they thought would be their assignments, political ass kissing by way of government operations that were nonsensical, overpayment of employees with too high salaries, overpayment for legitimate travel expenses (such as using a government rate when other rates were lower or putting personnel up in nicer hotels than needed) were all part of it.
In those 32 years, I saw lots of work related parties and attended plenty of them, like holiday parties or retirement parties. Most of these parties were after work hours although sometimes a retirement party was during lunch time. They were great and I enjoyed the ones i attended. Some were in the office, others in nicer venues. I also saw a lot of work related travel, some by myself and some by others. I will admit, when I traveled for work, I had a good time almost every time. So did the others who traveled with me. The thing is, the fun time, while on a detail away from home, was always our own personnel time. As far as the cost of both the parties and the good times went, it was never charged to the tax payer, not once as far as I am aware. Each time we had a retirement or holiday party we had to pay out of our own pockets. Each time we had fun times while in travel status, the money for it came out of our own pockets. I never once, to the absolute best of my knowledge, attended a party or fun times paid for by the government (in other words by the tax payers).
So, it galled me no end, to have seen a pompous bureaucrat on the news today telling a congressional inquiry that the GSA employees who partied hearty on the government dime, were entitled to those privileges! I will applaud the day that they convict that sack of turd, and his compatriots, of fraud, misuse of government funds and mismanagement. The other thing that pissed me off about it is the claims of the current administration that their hands are clean of any wrong doing in this affair regardless of a year passing by since the administration suddenly became aware of the problem. in that year, they thought up an excuse: 'It is all George Bush's fault'. That, of course, is if you believe the current administration under which the problem has continued to fester and under which it has gotten much worse. It is time to stop passing the buck about fraudulent spending of the buck and do something definitive to put an end to it.
Hopefully a good number of party animals who like to waste taxpayer money will be arrested and convicted, and/or lose their jobs over this one.
All the best,
Glenn
2 comments:
That's right, all the wasteful spending that has occurred in government since the day Obama took office is his responsibility. As we all know, when a new individual takes the office, his first job is to hire a completely new staff. Obama obviously had to have hired them. Heck, I bet he specifically instructed them to be wasteful! This is why we need a conservative businessman in the White House. There is never any waste in the private sector. There are never any corrupt business people in the private sector. Bush=good, Obama=bad; private sector=good, government=bad. Thanks for keeping things straight for us.
Your use of sarcasm is ridiculous. It lowers any esteem I could have for you as being an inteligent commenter. The truth is that there is plenty of blame to go around to others such as george W. Bush that ultra liberal Republican who initiated the bail outs. yet, the truth of the matter is that President Obama has spent even more money that the liberal GWB. He keeps spending too, so yes plenty of the blame, in fact most of it goes to him since his spending has surpassed that of any other president in the history of our nation.
As for the GSA extravaganzas, yes Obama needs to accept plenty of the responsibility. What problem do you have with him accepting his share of the responsibilty. Sure, this started under Busha s far as we know but it has gotten kuch worse under Obama. Now he is trying to wash his hands of the whole thing and his admin flunlkies are trying to say it is all the fault of GWB. I explained, in my original post that it is the fault of both of these presidents, did you miss that because you are so politically skewed as to confuse even yourself into only ever seeing one side of the issue.
By the way, if in your apparent sarcasm, you were trying to imply that I am a gung ho G.W.Bush supporter who said that all things done by GWB were great, you had better pay much more attention to my political posts that mention Bush. I supported a lot that he did but was also very opposed to some things he did such as signing the Patriot Act and the financial bail outs of failing companies.
Oh well, yet aanother bit of sarcastic wonderment from someone to timid or cowardly to leave a real name and real contact info with his/her comment.
All the best,
Glenn B
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