G.S.A. Officials Get a Grilling Over a Trip to Las Vegas
Source: NY Times
It is a remarkable moment when Congressional Democrats and Republicans turn their scorn from each other and join forces to focus it on someone else.
But that is precisely what happened on Monday when members of both parties on a Congressional oversight committee grilled the former head and other officials from the General Services Administration over profligate spending at a conference held in Las Vegas in 2010, which included taxpayer-financed hotel suites, tuxedos and Italian wine, and an appearance by a clown.
(...)
The lavish spending, which came to light last month, seemed almost like a parody of taxpayers’ worst nightmare of their dollars at work: parties, glad-handing and drinking toward no apparent end. The agency’s inspector general conducted a yearlong investigation of the four-day conference, in which 300 people were flown to the M Resort Spa and Casino.
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The investigation found that Mr. Neely had bragged about the expenditures. Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said to Mr. Neely: “It’s not your money! It’s the taxpayers’ money!”
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/us/politics/panel-grills-gsa-officials-over-las-vegas-trip.html
see also: "GSA inspector general is investigating possible bribes, kickbacks"
= new reply since forum marked as read
Defense can spend like drunken monkeys...
Have you seen the segway robotic targets?
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/tag/smart-targets/
A set of eight of these devices have just been delivered to Quantico in Virginia for live firing exercises. They were developed by the Australian firm Marathon Targets and approved by the US Foreign Comparative Testing (FCT) program, evaluates market-ready technologies that could prove useful to US defense forces. Their cost? $57 million.
