Fiscal conservatives buy $4.00 meatballs

[weenie]

<p>Does your workplace offer these sorts of perks? Our tax dollars hard at work:</p>

<p><a href=“http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/J/JUSTICE_PRICEY_SNACKS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT[/url]”>http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/J/JUSTICE_PRICEY_SNACKS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Snacks Take Big Bite Out of DOJ Budget
An excerpt:

An internal [Department of] Justice audit, released Friday, showed the department spent nearly $7 million to plan, host or send employees to 10 conferences over the last two years. This included paying $4 per meatball at one lavish dinner and spreading an average of $25 worth of snacks around to each participant at a movie-themed party.</p>

<p>More than $13,000 was spent on cookies and brownies for 1,542 people who attended a four-day “Weed and Seed” conference in August 2005, according to the audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. And a “networking” session replete with butterfly shrimp, coconut lobster skewers and Swedish meatballs at a Community Oriented Policing Services conference in July 2006 cost more than $60,000.</p>

<p>The report, which looked at the 10 priciest Justice Department conferences between October 2004 and September 2006, was ordered by the Senate Appropriations Committee. It also found that three-quarters of the employees who attended the conferences demanded daily reimbursement for the cost of meals while traveling - effectively double-dipping into government funds.

</p>

[ucsd_ucla_dad]

<p>Surprisingly, it looks like the expenditures are actually down 20% from a couple of years ago.</p>

<p>The costs quoted do seem high and given that they’re taxpayer dollars - way high. I also wonder why there needs to be an FBI conference held in Cambodia. I suppose they must have had their reasons.</p>

<p>

It also found that three-quarters of the employees who attended the conferences demanded daily reimbursement for the cost of meals while traveling - effectively double-dipping into government funds.

My company has specific rules against doing this so they could fire anyone caught doing so. Since it seems endemic at the DOJ they need to make sure they have rules governing this and start firing some people who abuse it. Word will spread pretty fast to not do it any more.</p>

[interesteddad]

<p>When challenged, I’m sure all the fine Regents University law grads in the DOJ respond, “So SUE me…” before doubling over in laughter. The DOJ appears to be the biggest patronage hack operation in the government.</p>

[tlaktan]

<p>

I also wonder why there needs to be an FBI conference held in Cambodia. I suppose they must have had their reasons.

</p>

<p>Actually, that may have been legitimate. Cambodia has been trying to step up their counterterrorist efforts, with limited luck. They’ve been working with the ASEAN countries (and ASEAN affiliates) to boost counterterrorist operations, but the region as a whole is suffering from lack of cohesion in anti-terrorist efforts. There’s been little domestic political willpower as well. The State Department’s [country</a> reports on terrorism](<a href=“http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2006/82731.htm]country”>http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2006/82731.htm) explains a brief bit about this.</p>

[mini]

<p>“More than $13,000 was spent on cookies and brownies for 1,542 people who attended a four-day “Weed and Seed” conference in August 2005, according to the audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. And a “networking” session replete with butterfly shrimp, coconut lobster skewers and Swedish meatballs at a Community Oriented Policing Services conference in July 2006 cost more than $60,000.”</p>

<p>Wonder what was in the brownies…</p>

<p>At least DOJ is doing its part to stamp out world hunger.</p>

[interesteddad]

<p>And, think of all the money they’ve saved by shutting down the civil rights and voting enforcement division.</p>

[weenie]

<h2>Funny interesteddad. </h2>

<p>Not that we need more proof that the self-appointed “fiscal conservatives” weren’t very fiscally conservative, but Alan Greenspan’s new book sheds further light:</p>

<p>Excerpted from <a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/15/business/15greenspan.html?_r=1&n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/People/G/Greenspan,%20Alan&oref=slogin[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/15/business/15greenspan.html?_r=1&n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/People/G/Greenspan,%20Alan&oref=slogin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>

WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 — Alan Greenspan, who was chairman of the Federal Reserve for nearly two decades, in a long-awaited memoir, is harshly critical of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the Republican-controlled Congress, as abandoning their party’s principles on spending and deficits.</p>

<p>In the 500-page book, “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,” Mr. Greenspan describes the Bush administration as so captive to its own political operation that it paid little attention to fiscal discipline, and he described Mr. Bush’s first two Treasury secretaries, Paul H. O’Neill and John W. Snow, as essentially powerless. </p>

<p>Mr. Bush, he writes, was never willing to contain spending or veto bills that drove the country into deeper and deeper deficits, as Congress abandoned rules that required that the cost of tax cuts be offset by savings elsewhere. “The Republicans in Congress lost their way,” writes Mr. Greenspan, a self-described “libertarian Republican.” </p>

<p>“They swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose” in the 2006 election, when they lost control of the House and Senate…</p>

<p>Of the presidents he worked with, Mr. Greenspan reserves his highest praise for Bill Clinton, whom he described in his book as a sponge for economic data who maintained “a consistent, disciplined focus on long-term economic growth.” </p>

<p>…By contrast, Mr. Greenspan paints a picture of Mr. Bush as a man driven more by ideology and the desire to fulfill campaign promises made in 2000, incurious about the effects of his economic policy, and an administration incapable of executing policy. </p>

<p>…“I indulged in a bit of fantasy, envisioning this as the government that might have existed had Gerald Ford garnered the extra 1 percent of the vote he’d needed to edge past Jimmy Carter,” Mr. Greenspan writes in his memoir. “I thought we had a golden opportunity to advance the ideals of effective, fiscally conservative government and free markets.”</p>

<p>Instead, Mr. Greenspan continued, “I was soon to see my old friends veer off in unexpected directions.” He expected Mr. Bush to veto spending bills, he writes, but was told that the president believed he could control J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, the Republican speaker of the House, better by signing them. </p>

<p>“My friend,” he writes of Mr. O’Neill, “soon found himself to be the odd man out; much to my disappointment, economic policymaking in the Bush administration remained firmly in the hands of the White House staff.” </p>

<p>He was clearly referring to the political team led by Karl Rove at the White House. Mr. Rove was a neighbor of Mr. Greenspan in a leafy enclave near the Potomac River, but the two men almost never had a conversation…

</p>

<p>Too bad all these GOP turncoats don’t speak out while they’re in power.</p>

[thisoldman]

<p>So what’s the difference between $4 Meatballs and fifty cent Meatballs.</p>

[weenie]

<p>$3.50/meatball.</p>

[thisoldman]

<p>the Democratic attendees knew what 50 cent meatballs are and couldn’t see the difference.
the Republican attendees recognized that they overpaid for 50 cent meatballs and know the difference.
the Neo-Cons thought they deserved $4 meatballs</p>

[tommybill]

<p>From post 3…. all the fine Regents University law grads in the DOJ respond, "So SUE me…”</p>

<p>If the Regents University law grads were sued, how many of them do you think would hire Regents University law grads as their defense attyorney…</p>

[mini]

<p>Actually, they were hoping for judges…;)</p>

[poetsheart]

<p>Interesting…</p>

<p>So, how many (what percentage) Regent University Law grads are there in the Bush Justice Dept?</p>

<p>Weenie, thanks for the excepts from Greenspan’s book. I found this one especially interesting: “My friend,” he writes of Mr. O’Neill, “soon found himself to be the odd man out; much to my disappointment, economic policymaking in the Bush administration remained firmly in the hands of the White House staff.” White House Staffers?!:eek:</p>