Greta steamed over scam: ‘Just how dumb does the government think we are?’

[happyg]

Irritated that Congress did nothing about employees charging taxpayers for personal expenses, Fox News host Greta Van Susteren went on a warpath Friday.

To provide some background to what got Van Susteren so steamed, the Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general found some disturbing trends among purchases employees made on federal credit cards.

More than half the EPA employees’ charges were for personal expenses, including gifts, gym memberships and expensive dinners.

The March 4 report showed that of the $152,600 in charges reviewed, $79,300 in expenses were “prohibited, improper and erroneous.” Virtually no media reported on the findings until Tuesday, when The Fiscal Times came out with its coverage.

The report’s study of $152,000 in employee charges comprised just a tiny fraction of the $29 million of EPA employee government credit card purchases in fiscal year 2012. And that’s just one agency in a huge federal labyrinth.

“This indicates an ongoing risk,” the report said. “Improved purchase-card oversight could save the government money, which would be especially helpful in the EPA’s current budget environment.”

The Fiscal Times reported: The auditor said that the government issues employees charge cards to bypass the complicated procurement process for small purchases. The card program was created over 30 years ago to “streamline the federal acquisition processes by providing a low-cost, efficient vehicle for obtaining goods and services directly from vendors,” the IG report said. Yet a spate of inspector general reports have highlighted routine abuse within the purchase card program for years.

This is nothing new. Last year, employees at a federal agency few people had ever heard of — the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service — purchased such luxury items as home theater systems and, in one case, leased a $53,000 BMW, according to the Washington Examiner.

This is called embezzlement in the real world, where profit and loss are carefully monitored and corporate survival means every penny is accounted for.

Video at link: http://www.bizpacreview.com/2014/03/15/greta-steamed-over-scam-just-how-dumb-does-the-government-think-we-are-106447?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

[Olivia]

I'm getting really tired of all this corruption in every branch of government and I'm also tired of Darrell Issa.  He never actually gets anything done, just runs his mouth and that's about it.

What's wrong with investigating the EPA and bringing charges against the ones that embezzled this money?  Nothing will be done about it, but at least the general public will know where the money is going.

[240B]

If I did this even once in a private, in any way what so ever, where I work, I would be fired the same day with no fanfare or explanation. I would show up to work, HR would meet me in the parking lot with a box of the stuff in my desk, and that would be that.
 
In the 'real world' this is called 'theft' and abuse of privileges. In government, it is called 'Tuesday'.
 
Having worked in government for a while, I can tell you what this is all about. Not one person will call attention to another person abusing government money for two reasons.
 
First, they all do it, so outing someone else will draw attention to your own issues.
 
Second, you never know how and who the person doing the abuse is connected. You could 'out' an intern, for example, for abuse of privilege and then get an email from his uncle, "the Senator".
 
That stuff happens all the time. Government, because it is so incredibly crazy lucrative, and crazy easy, it is very, very, incestuous. You never know, no matter who the employee is, who it is that you are dealing with or who they know and how they are connected.
 
This tends to keep everyone's mouth shut no matter what.

[Rapunzel]

I'm getting really tired of all this corruption in every branch of government and I'm also tired of Darrell Issa.  He never actually gets anything done, just runs his mouth and that's about it.

What's wrong with investigating the EPA and bringing charges against the ones that embezzled this money?  Nothing will be done about it, but at least the general public will know where the money is going.