Oh, the Washington Post
blared the headline today. Brian Williams called it one of the worst "fleecings of America" last night on the NBC Nightly News. Seems as though the GSA got caught in a big ole mess, and the heads rolled right out of Washington:
The chief of the General Services Administration resigned, two of her top deputies were fired and four managers were placed on leave Monday amid reports of lavish spending at a conference off the Las Vegas Strip that featured a clown, a mind reader and a $31,208 reception.
All bad, too be sure. (Although as a side note, one would think the GSA could afford better, 'er, "entertainment" than a clown and mind reader...particularly in Vegas. But I digress.) With all the bleeting of the media, you'd think this is the worst waste of money ever by the United States government. $1 million for a team building morale conference? Yikes. Then again...
in relation to THIS particular waste of money, nobody reminded us about THIS yesterday:
As much as $60 billion in U.S. funds has been lost to waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade through lax oversight of contractors, poor planning and payoffs to warlords and insurgents, an independent panel investigating U.S. wartime spending estimates.
In its final report to Congress, the Commission on Wartime Contracting said the figure could grow as U.S. support for reconstruction projects and programs wanes, leaving both countries to bear the long-term costs of sustaining the schools, medical clinics, barracks, roads and power plants already built with American tax dollars.
Or, for that matter,
THIS...
In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn (£88bn) in a US -directed effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff's notorious Ponzi scheme.
Now, is what the GSA did a big no-no? Absolutely, and the President was right to be furious and demand accountability. But oddly, the $1 million spent on the Vegas conference is nothing...NOTHING...as to the untold BILLIONS that were lost to waste and fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And yet...we don't hear to much about that on the TV news, do we? We never heard the juxtaposition of a President with political trouble over his "spending" problem in relation to Iraq and Afghanistan? But we certainly heard it in relation to President Obama in relation to the GSA scandal.
Or, put another way...
I'm less interested in the GSA entertaining their employees with a clown...
than with the clown who was President 10 years ago, and the waste and fraud under his watch.