Taxpayers foot the bill for Justice Department’s $16 muffins

Taxpayers foot the bill for Justice Department’s $16 muffins


The Justice Department spent more than $120 million in fiscal 2008 and 2009 to host law enforcement conferences across the country, many of which featured “extravagant and wasteful” costs for food, beverages and event planning, including spending $16 on each of 250 muffins served at an August 2009 legal conference in Washington, D.C., a report said Tuesday.

Acting Inspector General Cynthia Schnedar, in an audit report that examined taxpayer expenditures incurred by the Justice Department at 10 of 1,832 conferences held during fiscal 2008 and 2009, said investigators also found that another conference featured a lunch that cost $76 per person and coffee costing more than $1 per ounce. Other costly items cited in the report included a $32-per-person snack break consisting of Cracker Jacks, popcorn and candy bars, $7.32 Beef Wellington hors d’oeuvres, $10 cookies and $5 Swedish meatballs.

The numbers are included in a report that examined expenditures incurred by the Justice Department during fiscal 2008 and 2009 following a 2007 audit by the Inspector General's Office that also identified what it described at the time as “extravagant costs associated with food and beverages and event planning activities.” The new report said that while it found that the Justice Department had instituted conference cost guidelines since the 2007 report, individual components within the agency “are not taking all necessary steps to minimize conference-related costs and to eliminate wasteful spending.”

The report noted that the department hosted or participated in 1,832 conferences in fiscal 2008 and 2009, costing a total of $121 million. The new audit examined 10 conferences that occurred between October 2008 and September 2009 and cost over $4.4 million. It focused on the two major conference cost categories that the September 2007 report revealed as most potentially susceptible to wasteful spending – event planning services and food and beverages.

“Our audit found that two DOJ components, the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) and the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW), spent approximately $600,000 in grant funds to procure event planning services for five conferences without demonstrating that these firms offered the most cost effective logistical services,” Ms. Schnedar said. “The audit also found that neither OJP nor the OVW required event planners to track and report salary and benefit costs.

“As a result, the mandated DOJ conference cost reports submitted to Congress did not include over $500,000 of the $600,000 that it spent on event planning services for the five conferences we examined where event planners were used,” she said.

The audit also identified what it called “unallowable and unnecessary event planning costs,” including the hiring of a consultant as an event planner for one conference who lived in Anchorage, Alaska, to act as the liaison with the conference hotel located in Palm Springs, California. The audit questioned as “unnecessary” nearly $3,500 in Justice Department funds paid to the consultant to travel three times between Alaska and California, especially since the event had been held at the same venue three times previously. Also questioned as unnecessary in the audit were over $29,000 in travel, lodging and food and beverage costs for a face-to-face planning meeting held in Palm Springs in January and February 2008 that was attended by Justice department employees and event planning consultants.

In a response to the Inspector General’s report, Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden sent a memo to all department heads saying that as the department works to accomplish its mission, “We must also make certain we do so with a focus on accountability and transparency to the American taxpayers.” He told the department heads to ensure that financial resources are utilized in the most advantageous and responsible manner.

“I want to emphasize the need to maximize our financial resources, ensure we are prudent in our spending, and avoid the fact or appearance of extravagant spending, especially during these challenging financial times,” he said.


http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/sep/20/taxpayers-foot-bill-justice-department-16-muffins/

This should come as no surprise coming from the endless vacation administration. Meanwhile, eat your peas, America.


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$16 each for muffins??????????????

Let them eat peas!

 

Chicago's Best Muffins?


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....and these DC scumbags have the unmitigated gall to fill my television screen with endless demands for more of my money.

The "revolution" will begin with an ink pen and a 1040 form.

 

$16 muffins...that's the Obama's administration's idea of 'shared sacrifice'

 

I wonder how many $16 muffins Michelle ate

Barry, does this dress make my ass look fat?

no, it's the $16 muffins

 

Perhaps the Obama administration will remind us that DOJ made some extra cash this year selling AK-47s to Mexican drug cartels.

Too bad about the Border Patrol agent killed by those guns, and the over 200 murders in Mexico now linked to Fast & Furious weapons...

Those muffins are paid for, dude.

 

Sounds like haterade is in your blood. I personally think Michelle Obama is very attractive, and as far as first ladies go, she'd be a close second to Jackie Kennedy.

Seriously though, you probably have no idea how much your man (I'm assuming only a woman would hate this much) would probably love to hit Michelle Obama.

 

WTF? I'm not just mad at the Government for agreeing to buy $16 muffins.

I want to know who the (*)(*)(*)(*) baker was who overcharged taxpayers by about $14 per muffin.

WTF is wrong with people these days? Whatever happened to "the government rate".

We have a Government rate, we charge Government people less money than other people because they are the Government and should theoretically be on a very shoestring budget.

Instead, we have rent seeking bakers, toilet seat manufacturers, green industrialists and other people who intentionally overcharge the Government because it's Government and there is no real oversight for Government expense accounts, etc.

The fact is that common every day people of every shape size make and color rob the US Government blind through fraudulent overcharging.

If the Government came to me and said "Mr. Magician, we need your best muffins for this event." I would probably give them 50% off on the muffins and charge them 7 instead of 14 because it's the Government that's taxpayer money.

People don't even think about that anymore, they literally sit around trying to plot ways to overcharge or otherwise defraud the Government and it's led to 50% waste of every dollar Government takes in revenue. People really do look at the US Government and see a cash cow to be exploited on every level.

 

I agree. We can't even negotiate for prescription drugs for seniors. I'm like WTF! Who negotiates these deals? Oh, I got a clue. Nearly every last one of them are either Democrat or Republican.

 

i dont know most men, but i can speak for myself when i say i wouldnt touch that gargantuan beast with someone elses wanger lol, i would never wish that on anyone. besides that she has the teeth of one of those aliens from those sigourney weaver films.....yuck

oh lawd, then there is that issue of her huge ass feet, but we arent gonna get into that because id like to keep dinner down...yeesh lol.

 

oh and i cant believe you guys are figuring this crap out about what our politicians treat themselves too on our tax dollars. hell here in Memphis our politicians use $25000 a month to get punch catered for themselves, because obviously they arent capable of buying lunch themselves. oh and then they like to use our tax dollars to buy brand new really expensive office chairs for themselves,EVERY YEAR.

oh and lets not forget that eventhough they have their own cars,WE have to pay for them to get free gas in rented cars because apparently their cars are too good to drive.

and thats just one city, imagine what these jackoffs waste across the country, especially in the big house of D.C. lol. no wonder they want to raise taxes, they cant get enough of those (*)(*)(*)(*)ed muffins lol.

 

I suggest an optometrist. Michelle Obama is not attractive. She is not uinattractive. She is a plain-looking, unexceptional middle-aged woman.

 

Ok thats just insane. 16 Dollars for a Muffin?

I love coffee and an occasional muffin. i have frequented literally hundreds of vendors over the years...never in my life have I seen a 16 dollar muffin.
This smacks of the guy who said he needs 200K a year to feed his family.

Like to know whats really going on here with the money, I honestly cannot believe the muffins were 16 dollars each...noone would buy them.

 

Well to each his own I guess. Call it like I see it. And my eye sight is 20/20 and my tastes are exceptional. But you'd have to know me to understand that.

 

no (*)(*)(*)(*), if i got ahold of a $16 muffin i sure as hell wouldnt eat it, id frame the (*)(*)(*)(*)ed thing in a glass case so people can look at the wonder that is a $16 muffin lol.

 

translation: You will screw anything that is breathing.

 

LOL, well, my limitis would probably stop about a mile before I got to you so that should tell you something. I'll let my track record speaks for itself. There is no shame in my game. I might not be a Denzel, but I'm sure a helluva lot better looking than most of the people who claim Michelle Obama is not attractive. Not bragging, just pointing out the obvious.

 

Michelle Obama is not quite ugly.

But she's not very attractive either.

Her failing is cashing in on her husbands job by going on extravagant vacations at taxpayer expense.

 

Her failings? Hmm, I forgot every first lady before her just cleaned up the White House, prepared dinner and walked the dog everyday.

 

No accounting for taste...btw, from left to right, Princess Letizia of Spain, Carla Bruni, the wife of France’s president, and Moochelle Obama, seen here together. If you want to compare first ladies, it is interesting to note which one is always going on about what we should eat and how much.



Some guys like big butts...

 

did anyone even consider that perhaps that $16 included butter and margarine to spread onto the muffins? With the corn subsidies for using it as expensive fuel, margarine prices have soared

$16 seems absolutely reasonable to me and a small price to pay for our well paid, taxpayer funded bureacrats. What would you have them do, go to Sams club or Costco and save the taxpayers $15 per muffin?

 

Lets be fair here, we don't know what's in the muffins, and judging by the actions/inactions of the Justice Department I might well believe there are 'special' ingredients that drive up the cost.

 

That one on the right looks good....

from space.

 

Yes, you can see it, along with China's great wall, and those odd strewn rock designs from CHARIOTS OF THE GODS.

Those Euro gals really make Travis tingle in that funny place.