Federal Credit Cards Misused

From the Washington Post courtesy of AlterNet:

In the fraudulent category, a longtime employee of the U.S. Forest Service in Oregon, Debra K. Durfey, wrote convenience checks worth more than $640,000 from 2000 to 2006 to a live-in boyfriend, who used the money for gambling, car expenses and mortgage payments, according to the GAO and the Justice Department.

The fraud went undetected until a whistleblower forwarded a tip to the Agriculture Department's inspector general. Durfey, who headed her unit's purchasing office, pleaded guilty last year and was sentenced to 21 months in prison and restitution.

Another fraud case involved the U.S. Postal Service, where an unidentified postmaster used his card to charge $1,100 over a 15-month period for "various online dating services" while he was under investigation for viewing pornography on a government computer. The employee worked out an agreement to remain on sick leave until he retired in 2007 and paid back the money spent on the dating services, according to the GAO report and a Postal Service spokesman.

In a case the GAO deemed "abusive," the Postal Service spent $13,500 in 2006 on a dinner at a Ruth's Chris Steak House in Orlando, including "over 200 appetizers and over $3,000 of alcohol, including more than 40 bottles of wine costing more than $50 each and brand-name liquor such as Courvoisier, Belvedere and Johnny Walker Gold." The tab came to more than $160 a head for the 81 guests, the report said.

Postal Service spokesman Gerry McKiernan said the dinner was held to entertain large postal customers who were already in Florida for another conference, and actually saved money because it combined four events into one. He also defended the payments for alcohol.

"When you're having dinner with customers, it's normal to have a drink," McKiernan said.

In another case at the State Department, a cardholder spent $360 at the Seduccion Boutique in Ecuador to buy "women's underwear/lingerie for use during jungle training by trainees of a drug enforcement program." The report does not include further details but says a State Department official "agreed that the charge was questionable."

Click here for the rest.

It is very important to note that these Federal agencies are under control of the White House. That is, the buck stops with Bush. Or at least it should. My assumption is that the spending spree has been going on the entire time Bush has been in office; it is only recently that the now Democratic Congress has decided to exercise its usual oversight function--the previous Republican Congresses since 2001 seemed quite content to let these people run wild.

That's what you get when you put Republican political appointees, cronies essentially, in charge of various government apparatuses: if your philosophical belief is that government can do nothing for the country, that government "is the problem," and should be "shrunk," then all that taxpayer cash becomes problematic. What do you do with it? Why spend it, of course, on fun and pointless bullshit. As always, Republicans deal with the people's money as though they were pigs at a feeding trough. Whether it's giving massive tax cuts to the rich, or granting highly inflated no-bid contracts to campaign donors, or just buying booze and hookers, the GOP always comes to Washington to rip us off.

Bunch of fucking pigs.



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