April 19, 2005


My dime, wasted.

Yeah, we don't need no stinking oversight.

The Transportation Security Administration has failed to stop excessive spending, raising concerns of "unethical and possibly illegal activities" by employees who spent $500,000 on artwork and silk plants for a new operations center, according to a government report released yesterday.

The Department of Homeland Security's inspector general blamed TSA management for allowing "waste and abuse" in a $19 million project to build an operations center in Herndon. The facility is a communication center for the agency and monitors all transportation security incidents.
...
Working under a self-imposed deadline in 2003 and with little oversight, some TSA employees spared little expense to outfit the new Transportation Security Operations Center, ignored federal contracting rules and appeared to conceal their spending, according to the inspector general's report. When the center opened in September 2003, it included a 4,200-square-foot gym for 79 employees that cost $350,000; seven kitchens outfitted with numerous appliances, including Sub-Zero refrigerators costing $3,000 each; and large offices -- even for lower-level employees -- equipped with cable television at a cost of $63,099 for three years.

And I just got done shelling out somewhere in the neighborhood of big bucks in taxes for the "responsible adults" in charge of the government. Bullshit. Where my tax dollars should go: paying for schools, programs for womens healthcare and good pre-natal care, roads and mass transit and to make sure that no enlisted family has to live on Food Stamps and that the VA is funded to keep America's promise to my fellow veterans, from this mis-begotten war and ones long past.

I guess I am objectively pro-terror if I call Bullshit on any government agency buying Sub-Zero refrigerators for its employees. I guess I want the terrarists™ to "win" whatever the fuck that means anymore because I see red when I hear about irresponsible shit like this. These are the jerk-offs who tell the TSA workers in the airports to take our fucking sneakers off because we might have WMD's hidden in our laces. Well, I guess since they weren't in Iraq, some deskbound braintrust in Herndon, VA figures they have to be somewhere...probably in some old Navy vets shoe laces.

I guess this is just another in the long line of great examples of what happens when morons control the government. It goes from being government of the people to something the Founding Fathers would not recognize today.

I wonder how the IG at DHS will like inspecting salmon fisheries for terrarists™ in Alaska next summer?

posted by Jo Fish on 04.19.05 at 11:42 PM





Comments:

Honey, all it would take is a couple of inspectors to see that those sub-zero refridgerators are sitting in the houses of TSA administrators. But then, that would cost too many tax dollars for those inspectors.

posted by: Yankee in exile on 04.20.05 at 07:25 AM [permalink]



Funny, isn't it, that they can't find a single dime to fund AMTRAK?

posted by: Nicholas Wourms on 04.21.05 at 12:15 AM [permalink]



The Founding Fathers would recognize it. They would recognize it as King George's reign.

posted by: G. D. Frogsdong on 04.22.05 at 10:31 AM [permalink]






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All the original material © 2002-2003 Jo Fish
steal what you want, all I ask is an attribution of some sort
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