Your Tax Money: for booze, iPods, lingerie and a $13,000 steak dinner.

That must have been a really BIG steak!

Federal employees have been (caught) using government credit cards buy all kinds of cool stuff! Like a spending spree with free money. The stuff they bought? Forget the 10K toilet seat... these guys bought lingerie, went gambling, bought iPods, online dating services, and a $13,000 steak-and-liquor dinner, this all according to a new audit from the Government Accountability Office. The GAO found some abuses in a purchasing program meant to improve bureaucratic efficiency. Sure did! Apparently there's no accountability - so that sure did improve efficiency!

Some of the highlights in the report:
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. Boring old basic fraud.

What's funny is that it wasn't noticed until a whistle-blower 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. Should have spent 10-20K for payoffs to the "little people" Deb. I mean, what the hell, it wasn't your money anyway - spend it wisely!

More fraud but this time with the U.S. Postal Service. 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. What's that, only two strikes? 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. He still got a paycheck - got free match.com and wasn't named in the report. Pretty sweet deal.

In a case that 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.

Johnny Walker Gold?

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. "Conference" wasn't defined. I'm guessing it was actually a "wedding." Just a guess. I mean, I'm a postal customer, and so are you. He 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."

Uh... what?

Unfortunately the report didn't include any further details, but it says a State Department official "agreed that the charge was questionable."

Overall the GAO found that 41 percent of the transactions it examined did not follow government purchasing rules. The problem was worse with larger purchases: Forty-eight percent of transactions over $2,500 were in violation of federal rules, the report said.

Levin said in a statement that "although internal controls over government credit cards have improved, we still have a long way to go to stop the fraudulent use of these cards."

The words NO SHIZNIT come to my immediate mind as a retort.

Solution? How about the requirement for TWO signatures for expenditures over $2500? That's it.

You know what burns me the most about this report? That there's no rule that the US government has to buy US Products unless there's absolutely no alternative. Wait, what? Surely Cap'n - I thought you were going to rail about the wasteful government and the bureaucrats carelessly spending your money! (like you usually do...) At least bitch about them getting caught!

Look, Dems or Repbubs - or just 20 year GS-11 level government employees - there are some people who take advantage of not having responsibility or accountability for "Free" money. That's never going to change - and the sooner I come to terms with that fact, the happier I'm going to be --

But if you're going to spend thousands on booze for, what, The Stamp Increase Awareness Dinner following the wedding of Postmaster General's Daughter - you better be buying American products and services.

iPods - fine. That's in country, and probably going to data entry people, or someone's kid, I can pretend they're going to soldiers in the field? But when I hear that iPods are going out as body armor - yeah, I might bitch about it. But at least it's not a Sony product! Courvoisier is French. Belvedere Vodka is Polish. Well, as long as it wasn't Absolut... (see earlier posts)

If you're a government stooge suckin' off the teat of the people who bother to pay their fief to the government thieves - at least have the decency to spend it on American goods and services. I think if you get caught using US tax money inappropriately, sure, you're up for a good old fashioned tar and feather event. Should be on TV. But if you're not even going to spend my money on American stuff - oh, that's worse. You should get exiled for that.

Send 'em to France.