Seeing this warmed the cockles of my heart. The GSA's shenanigans are an easy target though. This same exact kind of item by item grilling should be repeated for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, The Department of Education, The Department of Defense, The USPS, and every single one of the hundreds of agencies and departments in the entire Federal Government and then repeated at the State and then the Municipal level. No exceptions. Bar none. It's easy to just do this one time with one eggregious violation. Now let's do it with EVERYTHING.

Everything but private businesses, right?

" Your company is going bankrupt. You've laid off thousands of workers. Millions of your costumers have lost their investments.

...And you're giving yourself multi-million dollar bonuses and going on trips?
..Okay, as you were."

Accountability is a bitch!

Everything but private businesses, right?

How is there equivalence between a private company that earns wealth by producing good and services that people buy because they want them versus thousands of government agencies that remove wealth involuntarily from taxpayers? Apples and oranges. Regardless, the CFO of most companies would beg to differ that there is no accountability for money on the corporate level. I've seen it first-hand. The finance departments of your average corporation rake you over the coals for purchases as small as fifty bucks and you have to account for every penny.

Now, if you are merely carping about CEO salaries and the relative 'value' they have that's another matter entirely. But I disagree with the attempt to put Federal waste and Corporate waste in the same boat. Any corporation that runs its finances like the Federal Government would be bankrupt in a day.

Everything but private businesses, right?



Well, officers of public companies are (or should be) held to account by their board, their shareholders, and the market. Those are the people with interests at stake. The reason why public spending is held to such standards is because every taxpayer (and citizen) has interests at stake.

Conversely, there is not much good reason to hold a private business accountable for spending. If you have a lemonade stand and you want to spend all your profits on candy, then that's really up to you. If you're mad that your boss spends all the company money on candy (or lets the secretary do so), work somewhere else.

To be clear, I don't like how the US handled the bailouts of private enterprises because it blurs these lines. But that's a generally separate issue.

Ouch. That sounds like a basket case.