Having Fun With Your Tax Dollars

They get to tax you, fund politically unpopular programs and wars, permit oligarchs to profit from inflation and now they get to charge fun and frolick on your dime.

From Hope Yen, Associated Press:
WASHINGTON - Federal employees charged millions of dollars for Internet dating, tailor-made suits, lingerie, lavish dinners and other questionable expenses to their government credit cards over a 15-month period, congressional auditors say.

A report by the Government Accountability Office, obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press, examined spending controls across the federal government following reports of credit-card abuse at departments including Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs.

The review of card spending at more than a dozen departments from 2005 to 2006 found that nearly 41 percent of roughly $14 billion in credit-card purchases, whether legitimate or questionable, did not follow procedure — either because they were not properly authorized or they had not been signed for by an independent third party as called for in federal rules to deter fraud.

For purchases over $2,500, nearly half — or 48 percent — were unauthorized or improperly received.

Read the rest of the story here

It's bad enough the government has the privilege of confiscating our personal incomes and charge taxes on fuel and communications. Making the kind of purchases described in the article should be treated as the crime it really represents - theft of the American people's money.

If you rob a bank or your local 7-11 store, you go to jail. Period. End of discussion. A U.S. Dept. of Agriculture employee was sentenced to 21 months in prison for using her privilege to pamper her boyfriend. This is how all of these cases should be dealt with, but unfortunately this isn't the case.

As the government gets bigger, it becomes more difficult to reign in abusive behavior by individuals working for it. Some of the behaviors came from the Department of Homeland Security, a relative newcomer to the Leviathan, we know as the federal government.

Is it any wonder the Founder of this country stressed for small, limited government?