U.S. Justice Department agencies spent too much for food at conferences, in one case serving $16 muffins and in another dishing out beef Wellington appetizers that cost $7.32 per serving, an audit found.
“Some conferences featured costly meals, refreshments, and themed breaks that we believe were indicative of wasteful or extravagant spending,” the Justice Department’s inspector general wrote in a report released today.
The inspector general reviewed a sample of 10 Justice Department conferences held between October 2007 and September 2009 at a cost of $4.4 million, a period that included the administrations of Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Barack Obama. The Justice Department spent $73.3 million on conferences in fiscal 2009, compared with $47.8 million a year earlier, according to the report.
The muffins were served at an August 2009 conference of the Executive Office for Immigration Review and the beef Wellington was offered at a February 2008 meeting hosted by the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys. A March 2009 conference of the Office on Violence Against Women served Cracker Jack, popcorn and candy bars at a single break, costing $32 per person, according to the report.
The report is a follow-up to one from 2007 that found the Justice Department had few controls to limit the costs of conference planning, food and beverages. That audit cited a reception that included Swedish meatballs costing $5 apiece.
Spending $32 per person for snacks at a conference? “Stimulus!”
If you don’t understand that, ask Paul Krugman. He won a Nobel Prize, y’know.
“In Ohio, which McGovern eventually lost by a slim 19,000 vote margin, his handlers figure perhaps 10,000 of those were directly attributable to his public association with Warren Beatty, who once told a reporter somewhere that he favored legalizing grass. This was picked up by that worthless a–hole Sen. Henry Jackson (D-Wash.) and turned into a major issue.
“So it fairly boggles the mind to think what Humphrey’s people might do with a photo of McGovern shaking hands with a person who once ran for Sheriff of Aspen on the Freak Power ticket, with a platform embracing the use and frequent enjoyment of Mescaline by the Sheriff and all his Deputies at any hour of the day or night that seemed Right.”
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72
Guilt-by-association smears are an ever-present danger in political life, and my carefully cultivated bad reputation probably keeps me from scoring some “exclusives” I might otherwise get. But the upside is that there is no one trying to tempt me through the revolving door that separates journalism from politics.
No Republican, not even Herman Cain, could get away with hiring me as a “media consultant” or “communications strategist” or some other type of glorified P.R. gig, so there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that I’ll ever become Jay Carney, and thank God for that.
Nor is it likely that I’ll be invited onto one of Sean Hannity’s “Great American” panels, because the executives at Fox News understand that their on-air choices are seen as officially symbolic of Conservatism, Inc. Every sin committed by Roger Ailes is somehow blamed on the GOP, and so even if I were as telegenic as Megyn Kelly, they’d never invite me to do the pundit gig on Fox. I’d stand a better chance of becoming a regular contributor on Rachel Maddow’s show.
What Tucker can’t seem to bring himself to admit is that about 10 minutes worth of careful editing would have put Jeff Poor’s article into the safety zone where not even the most zealous Palinista, nor even Sarah Palin herself, would have had any cause to complain:
Mike Tyson Targets Sarah Palin
in Obscene Sexual, Racial Rant
Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson engaged in a lurid and lengthy sexual rant about Sarah Palin during an interview broadcast on a Las Vegas radio station.
Referring to unsubstantiated claims in a new book that the former Alaska governor once dated former professional basketball player Glenn Rice, Tyson fantasized at length about Palin having sex with another former NBA player, Dennis Rodman. Both Rice and Rodman are black, and Tyson made graphic reference to racial stereotypes as he asked KWWV-AM hosts Paul Howard, Mitch Moss and Seat Williams to “imagine Palin with a big old black stallion.”
Tyson, who was convicted in 1992 of raping a teenage beauty pageant contestant, asserted that Palin “needed” to have sex with a black man, an experience he said “every white girl” desires in order to “get that out of their system.”
“Every uppity white middle class [woman says] . . . ‘Gotta get me a black man before I go prosper in this white world,'” Tyson said during the interview, provoking hysterical laughter from the hosts of the “Gridlock” program on the ESPN Radio affiliate station.
Saying he had read Joe McGinniss’s new “unauthorized biography” of the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, Tyson said, “Isn’t that beautiful to hear Palin [had sex with] a black man? . . . Her and her sister were into that stuff.” . . .
An article written that way might have included a sentence to the effect, “A spokesman for Governor Palin did not respond to a request for comment on Tyson’s remark.” And that kind of article could have led to a discussion of harm that results from such stereotypical attitudes.
Instead, we have Tucker Carlson trying to defend the legitimacy of a bad editorial judgment. And there are multiple layers of irony in the fact that I’m the guy pointing this out. Chief among the several ironies is this: When I was on the national desk at The Washington Times, I was always the “loose cannon” in the newsroom testing the boundaries of what could be printed in our “family-friendly” newspaper. Go ask Ken Hanner, Victor Morton or Geoff Etnyre how many times as an assistant editor I got chewed out for sending to the copy desk articles that got flagged as including language that senior editors disapproved.
Given that background, I can empathize with the predicament that Jeff Poor and Tucker Carlson have found themselves in, but cannot for the life of me understand Carlson’s defense. He seems to have the idea that Greta Van Susteren (and Tammy Bruce and Jedadiah Bila and everyone else who objected to the Tyson article) somehow expected the Daily Caller to ignore this incident. Carlson is pretending that the only way to report the story was the way that Jeff Poor reported it.
Allegations that the article represents an anti-Palin attitude — or a “boys club” environment — at the Daily Caller could be dismissed if Carlson would admit that the article, as originally published, was gratuitously offensive.
Of course, I have at times been accused of writing gratuitously offensive things on my blog, but that’s just me. This blog is not a publishing company into which people were invited to invest millions of dollars to create the “conservative answer to the Huffington Post,” which was Tucker Carlson’s original selling point for the Daily Caller. When I responded to Carlson’s boastful May 2009 announcement by saying that his proposed project “better not suck,” I scarcely expected that by September 2011, the Daily Caller would be accused by Greta Van Susteren of inciting sexual violence against women. Nor did I expect I’d be laughing myself to tears over Richard McEnroe’s “Downfall” parody:
And if you feel an urge to hit the tip jar — hey, don’t fight the feeling!
The original article is neutrally written. There is not a suggestion of the writer’s belief that Mike Tyson is out-of-bounds, not a word of criticism for the ESPN radio hosts for taking the interview here. . . .
Sometimes it’s hard to read tone, but the sense I got from the original piece was that the best jokes were being highlighted. . . .
Locker-room sex stuff. And just in case it isn’t already risque enough, Tyson starts throwing in some weird racial stuff, too.
Which is, I think, perhaps unfair to Jeff Poor. I know Jeff Poor, who did good work for Newsbusters, and don’t believe that he quoted Tyson’s remarks with an idea of derogating Palin.
What I actually think is that a lot of younger people, accustomed to watching Comedy Central where this kind of “humor” is commonplace, take it for granted. And in the Internet age, where everything is just one Google search away, it might seem that there is no harm in repeating whatever is already “out there.” Tucker Carlson is 10 years younger than me, and Jeff Poor is also young, and this is probably the reason why they reacted to the criticism the way they did.
The blog-war aspect of this incident rather dwindles into insignficance when measured against the apparent willingness of a Las Vegas radio station to allow Mike Tyson to spew such filthy and derogatory racial stereotypes.
And I still wish that was the focus of discussion: Why did these radio sports-talk guys raise this Palin question with Mike Tyson, then laugh at his response as if it were the funniest thing they’d ever heard? You don’t have to be a prude or a women’s studies major to be stunned by what Ace euphemistically calls the “weird racial stuff” in Tyson’s diatribe. A thorough discussion of that, however, would require mining another layer of irony I’d rather not deal with this afternoon, so I’ll content myself to quote my original reaction:
Now that I think of it, have we heard from Jill Filipovic, Jessica Valenti, Melissa McEwan or any of the other feminists? Because if Sarah Palin weren’t a Republican, I think they’d probably be outraged by this.
The damage to The Daily Caller is enormous. . . . This is a disaster compounded by the folks at The Daily Caller digging while in a hole, and digging even harder when people called them out on it, and doubling down on the digging as it went viral.
If you haven’t paid much attention to public schools in recent years, you may not realize that “anti-bullying” messages are now ubiquitous, often promoted in the name of “tolerance” for gay youth. And this theme has atracted outspoken support from Hollywood celebrities:
Last September, the “It Gets Better Project” was launched online as a place for adults — including high-profile celebrities — to reassure troubled and potentially suicidal lesbian, gay and bisexual youth that despite the taunting, bullying and physical abuse they face as adolescents and teens, life improves after high school. . . .
This message was posted to YouTube in May as part of the “It Gets Better” campaign:
The kid in that video was 14-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer. He committed suicide Sunday, which would seem to contradict the slogans and Self-Esteem Theory behind the “It Gets Better” campaign.
Perhaps these kids need another message. Pondering the plight of Jamey Rodemeyer, and understanding what teenagers are like, I’m having a hard time imagining an anti-bullying regime rigorous enough to protect kids like Jamey from insults. It’s just unrealistic.
The essential point of “It Gets Better” is correct: High school sucks.
It just does, for the vast majority of kids, without regard to sexuality. There are a relatively small number of popular kids — the jocks and cheerleaders, mainly — for whom high school is the Best Time of Their Lives, but for the rest of us mere mortals, high school was four years of relentless tedium interrupted only by occasional moments of misery and humilation. Continue reading ‘It Gets Better,’ Except When It Doesn’t and Then Teenagers Commit Suicide →
“On the other side of a tall fence that Todd built to protect what remains of his family’s privacy is a rental home currently occupied by Joe McGinniss, a journalist with a contract for a book about Palin. When McGinniss moved in and the Palins complained about this bizarre intrusion, McGinniss went on NBC’s Today show to portray himself as the victim of ‘the same kind of tactic that the Nazi troopers used in Germany in the ’30s.’ As ironic as that claim may be, perhaps the greater irony is that anytime Sarah publicly mentions the media’s evident vendetta against her, her critics accuse her of ‘whining.'”
— “Meeting Mr. Palin,” The American Spectator, Sept. 3, 2010
The Creepy Joe Worldwide Lie Tour is under way, as McGinniss publicizes his book-length hit piece on Sarah Palin with the help of his friends in the liberal media. And what he reveals in interviews is the warped mentality of Palin-haters, who project their own inner evil onto the target of their hatred. Here is Creepy Joe on CNN saying, “The Palins scare people. The Palins intimidate, they threaten”:
So powerful is this perverse process of psychological projection that it causes the Palin-haters to blame Palin for their hatred of her.
She is responsible for everything, and they are responsible for nothing: The “Sarah Made Me Do It” defense provides a blanket excuse for any wrongdoing by those afflicted with Palin Derangement Syndrome.
(4:11) “She has no sense of proportion. This was a minor annoyance. I can see – I can’t quite imagine the situation being reversed, but I can see if somebody who I thought was doing work that was not going to redound to my benefit moved in right next door to me, I’d wish that that hadn’t happened. But I think I would be an adult about it.“
McGinniss accuses Palin of getting “hysterical” and says if she hadn’t gone public with her complaints, “nobody would have even known about it.” Of course, all of the Palin-haters with whom McGinniss associated while in Alaska — including the vile Jesse Griffin — would have heard all about it from their “fan” Creepy Joe.
McGinniss says Palin “really immersed me in her ability to stir up hate by telling vicious lies about people,” when it was he who chose to immerse himself in the twisted world of Palin-haters who have been telling vicious lies about Palin for years. And then, at 6:14 in the WNYC interview:
“Even this past week, there’s a guy who has a Web site, a right-wing Web site, who linked to SarahPAC, the political action committee, and said he’s raising money to donate to Todd’s legal fund to pay Todd’s legal fees after he’s arrested for seeking me out and beating me up so badly that I have to be hospitalized.”
And who is to blame for this? “Sarah incites hatred,” says McGinniss. “and that hatred among her people can easily turn to violence, so it’s something you’re constantly aware of.”
You see how Palin serves as the all-purpose scapegoat upon which Palin-haters like McGinniss project responsibility for their own hatred. McGinniss deflects criticism of his intrusive behavior and his reckless recycling of unsubstantiated smears against Palin by projecting the blame onto Palin, knowing full well that his fellow liberals share his hatred and will therefore accept his blame-Palin explanation.
Sarah Palin deserves to be hated, McGinniss and liberals everywhere believe. Sarah Palin deserves to be stalked and maligned by her anonymous enemies, McGinniss and liberals everywhere believe.
And if you disagree with the universal opinion of liberaldom — if you think that Todd Palin would be entirely justified if he gave McGinniss the Mother Of All Ass-Whuppings — then you are the one inciting hatred that “can easily turn to violence.”
Well, it hasn’t turned to violence yet, but you never know, eh?
This, of course, is how the debate on taxes, the deficit, the economy, etc will be framed from here on out – all the way up until the November 2012 elections, all in a repeat effort by our mainstream media to try to give Their Chosen Candidate four more years in office by way of shameless, unprecedented demagoguery and outright deception.
And this effort will probably fail. Despite the media’s rave reviews for Obama’s Fightin’ Liberal speech, their enthusiasm will likely prove short-lived. Most journalists are liberals, but they’re also motivated by a powerful herd instinct — natural-born bandwagon-jumpers. Their liberal bias won’t prevent them from abandoning a failure, because nobody wants to be on a loser’s bandwagon, and it is becoming increasingly clear that Obama is a loser.
What is killing Obama is not politics, but his own policies. The failure to revive the economy — and, indeed, Obama’s policies have made a bad economy worse — is the underlying cause of all Obama’s political woes, and no matter how much liberals praise his Fightin’ Liberal speech, it won’t do a damn thing to bring about economic growth. So they can attempt to “frame the debate” however they want, and the result will be the same: Obama’s unpopularity will continue to be the dominant political fact of the 2012 campaign.
Just a few winters ago my wife and I took our daughters to witness the inauguration of a man who had campaigned on hope and embodied possibility. We are pretty immune to political euphoria, but, circulating among the footsore pilgrims, we could imagine our country had embraced the idea that we were all in this together. When the newly sworn-in president congratulated us all on choosing unity of purpose over recriminations and worn-out dogmas, we wanted to believe that we had done exactly that.
We already knew that New York Times editor Bill Keller was a gullible chump. We are surprised he would admit it so openly.
It recycles ideas that couldn’t get passed even when Democrats controlled Congress. . . .
This was the sort of speech that sounded better when Ted Kennedy was delivering it. The result is that we will get neither short-term stimulus nor long-term debt reduction anytime soon, and I’m a sap for thinking it was possible.
Yes, I’m a sap. I believed Obama when he said he wanted to move beyond the stale ideological debates that have paralyzed this country.
And here is why you’re a sap, Brooks: You looked at the long era of Republican ascendance (1981-2006) and decided that the cause of GOP policy failure was that Republicans were too conservative. Ergo, you reasoned, some sort of “moderate” bipartisan compromise was the solution. But the failures of the GOP are due to other reasons entirely — including the constant stream of disinformation flowing from the media — and so the bipartisan compromise approach you recommend only leads to Democrat victories.
. . . for us to solve this problem, everybody, including the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations, have to pay their fair share.
If we’re going to make spending cuts — many of which we wouldn’t make if we weren’t facing such large budget deficits — then it’s only right that we ask everyone to pay their fair share.
. . . a larger plan that’s balanced –- a plan that asks the most fortunate among us to pay their fair share, just like everybody else.
Either we ask the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share in taxes, or we’re going to have to ask seniors to pay more for Medicare.
And I will veto any bill that changes benefits for those who rely on Medicare but does not raise serious revenues by asking the wealthiest Americans or biggest corporations to pay their fair share.
Taxing those who Obama calls the wealthiest of Americans won’t solve our deficit problem – and it certainly won’t solve our spending problem. The top 10 percent of earners in America already pay about 70 percent of federal income taxes. And adopting the flawed deficit reduction proposal of taxing the wealthiest Americans would require mathematically unfeasible tax rates.
“Fairness” is not a valid economic argument. It’s a political argument. And the Laffer Curve suggests that Obama’s politically motivated plan to make the rich “pay their fair share” would actually result in less tax revenue, not more. The rich will engage in tax-avoidance strategies, or the drag on investment will slow the economy, or quite possibly both.
As Heritage senior fellow Patrick Louis Knudsen says, Obama’s plan “merely perpetuates a misunderstanding of the fundamental problem: deficits and debt are symptoms; the underlying illness is excessive and uncontrolled spending.”
