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You Can’t, Unless You Are The Government

In February of this year, during a speech. Barack Obama admonished companies by exclaiming:

“You can’t get corporate jets, you can’t go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayer’s dime.”

This was a direct stab at the companies that had taken, or in many cases forced to take, bailout money. He wanted to make it clear that as long as the taxpayer was footing the bill there would be no trips to these kinds of places no matter what the reason.

Of course this idea did not stop Obama from attending a fundraiser for Harry Reid in, you guessed it, Las Vegas. And he did it on the taxpayer dime.

It would appear as if it is OK to take these kinds of trips if you are the government because now we have word that the Social Security Administration sent at least 675 employees to Phoenix Arizona for a conference at the Valley resort. The cost of the trip was $700,000. This is 700 thousand dollars spent by an organization that has been raped of all its money by the federal government and will be in the red by 2016. They spent close to three quarters of a million dollars on a conference with classes such as “Techniques to Empower You,” “Mentoring the Generations,” and “Emotional Intelligence.”

The article also states that the SSA did not mention the after hours activities though I am not sure any of them cost the taxpayer because I would assume they were not paid for with taxpayer money (though it would not surprise me if taxpayer money was used).

Considering how terrible Social Security is and how it only allows people to live at poverty level while it plummets toward insolvency, one has to wonder who thought this would be a good idea.

Social Security is a boondoggle to begin with and should be gradually moved over to the private sector where the money people pay in belongs to them and they can decide how to invest it. This would generate more wealth and allow people to retire in comfort (something Democrats oppose because self sufficient voters are harder to scare into voting Democrat). This incident just demonstrates the atmosphere in the SSA. Waste money, make poor decisions, and don’t worry about it. The taxpayer will foot the bill.

If accounts were private we would not need 675 managers to run things (not to mention the tens of thousands of employees) and they could not go to training conferences that cost a fortune. There would be no need for all these people who run a poor system that has a return of less than 1% on investment.

Maybe that was their share of the bailout money.

You can’t waste taxpayer money unless you are the government.

Gotcha.

ABC 15.com

Big Dog

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