$16 Muffins. A Story of Government Waste

[Deleted]

Lol 76 dollars per person? Seriously I've paid a lot more than that for a meal. I pay around 7 bucks for coffee.

Seriously people will do anything to distract you from the fact taxes are the only solution. Tax those earning over 1 million. For christ sake the highest tax rate used to be 90%! Now it's what? 40%??

[Deleted]

Good quality Beef wellingtons can be expensive, prime beef is not cheap.

[Dacien]

Making them worse? Really? This is what becomes of ANY political talking on these boards. Stupidity comes crawling out of the woodwork and burrows into these threads. Clueless people should admit to being clueless and just not post.

Sound arguments can be made for Obama's bungling of the economy.

[I No I FeaR I]

Making them worse? Really? This is what becomes of ANY political talking on these boards. Stupidity comes crawling out of the woodwork and burrows into these threads. Clueless people should admit to being clueless and just not post.

Bush increased the deficit by something like 2 trillion?...in both terms
Obama has increased the deficit by something like 4-5 trillion i believe....in his ONE term.

"If you voted for Obama in 2008 to prove you're not a racist, vote for someone else in 2012 to prove you're not an idiot"

[Deleted]

Good quality Beef wellingtons can be expensive, prime beef is not cheap.

A home cooked Wellington (English style) cost me like 35 Euro for four people, that's 8.75 per person. Apparently mine costs more per person!

---------- Post added 2011-09-22 at 12:43 AM ----------

Bush increased the deficit by something like 2 trillion?...in both terms
Obama has increased the deficit by something like 4-5 trillion i believe....in his ONE term.

"If you voted for Obama in 2008 to prove you're not a racist, vote for someone else in 2012 to prove you're not an idiot"

Implying that Obama did it. Nothing to do with the stock market crashing, recession and rising unemployment. Yup, he just had some lulz.

[I No I FeaR I]

A home cooked Wellington (English style) cost me like 35 Euro for four people, that's 8.75 per person. Apparently mine costs more per person!

---------- Post added 2011-09-22 at 12:43 AM ----------



Implying that Obama did it. Nothing to do with the stock market crashing, recession and rising unemployment. Yup, he just had some lulz.

Except that he constantly talked about CHANGE CHANGE CHANGE.
The only CHANGE I'm seeing is the change left over in my pocket....

[Deleted]

A home cooked Wellington (English style) cost me like 35 Euro for four people, that's 8.75 per person. Apparently mine costs more per person![COLOR="red"]

Wish i could have tasted them, hard to find a good beef wellington where i live.

[Caiada]

Except that he constantly talked about CHANGE CHANGE CHANGE.
The only CHANGE I'm seeing is the change left over in my pocket....

There's no way to 'change' a financial crisis that had been slowly boiling over since the last decade. When depressions happen, tax revenue goes away and deficits increase. It's got nothing to do with whoever the heck's in charge at the time crap hits the fan.

[Deleted]

There's no way to 'change' a financial crisis that had been slowly boiling over since the last decade. When depressions happen, tax revenue goes away and deficits increase. It's got nothing to do with whoever the heck's in charge at the time crap hits the fan.

Recessions don't usually last this long without improving. Yes, Bushes post-2008 hurt the economy, so Obama would get some slack there. However Obama continued the same path of economic failure as Bush.

[stabetha]

A home cooked Wellington (English style) cost me like 35 Euro for four people, that's 8.75 per person. Apparently mine costs more per person!

---------- Post added 2011-09-22 at 12:43 AM ----------



Implying that Obama did it. Nothing to do with the stock market crashing, recession and rising unemployment. Yup, he just had some lulz.

but he doubled our debt to "fix" those problems and they only got worse. now he wants more money to throw at the problem (and his union leader buddies)

[Psilar]

Only thing I find 'wat' is the cookies and muffins.

$76 per person restaurant isn't that unheard of, is it expensive? Yes, however it isn't that unheard of in the restaurant industry. If you want a very good example, go to Las Vegas, you can see $100-200 per person there.

However, this being a 'conference' however doesn't necessarily make it necessary to go to a 4-5star restaurant though, there is no need for that.

Considering they can potentially come in at $18-20 per pound for the tenderloin its not that unheard of.

Is it a waste of money? Well if its for a conference, maybe. However for those special night outs for your family, the prices aren't that awkward. (except for the cookie / muffins, thats just weird). Now the biggest issue is that this isn't 'their' own money. That's what bothers me the most. If this is coming out of their own pocket then I wouldn't give a damn.

The point is...76 dollars at a grocery store will get a single person through 10-14 days eating 3 full meals. The idea we're paying 1 person for 1 meal is absurd.

[Deleted]

Bush increased the deficit by something like 2 trillion?...in both terms
Obama has increased the deficit by something like 4-5 trillion i believe....in his ONE term.

"If you voted for Obama in 2008 to prove you're not a racist, vote for someone else in 2012 to prove you're not an idiot"

I like how this guy is quoting someone complaining about clueless people.

[Woogs]

A home cooked Wellington (English style) cost me like 35 Euro for four people, that's 8.75 per person. Apparently mine costs more per person!

Key word is: Hors d'oeuvre. That's $7.32 for a couple bites.

[Demonakat]

I like how this guy is quoting someone complaining about clueless people.

I like how everyone in here thinks they can do better than current politicians so they throw their opinions on a forum for a video game.

Putting it plain and simple: 16 dollar muffins, they didn't know (or care) the cost of muffin or swedish meatball or brownie or cookie.

Woogs finally got the point that the Beef Wellington that was 7.32 was a SERVING. THAT'S A SMALL PORTION.

Yes, Obama screwed up. Bush screwed up. You can't do better, the amount of money they're dealing with is something your brain won't know how to begin to imagine. That's why they have a whole group of businessmen working this out, sometimes things slip through the cracks.
A bunch of high school educated kids that play video games all day will never be able to fix this countries economy. And even if you're college educated, so what? You still wouldn't be able to do it.

Be rational - complain, but don't say you can do better. Things slip through the cracks, I agree a million dollars to ship some washers is quite extravagant, and those are things that don't need to slip through the cracks. But when you're dealing in trillions of dollars rather than hundreds of dollars, mistakes happen a lot more easily.

[CipherAgent]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...hiK_story.html

$16 Muffins
$10 Cookies
$5 per Swedish Meatball

For every one of these examples, how many are unknown? When people talk about government inefficiency and waste, this is a good example of what they mean. It isn't government's own money, so they aren't compelled to spend wisely.

The real question is this, did the muffins really cost 16 dollars or is it just some way for a corrupt official to hide other wrongful spending? I very much think it's the latter.

[Arog]

I read about this earlier. I can't believe how our tax dollars are spent this just infuriates me and can't wait for the 2012 elections.

Edit- @ CipherAgent, I didn't even think about that possibility..thanks now im even angrier! lol

[Provocation]

The government is like a bunch of children and we are funding their little childish games. Those stupid kids prop up competition between a monopsony (i.e. the government) paying over-price vs. the people.

Now how did they get this money? By printing it of course. But do we get any of that money? No! We have to work for it! And we won't even get any new freshly printed money until a lot of the slowly "unnoticeable" inflation kicks in.

And by that time we are already paying more taxes for their wasteful spending! Well I say we cut them off and handle the debt with a new tax code based off of Austrian Economics, the ones who've been right!

[DraconusIX]

The caterer they used probably normally cost that much. The problem was they did not shop around for a discount. No different then a thousand other different areas where people dont shop around as much as they should because it is not there money.

On the otherhand, government has bigger issues with a lot of its regulations that cause inefficiency. Not uncommon for a high ranking government official with a Senior executive service title who makes 170k a year to have to spend 2 extra hours (at like $100 an hour) to go pick up and return a rental car from an inefficient carrier because the government wants to save $20 by using the location that you have to take a shuttle to from the airport. Or that same employee spending 5 hours of a 40 hour week doing travel reimbursements because the forms are so obtuse and bad.

There are thousands of contracts that are worse deals then $16 muffins, just too few have the knowledge or intelligence to spot them. An example is how the navy paid double what it should of for some laptops, then 6 months after the laptops arrived, the admiral who made the deal got a "executive level job" with that laptop company...

[Wells]

I agree with that 100%. They should find actual business minded people to do the government spending, not politicians.

MBAs are incredibly common among politicians.

[Dacien]

MBAs are incredibly common among politicians.

I don't think the problem is business-minded people in government, though, as RAWRF suggests. I think the problem is intrinsic to government, that the money they collect is not earned the same way you or I earn money, or as a business does. Most of us are careful with our money because we had to work for it. We've seen time and time again the results of dumping millions of dollars into the hands of politicians. Bridge to Nowhere comes to mind. Less well-known examples are everywhere. Supervisors blowing hundreds of thousands on their Facebook pages (*cough* Zev Yaroslavsky *cough) may not seem like a lot, but when you add it all up, it makes a big difference. Like raid buffs.