The General Services Administration (GSA), has a few roles but the biggest is in dealing with commercial companies to get contracted goods and services for the Federal Government. There’s a huge amount of power in working in this government agency as certain employees have influence over billions of dollars of non-military government contracts.
Throughout the history of mankind where there’s influence and power there’s corruption and our Federal Government is ripe with it. All you have to do is Google “GSA Corruption” and there are plenty of stories for you but I’m going to cover the one that occurred in Las Vegas at an employee outing that led to several investigations.
In 2012, top officials for the GSA spent $823,000 for an employee function which included a team-building exercise where they built 25 bikes that cost $75,000 total. The employees who planned the trip spent $130,000 going back and forth to Vegas around 15 times to make sure things were going as planned while enjoying lavish lifestyles each time they visited. Keep in mind these were “business” trips.
Each meal at the conference averaged around $62 per person which in Vegas is extremely out of the norm as food prices are generally very low there. As I’m sure you’ve seen in the news, some of the officials in the GSA had large, beautiful rooms where they hosted private parties.
After extreme pressure from Congressional and Senate Hearings the head of the GSA (Martha Johnson), fired two high-level employees and then she resigned. Before this no one was reprimanded but two employees were on paid administrative leave. Not only this, but it came out during one of the hearings that these two employees were given huge bonuses while on administrative leave. This is sickening.
This wouldn’t happen in the private sector because the employees would’ve been immediately let go and they certainly wouldn’t have received bonuses. This isn’t unlike what happened with Lois Lerner and the IRS. What she did was obvious where her emails were deleted and hard-drives were destroyed after lawsuits were filed (Clinton playbook?). She even had an email account that she did IRS business with that was a personal account under a man’s name. Is there any reason at all where someone would set up an account like this for legitimate reasons? Even with all this, and pleading the 5th, she was allowed to retire with full benefits. Getting reprimanded in the public sector is extremely rare and why the system has become so corrupt.
One of the major reasons the public sector is so messed up is that they don’t run their organizations like the private sector. They don’t worry about budgets. They don’t hold people accountable because then they’d have to hold themselves accountable. They don’t structure themselves to be results oriented.
This is why Trump talked about draining the swamp which includes changing the way government agencies do business. This is one of the reasons he won the election because people were tired of bureaucrats and wanted someone from the private sector who was results oriented. Basically he is far from perfect but at least he’s not a politician.
Throughout the history of mankind where there’s influence and power there’s corruption and our Federal Government is ripe with it. All you have to do is Google “GSA Corruption” and there are plenty of stories for you but I’m going to cover the one that occurred in Las Vegas at an employee outing that led to several investigations.
In 2012, top officials for the GSA spent $823,000 for an employee function which included a team-building exercise where they built 25 bikes that cost $75,000 total. The employees who planned the trip spent $130,000 going back and forth to Vegas around 15 times to make sure things were going as planned while enjoying lavish lifestyles each time they visited. Keep in mind these were “business” trips.
Each meal at the conference averaged around $62 per person which in Vegas is extremely out of the norm as food prices are generally very low there. As I’m sure you’ve seen in the news, some of the officials in the GSA had large, beautiful rooms where they hosted private parties.
After extreme pressure from Congressional and Senate Hearings the head of the GSA (Martha Johnson), fired two high-level employees and then she resigned. Before this no one was reprimanded but two employees were on paid administrative leave. Not only this, but it came out during one of the hearings that these two employees were given huge bonuses while on administrative leave. This is sickening.
This wouldn’t happen in the private sector because the employees would’ve been immediately let go and they certainly wouldn’t have received bonuses. This isn’t unlike what happened with Lois Lerner and the IRS. What she did was obvious where her emails were deleted and hard-drives were destroyed after lawsuits were filed (Clinton playbook?). She even had an email account that she did IRS business with that was a personal account under a man’s name. Is there any reason at all where someone would set up an account like this for legitimate reasons? Even with all this, and pleading the 5th, she was allowed to retire with full benefits. Getting reprimanded in the public sector is extremely rare and why the system has become so corrupt.
One of the major reasons the public sector is so messed up is that they don’t run their organizations like the private sector. They don’t worry about budgets. They don’t hold people accountable because then they’d have to hold themselves accountable. They don’t structure themselves to be results oriented.
This is why Trump talked about draining the swamp which includes changing the way government agencies do business. This is one of the reasons he won the election because people were tired of bureaucrats and wanted someone from the private sector who was results oriented. Basically he is far from perfect but at least he’s not a politician.
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