The epitome of government waste
This is extraordinary, and I don’t mean that in a good way:
One of the seven small federal agencies that President Donald Trump ordered downsized or eliminated on Friday was rife with corruption, with its employees hiring friends and relatives, commissioning paintings of themselves, and using government credit cards to indulge in constant luxuries.
The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) occupied a nine-story office tower on D.C.’s K Street for only 60 employees, many of whom actually worked from home, prior to the pandemic. Its managers had luxury suites with full bathrooms; one manager would often be “in the shower” when she was needed, while another used her bathroom as a cigarette lounge. FMCS recorded its director as being on a years-long business trip to D.C. so he could have all of his meals and living expenses covered by taxpayers, simply for showing up to the office.
FMCS is a 230-employee agency that exists to serve as a voluntary mediator between unions and businesses. As an “independent agency,” its director nominally reports to the president, but the agency is so small that in effect, there is no oversight at all — and it showed, becoming a real-life caricature of all the excesses that the Department of Government Efficiency has alleged take place in government.
This reporter spent a year investigating the agency a decade ago, and I found egregious and self-serving violations of hiring, pay, contracting, and purchase card rules. One thing I could not discover is why the agency actually existed, other than to provide luxurious lifestyles for its employees. Endless junkets to resort destinations, which employees openly used to facilitate personal vacations, were justified as building awareness of the agency in the hopes that someone would actually want to use its voluntary services.
Please read the whole thing, if you can stomach it. As bad as you may have thought the grift and corruption in government has been, this is probably worse. Note that this agency has been that way a long time – the reporter says he investigated it a decade ago, but … crickets:
What surprised me most about my FMCS investigation was what happened afterward: nothing. An inspector general made a referral to the FBI, but there were no prosecutions. Instead, President Barack Obama nominated a chief subject of the investigation to the top job.
It took DOGE and Trump to shut it down. It was a good ride – a great ride – while it lasted, and we paid for it.
But the Democrats would love for this sort of agency to continue.
I read the whole thing. Unbelievable arrogance.
And yet Trump and Musk are the evil ones.
Dems just don’t care about the waste and corruption. I don’t see that they will change.
There should be a law that any independent agencies or commissions have a start and an end date.
This is a particularly egregious example of waste but as a former federal employee, I can’t say that I’m shocked. Most people still have no idea of how much of the federal government is completely useless if not harmful.
That’s horrendous…
But since we’re talking about the Democrats one can ALWAYS expect it to get worse…
…and it does (of course)…
“USAID Censorship Scheme Exposed; Global Engagement Center Worked With UK Government And Media Firms To Deploy AI Tools”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/usaid-censorship-scheme-exposed-global-engagement-center-worked-uk-government-and-media
(You were wondering why PM Starmer and his party of malicious and ignorant clowns NEEDED—and therefore actively helped—Kamala Harris to win?)
After the Madoff scandal, there was the Allen Stanford financial scandal. A Ponzi scheme involving $7B in fraudulent securities.
The amazing thing was that a number of serious people blew the whistle on it well before it collapsed. Complaining to the federal SEC, of course. That particular branch of the SEC, in Texas I believe, did nothing even when provided with extensive facts and documentation.
I may have bits of the next part in error, but when that Texas branch was investigated, the DC headquarters was too. Many (or all) of the upper level worker bees were lawyers. It was discovered that a number of these DC lawyers spent their entire day on porn websites and filled up hard drives with their favorites. Then they bought more and more hard drives with taxpayer dollars. It wasn’t clear if they did any useful work at all.
The upshot at the end of that investigation was that some of those lawyers to go through “sensitivity” training classes.
I too read the whole thing. I was disgusted, but not surprised. In the least. This happens again and again when people have the opportunity. It happens in monarchies, oligarchies, republics, communist collectives, religious cults… It happens in our country at the federal level, state level, county, city and village level.
This is why everything that can be privatized should be privatized. It doesn’t mean this behavior will not exist; time and time again abuses similar to this happen in private institutions. But if they are private I do not have to participate or fund them.
I can not imagine being able to even take part in something like this. I guess the world has quite a few folks who will do nothing, take other peoples money in large quantities, on and on. I would think it would be appropriate for these folks to get no severance…
Fired, prosecuted, imprisoned with permanent loss of citizenship is the remedy I favor. No mercy.
“Sow the Wind, Reap the Whirlwind”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFGOddatJVk&t=1s
Whatever happened to the idea of “zeroing out” agency budgets every other year and making that agency justify spending everything above the first dollar on itself?
Probably went away with the idea of “an annual federal budget” when hiding behind continuing resolutions became attractive for Congress.
JD Keene on March 22, 2025 at 8:12 pm:
“… I guess the world has quite a few folks who will do nothing, take other peoples money in large quantities, on and on.”
Actually, that describes me and most other recipients of Social Security claims payments. [I suspect quite a few of the readers and commenters here also fit that situation.]
Thus, I do occasionally thank those folks who are still paying payroll taxes into this “pay as you go” scheme as they augment my income, analogously as my brothers and I paid our payroll taxes in our turn, which for all practical purposes was then sent along to our parents.
But I sincerely hope Congress finds a way to reform this “welfare/ insurance” program so our (yours and my) grandchildren don’t have to suffer* for our inability to wrestle this snake into submission. If the Congress does not, then the bond market and other economic forces will eventually remove any chance of them doing so.
JD, I suppose those recipients self esteem rationale exceeds their rationality as to the true value of their contributions to society and “public service”.
*We in fact gift our grandchildren enough to essentially transfer our net after tax SS income to their account coffers, but not every retiree can afford to do that.
And guess what turned up under another rock…
“The Greenhouse Gas Windfalls Blew Hard for Solar in the Biden EPA”—
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2025/03/20/the_greenhouse_gas_windfalls_blew_hard_for_solar_in_the_biden_epa_1098678.html
File under:
BoondoggleMega-Corruption, She Wrote…“…government waste…”
Not just the government, of course…
Related (where is Tom Wolfe when you really need him?):
“JOE NOCERA: The Luxurious Death Rattle of the Great American Magazine.”—
https://instapundit.com/710079/
Looting the Republic
If every waste could be weeded out of government there should be no reason a deficit should happen
they got it wrong – it should read MFCS
Whatever happened to the idea of “zeroing out” agency budgets every other year and making that agency justify spending everything above the first dollar on itself?
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Jimmy Carter attempted that. Not very successful.
I may have bits of the next part in error, but when that Texas branch was investigated, the DC headquarters was too. Many (or all) of the upper level worker bees were lawyers. It was discovered that a number of these DC lawyers spent their entire day on porn websites and filled up hard drives with their favorites. Then they bought more and more hard drives with taxpayer dollars. It wasn’t clear if they did any useful work at all.
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Harry Markoplolos made a detailed case to the SEC that Bernard Madoff’s ‘wealth management’ operation was a Ponzi scheme. The official who received the presentation and did nothing was a lawyer. You’ll recall the Obama cabinet member who admitted he’d enrolled in law school because he was bad at math.
Barry Meislin’s link to Instapundit links the original, here: https://www.thefp.com/p/the-great-american-magazine?r=131lq
It’s a great read! I think many here would enjoy it. It’s also a great reference to the point that this is human nature for many people when placed in a system with minimal oversight. I can choose not to buy “Vanity Fair” or “Time,” but I can’t choose not to pay my taxes. And magazine companies can go out of business when mismanaged. Uncle Sam just prints more money, devaluing mine and stealing from me through another form of taxation.
Uncle Sam just prints more money, devaluing mine and stealing from me through another form of taxation.
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Public sector deficits are financed through the bond market. The Federal Reserve will on occasion purchase Treasury issues on the secondary market, but that’s atypical.
Art Deco,
I knew you would refute that! I almost added that prediction to my comment.
Here’s a question…no doubt,there’s an answer out there somewhere….
“Inflation at Home, Grants Abroad: Why Were We Funding Aussie Universities?”—
https://legalinsurrection.com/2025/03/inflation-at-home-grants-abroad-why-were-we-funding-aussie-universities/