Friday, July 17, 2009

On The Cusp Of Meltdown, SSA Parties Hard

Audacious certainly seems to be the word for this administration, top to bottom:
ABC15 reported:
A Social Security Administration motivational management conference held at a high-end Valley resort last week cost $700,000, the SSA told the ABC15 Investigators.

Costs for the conference at the Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa included airfare, hotel entertainment, dancers, motivational speakers, and food, an administration official said.

A spokesperson from the SSA's regional office said the conference was essential, that teleconferencing was not an option, and that all 675 managers needed to meet in person.

The SSA provided ABC15 with a list of courses provided at the conference, which included "Techniques to Empower You," "Mentoring the Generations," and "Emotional Intelligence."

But the information provided by the SSA did not mention an after-hours casino trip, family members staying at the hotel, or the 20-minute dance party ABC15 observed.
Hm, go figure. Why would taxpayers be angry about paying for a bunch of government management types to party in luxury with their families after chatting about their feelings? I can't imagine.

Rush Limbaugh commented on the event:
Claiming they need "to learn how to reduce stress because of a growing number of death threats made against them, nearly 700 executives from the Social Security Administration," 700 executives! It cost $700,000. That's a thousand dollars per attendee. "We received threats against our employees by people who are in the American public," said Social Security Administration Regional Commissioner for San Francisco, Peter Spencer, in defense of the conference. He said, "There is a tremendous amount of stress involved in the job that we do."

What stress? You don't have any competition from anybody. All you've got is a bunch of complaining people, which is never going to change as long as the government runs anything. Look at Congress being outraged. It's proper to be outraged by this. This, folks, is very simple. This is as understandable as the House bank scandal. When this kind of news gets out, ladies and gentlemen, with unemployment news what it is, unemployment continuing to rise, government executives going on retreats for a hundred grand a person for three days, to relieve stress over deaths threats. The American people can't do that right now, the American people are paying for it...

Folks, the interesting thing here about all of this, this is more and more like the Politburo each and every day. The politburo had its hierarchy of leaders from the premier, president on down to these clowns at the Kremlin, they all had their dachas, their houses out there, their girls, their liquor and so forth, people in the country couldn't find food in the stores. Now we've got these people in Washington who are treating the US Treasury as a personal piggy bank to go party. They're better than everybody else, and they're so stressed out 'cause they're getting death threats. Seven-hundred thousand for three days for 700 people. Social Security executives. Okay.
Gateway Pundit helpfully adds the following:
By the way... Social Security is nearly insolvent.
Maybe that's where all their stress is coming from. Bring on the dancing girls!

There's my two cents.

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