Taking the Fifth Over Four-Buck Shrimp
The regional General Services Administration commissioner who oversaw the infamous $823,000 Las Vegas conference with mind readers and $44 breakfast refused to answer questions before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee today.
Jeff Neely, regional commissioner of the Public Buildings Service Pacific Rim Region, told the panel that, on the advice of counsel, he was asserting his Fifth Amendment rights and would not be testifying.
Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) asked Neely half a dozen questions ranging from what his title is to whether he attended the storied 2010 conference, and the commissioner tersely reasserted his constitutional protection against self-incrimination each time
Neely was the only of the five GSA witnesses to refuse to testify.
Martha Johnson, who resigned as GSA administrator two weeks ago as the scandal unfolded, apologized for the waste of taxpayer funds that cost her job.
“I personally apologize to the American people for the entire situation,” Johnson said in her opening statement. “As the head of the agency, I am responsible. I deeply regret that the exceedingly good work of GSA has been besmirched. I will mourn for the rest of my life the loss of my appointment and its role in leading a vital and important part of the government of the United States of America.”
Johnson said, though, that the GSA Western Regions Conference had been “an economical, straightforward set of training sessions in the late 1990s,” when she served at the GSA during President Clinton’s term, but had become a “raucous, extravagant, arrogant, self‐congratulatory event that ultimately belittled federal workers” by the time she returned to the agency in 2010.
Having served on President Obama’s transition team, Johnson was nominated to the chief spot shortly after he took office.
Michael Robertson, GSA chief of staff, worked as a legislative coordinator for then-Sen. Obama, left to work on the 2008 presidential campaign and also served on the president’s transition team. He gave a brief opening statement.
David E. Foley, the deputy commissioner of the GSA Public Buildings Service who joked about the lavish spending on one of the conference videos, apologized to the committee for his remarks.
“I did not intend to condone any wasteful spending,” said Foley, who was placed on administrative leave a week ago. About telling the maker of the winning conference video that he was “commissioner for a day,” “obviously that was a joke,” Foley told the panel.
“My remarks were wrong and I take full responsibility for what was said,” he added.
Foley also apologizes to Oversight member Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) for his conference quip about the representative: “Eleanor Holmes Norton, she has a couple of questions about executives that you mentioned outside. Something about going against the Obama administration’s discussion about executive pay and incentives.”
“I did not mean to belittle you or your role in any way,” he told her today.
“Even members of the Oversight Committee can take a joke,” Norton said later. “Far from belittling me, I think the joke complimented me.”
Well we can thank Speaker Bonehead and Minority Leader McMumbles for going along with all this spending like a couple of sheep. Boehner could have stopped the spending bachannalia by not approving the spending or deficit celing increase. They’re all pathetic. Serving champaign on the U.S.S. Titanic, while the band plays on, and the “public servants” serve themselves.
Nice try, but Boehner didn’t become Speaker until January 2011…this happened in 2010.
I have not seen the like since the Gambino crime family testified before Congress.
Let them eat cake!
Guys, this story goes right into Harry Reid’s office. The GSA spending went right through the roof as soon as Harry and nancy showed up.
The parallels with Orwell’s Animal farm stand out:
The early apples were now ripening, and the grass of the orchard was littered with windfalls. The animals had assumed as a matter of course that these would be shared out equally; one day, however, the order went forth that all the windfalls were to be collected and brought to the harness-room for the use of the pigs. At this some of the other animals murmured, but it was no use. All the pigs were in full agreement on this point, even Snowball and Napoleon. Squealer was sent to make the necessary explanations to the others.
“Comrades!” he cried. “You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us actually dislike milk and apples. I dislike them myself. Our sole object in taking these things is to preserve our health. Milk and apples (this has been proved by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of this farm depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for YOUR sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples. Do you know what would happen if we pigs failed in our duty? Jones would come back! Yes, Jones would come back! Surely, comrades,” cried Squealer almost pleadingly, skipping from side to side and whisking his tail, “surely there is no one among you who wants to see Jones come back?”
Here’s Johnson’s resume, note that she has not held a real private world management job since 1987 – and even then it’s not clear what size budget she helped manage; after that, nothing but fluff management and government jobs; she was over her head from day 1:
From 1979 until 1985, Johnson worked as a manager for Cummins Engine Company, first in Columbus, Indiana and then in Jamestown, New York. She worked from 1985 until 1987 as the CFO for an architecture firm, in 1987 and 1988 as a recruiter for a staffing company, and from 1988 until 1992 as a consultant in a diversity consulting firm. During 1992, she was an executive recruiting consultant with Ben & Jerry’s for several months.
After working on the Clinton-Gore transition team, Johnson worked in the White House Office’s Office of Presidential Personnel until October 1993, and then served as an Associate Deputy Secretary of Commerce from 1993 until 1996.[2] In March 1996, Johnson joined the General Services Administration, working there as a chief of staff from 1996 until January 20, 2001.[2]
In November 2001, Johnson became vice president of the Council for Excellence in Government. In January 2003, she left the Council for Excellence in Government to become a director at Touchstone Consulting Group, which was purchased by SRA International in 2005. SRA then employed Johnson from March 2005 until November 2007.[2] In late 2008, Johnson became a co-leader of the Obama transition team evaluating the GSA.[2]
Johnson left SRA to become a vice president of culture at Computer Sciences Corporation, a role she held until February 2010.
Computer Sciences Corporation = rent seekers.
Oh, really? From CFO to recruiter?
That’s a pretty big step DOWN! She must have really made a mess of things as CFO!
And what in the world is a “vice president of culture”? Can you say, “sinecure”?
Methinks we might find a lot of cronyism and connections to ranking Democrats if we looked closely into the “Computer Sciences Corporation”.
“…Johnson became vice president of the Council for Excellence in Government..”"
Dems World!
Dems World!
Party Time!
EXCELLENT!
Even a perfunctory survey of the spending habits of Federal departments and agencies would turn up similar examples, although perhaps not always as egregious as the GSA fiasco, of literally thousands of unnecessary projects, programs, and procedures on which taxpayer funds are wasted annually. The fact is that the current Federal bureaucracy is a bloated monster that is virtually unaccountable and, given the inexplicable complacency of our elected representatives, impervious to reform. What is even more alarming is that in the face of such corruption, we hear politicians, mostly of liberal persuasion, crying not for a reduction in unnecessary spending, but rather for more ‘revenue,’ i.e., tax dollars, which will be used to increase the bloat and the waste. American taxpayers are no longer represented in Washington.
Ya gotta give the progs credit for reading conservative blogs and making up the most outlandish claims. They say it was Bushes fault or the republicans did it first. They are so accustomed to lying to the public and not being challenged by the MSM, that telling these whoppers is second nature to them.
“I will mourn for the rest of my life the loss of my appointment and its role in leading a vital and important part of the government of the United States of America.”
Hahahahahahah…
Notice what she DIDNT say…
” I will mourn the rest of my life the squandering of Taxpayers money for such frivolous nonsense, while soldiers lay wounded, and people go homeless”
She only mourns the loss of her position….
And hasnt A CLUE AT ALL how rude and condescending it is for her to say that.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who felt that way as I read of her ‘regret’. So selfish.
I saw the same thing… “I’m sorry my hand was in the cookie jar when the curtain was opened”.
Disgusting, but typical of the calibre of “government” we have in sway today. Housecleaning, anyone? SOMEONE who will begin examining government agencies the way WE all have to examine our own checkbooks and credit card statements. Any of these bozos ever hear of “living within one’s means”? As in, OUR means? No wonder tax freedom day os late April, and “I’ve finally got MY life back” day in July.
All this atmosphere of decadence happened between Clinton and Obama. That places it squarely during the Bush administration. Yeah right. Do they really think we believe this? Bush’s fault!!
The fact is these people will not be fired and when they retire they will collect a pension from the taxpayers.
He has a right to not testify; GSA has the right to fire him for gross incompetence and bringing disrepute upon the agency.
My understanding is that the only reason you can invoke the Fifth is to avoid incriminating yourself. If that’s the case I suspect there’s some criminal activity here and Mr Neeley knows what it is and that he has a legal problem.
Well, you can take the 5th just to irritate the committee or to try to provoke them to immunize you and play the contempt game so you can be the suffering martyr put in jail by the evil, McCarthyite Republicans.
Wait until these clowns are managing your healthcare….
Hopefully they showed more integrity than the Secret Service and at least paid the…personal entertainment workers.
Congress investigate GSA Fraud and corruption? Whoopie ding diddly ding dang do! You would think they might want to check out the Lord ZerO crony slush fund Stimulus package! Just how much has the tax payer been honed for here? Now we are talking fraud and corruption you can get your teeth in!
This kind of waste is the norm across government, not the exception. No one spends other people’s money as carefully as they spend their own. Also from 2010 was this
“The nation’s space agency paid the out-of-this-world price of $66 a person a day for bagels, cookies and juice at a conference, a new report found. The subject of the NASA conference? It was a training session for its procurement officials — the people who do the buying with taxpayer funds. During the three-day conference, the 317 attendees snacked on “light refreshments” of soda, coffee, fruit, bagels and cookies at a cost of $62,611, according to a NASA Inspector General report. That’s $66 a day per person. And that wasn’t the only problem. The NASA financial watchdog criticized the financially strapped space agency’s spending on conferences in general. The inspector general said NASA didn’t price shop to get cheaper locations for conferences and that NASA’s spending on food and drinks was “excessive.”
That $62K didn’t include the travel costs, rental cars, hotel rooms, per diem and other expenses, all to attend a conference on procurement.
It is kind of funny (in a not at all funny way) how Congress is getting their panties in a wad over $820,000 spent at a GSA party yet they’re silent over $800,000,000,000+ spent for “stimulus”.
SQUIRREL!