I hope those muffins were worth $16

Wobbie

this is troubling.....but million$ aren't billion$.....and they certainly aren't trillion$

trillion$ are where our problems lie :x

81

imalive wrote:

this is troubling.....but million$ aren't billion$.....and they certainly aren't trillion$

trillion$ are where our problems lie :x

everything adds up....

and i can't believe there are people defending the $16 muffin.

BinauralJam

http://www.crumbs.com/cupcakes

Wobbie

81 wrote:

imalive wrote:

this is troubling.....but million$ aren't billion$.....and they certainly aren't trillion$

trillion$ are where our problems lie :x

everything adds up....

and i can't believe there are people defending the $16 muffin.

I'm not defending it...but we're spending (quick google search) $190M PER DAY in Afghanistan :x

blackredyellow

imalive wrote:

81 wrote:

imalive wrote:

this is troubling.....but million$ aren't billion$.....and they certainly aren't trillion$

trillion$ are where our problems lie :x

everything adds up....

and i can't believe there are people defending the $16 muffin.

I'm not defending it...but we're spending (quick google search) $190M PER DAY in Afghanistan :x

Tell me about it... that's like 11.9 million Hilton muffins we could buy every day with that money.

Smellyman

blackredyellow wrote:

Jason P wrote:

polaris_x wrote:

what this is ... is a microcosm of privatization ... this is how the gov't is charged when we outsource to private companies ... anywhere from catering services to prison systems ... it's legalized highway robbery ...

is there an auditor general in the US?

It's a microcosm of capitalization offering a product and selling it to a group that is neither interested in profit or efficiency. If you worked for a private business and your company's accountant saw a bill come in for $16 muffins for a meeting .... well, someones ass would be getting chewed and that would be the end of $16 muffins. But to a group that doesn't care about profit or where the funding comes from, why would they care?

If someone is willing to buy a $16 muffin from you, would you try to stop them? Taking advantage of someone requires doing something underhanded. Putting a price tag of $16 on a muffin and then someone walks into your store and spends $16 on it ... well, that's not underhanded ... that's just plain stupidity on the part of the person breaking their wallet out.

newsflash. Private business employees don't fill their tank either before returning. People would rather pay extra $20 or whatverver because people are lazy.
I was renting a car from Enterprise, and was talking to a manager there... He worked in an office for a few years right by my work (and right by all of the New York State building in Albany). He said they did a ton of state business, and just about everyone got the biggest vehicle available and never put gas in them when returning. He said it was great for business and commissions, but at the same time it made you angry about how wasteful they were spending our tax dollars.

81

imalive wrote:

81 wrote:

imalive wrote:

this is troubling.....but million$ aren't billion$.....and they certainly aren't trillion$

trillion$ are where our problems lie :x

everything adds up....

and i can't believe there are people defending the $16 muffin.

I'm not defending it...but we're spending (quick google search) $190M PER DAY in Afghanistan :x

agreed that there are bigger wastes of money...but at the same time...every little bit helps and shit like this should never happen

Cosmo

Priorities...
It's like worrying about buying the 10 cent package of Top Ramen or the generic brand Ramen for 8 cents... while the roof of your house is on fire.
...
It would be a higher priority if we are talking about the purchase of 1,750,000,000,000 packages of Top Ramen... or 1,750,000,000 muffins.

81

Cosmo wrote:

Priorities...
It's like worrying about buying the 10 cent package of Top Ramen or the generic brand Ramen for 8 cents... while the roof of your house is on fire.
...
It would be a higher priority if we are talking about the purchase of 1,750,000,000,000 packages of Top Ramen... or 1,750,000,000 muffins.

agreed that their are higher priorities, but this sort of shit should never happen in the first place.

Cosmo

81 wrote:

agreed that their are higher priorities, but this sort of shit should never happen in the first place.

...
It happens every time Private individuals or companies have access to government funds.
This is how a catering company can charge 16 bucks for a muffin... a doctor can bill Medicare 5 dollars for a band aid... a scooter/wheelchair salesman can work with an old fucker to have the taxpayers get him a Rascal when he really doesn't need one.
...
Hell, I see the same thing happen at my company:
We get 71 dollars per day on a meal allowance. I eat the free breakfast at the hotel, the free lunch at the conference and skip dinner... I've been sitting on my ass all day, not plowing the gotdamn South Forty. I don't need to burn off 3 squares a day.
But, some employees will max out the per diem... just because they can. Who has steak and lobster every night? Not me... or some of my co-workers... except when it's on the company dime.
People are the problem.

inmytree

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/ ... uffin-myth


The Great $16 Muffin Myth
Heard about those super-expensive baked goods at the Justice Department? The story is bogus.

By Kevin Drum | Wed Sep. 21, 2011 5:37 PM PDT

I've been reading all day about the $16 muffins the Department of Justice served at one of its conferences, and I finally got curious about this. Is it really true? So I went to the DOJ Inspector General's website, got the report, and searched for "muffin." The following paragraph looks fairly impenetrable, but go ahead and plow through it anyway: [1]

Considering the EOIR reported that at least 534 people received refreshments at its 2009 Legal Training Conference in Washington, D.C., it spent an average of $14.74 per attendee per day on food and beverages—just above the $14.72 JMD limit for refreshments. We credit the EOIR for implementing the following controls to reduce food and beverage costs: (1) it provided just refreshments and not full meals, (2) it ordered fewer refreshments than the total number of reported attendees, and (3) it received 15 gallons of coffee, 30 gallons of iced tea, and 200 pieces of fruit for free. However, many individual food and beverage items listed on conference invoices and paid by the EOIR were very costly. The EOIR spent $4,200 on 250 muffins and $2,880 on 300 cookies and brownies. By itemizing these costs, we determined that, with service and gratuity, muffins cost over $16 each and cookies and brownies cost almost $10 each.

So did DOJ really pay $16 for muffins? Of course not. In fact, it's obvious that someone quite carefully calculated the amount they were allowed to spend and then gave the hotel a budget. The hotel agreed, but for some reason decided to divide up the charges into just a few categories instead of writing a detailed invoice for every single piece of food they provided.

This is unremarkable. In fact, I'm here to tell you that this happens All. The. Time. I've been involved in what feels like a thousand conferences of this kind, and I'd be shocked if it happened any other way. Hell, I'm surprised DOJ even got that much of a breakdown. Far more commonly, your event person negotiates what kind of refreshments you'll get, and the invoice ends up looking something like this:

Refreshment table (bev/morn/aft) — 5 days....................$39,500

None of this is to say that DOJ didn't overspend on its conferences. In fact, it sounds like they did—though in some cases this was just an artifact of applying overhead costs to the food instead of accounting for it separately. But the $16 muffin? That's a myth. It'll never die now that it's been delivered to posterity thanks to some enthusiast in the OIG who broke out a calculator and mistakenly assumed they could calculate actual costs this way, but it's still a myth.