Free Republic

More than a month after he was put on leave when a video surfaced showing him joking about the lavish spending — $823,000 — at a taxpayer-funded General Services Administration conference in Las Vegas, a top official at the agency has quietly returned to his job. David Foley, deputy commissioner of the GSA's Public Buildings Service, was one of the speakers at the convention who has come under sharp congressional scrutiny after an audit uncovered massive waste at the gathering, including a talent show, open bar and red-carpet party. Introduced before his speech at the conference as a “platinum big...

David Foley, deputy commissioner of the GSA's Public Buildings Service, has returned to the agency after being placed on administrative leave. Officials made no public announcement about his return. He was placed on leave in April, the same month he apologized to Congress for remarks he made in a video where he joked about the GSA's lavish spending. Foley was one of the speakers at the taxpayer-funded GSA $823,000 conference in Las Vegas that came under sharp congressional scrutiny. An audit uncovered wasteful spending on a talent show, open bar, red carpet party, and lavish gifts. GSA personnel spent wasted...

Employee behind lavish Las Vegas conference out at GSA WASHINGTON -- Jeff Neely, the regional director responsible for much of the General Services Administration’s highly controversial $823,000 conference in Las Vegas in 2010, is no longer employed by the agency, a spokesman said. "GSA is in the process of completing its review of activities associated with the Western Regions Conference and pursuing all available avenues for appropriate disciplinary action against those responsible. Jeff Neely was placed on administrative leave based on his involvement in the WRC. As of today, he’s no longer employed with GSA,” Deputy Press Secretary Adam Elkington...

A Republican congressman claimed Thursday that the scandal-besieged General Services Administration might be caught up in more questionable behavior -- possibly seeking "kickbacks" from contractors who work on energy-efficient buildings. Rep. Charles Boustany's questions revolve around an obscure tax deduction for companies that work on energy-efficient buildings. He said documentation shows the GSA might have been trying to demand a 19 percent kickback -- from the deduction itself -- for companies that do this work. If that's the case, Boustany expressed concern about where that money was going -- considering the hundreds of thousands of dollars GSA has spent over...

President Obama is presiding over a corrupt administration. In fact, the moral rot renders America an international laughingstock. Mr. Obama has created a political culture of arrogance and abuse of power that is infecting every segment of the federal government. The U.S. Secret Service is a case in point. Hookergate has shaken the agency to its very foundations. Secret Service agents went wild in Cartagena, Colombia, prior to a recent summit attended by Mr. Obama and other world leaders. A dozen agents and more than 10 military personnel have been implicated so far. Bar hopping, boozing and soliciting prostitutes —...

What do you get when you cross George Orwell's “Animal Farm” with John Belushi's “Animal House”? “Government Gone Wild”! If you assume that's the title of a porn movie about U.S. Secret Service agents cavorting with prostitutes in foreign countries, or employees of the U.S. Government Services Administration (the GSA manages federally owned property) whooping it up in Las Vegas at taxpayers' expense, Think Again. The hard truth is that the larger government grows, the more Orwellian and “Animal House” its conduct. Belushi's character, Bluto, exercised no greater restraint around free beer than did GSA Regional Director Jeff Neely and...

The former right-hand man for the official at the heart of the General Services Administration spending scandal pleaded guilty in a long-running embezzlement scheme just months before that fateful Las Vegas convention in 2010 -- a case one lawmaker now sees as a warning sign ignored. "They were living in some strange bubble," Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said of GSA employees, in an interview on "Fox News Sunday." The senator, in announcing Sunday that he's urging the GSA inspector general to launch a probe of the entire agency for evidence of similar abuses, invoked the case of Daniel Voll. Looking...

White House press secretary Jay Carney accuses former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) of "politicizing" the Secret Service incident in Colombia, the GSA scandal and soldiers posing with dead Afghans for implying it represents a breakdown in White House oversight. "What they're doing is trying to turn these incident, one that's still under investigation into, you know, political advantage and obviously you recognize that, everyone here recognizes that," Carney said. Full transcript of the exchange below.

What can we learn from allegations against a half-dozen supervisors in the Government Services Administration for wasting, and perhaps stealing, taxpayer dollars on foolishness in Las Vegas, and against a dozen Secret Service agents for dangerously procuring prostitutes in Cartagena, Colombia, while there to prepare for a visit by the president? If the allegations are true -- and they seem to be -- the behavior of these government workers reflects a view of government hardly consistent with the idea of limited government and public trust. The United States is the only nation in history founded on the principle that...

General Services Administration officials permitted a high-ranking employee to spend tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars on lavish travel junkets, despite an inspector general's dire warning about the executive's pattern of waste, fraud and abuse, officials said Tuesday.GSA Inspector General Brian Miller warned Martha Johnson, then head of GSA, in May 2011 about Neely's pattern of inappropriate and unbridled spending, including a $823,000 Las Vegas conference for 300 GSA employees in October 2010. A month later, a GSA official informed a White House lawyer about an investigation of "fraud and wasteful spending" at GSA Despite those warnings, Neely received a...

Tribune Media Services One doesn't have to be Tom Clancy to develop a plot of political intrigue that could actually have taken place in Cartagena. In 2007 an investigation by Telemundo and NBC News found that, "the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia has taken root in South America, fostering a well-financed force of Islamist radicals boiling with hatred for the United States and ready to die to prove it."

Leadership: What do the GSA spending scandal, the Secret Service sex scandal and Leon Panetta's expensive weekend trips home have in common? They stem from a culture of irresponsibility set by the man in the White House. When President Obama came to Washington, he promised to usher in a "new era of responsibility," one where everyone would recognize "duties to ourselves, our nation and the world." But Obama has delivered the opposite. He's used the presidency to lavish himself and his family with hugely expensive perks. He's used the Treasury as a piggy bank to reward donors and friends. He's...

Twin GSA, Secret Service scandals pose new threat to ObamaBy Amie Parnes - 04/19/12 06:22 PM ET The General Services Administration (GSA) and Secret Service scandals have been a distraction for the White House as it moves toward the general election and fights the perception of an out-of-control government. The double dose of scandals has made it difficult for the White House to get its message out, and Republicans have piled on, pushing a tone of cynicism and disappointment with a government they say needs to be reined in. Obama’s likely opponent, Mitt Romney, said this week that he would...

The senior government executive who organized the lavish Las Vegas conference at the center of a General Services Administration spending scandal took dozens of trips for the agency. The boss's wife accompanied him on some of them — and taxpayers picked up the tab. Deborah Neely wasn't always just sharing husband Jeffrey E. Neely's hotel rooms at resorts from Las Vegas to the Pacific islands. She handled party arrangements, directed event planners to spend government money and arranged lodging for relatives on the GSA trip to Las Vegas in 2010, an unusual role revealed in transcripts of interviews that the...

April 17, 2012 G$A’s Vegas $candal Leads Straight to Harry Reid Bryan Preston And ultimately, to President Obama’s demagoguery. In 2009, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) urged the White House and individual federal agencies to lift government travel bans on “cities known as resort towns” like Las Vegas — the site of a controversial $823,000 General Services Administration conference in 2010.Reid and then-White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel exchanged letters in the summer of 2009, with Reid urging the administration to publicly support government meetings and conferences in cities like Las Vegas. Emanuel wrote to Reid that he...

Stop the presses: Big-spending Democrats are finally up in arms over a federal boondoggle. Details of the U.S. General Services Administration bacchanalia get worse by the day. We've graduated from overpriced breakfasts in Vegas, friends-and-family junkets galore and in-house videos mocking their own profligacy to extravagant bonuses, alleged kickbacks, obstructionism and bribes. But the scandal is still small potatoes compared to the potential billions GSA is pouring down the Big Labor drain. Whistleblowers and an independent inspector general investigation estimate that the GSA's Sin City conference cost taxpayers an estimated $1 million in 2010. Washington bureaucrats squandered another $234,000...

The government official on the frontlines of the scandal involving a wasteful government conference, U.S. General Services Administration regional commissioner Jeffrey Neely, will invoke his 5th amendment right against self-incrimination, his lawyer Preston Burton tells ABC News. He won’t comment on the $822,751 conference, many of the expenditures for which the GSA Inspector General called “excessive” and “wasteful.” He won’t comment on the bizarre awards ceremony, or the commemorative coins, the mind-reader/motivational speaker. Mr. Neely bares a bit more in a photo collection on his wife’s Google+ page. There visitors can see photos of Neely staying in a luxurious suite...

When in doubt, President Obama is quick to push for more government regulations as a universal cure to all problems. No matter what the problem, be it health care, financial reforms, small business growth, taxation, Team Obama tells Americans that new regulations that will expand governmental control and operations, are vital. What Obama fails to realize is that more regulations piled atop the already huge regulatory thicket, are not the solution to the problems this nation faces. Moreover, new regulations and the corresponding expansion of government, are likely to create far more problems and continue to hobble economic growth. Daily,...

The General Services Administration official tasked with organizing a now-infamous $822,000 Las Vegas conference plans to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights ahead of a scheduled Monday grilling on the Hill. On Thursday, House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) served a subpoena to require Jeff Neely to appear before the committee, according to Democratic committee documents obtained by POLITICO. Neely’s attorney on Friday informed the committee Neely will exercise his right against self-incrimination and requested not to attend the hearing. “Requiring Mr. Neely to travel from California to appear before the Committee when you have been advised that...