Millions of tax dollars wasted by the Department of Justice

Although it has a 13 trillion dollars debt, the Department of Justice is not spending money for investigating crimes, drug cartels or fighting terrorists, but on pool parties and rollercoaster rides.

Many millions of dollars coming from taxes are paying for recreation in the name of crime prevention, invoking the idea that fun activities will keep kids out of trouble and so the crime rate will drop. But, striking as it may seem, the money used for police donut eating contests come from the Department of Justice, which claims that there are not enough resources for supervising the foreign intelligence. When asked, the U.S. Government Accountability Office says that nobody is monitoring how much money is spent on the recreational activities. Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn gives a hint on the amount, estimating the recreational activity spending to 100 million dollars in the last five years, out of which at least 200,000 dollars were spent last years so that officials were able to attend conferences at golf resorts in Florida and Palm Springs.

Many of the money are approved by the Congress without the normal public review, and they rely on the ones that receive them to follow the rules. But sometimes they do not. For example, the ex Alaska Senator Ted Stevens gave 1.7 million dollars to a group run by a couple who were his friends. Not long after that they were accused of stealing 450,000 dollars and spending them for their son’s wedding reception, who happened to work for Senator Stevens. Last month, an Oklahoma City program that was supposed to deal with federal crime prevention was found to have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy a giant flat screen TV, 40 pairs of binoculars and Japanese swords worth 200 dollars each. The police officers declared that they have never used neither the binoculars, nor the Japanese swords.