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Saturday, November 01, 2014

What's a "Micropurchase" and why are we buying government employees coffee at Starbucks?


The government defines any purchase of less than $3000 a "micropurchase."   For this purpose, government employees are issued credit cards.  Given the number of federal employees, their contempt for the taxpayer, and their propensity to commit fraud, it's no surprise that those "micro" items add up to macro dollars.

The federal government has spent at least $20 billion in taxpayer money this year on items and services that it is permitted to keep secret from the public, according to an investigation by the News4 I-Team.
The purchases, known among federal employees as “micropurchases,” are made by some of the thousands of agency employees who are issued taxpayer-funded purchase cards. The purchases, in most cases, remain confidential and are not publicly disclosed by the agencies. A sampling of those purchases, obtained by the I-Team via the Freedom of Information Act, reveals at least one agency used those cards to buy $30,000 in Starbucks Coffee drinks and products in one year without having to disclose or detail the purchases to the public.
A series of other recent purchases, reviewed by internal government auditors, include wasteful and inappropriate purchases by government employees -- including a gym membership and JC Penney clothing -- that were not detected or stopped until after the purchase was completed.
The agencies and their leaders refuse to explain how and where they spent your money.

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