Malachi Smith's List: LET'EM EAT CAKE-Marie Antoinette Society

• D.C. agency buys massages for 40 employees
• By: Michael Neibauer 
  Examiner Staff Writer
        November 30, 2009
• Mayor calls the expense 'inappropriate'
• The District's Office of Unified Communications used its government-issued charge card to buy $900 worth of massages for its staff, an expense even Mayor Adrian Fenty deemed inappropriate.
• The massages were charged to an OUC purchase card on Oct. 25 and listed under "Spas - Health & Beauty," according to monthly data provided by the Office of Contracting and Procurement.
• Sources say about 40 of the OUC's staff, including 911 call takers, were chosen to receive a massage based on the quality of their work.
• Nichole Jefferson, a D.C.-based massage therapist, was hired for the job.
• "The purchases were part of OUC's Employee Appreciation and Wellness Program activities that also included heath screenings, aerobics and blood pressure and glucose checks," Mafara Hobson, Fenty's spokeswoman, said in a statement.
• "While the intent of the wellness activities was well intended, some were not an appropriate use of funds and will not ever be included in future activities."
• The massage charge pales in comparison with the $111,036 paid to the Capitol Skyline Hotel over the course of October by the Office of the Tenant Advocate.
• Twenty-one families, displaced after the District ordered their two slum apartment buildings closed, were housed there starting in late September. Two remained last week but should be out soon, said Johanna Shreve, D.C. chief tenant advocate.

• Among October charges

   
   
  • $2,420: Office of the Chief Technology Officer, for zzounds.com, an online musical instrument retailer
   
  • $365.70: Department of Transportation, for no-show fees from the Hilton Hotel chain
   
  • $19.95: Fire department, for "Passport to Fun," described as an entertainment savings program
   
  • $488: Various agencies, for travel agent booking fees
   
  • $56: Metropolitan Police Department, for the Palm steakhouse in Denver
• "These families were in an extremely bad situation," Shreve said.
• Shreve said she did not know whether the city would seek reimbursement from the owners of 4226 Seventh St. NW and 3330 10th Place SE.
• The charges come to $3,581 a day -- $170 a night per family.
• District government employees put $832,950 on their purchase cards in October, $99,512 of which was for travel-related expenses including airfare, hotels, food and taxis.
• Purchase cards accounted for $13.34 million in taxpayer funds between Jan. 1 and Oct. 31, according to the Office of Contracting and Procurement.
• Monthly purchase card spending citywide has picked up since April by about 20 percent, according to OCP data. This despite a historic recession and looming billion-dollar budget shortfalls.
• mneibauer@washingtonexaminer.com

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• Nancy Pelosi spends $2,993 on flowers
• By JAKE SHERMAN & MEREDITH SHINER |                           11/30/09 6:05 PM EST
• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) spent $2,993 in taxpayer money on flowers between June and October.
• House Majority Whip James Clyburn has a thing for Chantilly Donuts, spending about $265 at the Virginia shop in the past quarter.
• And Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), a fiscal conservative, decided to give about $2,000 in unused office funds back to the government to help reduce the deficit.
• These expenditures – culled from thousands of line items released Monday by the Chief Administrative Officer of the House – are just a fraction of the $300 million spent last quarter by House offices.
• But while the bulk of congressional office spending goes to salaries and routine office expenses,
• some of the line items offer a window into the personalities and priorities of each congressional office.
• Pelosi, who has come under fire in the past for spending on flowers, also spent roughly $30,610 in food and beverage and about $2,740 on bottled water, contributing to the nearly $120,531 total from all congressional leadership accounts.
• Her offices defended the charges, saying the Speaker’s office holds more ceremonial events with visiting dignitaries than other congressional offices.
• They also use a local florist, and about a third of her flower expenses this quarter were for Jack Kemp’s funeral.
• House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) racked up about $24,617 in catering costs.
• House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) spent about $1,561 in bottled water
• and House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) spent no money on water but a touch over $18,000 in food.
• House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) spent about $24,116 on food and beverage.
• These line by line expenditures used to come just in bound green books, but for the first time ever, Pelosi requested that the reports also be put online this quarter.
• The nearly 3,400 digitized pages were released Monday afternoon and touted by Pelosi as expanding “accountability to taxpayers and the press.”
• Most of the expenditures seem standard – everything from individual staff salaries to office supplies is listed.
• Most offices order food from the Capitol Host in-house catering service, but others order from outside locales.
• Clyburn, for example, frequently purchases donuts for his office from Chantilly Donuts in Virginia, where he spent about $265 in the period stretching from June until the end of September.
• One of the biggest line items for congressional offices outside of salaries tends to be the pricy subscriptions to Congressional Quarterly, which produces high end legislative tracking products, a magazine and a daily publication.
• Cantor and Boehner together spent $69,832.50 on the company’s publications – Boehner spent $48,085 on CQ publications.
• Lawmakers appear to have great flexibility on what qualifies as an office expense.
• Money is spent on everything from security services for district offices to thousands in mileage reimbursements for individuals’ cars.
• Taxpayers foot the bill for leasing cars for members, including cars for Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) and Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas).
• Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) spent $28,410 with a market communications firm to send a newsletter to his constituents, querying them on issues ranging from the closing of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, earmark reform and health care.
• A spokesman said it was sent to 196,000 constituents and is just “one of the many tools Congressman Kirk uses to communicate with constituents.”
• Some even have money left over to give back to the government.
• Walz and Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) both returned about $2,500 to cut away at the deficit.
• Bachus, a fiscal conservative, said he does not take cost-of-living increases in the middle of a congressional term.
• Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the amounts Nancy Pelosi’s office spent on flowers and James Clyburn’s office spent on donuts.

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• Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after 'Danish text' leak
• Developing countries react furiously to leaked draft agreement that would hand more power to rich nations, sideline the UN's negotiating role and abandon the Kyoto protocol
• • John Vidal in Copenhagen 
          
  •   guardian.co.uk,   Tuesday 8 December 2009
• The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN's role in all future climate change negotiations.
• The document is also being interpreted by developing countries as setting unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050;
• meaning that people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much under the proposals.
• The so-called Danish text, a secret draft agreement worked on by a group of individuals known as "the circle of commitment" –

  • The "Coven" of Committment?
  Add Sticky Note
• but understood to include the UK, US and Denmark – has only been shown to a handful of countries since it was finalised this week.
• The agreement, leaked to the Guardian, is a departure from the Kyoto protocol's principle that rich nations, which have emitted the bulk of the CO2, should take on firm and binding commitments to reduce greenhouse gases, while poorer nations were not compelled to act.
• The draft hands effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank; would abandon the Kyoto protocol – the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions;
• and would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions.
• The document was described last night by one senior diplomat as "a very dangerous document for developing countries.
• It is a fundamental reworking of the UN balance of obligations. It is to be superimposed without discussion on the talks".
• A confidential analysis of the text by developing countries also seen by the Guardian shows deep unease over details of the text.
• In particular, it is understood to:
• Force developing countries to agree to specific emission cuts and measures that were not part of the original UN agreement;
• Divide poor countries further by creating a new category of developing countries called "the most vulnerable";
• Weaken the UN's role in handling climate finance;
• Not allow poor countries to emit more than 1.44 tonnes of carbon per person by 2050, while allowing rich countries to emit 2.67 tonnes.
• Developing countries that have seen the text are understood to be furious that it is being promoted by rich countries without their knowledge and without discussion in the negotiations.
• Clearly the intention is to get [Barack] Obama and the leaders of other rich countries to muscle it through when they arrive next week.
• "It is being done in secret.

  • Secrecy is the order of the day whenever these Devil Pin Heads get together in their smoke filled back rooms to discuss anything..be it international, national or domestic policies. These self styled "Elites" have sumperimposed themselves onto the world populations in poor and rich countries without anyone's consent..other than consent through deceit and abject hypocrisy.
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• It effectively is the end of the UN process," said one diplomat, who asked to remain nameless.
• Antonio Hill, climate policy adviser for Oxfam International, said: "This is only a draft but it highlights the risk that when the big countries come together, the small ones get hurting.
• On every count the emission cuts need to be scaled up. It allows too many loopholes and does not suggest anything like the 40% cuts that science is saying is needed."
• Hill continued: "It proposes a green fund to be run by a board but the big risk is that it will run by the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility [a partnership of 10 agencies including the World Bank and the UN Environment Programme] and not the UN.
• That would be a step backwards, and it tries to put constraints on developing countries when none were negotiated in earlier UN climate talks."
• The text was intended by Denmark and rich countries to be a working framework, which would be adapted by countries over the next week.
• It is particularly inflammatory because it sidelines the UN negotiating process and suggests that rich countries are desperate for world leaders to have a text to work from when they arrive next week.
• Few numbers or figures are included in the text because these would be filled in later by world leaders.

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