No more $13 teas, $70 lunches for legal aid outfit (AP/CNN)

[eppur_se_muova]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The $13 per person "high tea" service and $12 bagel breaks will be gone from the January directors meeting of the government's legal aid program for the poor. And the meeting will be held at the headquarters conference room rather than the upscale hotel used in the past.

After severe criticism from Congress, stinging reports from a financial watchdog and several articles by The Associated Press, the Legal Services Corp. has decided to temper the expensive tastes of its top officials while poor clients are turned away for lack of program funds.

Internal memos, provided to the AP voluntarily by a Legal Services official, made clear there would be no more $70 lunches and $14 "Death By Chocolate" desserts at board meetings.

Only in special circumstances would there be a repeat of hotel costs that shot through the government's room rate ceiling, limousine services and first-class air travel.

The AP documented in August and September how the program's executives spent freely while the corporation's own study showed many poor Americans -- in need of legal help -- were being turned away at local clinics funded by the corporation.
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more: http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/12/19/agency.expenses.ap/index.html

NOTE: Three Repuke Senators in on this. The expenses involved are nickel-and-dime stuff compared to Bu**sh**'s budget-busting, billion-dollar excesses. Could all this righteous indignation be a fig leaf for genuine Repuke excesses? If the program does have not have the funds to take on the legal causes of the poor, that is sure to be due to underfunding, on the scale of millions of dollars, not because of overpriced meals at meetings which occur only four times a year.

on edit: feel there's a certain 'much ado about nothing' involved here, added appropriate comments.

[rodeodance]

1. and Why weren't the Directors fired???

[Bozita]

2. Gawd protects members of BoDs.

Check Halliburton. If not for Gawd, the entire BoD wpould be in jail.

[acmejack]

3. Better late than never.

[Kiouni]

4. I would be ashamed to call myself an American

if I did the kind crap these half-wits are doing. You got haliburton having to pay back the gov. for over billing, the whole Katrina capitalization and these thieves ripping off their fellow americans like they have some entitlement to it. Makes me sick, even if my "private" company wants to pay for extra amenities i turn them down because it is needless expenditure on my account. what makes these guys thing their so special?

[sofa king]

5. LSC > Buckhead > AWOL

One of the members of Legal Services Corp is a guy named Frank B. Strickland, who prior to this post served on the Fulton County Elections Board with a guy named Harry MacDougald, better known to us as "Buckhead," the freeper expert on the early '70s typewriters which could not possibly have written the memos about George Bush that forced Dan Rather into retirement.

Now Frank is seen enjoying the pork lavishly dished out to hundreds of low-level political operatives of the Republican Party--for what, I wonder?

[madmusic]

6. The org is wingnut

What do they care about indigent defense?

[wiley]

7. The Question is do the Board Members get paid?

If so, it's certainly much higher than their expenses. If they are not compensated at all, these amenities are not really a big deal. Another question is whether it was cheaper to have them meet in a hotel, rather than a Board room where possibly staff and others might have access to them. Security can be very expensive, and attract attention -like to the fact that Republican goons were placed on the Board of an agency that Republicans threaten to cut funding for on a regular basis.

[NVMojo]

8. disgusting ....