iPods, lingerie and Uncle Sam

Your tax dollars hard at work. From the Washington Post:

Federal employees used government credit cards to pay for lingerie, gambling, iPods, Internet dating services, and a $13,000 steak-and-liquor dinner, according to a new audit from the Government Accountability Office, which found widespread abuses in a purchasing program meant to improve bureaucratic efficiency.

The study, released by Senate lawmakers yesterday, found that nearly half the "purchase card" transactions it examined were improper, either because they were not authorized correctly or because they did not meet requirements for the cards' use. The overall rate of problems "is unacceptably high," the audit found.

The GAO also found that agencies could not account for nearly $2 million worth of items identified in the audit ...

But wait, it gets better! The lingerie and other undergarments, totaling $360, went to jungle-training exercises in Ecuador. (Who wants to bet it was leopard-print?) And the iPods, all $800 bucks' worth, were purchased by a NASA supervisor who -- and I stress, this is true -- had his name engraved on each of them. Obviously there are more egregious cases in the GAO study, but these are the most fun ones.

Granted, this is but a drop in the budgetary bucket, and as Lurita Doan of the General Services administration (which issues the purchase cards) told the New York Times, the current card system saves about $1.8 billion in admin costs each year.

Still, this kind of makes me want to become a rabid libertarian. Or a government employee.