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A dozen sites
I'm diggin'

1. Find out how healthy your country is.

2. What's with all the Google anti-trust lawsuits?

*3. The Washington Post reports on why TV reporters have to be Jacks of All Trades now.

4. Here are the eight companies that gave the most to help Haiti.

*5. The number of U.S. millionaires rose 16 percent last year.

6. Find out why there will be a national Eggo waffle shortage until summer.

*7. The New York Times explains how women in the work force helped save Social Security.

8. Here are some great databases that newsrooms have created to help connect people with their community.

9. Learn more about the new Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.

*10. CBS Radio News' Peter King explains how he broadcast from Haiti in the early days after the quake.

11. The FCC investigates the health and future of local news.

12. Levelcam lets you stabilize your handheld video.

All of my Diggin' sites are saved on Poynter's del.icio.us page.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but relies on the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. We will correct errors and inaccuracies when we become aware of them.

The GAO Discovers Lavish Government Credit Card Spending

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit found government workers using their government-issued credit cards to gamble, make car and mortgage payments and more.

The audit said that in hundreds of cases, inspectors could not even locate the stuff that had been purchased. Nearly half of all purchases were not properly authorized. Remember, this is hardly the first time this has happened -- similar findings turned up in 2002.

Here is a taste of the audit results, which can be found in the GAO report, linked to on this page:

A postmaster at USPS used his government purchase card to fraudulently subscribe to two Internet dating services over 15 consecutive months (April 2004 through October 2006). The monthly charges for these dating services were the only charges that appeared on the cardholder's monthly statements during this period; yet each of these charges was authorized and paid for by USPS. The cardholder paid restitution of over $1,100 but faced no disciplinary action for this fraud.

From October 2000 through September 2006, a cardholder at the Department of Agriculture (USDA) fraudulently paid over $642,000 to a live-in boyfriend who shared the same bank account as the cardholder. The $642,000 was used for personal expenditures, such as gambling, car loan and mortgage payments, and other retail purchases. The activities took place over a 6-year period, but were not detected by the agency until a whistleblower reported the cardholder to the agency�s Office of Inspector General in 2006. The cardholder was sentenced to 21 months in prison and ordered to pay restitution of over $642,000.

One USDA cardholder used year-end funds to acquire a Toyota Sienna and a Toyota Land Cruiser totaling nearly $80,000. Although the purchases were made at the request of two Foreign Agricultural Service offices, the cardholder violated agency policy by failing to acquire a GSA waiver.20 The cardholder also used four convenience checks, purchasing the Toyota Sienna with one check and splitting the payment for the Land Cruiser into three separate checks because its purchase price exceeded the convenience checks' maximum purchase limit. Although documentation from USDA showed that the vehicles were shipped overseas to the units that requested them, we did not perform additional work to determine whether these vehicles represented a valid government need.

Posted by Al Tompkins at 11:57 PM on Apr. 11, 2008

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