I'm guessing those $16 muffins were at a hotel, if it was a conference. I've had to organize hotel food for conferences before, and it is insanely expensive. I'm not defending wasteful government spending, but short of telling the attendees to brown-bag their lunches, if you're having an event at a hotel, the hotel controls everything.

I remember trying to organize food, and wishing for something more healthy than coffee and cookies for the afternoon break. Fresh fruit doubled the price.

Ideally, they probably should have picked a different venue, but there are so many other variables (availability of meeting room space, dates, etc.) that sometimes you take what you can get.

Rock and hard place, yes.

Hotel catering services are a racket.

I read about that this morning and was appalled. You heard about the $780 coffee pot on the old C-5 Galaxy cargo planes the USAF flew back in the mid 1980's (I've actually poured coffee from one of those Oh-So-Expensive coffee pots, by the way) I'm sure. The whole effort in military expenditures was referenced to highlight the Fraud, Waste and Abuse of taxpayer dollars in the Defense Budget.

This one, though, just boggles the mind. There's gotta be some cronyism going on at the Justice Department that justifies such expensive muffins, cookies and coffee. I wonder how much fat we could trim off those types of things if we had a plebiscite committee of citizens throughout the country who simply went through the budgetary lists of all the governmental departments and found such things as this, communicated the information to their peers and asked for popular votes as to whether these charges were reasonable?

If people could see what some of our money was spent on in government, and then had a say in it, I think we'd find many, many more ways to trim the fraud, waste and abuse of taxpayer dollars.

And if we can't do that, where do I sign up to be a muffin man? I'm a damn good baker and chef.

froggy / dun - thanks for dropping by. I'm looking forward to the government explanation of this spending. The spin may go along with the legend about how much the military spent on a hammer.

- and Dun, I am sure bakers all across the country are doing some rough calculations of the revenue that could be generated from those muffin tins ;)

I am with froggy on how much hotels can jack up prices for food and drink. It is beyond crazy. I think part of what is going on now is the fact that hotels have lost so much business during this recession that they are trying to "make it" on customers they have not lost.

And governments everywhere spend money in ways that appear wasteful. The Canadian government is presently spending $90,000 per day on a contract to figure out how to contain government spending.

But a good post and worth knowing this information.

Wow, how does one get the muffin woman concession at these meetings. I make really good muffins.
rated with love

Silly libruls.

The $16 muffins came from the Hilton.
The Hilton is private industry, not government
therefore the Hilton is more efficient and cost effective
an in-house conference and government produced baked goods would have cost far, far more.
Just because it's government.

Still trying to privatize everything, I suppose.

To save money all we need is a few crackerjack people to sit down and figure things out. NO more feasibility studies.. just the hard facts mam..
wow

HUGGGGGGGGGG

I promise not to complain again about how much Starbuck's charges for its muffins.

"Hotel catering services are a racket."

Yes they are!!!! Casino-Hotels too!! :-)

*slaps head*

From Mother Jones:

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/09/great-16-dollar-muffin-myth

Wow, and everyone wonders how the American family gets so much debt...they pattern of ridiculous spending is not confined to the people of this nation, it is also the government. Who makes the money? Never mind, I have a pretty good idea.

According to the Hilton, it was $16/head not $16/muffin and included baked goods, fresh fruit, tea, coffee, sodas, plus tax and tips.

The IG report mentions the fruit and drinks as being "free" which isn't very likely, but $16/muffin sounds much worse (and IG's have to justify their work), so $16/muffin is repeated a number of times in the report.

(this is from an AP story I found on Yahoo!)