Reason Writers at CNN.com: Matt Welch on the GSA Scandal and the Real "Sin City"

Writing at CNN Opinion, Reason Editor in Chief Matt Welch compares two politically controversial Las Vegas trips: That of Wells Fargo executives in 2009, and General Services Administration employees in 2010. Excerpt:

A funny thing about collective shame -- we are happy to administer it on CEOs who get their arms twisted by the feds, yet we shy away from applying it to one of the only truly collective entities we have: taxpayer-funded government. […]

And let's not forget what the GSA does: As The New York Times puts it, the agency is "essentially the government's personal shopper for big-ticket items, like buying and leasing buildings and cars." These are precisely the people tasked with making sure taxpayer dollars are spent most wisely. […]

The surprise isn't that a federal agency went wild, or even that it got caught. What remains a genuine stumper is that the rest of the country hasn't quite figured out that the real Sin City has relocated 2,500 miles east.

Read the whole thing here.