Do you know the muffin man?

...he lives up in D.C:

Have you heard the one about the Justice Department's $16 muffins? Probably not, though even if you have, this latest revelation of workaday government waste has long since lost its capacity to shock. And therein lies the real problem.
For those catching up: The DOJ's OIG (Office of Inspector General) Tuesday released an audit showing that the department spent nearly $500,000 for food and beverages at just 10 Justice-sponsored conferences in 2008 and 2009.
"One conference," auditors found, "served $16 muffins while another served Beef Wellington hors d'oeuvres that cost $7.32 per serving."

Matt Welch is right: examples like this, going all the way back to the Reagan-era "$600 toilet seats," form a sort of background noise against which everyone sort of grunts "that's gubmint for you," then goes about their own business... not acknowleging these anecdotes are merely the tip of a very large iceberg:

...politicians prefer instead to talk about $16 muffins and $600 toilet seats -- it's the least expensive way to simulate fiscal responsibility. The boy who cries muffin while signing onto every new major entitlement and military adventure is not in any position to deliver lectures about tax-dollar stewardship.  ...

The lesson of government waste, whether on $16 muffins or $535 million loan guarantees to solar power companies or $48 billion in "improper" Medicare payments, is one worth relearning every day.
Managers whose budgets do not depend on customer satisfaction and who do not face competitive pressure in the marketplace, will not, on balance, spend their money wisely. Vendors selling to those managers know that price matters much less than it does to, say, Wal-Mart. And anywhere there is political urgency and official involvement high up the command chain, conditions will begin resembling a gold rush.

Let's just hope that after the latest "gold rush" spurred by three rounds of government "stimulus," the country doesn't come to resemble an abandoned ghost town...