Keller @ Large: IRS Credibility Bottoms Out

BOSTON (CBS) - Chances are during your lifetime you may have the misfortune of knowing someone like him, the very-married guy who goes on a road trip for work and, from the moment he boards the airplane, is on the lookout for extramarital companionship.

And if you have ever known him, no matter how nice a guy he may seem to be, don't you find it hard to trust him, knowing that his own wife can't do so?

Listen to Jon's commentary: 

That is how I'm sure many of us feel having learned that three years ago, the Internal Revenue Service paid for 2,600 of its employees to gather in Anaheim, California for a free-spending leadership-training conference which included baseball tickets, fancy hotel suites, and $50,000 to make two videos of employees performing a Star Trek parody and other humorous hijinks.

And that was just one of 220 IRS conferences for employees between 2010 and 2012, according to the Associated Press.

But never fear, a crackdown on this kind of thing is already well underway, with IRS spending on large parties… excuse me, conferences like that one... down to under five million last year. The Anaheim fiesta was, says an IRS flack, "an unfortunate vestige from a prior era," as if a year ago is already ancient history.

Few serious bosses with a clue would do stuff like this these past few years amid all the deprivation of our economy, for fear of looking careless and foolish.

Except, apparently, the decision-makers at the IRS.

For them, recession time was party time.

And as a result, among other reasons, their credibility gauge is buried on zero.

You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday at 7:55 a.m. You can also watch Jon on WBZ-TV News.