FatCratz

Door-to-Door Shuttle Buses

Did you know that shuttle buses operate in the nation's capital ferrying federal employees free of charge door-to-door from building to building? According to this article, there are over 158 of them operating on behalf of 18 federal agencies.

And they are mostly empty. Having ridden on the DoD system, I can attest to that fact, having almost always been one of a handful of people on mini or full-sized buses that ran every 15 or 30 minutes. Apparently, most of the buses operate within a 2.5 square mile near the mall downtown.

Apparently, tourist-taxpayers can afford to walk or take a public bus point to point in this area, but those whose salaries they pay need a free shuttle. 

U.S. Debt Clock

This is mesmerizing to watch.

Take the time to read through all these numbers and think a moment about each one.

"This would be funny... if it wasn't your money."

Thankfully, our government isn't THAT good at collecting taxes... yet

Complements of Real Clear Politics, the following ad seems like a tax collector's fantasy.

As for FatCratz, I'm shocked that someone in the Pennsylvania state government greenlighted an ad with such clear Orwellian overtones. File this one under "tone deaf." FatCratz is in favor of paying all the taxes one owes, but still believes the governments tyrannical power to seize property should be very, very carefully circumscribed.

Public employee compensation

One of my anonymous contributors suggested the following John Derbyshire post my way, from National Review's "The Corner" (which in turn is a quote from a reader letter, so if you can follow that chain of semi-anonymous references, good luck):

He notes (see here) that the average salary for a city employee of Joilet, Illinois is $83,500/yr. The average taxpayer cost per city employee once you calculate in the pension is $127,000/yr. And city employees make no contribution to their health care coverage and are not particularly interested in changing that. The average household income in Joliet is $47,700.

The post continues to highlight the differences between public and private sector compensation... focusing on the GUARANTEED public sector pension, versus what someone in the private sector has to lay away over a lifetime of work to attempt to secure a similar GUARANTEED annual payment in perpetuity (something like $1,000,000 in the bank in high-quality, low-return investments for each $20,000 per year of interest to live off of).

In short, those our political class now calls "the rich" for taxation purposes are barely making a dent in securing their own pension equivalent to government employees. This security is one of the biggest aspects of public compensation, and it gives a lie to the fact that government employees are in some way "public servants" making great sacrifices.

Derbyshire concludes:

I see no help for this poor guy. He's a goner — sorry, pal. It's not too late to save the children, though. Make sure you tell them, morning noon and night — GET A GOVERNMENT JOB!

As someone who worked for the government, I disagree. No matter how big the government bribes salaries get relative to the private sector, I will tell my children to pursue a calling where incentives to excel are in abundance and excellence is rewarded.

FatCratz is...

meant to be a lighthearted picture of what government does well, and what it does poorly, through the eyes of government employees. So that we might look to government to do the right things, and not expect too much, or too little, of it.

I don't want to buy my next car from the DMV.

FatCratz is now on Facebook

Click the "Like" button on the left, become a fan, and help us keep the FatCratz experiment underway.

We are looking for a few good government employees--federal, state, local--to give us some humorous stories from the lighter side of the government bureaucracy.

Thank you for your support. And remember, you don't have to work in government to contribute.

Prize Money for Bureaucrats

John Steele Gordon has a brilliant op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today (subscription required and worth every penny), that powerfully captures the essence of what FatCratz is all about. The piece is brilliant because it both nails the problem of government bureaucracy and offers a real-world solution.

First, the problem:

Bureaucrats, alas, are... highly disincentivized to increase efficiency and to innovate. In business a penny saved is a penny earned, the savings flowing directly to the all-important bottom line. But in a bureaucracy, a penny saved is a penny likely to be cut from next year's budget. And prestige in a bureaucracy comes not from profit but from the size of one's budget. So even accidental savings are likely to be suppressed with make-work.

And then the solution, admittedly outside the box, but not entirely unworkable:

Let's say the federal widget inspection office in Seattle comes up with a way to save a million dollars a year by changing the method it uses to inspect widgets. Why not give personnel in that office the first year's savings, distributing it according to a set formula akin to that of the Royal Navy's? A million dollars in "prize money" would certainly be an incentive to motivate even the most slothful government office to find new ways to do things.

This solution is doubly brilliant because it is introduced by a reference to Patrick O'Brian novels, which are near and dear to the FatCratz heart for their evocative portrayal of the dictum, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

This solution could also be employed in the private sector, which in large companies often becomes stratified enough to resemble a government bureaucracy. By distributing the rewards of increased efficiency widely to the members of a large team instead of rewarding a handful of credit-hungry managers, it provides incentives to the entire team.

Any one have any examples of this model being used in business or government?

Government employee asked to show immigration papers...

The head of our Customs and Border Protection agency, Alan D. Bersin, claims he didn't know he was required to complete and retain an I-9 form for the 10 household employees he has hired since 1993, as required by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (which shares enforcement responsibilities with the agency he heads).

As GovExec points out, this raises questions about his credibility and truthfulness, especially since he appears to have accepted the recess appointment after he knew he was in technical violation of the law. I for one am willing to stipulate that Bersin is sincere and followed the letter of the law as he knew it for the last 17 years. His credibility is no more in doubt than any other head of a federal agency.

The bigger problem here is that there is a five-page form that all U.S. employers must complete for all persons they hire, and the person qualified to head the enforcing agency didn't know it existed until he was being confirmed to head said agency. In other words, we have a system of regulation and taxation so complex that the people enforcing it don't even understand it until they have to massage their non-compliance so they can get the job of ensuring that we comply. See Geithner, Tim (IRS); and Daschle, Tom (HHS). 

I'm sympathetic to the fact that the rigors of our confirmation process almost by definition are set up to exclude virtually all qualified candidates. But what about the rest of us? If they can't follow the law, why should we? This is what the Tea Party movement means when they say our government is too big and intrusive.

FatCratz is...

A) A comparative sociological exploration of the cultural differences between the private and public sector workplace;

B) A GSB case-study of the structural limitations of public organizations to achieve their intended goals, with the intended goal of public policy prescriptions for a leaner, meaner federal government that does what it is supposed to and does it well;

C) An outlet for government employees to share their water-cooler humor about the mind-numbing inefficiencies of their workplace;

D) A Tea Party-inspired rant against an overbearing federal government hoping to contribute to its implosion;

E) All of the above.*

*The answer is of course is E, with an asterisk (on loan from MLB/Barry Bonds) noting for the record books that the FatCratz preceded the birth of the national Tea Party Movement on Tax Day 2009--we were officially birthed on April 1, 2009--and was inspired, one might say "percolated", by years of federal service.**

**Said federal service occurred entirely during the second Bush administration, which underlines the fact that FatCratz is non-partisan in its drive for a smaller, more efficient, less funny government.

Brought to you by the IT pros at your federal government

This is the way it works, people. You send me your stories--they might be silly, they might seem insignificant--and I post them here.

Here's a story I got today that shows how the government can screw up something as simple as getting a new office:

I work at a Federal agency that is notorious, to say the least, for having serious IT problems. Here's an example of how crazy things are. A colleague of mine, who had been the acting supervisor of her office for several months after her former boss was promoted, recently had the "acting" removed from her title and was made supervisor. She continued working in her cubicle for a while, but then finally decided to move all her stuff to the old supervisor's office. She got her phone line/voice mail moved, files, etc. 

There was just one problem: she also put in a request to have her computer (i.e., her access to network/shared drives, etc.) moved to the new office -- and it took over THREE WEEKS for the IT folks to finally get her all set up on the computer in her new office! In the meantime, she had to keep working at her computer in her old, otherwise empty cubicle, while jumping up and running to her new office whenever she heard her phone ring.  

Can you imagine this happening anywhere in the private sector -- an employee gets promoted and moved to a new office, and it takes the IT gang 3 weeks to set up her computer in the new office?

Veterans of government employment shrug our shoulders and roll our eyes. So what? That's the way government works. But people in the real world, people in the private sector, have no clue that this is business as usual for the FatCratz in DC. 

Social value of airing stories like these? Do we really want these people running our healthcare? Designing our automobiles?