FatCratz

Know Your Member II: The Combination

Thanks to a new contributor, here's the second installment of Know Your Member (explained here). Like the first, this one is a little hard to believe. But I'm not sure how you could make it up, either.

I read your story about Congressman who was throwing out staplers, and had to laugh. I worked for a member who from time to time was a little paranoid, and though the following didn't happen to me, I was in the office when it occurred.

Our boss was at the airport getting ready to board his plane on the way back to the district, when he called in a panic because he had left his eyeglasses and some other personal items in his DC apartment. He wanted an assistant to run to his house, pick them up, and deliver them to the airport before the plane took off. The only problem was that the assistant didn't have keys to the place.

Fortunately, there was one of those real estate key boxes on the door with a combo lock. Here's where things get a bit surreal. The Congressman didn't want to reveal the combo over the phone. It wasn't clear whether he thought someone might be wiretapping his calls, or someone in the seat beside him might be listening in (and know who he was, and where he lived, and memorize the combo, etc.).

Solution? The Congressman asked his assistant to guess the combo. Four or five digits, one digit at a time. After each guess, he'd give hints ("higher" or "lower"). And when he got it right, he'd signal in the affirmative.

I Want That Job

We all have a little FatCrat in us... Who, after all, if offered this job, could turn it down:

The Education Department will eliminate a Bush-era "education policy attaché" based in Paris -- the one in France -- whose annual salary, housing allowance and business expenses exceed $630,000.

The good news is that the position is being cut. The bad news is that it existed in the first place.

Bureaucrats can't be trusted to be frugal with other people's money. Not because they are evil, but because they are human. It's not a question of additional review or accountability or systems. It's the question of the inherent logic of the public expenditure. Bigger budgets are a sign of bureaucratic success, and the Department of Education has gone from $14 billion in 1980 to as much as $100 billion in this decade. Even if you correct for inflation and population growth, more than double.

The good news in this article is that it seems someone at the Washington Post is reading FatCratz (see our earlier post):

The Department of Homeland Security has started buying its supplies in bulk and -- to the surprise and delight of bureaucrats -- discovered it's much cheaper that way.

We'll take that as a complement, though it could also mean our humor is so obvious that even the Post can come up with it on their own. At least we beat them to it.

Why Not Let Us Vote on Stimulus Projects?

We're seeing lots of local news stories about grants submitted for stimulus money. Like this one, to study seaweed:

Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and the City Parks and Recreation Department have applied for a $3.1 million grant to study seaweed. The federal stimulus money would be used to conduct a variety of different studies. The university, for example, would study the formation of seaweed and investigate possible new uses of seaweed, as bio-fuel for example.

We have no way of knowing whether this grant, for example, will ever be made, until after it's been made, for example. And then of course we'll have moved on, for real.

I have an idea. Why not let us vote? If we have websites dedicated to transparency, why not post incoming grant applications online for the public to review BEFORE they're funded. We can rate them, and the public rating can be one factor among many determining whether or not they are funded. Or the only factor.

Let's face it, we can't trust bureaucrats to be discriminating, particularly when they're being told to give away almost a trillion dollars, and fast. After all, it's better that the money be spent wastefully, even fraudulently, than not at all.

USDA II: Fun With Acronyms

You're Tom Vilsack, new Secretary of Agriculture. Your headquarters building has eight miles of corridors. Someone reminds you that you run the National Finance Center, a payroll service that runs a huge proportion of all government payments. Then they hand you a partial list of the operating units in the NFC. Here they are:

ABCO, ABCOINQ, ADJP, BATCHFOC, BCST, BEAR, BLCO, CADI, CAS, CETR, CFST, CLER, CRED, CULPRPT, DATADICT, DFIS, DOTSE, DPRS, EARN, EEOT, EIDS, EMIS, EPIC/HCUP, EPP, FAADS, FEDS, FEDSINQ, FESI, FFIS, FINQ, FOCUSRPT, FTSP, GVTS, HCUP, IMPF, IRIS, ISPF, LEDG, LIST, MANLOG, 13, MASC, MATS, MISC, MPOL, PACT, PAYE, PC-BLCO, PC-BRCD, PC-FEDS, PC-MISC, PCMS, PC-PEST, PC-PRCH, PC-PROP, PC-TARE, PC-TRVL, PEP51, PKI, PINE, PINQ, PLAN, PMIS, PMSO, PRCH, PRCHENT, PRCHINQ, PRES, PROP, RETM, RFQS, SAMS, SETS, SF-279, SINQ, SPIN, SPPS, STAR, TELE, TIME, TINQ, TMGT, TPIR, TRAI, 14, TRAN, TRVL, UCFE, UNAL, UTVN, VPSPRINT, WTWO, INQ

That is the sprawling beast that is one division within one cabinet-level department. Multiply that 15 executive departments, and untold divisions within each one.

Are you getting your money's worth?

How Many People Work for the Government?

George Will's column today digs up this great nugget from a January interview with the new Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack:

Vilsack . . . learned that his new workplace contains a post office, fitness centers, cafeterias and 6,900 employees. But he remained uncertain about exactly how many employees he supervises nationwide. 'I asked how many employees work at USDA, and nobody really knows,' he said."

Granted, this was on Vilsack's first day. But I doubt any corporate head in the private sector would admit not only that he didn't know how many people worked for him, but that nobody really knows.

To be even more fair to Vilsack, the USDA is a sprawling beast.

As a federal employee, my paycheck actually was processed by the USDA-run National Finance Center, in New Orleans. They also manage most of the government employee health benefits. When you get your first check from the USDA, it seems strange. Then you get used to it. Go figure.

"Feds Waking Up To Nightmare Of Bedbugs"

When I first saw this story, I thought I had to link to it simply because the headline was so funny.

Faced with rising numbers of complaints to city information lines and increasingly frustrated landlords, hotel chains and housing authorities, the Environmental Protection Agency is hosting its first-ever bed bug summit on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Then when I read the above paragraph, I figured as a bonus I could talk about the intrusive nanny state. What on earth does the federal government have to do with keeping bugs out of my bed?

At this point, I considered and passed on numerous bad jokes about NSA and warrantless wiretapping.

Finally, I realized I had a true FatCratz trifecta. It seems that one of the leading causes of the bedbug resurgence is... government regulation:

The EPA, out of concern for the environment and the effects on public health, has pulled many of the chemicals that were most effective in eradicating the bugs from the U.S. over the last 50 years - such as DDT - off of shelves.

"Know Your Member" Explained

A recent contribution to FatCratz has inspired--we hope--the creation of a new feature: Know Your Member.

We begin with a serious tip of the hat to Stephen Colbert's "Better Know a District" feature. Members of Congress are human. Colbert's stroke of genius was to allow Members to put their full humanity on display by setting them in front of a camera, hitting "record," and asking questions. If you never seen the result, click the above link and have a laugh.

"Better Know a District" shows that there's no better way to put the humanity of our leaders on display than to let them talk for themselves.

FatCratz believes, however, that there is a close runner up: letting their employees talk about them.

Now, this is a dicey proposition. No one wants to get caught telling potentially embarrassing stories about their boss, particularly when you are an "at will" employee. But like all aspects of FatCratz, contributors to Know Your Member, as will the identity of the Member in question.

And let's face it, there's a lot of plausible deniability. We all know these stories fly around the Hill. The story you submit doesn't have to be about your own boss.

What's the point of this feature? All Members of Congress from time to time act like FatCratz, and who can blame them? They are besieged by people pampering them, and seeking their favor. Keeping them humble is a good thing. As is reminding the people they represent that they are merely human.

Oh, and while we're keeping them humble it doesn't hurt to have a laugh.

Know Your Member I: The Stapler

Here's a contribution that has the potential to start a new feature. We'll see if we get some more stories in this vein:

Not sure that this qualifies for "FatCratz," but one of my favorite stories from my days working on the Hill was about the Office Manager who noticed that they were always short of staplers in their office. They were purchased, placed on desks, and then went AWOL.

After some investigation, it was finally determined that the Member in question was unaware that you could refill a stapler. Whenever he used the final staple, he would throw the whole thing away.

I think it qualifies. Here's why:

Members are human. In my experience, this was one of the great revelations of working on the Hill. And we at FatCratz believe it is useful to remind ourselves of this from time to time. The more our leaders remain humble, the more they'll fulfill their responsibility to represent our interests, and not their own.

So, what do you say Hill staffers. Any good stories about your Member?

(Know Your Member explained.)

[UPDATE: Good news. We've received another "Know Your Member" submission. We'll post it tomorrow.

Is Feinstein A FatCrat?

It may be too early to tell, but it will be interesting to see how many news outlets pursue this story tomorrow.

Seems that on the first day of the new congress this year the Senior Senator from California proposed routing $25 billion of TARP funds to FDIC to handle foreclosures... at the same time her husband's real estate firm had landed a plumper-than-usual contract to provide said services to said FDIC.

This is a complicated deal--You have to click through 8 pages to read the whole Washington Times piece. But when you have hundreds of billions of dollars sloshing around, as is the case with TARP and Stimulus spending, they're all complicated deals. It makes it remarkably easy to route a billion here or there to friendly parties. Or to your husband.

Most of us don't do complicated anymore. That's why it's highly unlikely that this story will generate any public outrage.

Big Business vs. Big Government: FatCats vs. FatCratz

A new Gallup poll confirms that most Americans still see Big Government as the biggest threat to our country, vs. Big Business and Big Labor. The margin, however, is slipping, from a 36 point gap in 2006 (61-25) to a 23 point gap today (55-32).

As we noted in a previous post, though they distrust "Big Government," the waste and abuse endemic to the public sector is generally under-reported. Like the recent Rasmussen poll on capitalism vs. socialism, the shift in these numbers also reflect the presence of high-profile fraud and abuse in the private sector. While the phony FatCat is a media darling, the FatCrat is a relatively unknown creature.

FatCratz is like a PR agency for the unsung FatCrat. Our mission, is to put a face (if not a name) on American's fear of Big Government.