“The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.” – President Barack Obama, Inauguration, 1/20/09
I really don’t think that just because they show up for work, that what happens then can be called “work”. Our Federal Government’s “whether it works” on full display (reformatted, emphasis mine):
Federal paralegals had no work, so they surfed the Internet
Dozens of federal employees at an obscure agency that handles appeals of patent applications went years with so little work to do that they collected salaries — and even bonuses — while they surfed the Internet, did laundry, exercised and watched television, an investigation has found. The employees, paralegals making $60,000 to $80,000 a year, were idle with full knowledge of their immediate bosses and multiple layers of managers and judges who “sat on their hands” waiting for work to give them, a year-long probe by the Commerce Department inspector general’s office uncovered.
That salary is just the base – Federal employees have way better benefits and retirements. Figure that the cost was well over $100 to$120K – each. Yeah that will add up over the years:
The underworked paralegals did little as a backlog of appeals of patent examinations that many of them were hired to help process doubled from about 12,500 in fiscal 2009 to 25,300 last year. Soon after the appeals board brought on additional legal support staff to address a deluge of challenges to decisions by patent examiners, the Patent and Trademark Office imposed a hiring freeze that halted hires of judges needed to handle the appeals. But they took home more than $4.3 million in pay and about $700,000 in annual performance bonuses of up to $3,500 apiece for “outstanding” work from 2009 through 2013, the report released Tuesday found.
So, I bet that this was just an oversight, right? No one benefitted from this, right? After all, we are told by Progressives that our public servants are all altruistic – only serving to serve. “Selfish” self-interest, that which Progressives castigate both capitalists and conservatives played no role in this at….oh, WAIT!
…The bonuses included $120,000 for the paralegals’ supervisors, some of whom didn’t even bother to check in with their staff to make sure they had enough work to do. When it was time to fill out their timesheets, the employees were told by their supervisors to record their hours under a different pay code known as “Other Time,” investigators found. The practice only stopped last year once patent officials learned that Inspector General Todd Zinser’s office was looking into complaints from three paralegals, all anonymous whistleblowers, about the lack of work.
So, being good Technocrats, only wishing to serve the public as Progressives keep telling us about their (ahem!) non-partisan Administrative state. It exists only to better organize an ordered society. But what if they can’t get themselves to be an ordered workforce?
When it became clear that an investigation was underway, top managers devised other tasks for the paralegals to do, including assigning them to a project writing an article on the history of the appeals board. But the article was never published, the report found. And most of the other work was “busy work”.
No, they should not have been “managing” (something seems to make that oxymoronic in this context) to find them something else – they should have been downsizing them. As opposed to most on the Left, I see Government as a place where people actually do work – needed, value-added work and not “busy work”. Government, while overseeing our ever enlarging Welfare system, should not be Government AND Welfare combined – to do otherwise is a horrible use of taxpayer monies.
No, this is not “ whether it works” – this is out of control. We hear of this over and over with an overbloated government – it is one thing to have surplus employees but when the managers get bonuses for the work not done for out-of-work workers, this is something to be “patriotic” about (as Progressives tell us that our Government is patriotic)?
…Managers told investigators that they weren’t surprised that the paralegals were shopping and exercising on government time, even bringing Kindles to the Alexandria headquarters to read when they were required to be there. One manager said he “wouldn’t have been a bit surprised if there were people who were going out to the golf course.”
And that manager seems to be saying it in such a matter-of-fact fashion, that’s supposed to be normal?
