34 Responses to “Who would pay employees to return electronics?”

1. Richard Says:
   January 5th, 2010 at 1:51 pm

   Darrell Issa is a classic “fiscal responsibility” panderer.

   There is no reason to assume carrying out the recovery of the printers by directing people to return them and then following up until they do would cost less that the incentive approach.

   Issa probably understands this but wanted to blow smoke about something he could make sound stupid and wasteful. (If you suspect Issa is as naive as he seems – you may be right. I do not know the man.)

   This magazine swallowed the bait and wrote just the kind of article Issa wanted. One without analysis that simply made Issa sound logical and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing sound foolish.

2. Nick Says:
   January 5th, 2010 at 2:16 pm

   This is extremely one sided.
   $40,000/$75 = 533 desktop printers.
   given the price differential between printing a page on a desktop printer and printing a page on a leased networked office printer, it is not out of the question to estimate that the savings realized by getting rid of those desktop printers would have surpassed the cost of the program within 4 months.

   What should have been done instead?
   Let the employees take the printers home, donate the left over ink, and take the hit for the loss of the estimated cost of the devices (probably <$10k). Printers are gone, government is honest/accountable/charitable and saves boatloads of dough, and employees get something for "free". Win Win Win.

3. Bob Says:
   January 5th, 2010 at 3:00 pm

   Printers make lousy capital investments because they depreciate very quickly, due to mechanical wear as well as technological obsolescence.

   Personal printers are a virtual throw-away cost, because they lose their entire value within a year. Even “expensive” laser printers designed for personal use are only designed for 10k to 20k pages, and could easily be well past their useful life within 12 months.

   I don’t know how “capital investment” works when you’re talking about the government, which does not have to pay taxes, but personal printers should be an expense cost.

   Multi-function devices such as the one described (PIN access to print jobs) are a great lease candidate for the same reasons: They wear quickly and are outdated. Under lease, you get a new printer every 2 to 3 years.

   What’s even more interesting is that PIN alone is insufficient to guard certain types of sensitive data. Let’s say that you’re printing a customer list of a failed bank, where the list includes customer name, telephone, and address. Federal guidelines require that this type of data, NPPI as defined by GLB must be protected by two-factor authentication….. a PIN is only single-factor, and is considered insufficient access control to prevent unauthorized access.

4. Mike Says:
   January 5th, 2010 at 3:14 pm

   Congressman Issa is correct; Richard is obviously a Government employee, a union employee or perhaps both, and definately an Obama Democrat trying to spread the welth.

   If I (my company) supplied employees with equipment and requested it back I would suspect 85% of the employees would return it promptly as requested; 530X 85%(450) X$75 = a savings of about $34,000. A reminder memo would probably get another 10% of the original group to perform as requested, 54X$75= another $4,000 for a total savings of $38,000. The remaining 26 employees that had not returned their computers as requested would be suspended for five days without pay for their insubordination, saving the agency about another $26,000 ($1,000 per week per employee) The department would probably find out that they didn’t miss the suspended employees and could terminate the entire 26 saving the agency over $1,500,000 a year at a minimum of $60,000 a year salary. Assume that each terminated employee had 15 years to retirement the agency would save $22,000,000 plus retirement benefits. Side benefits – 26 offices not requiring lights, phones, heat, cooling or cleaning; sounds like a “Green Idea” to me.
   Thank you Congressman Issa!

5. Richard Says:
   January 5th, 2010 at 4:12 pm

   Mike

   I am neither a government employee nor union member. The “spread the welth” slogan is a standard Carl Rove-ian rejoinder.

   I do think Obama is on the right track on many things and the spectacular redistribution of wealth over the prior 8 years is not justifiable (redistribution from the bottom 95% of the people to the top 2%. Are you in that 2%?). I support a little moderation on the extreme concentrating of wealth and that may be what you regard as “spread the welth”.

   Your analysis of the savings is the sort of hyperbole a Congressman Issa style panderer likes. A clever rant without any plausible content. This kind of “analysis” would make Rush Limbaugh proud.

   Feel free to offer a reasoned analysis of the trade off between small incentives and enforcement of a directive.

   I never said the incentive would save money. I only assert it is not an OBVIOUSLY bad decision and pretending it is simple, as Issa does is unhelpful.

6. Bryan Henderson Says:
   January 5th, 2010 at 8:10 pm

   Everyone seems to have missed the fact that the personal printers are worth something to the employee and you can’t simply make an employee do anything you want. The common printer makes the employee’s job more tedious so he will require somewhat more pay to keep doing it. Maybe retaining employee goodwill (a valuable asset) is what the designers of this program had in mind.

   Replacing even one employee who says, “that’s the last straw; I can’t work for this penny-pinching slave-driving agency any more” would probably cost more than $44,000.

7. Bob Says:
   January 6th, 2010 at 11:53 am

   I somewhat disagree with Bryan on two points:

   1. If you have a nice good gov’ment job, you would be stupid to leave, especially in this economy.

   2. This is the whole “entitlement” attitude. In the “real” world, someone comes along, sets a policy, you feel inconvenienced, and you move on. Employees should not be incrementally compensated for tasks that are a little tedious…. I mean, come on! they call it “work” for a reason. On the other hand, there needs to be a policy exception for the one or two individuals whose jobs are going to be totally wrecked by the new policy. If someone came to me and said: “Boss: I need a raise because I now have to walk down the hall to the printer 5 times per day”, my response would be: “First, I’m doing it also. Second, you’re NOT getting a raise. It’s called ‘your job’.”

   Mike and Richard:

   I humbly submit that we can express differing opinions without attacking each others’ politics.

   I will say this: Mike’s assessment of how it works in the “real world” is correct, and demonstrates the gap as well as the detachment you get when you let the government handle anything. Government and fiscal responsibility are mutually-exclusive. Regardless of the outcome, the approach outlined in the article sets a bad precedent, and is therefore VERY clearly a bad idea.

8. Richard Says:
   January 6th, 2010 at 1:32 pm

   Bob -

   Most organizations need people who work effectively and with commitment to the job. Not simply show up every day and try to avoid ticking off the boss.

   There are many factors that affect an employees dedication and Mike seems to think think that barking orders or firing a few people to put a good scare into the rest is an effective approach. If he employs people who do not need to exhibit creativity and who do easily measured work that may be somewhat effective.

   If he depends on employees to go the extra mile because they want to see the organization succeed then sometimes spending a couple bucks to make people feel appreciated is better than telling them: “Be happy you have a job”. The payback in morale is hard to measure but $75 spent on the morale of someone who costs $100,000 or more a year to keep around is not OBVIOUSLY a bad investment.

   I work for a company that is widely regarded as effective, well managed and careful with costs. Giving small incentives to employees is part of the culture.

   I do not agree “Government and fiscal responsibility are mutually-exclusive” but it does have a nice simplistic ring to it.

9. Bob Says:
   January 6th, 2010 at 2:20 pm

   Richard:

   I’m not talking about beating people over the head, and I’m not talking about giving people gift cards. I think there needs to be a happy medium. Things are tough all over, and it’s hard to explain to a taxpayer, recently out of work, why they lost their job but some gov’ment schmuck gets a gift card for doing what is essentially their job.

   Conversely, no bonuses at my company this year, and I had no problem dipping in to my own pocket to buy gift cards for my employees — an investment for the valuable ones, and a lesson for the “entitlement” ones.

   I don’t know if you intend this, but your last comment comes across as really condescending. What you seem to be implying is that either you have information that I don’t (which is probably not the case), or that I have somehow failed to formulate an educated opinion (which is also not the case). If you think my statement is wrong (which it is not, and I can prove it), I’ll be happy to debate you on it.

10. Richard Says:
    January 6th, 2010 at 3:37 pm

    Bob

    Is this what comes across as condecending?

    ‘I do not agree “Government and fiscal responsibility are mutually-exclusive” but it does have a nice simplistic ring to it.’

    If so, perhaps it was. You offered a simple, logically absolute and fundamentally unprovable assertion. I said I do not agree and took a shot at how simple and absolute you made it sound.

    If you had said “Government tends to have problems with fiscal responsibility.” I would have let it go. I could not let it go when you chose to cast your opinion as the sort of logical absolute that is so popular in the “Government is always bad” crowd.

    Both government and private business sometimes do things which harm the common good and sometimes do things which help it. Neither has a lock on doing what is best.

    Government should be evaluated by its ability to contribute to the common good. Business is evaluated by its ability to make a profit for its owners. I do not know any definition for “fiscal responsibility” that neatly covers both.

    For example, disposing of waste at the lowest cost to the business may be called “fiscally responsible” by the business owners and “fiscally irresponsible” by the neighbors who’s property is contaminated. For government, it may be “fiscally responsible” to pay the extra waste disposal costs that prevent harming the neighbors.

11. Bob Says:
    January 6th, 2010 at 5:40 pm

    Richard:

    In your example, I would like to point out that the government doesn’t dump anything themselves. They contract to a private business. In addition to being the lowest bidder on the gov’ment contract, the private business in question JUST MIGHT be the ones dumping waste in a neighborhood.

    So the inherent mismanagement comes in to play (again, using your example): Instead of contracting privately for waste disposal, we go to the executive or legislative branches and say: “Something has to be done about this waste disposal problem”. So after gov’ment studies, polls, interviews, money spent on travel and “fact finding”, everybody gets together and creates a new law, sanctioning an entity to deal with waste disposal.

    Every new law has inherent management costs. So now, the taxpayers are paying to charter a government entity that duplicates something that already exists in the public sector. The public sector has a mandate to be profitable, which is conducive to thrift (and in some cases, bad decisions). On the other hand, the gov’ment entity has NO SUCH mandate. Their mandate is to dispose of waste. So slowly over the years, their function gets more and more complicated, and their budget grows unchecked. Eventually, they move outside of their original charter, and end up administering the school lunch program (just being facetious, not literal). Because….. that’s how governement works. Government is complexity by definition, and complexity leads to increased cost. Increased cost in the context of public funds means mis-management. They are one in the same.

    If “government=good”, then we would all work for the government, and there would be no private sector. Unfortunately, there would be no revenue.

12. Bob Says:
    January 6th, 2010 at 5:47 pm

    Oh… one more point.

    To your point, “Government should be evaluated by its ability to contribute to the common good”

    My retort is that it SHOULD be. I agree. But it ISN’T. Government is evaluated based on who is elected. There is no referendum on government entities — by the time new elected officials come in to power, they have moved on to other issues. When was the last time you filled out a “customer satisfaction survey” at the Post office? How about the IRS? The EPA? In these cases, government does NOT exist for the people, it exists for the politicians, because ultimately, they are not accountable to anyone. To further my previous point, the lack of accountability ALSO equates to fiscal irresponsibility.

13. Richard Says:
    January 7th, 2010 at 9:24 am

    Bob

    You have made some careful arguments here and while I generally disagree, I respect the care with which you expressed them. An argument that is well constructed can move the thinking of someone who sees it differently. I suggest you focus on that approach.

    You still fall back to the simplistic slogan too and a simplistic slogan can fire up believers but cannot contribute to reasonable discourse.

    Examples:
    1) you imply I said “government=good” and attack that, leaving the impression you have proven “government=bad” and by implication, that my arguments must be 100% wrong.

    2) You try to undercut my argument by stating “government doesn’t dump anything themselves”. This is both incorrect and irrelevant. As a single example, for years the coast guard dumped old lead-acid batteries in the water next to marker buoys. A few years back the taxpayers paid to have them retrieved. Also, when the government does contract waste disposal, they set detailed ground rules for how the dumping is to be done. They accept the lowest bid that satisfies the ground rules and sometime public input results in stronger ground rules next time.

    3) You say: “Government is evaluated based on who is elected.” I do not know what that means but it has the sound of “badness”. All I was saying is that when citizens discuss the success or failure of government, our measure should be, how much or little does it “contribute to the common good”? When owners discuss the success or failure of a business they own, their measure is “profit”.

    4) You say about polititions: “ultimately, they are not accountable to anyone”. This again has the sound of pure badness but is clearly not accurate. If you wanted to move the discussion, you could identify ways in which accountability is broken or point out that polititions are accountable to the wrong interests. Your simplistic (and clearly inaccurate) formulation makes believers applaud but does not move a non believer an inch.

    BTW – Private business always exists within a community and affects people who are not owners. In my view, a proper role for government is to define regulations, taxes and fees that balance the rights of owners and non-owners who are impacted. Both owners and non-owners have a right to try to influence the government process. If owners are free to make all decision without any government “interference”, the decisions will not protect anyone except owners.

14. Bob Says:
    January 7th, 2010 at 9:53 am

    Richard:

    I agree with you on two points:

    1. I agree that my arguments are SOMEWHAT simplistic, in that I have left out some detail for the sake of brevity.

    2. (I reiterate) I agree that government SHOULD be evaluated based on whether it has served the common good. But it’s not. Government is evaluated based on whether “we” as individuals have gotten what we want out of it. Enter the lobbyists and special interests. Enter the inate tendency for a person in a position of power to consider themselves outside the system, and therefore above it. Although not 100% of them, and not 100% of the time, the people “we” elect as our leaders are erroneously or willingly influenced to a particular position, and that serves NO ONE except the special interest. The outcome can’t possibly be for “the common good” in this scenario.

    In your Coast Guard example, although it seems like common sense that you can’t dump toxic batteries in to the ocean, I’m sure no one knew any better at the time. As for the cleanup, I guarantee it was done by a private company (the lowest bidder).

    The role of the government SHOULD be to act as a backstop where private business HAS run amok (not CAN run amok — there is a difference). When I look at current state, it seems like BOTH private business AND government HAVE both run amok.

    It’s great to hold an idealist’s point of view. I prefer to be optimistic myself. The reality, though, is what you have to deal with at the end of the day, after all “the dealing is done.” Our founding fathers recognized that government is not “the mother”, and that ultimately, individuals have to take responsibility. It seems that today, in our society, the individual prefers NOT to take responsibility, leaving room for government to run amok. Meanwhile, rather than focus on the lack of governance on Wall Street that led to disproportionately high risk for the investor THAT THE INVESTOR DID NOT UNDERSTAND WAS A RISK, government left it to those private institutions to figure out for themselves. Instead of evaluating the risk, the leadership of those companies chose to ride the gravy train until it crashed.

    My point (and thesis) is this: THE CORRECT BUSINESS DECISION would have been to evaluate the risk, and invest a much smaller percent of the company’s portfolio in mortgage-backed securities. The evidence is out there that people knew the risk but chose to ignore it.

    I’m not in favor if Exxon’s excuses about $5/gallon gas, either. I think their playing a shell game (no pun intended) to fool the public, their investors, and the oversight in to thinking that there are legitimate costs involved (and there IS NOT).

    There has to be a middle ground, and I don’t trust that the government, current state, can fix anything. (subjective point of view)

    I can list examples, and you can list contrary examples. Your opinion is obviously intractible, so we have to agree to disagree.

15. Richard Says:
    January 7th, 2010 at 12:15 pm

    Thanks Bob

    This last note of yours is a good example of the difference I was getting at. While we will probably not ever fully agree, this time you are making statements that I can think about rather than just dismiss as slogans.

    Simplification is part of any discussion but reducing a nuanced trade off to an absolute statement results in the true believers nodding their heads but not much else. Neither the true believer nor the moderate gains any insight from the absolute (and clearly inaccurate) statement. The believer in the opposite extreme may not learn no matter how you phrase things but the goal of discussion should be getting a nuanced thinker to consider moving just a bit.

    I consider a good discussion, or debate, to be one that results in at least a tiny shift in my own views and at least a tiny shift in others views. It is very rare for someone to argue so convincingly that someone totally changes their viewpoint but I expect any thinking person to evolve as they make their arguments and hear what others have to say.

    This is difference between saying about polititions:“ ultimately, they are not accountable to anyone” and something like “they are too much accountable to contributers and too little accountable to voters”.

    If “ ultimately, they are not accountable to anyone” is really 100% true then it is pretty hard to see why we should not all join citizen militias and go kill them. If they are less accountable than they should be or accountable to the wrong people then we can discuss how to make them more accountable. Maybe we will even find some points of agreement once the nuance is recognized.

16. Bryan Henderson Says:
    January 7th, 2010 at 12:38 pm

    Bob:

    On your point that it would be stupid to leave a good government job right now, you’re saying that these employees are presently overcompensated, and in that case taking away the things that make their job fun, without giving them anything in return, makes sense. In that case, Congressman Issa should also be advocating cutting salaries, turning off air conditioning, and a variety of other things to save the taxpayer money.

    On your point about entitlement: What I was talking about isn’t really about entitlement, it’s about pure business. Issa believes the gift card program makes taxpayers $44K poorer. I believe that the agency managers who came up with it believe it makes the taxpayers richer (due to the various costs of low employee morale). To your example, I have in fact had employees demand raises, citing various things they hated about their jobs. To their credit, they did not claim they were entitled to the raise — they were just saying they had alternatives to the job and were willing to take them.

17. Richard Says:
    January 7th, 2010 at 1:42 pm

    Well said Bryan

    There is abundant research to show that gross salary is not the only factor that affects how hard an employee works.

    Small additions to base pay are unlikely to change behavior or retention. A $75 gesture of appreciation about once a year can sometimes have far more impact than a permanent $75 raise.

    An employee that makes $60K and feels appreciated may still leave if someone comes to offer $70K but one who feels unappreciated is much more likely to seek another job and may jump even if what he finds does not pay a nickel more.

    If Issa thinks government employees are over paid he should focus on that, not on a $75 gift card. Issa is not trying to solve a real problem. He is constructing a news blurb that makes him look tough on waste. I suspect the “news report” we saw was mostly copy/paste of a few line from Issa’s press office. FINANCE|Tech News just took the bait.

18. Bob Says:
    January 7th, 2010 at 1:52 pm

    Richard and Bryan:

    The point I was making is that the precedent of rewarding someone to avoid negative behavior is different than rewarding someone for positive behavior or accomplishment. The point about entitlement is that the policy in question assumes that people will make a negative choice: keeping the equipment, and attempts to influence that choice. Unless specifically told otherwise, the equipment belongs to the department (and therefore to the government, and therefore to the people), and keeping it is inherently wrong, UNLESS it’s given to you. I would have NO PROBLEM giving these folks the old printers as a REWARD for hard work — this is a win / win (keep in mind that the printers are considered hazardous materials in several states, and the government would have to pay a disposal fee). I have an issue with a policy that could be construed as conducive to an entitlement world view.

    Richard:

    Regarding “slogans” — I don’t quote slogans, I make generalizations. By definition, a generalization isn’t 100% reflective of every situation, but reflects a trend or disproportion AMONG several situations. So, as far as generalizations go, and again, back to the point: to boil down the discourse between you and myself, “government is not fiscally responsible”.

    I leave that generalization in your hands to accept or not, to disprove or not.

19. Richard Says:
    January 7th, 2010 at 2:57 pm

    Bob

    You are ignoring the distinction between a generalization and an absolute statement. A generalization may be stronger or weaker than appropriate and people can negotiate.

    When a statement is made absolute it becomes either 100% right or wrong. If someone who believes it “is NEVER a good idea to jump from a 4th floor window” is caught in a burning building, he will not even go look. Someone who understands that it is RARELY a good idea may go look and see the firemen holding the trampoline.

    The difference between “never” and “rarely” is the difference between a slogan and a generalization. The generalization does not rule out taking a look on a case by case basis.

20. Bob Says:
    January 7th, 2010 at 3:11 pm

    Richard:

    This is not a word game. I mean what I say, and I say what I mean. Anything dealing in absolutes is unrealistic.

21. Richard Says:
    January 7th, 2010 at 4:19 pm

    Bob

    The word pair “mutually-exclusive” is absolute. You picked it. It says:

    If government then not responsible
    If responsible then not government

    You seem to recognize there is a middle ground but it is not possible to discuss a middle ground without backing away from the absolute statement. Many people use absolute phrasing as a rhetorical trick for blocking any discussion. Why chose the absolute form unless you want to cut off all discussion of middle ground?

    I say 2 + 2 is 4 and I am willing to label that as absolute. You will not easily get me to discuss other answers.

    Forty 2.1 pound rocks together weigh 84 pounds but I am not willing to label that as absolute. If someone weighs them and says it is actually 83.9 pounds I will might accept his result. It depends on how accurate I think the 2.1 per rock is.

    If he says they are 60 pounds I will probably want to work with him to see where the difference come from. Neither 84 pounds or 60 pounds is exactly right but one is probably closer than the other. It is likely that by working together we will get a number we both accept.

22. Bob Says:
    January 7th, 2010 at 5:10 pm

    Richard:

    More word games. People usually understand that in normal conversation, an absolute statement is meant to generalize. Sorry if you disagree.

23. Richard Says:
    January 7th, 2010 at 7:18 pm

    Bob

    Politicians who want to get their way spend big bucks on consultants who can help them phrase things in a way that cripples discussion. The goal is to make someone who agrees seem to represent “common sense” and someone who questions them seem stupid or evil. Here are a few examples. You can probably suggest some too. Every political side tries to do this this:

    The Patriot Act
    Government is the problem
    Pro Choice vs Pro Life
    The Defense of Marriage Act
    the Marriage Penalty
    The Death Tax
    Death Panels

    If a consultant had proposed the “Police Powers Enhancement Act” he would have been fired. If somebody proposed the “Security Agencies Reorganization Act” they would have left the door open to debate. When somebody came up with “Patriot Act”, they knew they were making discussion of what it should contain nearly impossible. Any questioning of the smallest provision could be labeled “treason”.

    Anyone who keeps a straight face while adopting the politician’s phrase is either falling into the trap or knowingly participating in crippling real discussion.

    When someone who does not have a spin doctor on staff says something like: “Government and fiscal responsibility are mutually-exclusive”, it is hard to know whether it is an unconscious echo of some spin doctor or a intentional ploy to undercut discussion. Either way it makes reasonable discussion harder and a challenge is fair.

24. Bob Says:
    January 7th, 2010 at 7:30 pm

    Rich:

    Like I said, I don’t play these word games, and most reasonable people don’t either. Both sides have their little slogans and word games, but intelligent people don’t pay attention to that — unfortunately, the unwashed masses can easily be swayed by emotional reaction vs. logic.

    Unfortunately, politicians on both sides play these little word games with the constitution, manipulating the intent to mean what suits their purpose.

    Again: I say what I mean, and mean what I say. No word games here.

    If you have to qualify something you say (NOT YOU, PER SE, I mean “you: the common man” [and man is short for "mankind", which includes women, midgets, and unicorns for that matter]) with “WELL, technically….” then you’re playing word games (and by “games” I mean: “subtle manipulation of the original meaning”).

    Clear?

25. Richard Says:
    January 7th, 2010 at 9:11 pm

    Nope, not clear –

    Everybody with a viewpoint plays games by attempting to frame the debate so the other side has an uphill fight.

    Sometimes it is with paid help, sometimes with personal cunning and sometimes without realizing.

    I try to recognize I may be gaming any discussion and if I am well called on it I will try to acknowledge by saying: “You are right, that was not fair. What I said was simplistic. Let me think about how to say it in a more careful way.” Sometime I am honestly surprised I let myself fall into the simplistic view and sometime I know I was trying to game the outcome.

    If I decide I fell into a trap by thinking something was simple or obvious because it superficially felt right, I hope I learn from being challenged. Once in a while I even say “I did not realize that, you may be right.” Then I try to do some research. More than once I have gone back the next day and said: “Thanks for making me think, you have improved my understanding.”

    You say “Aw shucks. I just say what I mean. I never play games”

    I wonder, which of us is “reasonable people” and which is “unwashed masses”? Were you trying to suggest that you are the former and I am the latter? Isn’t that a ploy? A game?

    I actually suspect we are both “intelligent people” and we both sometime get swayed by a simplistic, emotional argument that fits our predisposition.

    Anyone who thinks he is immune from falling into these rhetorical traps or above setting them is almost certainly deceiving himself.

26. Bob Says:
    January 7th, 2010 at 11:22 pm

    Rich:

    I was actually suggesting that both of us were “intelligent people”. No slight implied.

    The unwashed masses are out there, out of control, ready to believe what the media tells them to believe (conservative or liberal)

    I believe in introspection, as you say you do as well. I also believe that “progress depends on the unreasonable man” (George Bernard Shaw), and without ego, I am not unafraid to be unreasonable.

27. Richard Says:
    January 8th, 2010 at 8:09 am

    Thanks Bob

    I will still be pointing out the use of rhetorical tricks that undercut discussion but I will try a bit harder to avoid condescension.

    I am contemptuous of the people in both politics and advertising who are paid to find deceptive phrasing. They are fully conscious that their goal is to prevent intelligent analysis. I have similar contempt for a “pundit” who scripts unnuanced assertions and pretends “ditto” represents a reasoned response. The guy who comes up with “lose UP TO 3 pounds a week” knows 99% of customers will lose little or nothing.

    This discussion did help remind me that I am not 100% immune to this kind of game. I can be caught by it and can play it without realizing.

    I welcome anyone to call me on it when I echo a slogan or simplistic sound bite where a careful statement would be more helpful. I would be happier if they call me on it without any condescension when I did not intend the gaming.

    BTW – I put Congressman Issa, who’s little stunt triggered the FINANCE|Tech article , in the category of people who are cynically and consciously seeking deceptive rhetoric.

28. Mike Says:
    January 8th, 2010 at 5:13 pm

    I’ve been enjoying the volleys back and forth. How about an absolute change in direction? Let’s change the law to Limit terms of all politicians in America to two terms.
    One in office; One in prison. I understand Illinois already does this. (”Dennis Fox”)

    Well back to work for me. If I get all my work done today I get to take the microwave and coffee pot home.

    Regards,
    Mike

29. Richard Says:
    January 9th, 2010 at 9:21 am

    Mike

    Your boss is tough. I think you should get the microwave and coffee pot just for still being there at quitting time.

    .

30. John R. Adams Says:
    January 10th, 2010 at 10:58 am

    Well, thanks, guys, for an interesting exchange. If only real problems could be solved this way….

    I’ll leave my two cents regarding the $75 rebate plan:

    I think that all of us are operating with insufficient information. I assume that the rebate program was intended to identify the handful of users who actually want to keep their printer. The approx 535 personal printers are expensive: (a) under maintenance contract, use expensive supplies, and are probably automatically replaced every year or two.

    By identifying the (probably just a handful) of users who actually need a personal printer, the department can eliminate hundreds of “kinda nice to have, but don’t really need it” printers. The rebate is intended to get the users to think: do I really need this printer? Without an incentive, the answer is always “Yes.” With a $5 incentive, the answer continues to be “Yes.” I suppose the program designers decided that $75 was about right.

    It is difficult for me to contact the people involved to learn of the logic behind the program. I’m just guessing, but I bet I’m on-target. Congressman Issa could have had a staffer make some calls and track this down. But that doesn’t get the same press as his alarmist reporting.

31. Richard Says:
    January 11th, 2010 at 1:14 pm

    John

    You suggest an excellent alternative motive. You may be exactly right.

    One of the things that bugs me where I work is trying to get a conference room because people book a weekly time slot for 6 months even when the meeting only happens 25% of the booked times. They are expected to cancel the reservation the moment they know they will not need the room week, but they seldom do. I suppose Mike would send a strong memo reminding everyone that responsible utilization of conference rooms is “part of your job” and expect that to solve the problem.

    If there were some way to give people a small reward for reliably cancelling unused reservations, I bet the company could get by with fewer conference rooms and save money. It would avoid the morale damage that would come from having a conference room police. I do not know how such a program could be structured but if it were workable, it would not be a waste of money.

    I think $75 probably comes from tax law. An employee may be given small tokens or gifts without it counting as taxable income. I think a $100 gift card would have been considered taxable compensation.

32. Mike Says:
    January 11th, 2010 at 10:27 pm

    Thanks for the info Representative Darrell Issa, and thanks for doing your Job.

    By Hugh Son

    Jan. 7 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, then led by Timothy Geithner, told American International Group Inc. to withhold details from the public about the bailed-out insurer’s payments to banks during the depths of the financial crisis, e-mails between the company and its regulator show.

    AIG said in a draft of a regulatory filing that the insurer paid banks, which included Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Societe Generale SA, 100 cents on the dollar for credit-default swaps they bought from the firm. The New York Fed crossed out the reference, according to the e-mails, and AIG excluded the language when the filing was made public on Dec. 24, 2008. The e-mails were obtained by Representative Darrell Issa, ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

    The New York Fed took over negotiations between AIG and the banks in November 2008 as losses on the swaps, which were contracts tied to subprime home loans, threatened to swamp the insurer weeks after its taxpayer-funded rescue. The regulator decided that Goldman Sachs and more than a dozen banks would be fully repaid for $62.1 billion of the swaps, prompting lawmakers to call the AIG rescue a “backdoor bailout” of financial firms.
    more at – http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aXIvW4igKV38

33. Richard Says:
    January 12th, 2010 at 10:32 am

    Mike

    I would not claim Issa can never ever do something useful. The Bloomberg story is very complex and even after reading it carefully I am not sure who did what and whether their actions were improper.

    I think there is enough here to call for investigation. If Issa has limited himself to calling for an investigation (as has Frank), I can thank him. If the investigation substantiates that there is real misbehavior, then something should be done to anyone who misbehaved.

    If Issa has already salted the press with releases and talking point that make it sound like he has uncovered and proven corruption then I do not commend him. This particular article does not give much clue how Issa is spinning the story.

    I will wait to see how Issa spins this and how the investigation plays out before I decide how much credit to give him personally.

    Much of the economy was a house of cards at that point and looking for ways to take apart the house of cards carefully rather than blow it away may have been with honest intent. On the other hand, it could have been pure crony-ism. That is why investigation is the right course.

34. http://www.law.cornell.edu/usca/search/index.html?query=%20AND%20%20AND%20Osborne&scope=all Says:
    March 9th, 2010 at 1:27 pm

    Nice post! This is also my biggest earning area. However, it

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