You Are More Likely To Die Than Be Fired By The Federal Government

Talk about adding insult to injury. About fourteen million Americans are unemployed today with many more millions underemployed, either working part time, working in jobs they do not want, or they have become too discouraged to even search for a job. American businesses are scared about all of the uncertainty that this Presidential administration and Congress have created in the market that they are afraid to hire, making existing employees work much harder just to keep their jobs. Times are tough all over.

Well, maybe not all over. According to a July 18, 2011 USA Today report, "Federal employees' job security is so great that workers in many agencies are more likely to die of natural causes than get laid off or fired." In other words, once you get a Federal job, regardless of how poorly you perform and your government entity performs, your death is more likely to be the cause of you leaving your job than any other reason. Details from the article include the following:

• Death is the primary threat to job security in the Environmental Protection Agency, the Small Business Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Office of Management and Budget, and a dozen other Federal operations.
• The Federal government fired .55% of its workers in fiscal year 2010, 11,668 out of 2.1 million.
• The private sector of the economy fires almost six times as many workers on a percentage basis than the Federal government.
• The Federal Communications Commission with 1,800 employees and the Federal Trade Commission with 1,200 employees did not fire a single employee last year.
• Once you are into your Federal career for more than a few years the job security rate becomes nearly 100% since 60% of government firings occur in the first two years of employment.
• Last year the government fired none of its 3,000 meteorologists, 2,500 health insurance administrators, 1,000 optometrists, 800 historians, or 500 industrial property managers.
• Almost one fourth of the government's employees, about half a million people, make over $100,000 a year and enjoy an astronomically high job security rate of 99.82%.
• Only 27 out of 35,000 of the Federal government's attorneys were fired in 2010, a minuscule .08%, while 33 died.
• Geographically speaking, Washington D.C. employees had the safest jobs, 99.74% job security.

These are truly ridiculous numbers. Made more ridiculous by a quote in the article from HUD spokesman, Jerry Brown, whose department has a 99.85% job security rate. Following his assertion that this high job security rate shows a  skilled and committed workforce, "We've never focused on firing people, and we don't intend to start now. We're more focused on hiring the right people."  This statement strains the limits of credibility to think that anyone hiring process or department almost never, ever hires a bad performer.

His inane quote is countered by a quote from San Francisco management professor John Sullivan, an expert on employee turnover: "Rather than indicating something positive, rates below 1% in the firing and layoff components would indicate a serious management problem." The professor also asserts that a low departure rate such as what the Federal government incurs shows a failure to release poor performers and those with obsolete skills.

Which quote do you believe? Frankly, I would go with the professor's, given some of the facts and incidents we have reported on in this blog:

• When the economic and financial structure of the world was crashing several years ago, internal audits found that dozens of SEC employees were spending most, if not all, of their time in the office searching the web for pornography and downloading it onto their government computers.
• When the Gulf oil spill fiasco happened, it was widely reported that many Interior Department employees were also spending significant amounts of time looking for and downloading pornography.
• National Science Foundation (NSF) auditors found that two NSF employees were in the midst of a torrid love affair and had used thousands and thousands of NSF budget dollars to support the affair.
• The St. Petersburg Times reported in October, 2007 that in a one year period, Federal employees had wasted over $140,000,000 of taxpayer money on first class travel tickets., breaking government rules on travel restrictions. (Note: this finding of waste and other examples are described in detail in "Love my Country, Loathe My Government")
• The Associated Press reported in December, 2007 that the IRS had spent $2,000,000 on a computer security system that the IRS had no intention of using.
• A news report in April, 2008 reported that a Department of Agriculture employee had written government checks worth over $642,000 over a six year period to a live in boy friend. This same report found Postal Employees had spent over $14,000 on their government issued credit cards for Internet dating services.
• Various sources estimate that upwards of $200 billion a year is lost to fraud in the Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid programs, indicating that someone in those operations are not doing their job when it comes to running a tight, fraud-free operation.
• Last week we talked about a story on a story from The Week magazine that estimated about $17 billion a year or about 12% of the budget for unemployment benefits is lost to fraud every year, indicating another organization that is doing a very subpar job at minimizing waste and fraudulent spending of taxpayer money.
• Earlier this year we reported on a news article that investigated the Federal Aviation Administration and found that it had lost track of the locations and the ownership of thousands and thousands of small private airplanes, airplanes that could easily be used for terrorist operations.

We probably could go on endlessly with other examples like this but you get the point. If the Federal government was solving all of the major issues facing Americans today and wasting very little taxpayer wealth in the process, then I could live with the low firing rate since I and the rest of America was getting value in return.

However, the exact opposite is happening. None of the major issues of our time are getting resolved, or for that matter, getting any better, and those responsible for delivering efficient, effective and value quality government services face no consequences, accountability, or responsibility for this non-performance.

In light of these examples, and the nonperformance of the Federal government bureaucracy to serve the American public, Mr. Brown's statement above falls quite flat. It is not that the Federal government has such a highly skilled workforce that enables it to have a employee firing rate one sixth the size of the rest of the world, the fact is the Federal government does not let anyone go for poor performance or obsolete skills, an absolute requirement of private businesses and companies.

My question back to Mr. Brown would be the following: how many of the people from the SEC and Interior Department who abused their jobs in search of pornography have been fired, how many employees who fraudulently flew on first class tickets have been fired, how many employees who do not do their jobs and allow hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to be wasted via fraud have been fired, how employees who abused their government issued credit cards have been fired, how many employees at the FAA who have created a whole in our national security have been fired for losing track of thousands of private aircraft have been fired? I would bet very few, if any, of these perpetrators and their supervisors have been fired as a result of this shoddy performance.

The ultimate responsibility for this disgrace and inefficiency comes back to the political class sitting in the White House and in Congress. They have to step up and be the leaders when it comes to setting standards on performance and accountability.

However, given their own poor track record of delivering results and being accountable, I am afraid that this leadership trait will not emerge soon in our government.

Until then, the Federal government will be the epitome of inefficiency and nonperformance and the poster child for the old saying: " Nice work if you can get it."  A slogan that will continue to divide the country along the lines of those that have it good (politicians and Federal government employees, both of whom depend on the hard work of the rest of the country for their well being) and the rest of the country which is struggling mightily day to day for their own survival and to support the inefficiencies, ineffectiveness, and waste of our Federal bureaucracy and the seemingly lifetime job security that comes with it.


Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
http://www.loathemygovernment.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com/

The Transportation Security Adminstration - Shaking Us Down in More Ways Than One

As most airline travelers know, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is the Federal agency that is supposed to keep us safe when traveling, with their most visible responsibility being the screening stations and pat down routines that we all have to go through to get to our airline flights. It has been well documented that the TSA does not do the greatest job possible, with complaints of aggressive pat downs and groping and incidents where tools, guns, ammunition and other potential weapons got past the TSA screeners.

Now, a new investigation from the House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure identifies other areas where the taxpayer gets shaken down by the TSA, wasteful spending and inefficient operations. Their recently released investigative report, "TSA Ignores More Cost-Effective Screening Model" was released last week. A major finding from the investigation was the conclusion that a private business/Federal screening option, the Screening Partnership Program (SPP), does a much better screening job than TSA's own employees.

The SSP was established after the 9-11 attacks in 2001. The program allowed individual airports to opt out of TSA operated screening processes and employees and request the use of approved private screening contractors. These contractors would have to adhere to TSA standards and procedures, be pre-approved before an airport could use them, and would be subjected to TSA oversight. Starting in 2002, five airports initially used private company screeners and that number has increased to sixteen, with many other airports requesting this option over TSA's own employees.

Despite airports' desires to switch to private screening companies, their legal right to do so, and Congress' intent to allow them to do so under the law, the TSA unilaterally decided to stop approving new requests for private screeners. This Congressional investigation, according to the authors of the report, proved that the cost and financial justifications the TSA used to block new requests were invalid. Findings from the investigation include the following:

- Screening under private SPP screeners is far more effective and efficient than TSA screeners.
- The investigators estimated that private screeners were 65% more efficient and could reduce costs by 42%.
- If the nation's top 35 airports used private screeners, it is estimated that U.S. taxpayers would save over a $1 billion over the next five years.
- Congressional investigators concluded that the TSA "cooked the books" when doing their cost analysis, falsely increasing the costs of using the private companies vs. TSA's own screeners.
- When the committee compared the security operations at Los Angeles International Airport, which has TSA screeners, to the security operations at San Francisco International Airport, which has been using private screeners, they concluded that taxpayers could save $38.6 million a year if Los Angeles adopted San Francisco's operations model.
- The TSA has much higher job attrition rates than the private screening companies, resulting in high employee turnover, a less experienced staff, significantly higher training costs, and a very expensive mobile screening force that is flown and stationed around the country, at great expense, to temporarily fill the many TSA staffing needs.
- The United States is one of the very few governments around the world that operates its own screening staff, most other countries oversee private companies who do the actual screening.
- There are clear and significant advantages for forcing the TSA to approve five pending SPP requests.

Two observations here, one good and one bad. First, the good news. This is one of the few times in my life where I actually saw a Congressional committee do its job in a stellar manner. Most of the time, the Congressional committees seem to just go through the motions. This committee actually did an in-depth investigation, identified root causes of the problems, quantified the problems, and came up with the necessary changes listed below, all to the benefit of the American traveler and taxpayer.

The bad news. According to the committee, the TSA did not cooperate at all in this investigation, despite the Obama administration's claims that this was the most transparent Presidential administration of all time. The investigators claimed that the TSA did not comply with multiple requests from the Committee. If true, this is a disgraceful situation. A Congressional committee is trying to do its job under the tenets of the Constitution but administration bureaucrats refuse to cooperate, even if it would make airline travel safer, more efficient, and less costly for American taxpayers.

Not surprisingly, the investigators found evidence that TSA officials lied when they denied talking to union representatives about the SPP. This implies another example where the potitical class sells out the American taxpayer for votes, in this case, union votes.

As a result of this extensive investigation. the committee developed the following recommendations:

- The TSA should adopt the model for airport screeners that most of the rest of the world uses, i.e. TSA should not be the regulator, operator, and auditor at airports.
- The TSA should immediately approve any valid SPP request that was previously placed on hold and approve any valid current applications.
- The head of the TSA should not have blanket power to approve or disprove any airport's SPP request.
- The TSA should pre-qualify private screening companies to compete with SPP contracts.

This is good government in action. It is consistent with Step 1 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government." That step would reduce Federal government spending by 10% a year for five years in order to get government spending under control. However, a major underpinning of Step 1 was a ground up review of all government operations. Such an effort would uncover inefficiencies and wasteful spending in every government nook and cranny, just like the Congressional committee did with this TSA analysis.

If this type of Congressional committee behavior and Step 1 were widely implemented, the American taxpayer would no longer be shook down by politicians that use government functions for votes and bureaucrats who would rather protect their turf than protect American lives and wealth.


Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.loathemygovernment.com
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com