The White House was on to something last year when it asked federal employees for their ideas on improving the government, but sometimes opening the floor to suggestions can backfire. Stars and Stripes has a fun story today about some of the wackier ideas the public has submitted online to the Defense Department. The most awesome proposal is to airdrop a platoon of GPS-equipped bears — which have a better sense of smell than even bloodhounds — into Afghanistan to hunt down Osama bin Laden. This helpful person (possibly Stephen Colbert) really thought through the logistics involved in such an operation, and…
Monthly Archives: March, 2010
If there’s one phrase I’m tired of hearing over and over from senior White House leaders, it’s their desire to “make government service cool.” An occasional quip would be one thing. But it’s become a mantra for the Obama administration, included in everything from official bios to speeches to interviews to strategic plans. And what’s worse, it’s a meaningless catch phrase. If the government is having a hard time attracting and retaining talented young people, it’s probably because it takes five months to hire somebody and because hard workers don’t feel properly rewarded and think slackers aren’t dealt with — not because of…
When I polled the 15 Cabinet departments for a March 8 article detailing the government’s carbon footprint and plans to reduce it, one department failed to respond: the Health and Human Services Department. Now, I think I understand why. According to information just provided to me by the department, HHS has set a goal to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 10.4 percent by 2020, compared to a 2008 baseline of more than 1.1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents. HHS’ target is lower than that of any other Cabinet department and much lower than the governmentwide average of 28…
Mike Quigley is for the birds — literally. The first-term congressman introduced legislation Tuesday that would require bird-safe materials and design features be used to the maximum extent possible on all new and renovated buildings maintained by the General Services Administration. The bill is similar to legislation the Illinois Democrat championed in 2008 when he was on the Cook County Board of Commissioners. I am proud to build upon the work we did in Cook County to promote bird-safe building and spearhead an initiative at the national level that will make sure our tall buildings are not safety hazards. This bill…
Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano was on the Diane Rehm show earlier this week. Part of the interview focused on Joe Stack, the man who flew his small plane into the IRS building Austin, and Napolitano — who clearly wanted to avoid calling Stack a terrorist — offered a slightly odd definition of terrorism.
If you think you can get an illegally-obtained Egyptian sarcophagus through customs, think again. This beautifully-decorated and well-preserved sarcophagus was seized by a Customs and Border Protection agriculture specialist in Miami in 2008. The specialist was concerned that the sarcophagus would require a permit to enter the country and referred the 3,000-year-old coffin to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and the Trade Enforcement Team. They investigated the sarcophagus’ history and determined it was indeed stolen property. ICE and CBP presented the sarcophagus to the people of Egypt Wednesday at a ceremony at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C. Said CBP…
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration is reportedly investigating more than 70 jokes or inappropriate statements that IRS agents felt were threatening since the Feb. 18 attack on an IRS building. Colleen Kelley, national president of the National Treasury Employees Union, told reporters on Tuesday that dozens of taxpayers have made jokes or comments about attacking the IRS since disgruntled taxpayer Joe Stack flew an airplane into the IRS’ Austin office. Some have cracked wise about wanting to take flying lessons while talking to the IRS about their audit, Kelley said, but TIGTA isn’t laughing. IRS employees “didn’t think it was…
Former Democratic Rep. Eric Massa’s bizarre explanations for his departure from Congress have been an endless source of entertainment this week. Any conspiracy involving health care reform, nude Rahm Emanuel, tickle fights, and Navy rituals likened to Caligula is just too good to be true. But what I love most is that because Massa first claimed the extent of his inappropriate behavior was grabbing a male staffer and saying “What I really ought to be doing is frakking you,” the sci-fi show Battlestar Galactica’s fictional profanity is now being used on the nightly news.* For those of you who are confused, here’s BSG…
Cass Sunstein, the Obama administration’s “regulatory czar,” gave a speech at the Brookings Institution this afternoon. Regular readers are probably familiar with most of its content — the open government directive, OMB’s dashboards for transparency and IT projects. But Sunstein made a couple of interesting points on the limits of open government initiatives.
Many agencies use a single e-mail messaging system across all departments and offices. That’s not the case at the Agriculture Department, which operates 27 different e-mail systems, USDA Chief Information Officer Christopher Smith told a House Agriculture subcommittee Wednesday. Only the largest departments within the USDA have modernized and use shared e-mail systems. The other departments and agencies operate as they have for years — separately and without collaboration. Each office is responsible for monitoring and maintaining its own e-mail system, which is time consuming and slows down the USDA’s modernization, Smith said. This fragmented approach has hampered USDA’s ability…