So the receptionist at the office started* walking around handing out envelopes — envelopes larger than a paycheck — which is sometimes not a good sign. But lo and behold, opening the envelope revealed a nice crisp, clean $10 bill courtesy of [a proxy for] the government!
This is an employment survey designed to assess “worker attributes and job characteristics”. It’s funded by the DoL and the ETA [Employment & Training Administration]. And they expect to become “the nation’s primary source of occupational information”.
But my normal railing against government — wondering why they need this source of information, wondering if they’ll be any more “primary” of a source than monster.com, or to point out how the bland questions in their little booklet doesn’t come close to explaining my job — is a whole different discussion. My wheels got spinning when I saw the $10 bill paper-clipped to the front of the paper. After all, they explain quite clearly that it’s a voluntary survey. Yet there’s a $10 bill on the front.
Now, I’ve seen “free” money before. At least once a week I get a check in the mail from some scamming company, and all I need to do to sign up for their service is to cash it. But this is cash. And the survey is voluntary. The worst threat they can make is that if I don’t fill out the survey, they’ll inflate away the value of that $10 note. But they were going to do that anyway, and anyway I spent it before it was worth less than $9, I’m sure.
Immediately it’s clear that they’re getting a lot more from DoL/ETA to run this survey. It makes me wonder what kind of model their funding is based on. Is it a pay-per-completed-survey model? If so, one would think the gov’t is paying a much higher price for each completed survey. Is it a simple grant? One wouldn’t think so, because the company (RTI) running the survey could probably get higher compliance by sending out higher numbers of surveys overall.
Part of me wonders why they sent out cash rather than something that was contingent on completing the survey — but I know why they didn’t do that. If I’d received something like that, I’d have pitched it. If I’d received something traceable (like a check), I’d have pitched it. Frankly, if they hadn’t had a web-enabled response form [and I’d been forced to “write” a response], I’d have pitched it. Heck, if they’d told me that compliance is mandatory, that’d probably make me more likely to pitch it — assuming, of course, that doing so wouldn’t get me in trouble with the nice folks who sign my paychecks.
So I understand why they send out the cash. After all, even I — as someone who cares little about government intelligence-gathering — ended up filling it out due the implicit guilt of taking the “free” $10.
But what I don’t understand is why this data is so worthwhile that the federal government would spend so much money collecting it? Actually, I understand that too. It’s not their money. » Read more
The Senate passed Porkulus III by a vote of 70-28 with 13 Republicans demonstrating their party’s new found fiscal conservatism by crossing over to vote with every Democrat present for the bill. Like the first Porkulus signed by George W. Bush in 2008 and the Porkulus II passed last year, Porkulus III forks over billions of borrowed dollars to fund various special interest projects and tax gimmicks in the name of “creating jobs”.
The gimmicks funded in this lastest round of Porkulus include a tax holiday for the remainder of the year on Social Security payroll taxes, but only if the company hires someone out of work for more than 60 days. In addition, Porkulus commits to billions in in more mass transit spending and more highway projects (ie. more pork barrel spending).
The Senate’s version of Porkulus must be sent over to the House where it must be reconciled with the House’s much more expansive $154 billion Porkulus bill. However, the Senate plans to pass more items in the House’s bill one at a time so that Senate Majority Harry Reid and other Democrat leaders can find out how much the prices of the votes of “fiscally conservative” Republicans are.
Included are proposed Senate bills giving away corporate welfare to ethanol producers, which is expected to be supported by farm state Republicans. In addition, there is another planned Senate bill to keep Americans out of work longer by extending unemployment benefits and COBRA.
The RINOs who supported Porkulus III today are:
Alexander (TN)
Bond (MO)
Brown (MA)
Burr (NC)
Cochran (MS)
Collins (ME)
Hatch (UT)
Inhofe (OK)
LeMieux (FL)
Murkowski (AK)
Snowe (ME)
Voinovich (OH)
Wicker (MS)
Kay Bailey Hutchinson (TX) deserves special recognition for not even bothering to show up to do her job and vote either way. While the other choices in the upcoming GOP primary for governor are not that great either with ex-Democrat and Bush acolyte Rick Perry and birther/truther Debra Medina, Hutchinson deserves some um…recognition for not doing her job today.
In addition, Richard Burr and Lisa Murkowski are also up for reelection this year and both of those politicians deserve recognition for their vote to add to our national debt and for more wasteful spending. Finally George LeMieux was recently appointed by Florida Governor Charlie Crist to the Senate seat. Crist is looking to join the Senate himself. Florida voters should keep this in mind when they vote on Crist’s promotion.
I’m one of the original co-founders of The Liberty Papers all the way back in 2005. Since then, I wound up doing this blogging thing professionally. Now I’m running the site now. You can find my other work at The Hayride.com and Rare. You can also find me over at the R Street Institute.
Those of us who truly believe in limited government* tend to be simultaneously amused and irritated hearing the folks at CPAC speak of limited government as though it’s a principle they truly support. Yesterday, the Libertarian Party’s Executive Director Wes Benedict, monitoring the CPAC festivities from afar, said some of the things that many of us have been thinking:
Unlike libertarians, most conservatives simply don’t want small government. They want their own version of big government. Of course, they have done a pretty good job of fooling American voters for decades by repeating the phrases “limited government” and “small government” like a hypnotic chant.
It’s interesting that conservatives only notice “big government” when it’s something their political enemies want. When conservatives want it, apparently it doesn’t count.
– If a conservative wants a trillion-dollar foreign war, that doesn’t count.
– If a conservative wants a 700-billion-dollar bank bailout, that doesn’t count.
– If a conservative wants to spend billions fighting a needless and destructive War on Drugs, that doesn’t count.
– If a conservative wants to spend billions building border fences, that doesn’t count.
– If a conservative wants to “protect” the huge, unjust, and terribly inefficient Social Security and Medicare programs, that doesn’t count.
– If a conservative wants billions in farm subsidies, that doesn’t count.
It’s truly amazing how many things “don’t count.”
Benedict went on to point out the lack of concern these same people had with the government expansion of President Bush and the health care mandates of another CPAC favorite – Mitt Romney.
While I’m by no means a supporter of the Obama Administration, the idea that many Conservatives seem to have that all the problems we are faced with started on January 20, 2009 is completely ludicrous**.
These are the same people who would gladly support Sarah ‘the Quitter’ Palin, ‘Mandate’ Mitt Romney, or ‘Tax Hike Mike’ Huckabee – none are what I would call ‘limited government’ by any stretch of the imagination.
