Amazing Federal Employees

Okay, it isn’t exactly the rule and it is indeed not something that should lead to unwarranted generalizations, but this is a story of a very important part of American government… the part that actually stamps proprietary validity to competition-driving inventors seeking patents. America Invents, jobs are created and our competitive edge rises. Despite the rising tide of invention from China and other rising nations, the U.S. is still mega-creative, mega-inventive, and the United States Trademark and Patent Office holds a value key to so much of that intellectual property.

We are so inventive, it seems that there is “a backlog of appeals of patent examinations that … doubled from about 12,500 in fiscal 2009 to 25,300 last year.” Washington Post, July 31^st. Wow! Go inventors! But we all know that with business method patents, software patents, questionable applications, often with patents issued, over “common sense” (think: the patent issued to Amazon on its “one-click” buying method), the June Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Supreme Court ruling denying an overly abstract software patent, etc., the USPTO has to be overwhelmed with work. They needed more people to handle the overload.

It seems that the relevant government operatives got the staffing they wanted: “[However, 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.” Oh! And that immediately cut the need for the extra support staff, as Congressional budget cutters honed in on slicing and dicing wherever they could. But these staffers were already on board.

Hmmm… what to do with that existing support staff without bosses and even work to do because of this cutback. Normally, in the real business world, you’d let them go. But in government, if you cut someone – even with an expectation of getting more funding later – budget realities will tell you that you later will have to justify why you need them back to a Congress that hates to increase budgets for anything. So… er… you keep these folks to stabilize your baseline budget, even if they have nothing to do. Austerity, it seems, encourages waste?

“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... [They took home] $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 [July 29^th] found.” The Post.

Wow, that is clear waste! It should never happen! But because of the way budgets are determined and how our gridlocked House makes budget decisions, if you are a federal administrator with a temporary (yes, even years can be seen as temporary) labor surplus, you are deemed mentally ill if you reduce your ask to Congress. Once a budget is reduced, it becomes the new baseline from which all future appropriations are determined. And in this era, the probability of getting more later is well… zero. Since the new House likes to cut budgets without looking at precisely what they are cutting (think the scandal at VA hospitals would have occurred if enough money had been provided?), to most federal administrators they have no choice but to figure out how to hold on to as much as they can.

This is the legacy of “legislation by slogan,” blind adherence to underlying mantras without the slightest intention of digging into facts as they really are, acting primarily to enhance perception without much concern for the actual needs of the country itself, focusing on getting elected – even if the resulting platitudes and placebos only make things worse, playing to a constituency that has slowly been educated that voting for the right “words” will create an instant solution to complex problems their elected representatives often don’t understand, cannot explain and in connection with long bills that they will vote on without ever reading them. The vote in accordance with some simplistic slogan. Always. Common sense. Don’t let it get in the way!

It is America, land of SuperPacs, gerrymandering, disproportionate representation of rural communities (two senators from every state regardless of population), constantly running for office and seeking campaign money (House representatives are elected every two years), where stupid trumps smart, where form trumps substance and where gaming the system trumps administrative sense.

 I’m Peter Dekom, and we voted for it, we support it and we are now going to have to live with what we have created.