Volume 8 Number 3 -- October 21, 1995
In a surprise press conference, the D.C. City Council announced that, in order to resolve its long-standing statehood and fiscal woes, the city will merge with the state of Idaho.
The plan was originally proposed by the House Appropriations D.C. subcommittee after the governors of both Maryland and Virginia rejected proposals to merge D.C. with those states. Idaho was chosen apparently because of its status of being the only state to have no urban areas as defined by the Bureau of the Census, and that its Governor, Phil Batt, happened to be on vacation when the scheme was concocted and was unable to object until the plan had been approved.
Liberals are fond of the plan, which will likely result in DC voters being allocated at least one voting member within the House of Representatives, and probably a D.C.-based Senator as well. Conservatives also expressed delight at the plan, because D.C.'s very strong liberal core will be diluted by Idaho's heavily conservative population in the electoral college, increasing the likelihood of Republican victory in Presidential contests.
Washington natives are pleased that they will have the financial backing of Idaho, which has run budget surpluses in seven of its past eight fiscal years. Idahoans expect that their influence in the halls of Congress (which is currently negligible) will increase markedly as Congressmen suddenly find themselves surrounded by 600,000 Idahoans at close range. Per-capita potato consumption in the District is also expected to increase substantially.
It is anticipated that the capital of the combined state will
continue to be in Boise, as members of the state legislature are quite
fond of the phrase "those bureaucrats in Washington" when discussing
Federal programs, and would undoubtedly be uncomfortable at
themselves becoming bureaucrats in Washington.
Among the first things they'll do is set up a 3-foot wide
corporate-wide Quality Meter in your lobby, like the one shown at
right. While the meter is actually a conventional barometer with new
labels, changes in air pressure are widely used throughout the Quality
industry to reflect changes in perceived Quality. Your employees will
see that your Quality Department has its thumb on the pulse of Quality
in your organization, and tracks its every fluctuation with scientific
accuracy.
And our Quality Employees will generate a vast library of
procedures and standards documents that you can show to potential
clients, visitors, and auditors to demonstrate that you've thoroughly
documented everything that happens within your organization. But,
unlike traditional time-consuming methods of documentation that can
takes weeks of time away from your most skilled employees, our
Quality Employees won't interfere with your day-to-day
operations. Instead, they'll generate the documents with an eye
toward Critical Vagueness, which assures you that "Whatever you do,
it's in the procedure." The auditors will approve of your
operation, trust us.
In short, IncompeTemps' Quality Employees can give your
company all the benefits of Quality Plans, from a Quality spot on the
organizational chart to procedures, standards, and meaningless but
impressive graphics suitable for plastering all around your operation,
at a fraction of the cost of trying to manage Quality yourself.
Ilkovitch was apparently responding to the Committee for the
Abolotion of Most Places with Plants and Animals In Nature (CAMP-PAIN), a lobbying group opposed to the National
Park Service as a government entity, and opposed to the outdoors as a
concept.
Oberin Underbudget, a Gingrich spokesman, stated that they expect
sale of those properties to major corporations will net approximately
$1.4 billion in deficit-reducing income, although he would not
speculate on the annual leasing costs the govenment will have to pay
to use those buildings. "Those payments will come out of different
agencies' current budgets--the National Park Service, for instance
will be spending its budget on leasing the Washington Monument, rather
than all those frivolous things they're doing with it now."
If all goes well with the plan, Underbudget said, they hope to
proceed to lease other federal land and equipment. "Perhaps if we
sold Yellowstone on a concession basis, we could more quickly balance
the budget. And those B-2 bombers that Republicans keep putting into
the budget even though the Pentagon doesn't want them could be sold to
private interests, and then leased by the Government. It's
right-sizing at its best, and will reduce the excessive influence of
the Federal Government by letting the private sector own and manage
many government facilities such as national parks and defense bases.
Everyone knows that smaller government is better."
"Besides, I think American citizens want lower taxes, even if it
means GM cars on display in the rotunda of the Capitol or a Microsoft
stock certificate in the National Archives on display next to the
Declaration of Independence. The new owners will only be able to
add their corporate influence, such as McDonald's proposal to
paint Arches National Park bright yellow; the contracts will
specifically prevent activities such as shortening the Washington
Monument to better fit a corporate logo."
Buried on page 1,454 of the recently-approved 2,338-page 1996
Fiscal Year Congressional Budget Plan is Subsection
3.10.39(a).iii.9(w), "Surplus Capital Sale and Lease Plan." This plan
outlines $172 billion in supplies, equipment, and holdings that will
be sold at auction by the federal government during the fiscal year in
order to help reduce the budget deficit. Item 558 of the things to be
sold under the plan is "Miscellaneous real estate located in the
capital city, and the structures located thereon, as specified on page
44 of plat 229 of the District of Columbia Property Records Archive,
valued at approximately $1.4 billion."
SPRIL researchers spent 14 hours sifting through land ownership
records before determining that the specified page details the real
estate owned by the federal government in and around the White House,
Washington Monument, and Capitol. (The rest of the National Mall is
"unimproved," however, and is not included in the property for
auction.)
Dear Dr. Staff:
I finally decided to buy a personal computer, but I noticed that a new, faster model
was about to be introduced, so I decided to wait until the market stabilized
so I could buy a machine that would be state-of-the-art for a while. I've been
waiting since 1982, and now I feel obsolete because I still don't have a
computer. How is that the darn things keep getting smaller and faster (but never
seem to get any cheaper)?
--Confounded Computer Consumer Dear Confounded: To answer this question, I'll have to
explain some principles of economics. Prices are often set not by how
much it costs to make something, but by how much customers
will pay to get it. For example, the phone company doesn't
have to pay anything for you to use touch-tones on your phone; in
fact, if you use an antique rotary phone, they convert the
noises it makes into tones. Yet most phone companies still charge
their customers for touch-tone lines. It doesn't cost airlines more
to fly a plane on a weekday, but they charge their customers more.
So it is with computers. It's a little-known fact that there's
been virtually no development of hardware technology in the past
decade. The only difference between, for instance, a 286 and a
486 is that the 486 is painted with the "486" logo and has an
internal switch set for "486." If you've ever wondered how a Pentium
can run all the same software that a 386 can, it's because they're
actually the same thing.
Since it costs Intel the same to manufacture a Pentium as it did
a 286 (because they're really the same thing), the price of each
of each, as it becomes the latest technology, always stays the same.
That's why a new computer always costs about $2000.
Why would they deliberately slow down a computer? It takes a lot
of money to develop new hardware technology--years and years of work
from hundreds, if not thousands, of highly-paid engineers are
required. In order to sell a product for the years it takes the
engineers to develop a new product to replace the former, they've
got to make it look like the computers are slowly getting
better. The
software that runs on a computer develops differently--it gets
bigger and slower with each new version that comes out. The main
reason people buy new computers is because their old one is too
slow--so if Intel had released the Pentium in 1985, everybody would
have bought one then, and nobody would have bought any Intel products
since then, so they wouldn't have any money to develop their next line
of computers.
It's also easy to see why computers keep getting smaller,
too. When a new computer line (such as the 8086, which came before
the 286) comes out, the chip is turned down extremely slow, so perhaps
1% of its energy is devoted to working for users. Where does the rest
of the energy go? It generates heat, and to keep the computer from
overheating so much, it needs to be in a big box so the computer is
well-ventilated. As more and more of a computer is actually used to
process what a user wants (instead of just to slow it down), less
heat is generated, and so the computer's box can be smaller.
--Thermal Wizard Do you have a question or comment for Dr. Staff? Send it today!
Many companies have gone too far with so-called
Quality initiatives. It's not an uncommon sight among these
self-proclaimed forward-thinking firms to have skilled engineers and
other high-paid experts sitting around fiddling at creating procedures
and standards documents instead of doing what you hired them to do.
That's where IncompeTemps comes in. We can supply you with all the
Quality Personnel you need, to organize your Quality
Program. You might think that hiring a legion of Quality
Personnel might bankrupt your firm. But that's where the
distinction between Quality Personnel and quality personnel
comes in--the latter are good employees who know what they're doing,
but the former are merely mindless minions who fill up your
Quality Department, freeing up your intelligent employees to
get something done.
Ichabod "Icky" Ilkovitch, a staff member working for House Speaker
Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia) concealed text within a recently-passed
budget resolution that directs the General Accounting Office to
auction the Capitol, Washington Monument, White House, and several
national parks, and then
lease those properties on an annual basis from the new owners.
