They get promoted!

Bush gave them the Medal of Freedom, and then declared 'Mission Accomplished.'

I'd really like to know what happens to the people who "lose" these laptops.

I'd have thought that was pretty obvious! With their insider knowledge, they become very wealthy from selling the sensitive information contained therein to the highest bidder and retire to the sunny Bahamas.

Or alternatively, given personal experience of gov't officials, they've simply mislaid them somewhere and have no idea where because their acute short attention span does not allow them to remember. Of course, their department heads, who are equally mentally deficient, simply forgive and forget to furnish them with a replacement.

Third scenario....there were actually 1,137 gov't employees with enough working grey matter to consider stealing and reformatting them for the family's personal use at home.

Pretty amazing, that! The gov't actually having that many employees with an IQ that high! :SURPRISED

Now if only the hierarchy could identify and re-assign these smarter than average Commerce Dep't employees to other gov't areas...you might finally get a bureaucracy with some idea.

Third scenario....there were actually 1,137 gov't employees with enough working grey matter to consider stealing and reformatting them for the family's personal use at home.

Actually, that is not far from the truth.  The real truth is that they just cant find those laptops.  Some may be in employees homes.  Most likely the majority of them are DOA and in some salvage bin, but the paperwork has not been updated to reflect that.

I worked for a state agency in the early 90s, and an audit found that there was $250,000 of computers missing.  Actually no computers were missing.  The real story was that they were pieces of junk and given to local tech centers so that students could use them to learn how to repair computers.  But some paperwork got lost, so they appeared to be "missin".

Unlike private industry, the government does not depreciate equipment.  So a computer bought 10 years ago for $2500 is still listed on the books for $2500 even though it is not worth $5.  Welcome to the twilight zone called the government.

But some paperwork got lost, so they appeared to be "missin".

Sorta backs up the public servants' short attention span theory, doesn't it....like important documents going through the paper shredder while their lunch wrappers are filed instead, or putting 'in items' in the 'out basket' and visa versa....

Welcome to the twilight zone called the government.

I always wondered where Rod Serling got the ideas for his hit TV series.

It also reminds me of a time when I was a public servant attached to the Queensland Police Department. A notorious criminal had fled a maximum security prison facility and the police inspector in charge of the case wanted information contained in the felon's file, which according to the log, had most recently been signed out by me and not returned to its location.

Well there was going to be hell to pay if that file wasn't on the inspector's desk by the end of the day....my job was at stake if I did not produce it for him, and so began my search of the 18 floors of Police HQ, following every lead and paper trail that may help me locate it.

Come 4.45pm and still no success, I decided there was no alternative but to face the music and admit to my failure, to throw myself upon his mercy and beg forgiveness. What I got, however, was a barrage of insults and abuse, mixed in with numerous expletives that I'd have been charged for had they come from my mouth. The demeanor of the man was such that I thought my days there were numbered....and then, out the corner of my eye, I spotted the 'so-called' missing file sitting in plain view on his desk in front of him.

After all that abuse and arrogance, I felt like telling the inspector to shove his job where the sun don't shine, but intead I decided to retrace the file's steps to ascertain how and why it was supposedly missing. During the course of the following day, I discovered that no less than 73 people had handled the file since I had, and each had made amendments to it but neglected to sign it in or out....that the log with my signature to sign it back in was filed away in an old archive at a previous Police HQ several streets away. It turned out that the file was in its correct location all the time, until an overly ambitious officer saw fit to place it on the inspectors desk for his perusal after the prison break...and obviously didn't sign it out according to procedure. It was thus missing, and all my fault because 73 other employees also neglected to follow standard protocols.

To rub salt into my wounds, an apology was never forthcoming and several staff members treated me like vermin after the debacle, so I transferred to another gov't dep't....which incidentally, was run just as ineficiently and was frequently in chaos for many of the same reasons....clueless employees. It was then I decided that gov't dep'ts couldn't organise as piss up in a brewery, that an overwhelming majority of public servant couldn't find their butt cheeks with both hands and a mirror to assist, so I resigned and got an honest job as a furniture removalist.