Six-Figure Salary For Not Working - National Institutes of Health

[dArKeR]

When Congress was looking to make the National Institutes of Health more efficient, Joyce Sweasy came to the rescue. A top supply manager at NIH, she offered an idea to cut waste and save taxpayers $2 million a year. It's one reason her boss then re-assigned her, but as CBS News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports, it was no promotion.

"I was given absolutely no work to do," Sweasy says.

She claims her boss was angry because her cost-savings plan exposed waste in his branch; he says she was repeatedly insubordinate. But Sweasy never imagined her "punishment" would be a do-nothing assignment with taxpayers forking out her paycheck.

"My gross salary was over a $100,000 a year," she says. "How can they continue to pay me," she wondered. "I'm not doing anything."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/15/eveningnews/main573307.shtml

[loudnclear]

1. If they ever really take a good hard look at the NIH

besides its blatantly discriminatory hiring and promotion practices, they (the investigators) will find more waste, fraud, and mismanagement than most other government agencies. A cadre of scientists who dazzle Congress with hocus-pocus biomedical research form a closely knit "network" that pays top taxpayer dollars to the "old boy network" for conducting questionable research at extremely high costs. It also is a haven for foreign scientists and their families to immigrate and gain citizenship (even some with criminal backgrouds) without much accountability. The system is so complicated and enmeshed in the welfare system for the rich Ivy League and other favorite colleges and universities that it would take at least five years of thorough investigation to sort it all out. Suffice it to say that many of this "elite cadre" of "renowned" "scientists" have been feeding at the public trough for over 50 years with little return for the investment of billions. NIH has been protected by a Congress that lives in mortal fear of dying of disease (which they all will anyway) and who love to be memorialized by having a building at NIH named for them. The level of administrative mismanagement and misconduct is matched only by its scientific mismanagment and misconduct. But then, no one will ever take a serious look at it. Americans love to be delusional about their "icons."

[dofus]

2. I belong to a disease foundation

the National Alopecia Areata Foundation which has helped fund research at NIH. I don't think it's a totally useless organization.

[DrWeird]

4. Given that my graduate student stipend

for my research in the synthesis of a novel anti-HIV drug is paid by a grant from the NIH, I have to agree that it's not totally useless.

[LearnedHand]

6. So who do YOU want to be funding cutting-edge medical research?

The pharmaceutical companies?

[preciousdove]

3. Those with Lyme Disease found it was more tha useless its policies

were hazardous to life, health and financial security.

[Pale_Rider]

5. I guess Joyce is out of ideas ...

... sits around with nothing to do. If I was her, I would get creative and think up some new ideas to cut waste (and torment her managers). Six-figure salaried people are expected to come up with new ideas.

[Guaranteed]

7. I heard she wrote mystery novels....n/t