Guiding Principles

The fifteen guiding principals below reflect the most succinct and comprehensive body of work more than a dozen focus groups operating at our request over the past 25-years could come up to define who we would ideally like to be, no matter how far we may wander from our ideal path.

Many of them are inherent and intrinsic into the very fabric of who we are, how we’ll forever operate, and what we stand for without hesitation, others are open for debate and adjustment as times and public outcry demands, so we’ll always remain exactly as flexible as we are required to be, but as firm and steadfast as we’ve always liked to have thought we are.

1. This is a government organization operating under federal charter from the United States federal government, which is by the people and for the people, and as such promises nothing less than the best betterment of no fewer than 280million persons (292million if you count the illegals, who may soon enough be citizens as well.)
2. Public funding plays an important role in our society, limited only by the depths of the pockets that wish so dearly to fund the projects that mean the most to you.
3. Science, technology and research, even of the most menial and trivial varieties, play an unbelievably critical role in the formation and foundation of the lives of every human being around the world, even those we’d just as soon see kill themselves in civil war. They have children too, and it’s those children we’ll support as best we’re able with scholarly studies about everything from worms to pine nuts until such time as they take up arms against us, and that’s a promise.
4. We only have access to unimaginable wealth, but no power or oversight to insure these monies are actually used for good. That responsibility is up to the individuals and organizations we haphazardly throw the money at with alarmingly little consideration. Those are the ones who actually perform the greatest goods, or should be sued in the event of greatest evils.
5. While our focus is clear, our objectives are not always as sharp by contrast. We aim to prioritize towards some of the most neglected projects, and also those that have been considered by other funding groups to be "wholly without merit", because many times that is precisely where genius may lie.
6. We identify a specific point of intervention, such as in a guy’s basement in Poughkeepsie, and apply unbelievable financial incentive to it in order to exert the greatest will of good for the world.
7. We take tremendous financial risks with government finances that could, and perhaps should, be spent on other projects, and fund with urgent disregard for outcome or public well being, in order to hope for the best in the long haul.
8. We are advocates for our researchers, often in ways that compromise national security and risk to life and limb, both during and after the research grants have been issued.
9. We are a modest organization, and we always endeavor to balance our unwavering confidence with the hushed voices of highly compensated outside experts whose advice we have never yet taken seriously. It’s just part of what we call "The Bureaucratic Treadmill of Pre-Certainty".
10. We treat our grantees, if at all, as interesting subordinates who are indebted to us in incredible ways, much like a loan shark might watch the money he has placed on the third horse in the fifth race, metaphorically. We treat them with utmost respect, but if they miss a deadline or two, they had better be dead or in the witness relocation program, because this money belongs to every tax payer and we won’t hesitate to publicly post personal information so the hundreds of millions of tax-paying victims can know exactly who it was that made off with their honestly invested money.
11. Delivering results is very important, easily in the top ten of our organization’s priorities. With this in mind, we’ll always seek to send periodic emails regarding the status of a project, time permitting.
12. We demand ethical behavior of ourselves and will stop at not so much to insure that we’ve probably acted in mostly ethical ways, at least much of the time.
13. We will always treat one another as valued colleagues within our office, even if this philosophy does not extend to grant recipients, other government agencies, reporters, the inquiring public or any person outside of our immediate office, which may include seasonal workers we have brought in to expend the last bits of our fiscal year’s budget.
14. We are way committed, not only to facilitating the expenditure of as much money as possible, but also in doing so in ways that creates an appearance of positive stewardship of the unaccounted billions we expend annually with so remarkably little to show for it.
15. We will always leave room for growth and change, so long as the "growth" is in our annual budget and discretionary (slush) account for new expenses we’ve just deemed necessary, and the "change" has nothing to do with any changes in staffing, not only because we have a solid team, but because we’re government employees and our removal would cost much more than keeping us, regardless of how ineffectual we may seem in the public eye.