Tomorrow is a federal holiday. Federal employees who want to keep track of the rest of their days off can download the "Federal Leave Record App" to their mobile phones from the Web site of GEICO, the insurance company owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. From the site:
For over 50 years GEICO has been providing leave record cards to federal employees, free of charge, to help you track your annual and sick leave. Now, we have created a mobile version of the federal leave record with the tech savvy federal employee in mind. Want to know when you will have enough leave to take that vacation? Well, take a look at your GEICO leave record app and set a date for your dream trip.
The site also includes a link to the Facebook page GEICO has set up to market insurance to federal employees: "Federal Employees could get a GEICO discount just for being a GS-7 or above! If that doesn't make you tingle, I don't know what will."
As a GEICO customer, I'm somewhat uneasy about paying full price while people like Timothy Geithner or Ben Bernanke get a discount on their car insurance courtesy of Warren Buffett. And as an American, I'm somewhat uneasy with the idea that one of our richest capitalists got that way in part because of the insight that government employees spend a lot of time sitting around thinking about how much vacation time they have accumulated.
None of this is to begrudge Mr. Buffett his success or to begrudge hardworking federal employees their vacations or their car insurance. Or to suggest that Berkshire doesn't have every right to price and market its products however it sees fit. Maybe GS-7s have fewer car accidents than the rest of us do, so they deserve lower rates. But if the left is going to try to divide America between the 99% and the 1%, it should at least be prepared for the right to come back against government employees who get special discounts and benefits.
