When I was working at DoD, a notice was posted from the Personnel Dept. saying that all promotions above a certain level would be reviewed to make sure that "all opportunities for diversity" (their words) had been exhausted. Which meant that Peter, you can just forget about it.

This directly affected me, since I had spent some time as acting (a round robin deal with one other person) at the level in question.

I was outraged on general principles, although as far as my personal situation was concerned, I wasn't too cut up. The extra money wasn't worth the extra work. At that level I was coming in early and working late, but I got the world that the big boss thought I should be coming in earlier and leaving later and taking work home with me, so screw that. (The position was later abolished due to a reorganization.)

-- Anonymous, November 19, 2001

Answers

Another item:

Early in the Clinton Administration, we got a notice, from Les Aspin (Clinton's first Secretary of Defense). It said that a recent survey had shown that morale in the Armed Forces was extremely high (in fact it was in the toilet, I was there).

The primary reason given was happiness over Clinton's policy of gays in the military! This is like saying that morale was soaring because of a sharp cut in pay.

(I happen to think that "don't ask, don't tell" is OK, but it was forced on Clinton by Colin Powell and Sam Nunn, head of the Senate Armed Services Committee.)

-- Anonymous, November 19, 2001