Obama's Binder Clip Causes Outrage

Apparently some people are really picky.  Obama came out with his American Jobs Act this week and there are lots of people weighing the pros and cons of his proposal.  There are also people who want to talk about his usage of office supplies.  The New York Post came out with an article titled O gives jobs ‘clip’ service calling it a "chintzy fastener" and an "enormous paper clip" in the headline and opening sentence, but the rest of the article actually talks about the jobs bill.  Why would they tease me with that great introduction and then launch into boring lectures about economic theory?  Yuck!  Talk about the binder clip people; that's the news!

Luckily, the Huffington Post was up to the challenge and ran an article about the article that should have been about a binder clip, and actually did a better job of binder clip reporting.  They link to a product page from Staples with the information that they are quite affordable.  The Huffington Post is not an office supplies blog so I can excuse their lack of knowledge on the subject but a 1" capacity binder isn't going to easily hold all 155 pages of the Jobs Act when printed on standard paper.  They also wouldn't realize that even the generic Staples brand binder clips are not the most affordable.

Universal Binder Clips are Cheaper than Staples

The people who rate binder clips live in a strange world of actual capacity vs ease of use.  Everybody who has spent some time in an office knows that different weights of different papers (see previous article about paper weights as it pertains to actual binders) so nobody wants to say a specific binder clip will hold an exact number of pages.  However, I do know that a large clip can physically hold the 155 pages of the Act.  The binder people would probably advise against it as the binder clips are being forced nearly to their breaking point at 200 pages.

Of course I didn't actually see Obama with the paperwork so I can't tell you if he was performing an act of treason against office supplies.  It's possible he printed the paper double sided and it would fit easily.  It's possible he printed on a lightweight paper that would fit easily.  It's equally possible that he only had 100 pages of the 155 page document actually in the clip at the time.  Like finding out how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, we may never know.

It does go without saying that once you are binding more than a 100 pages with one clip you have to know the pressure on the inner most pages is greatly decreased and may not stay put as well as you would like.  Buyer Beware!