Millennial millions

Another staffer for Republican House government oversight and reform committee chairman Darrell Issa has hit the road, this time for a quick trip to Hot Springs, Virginia, to attend the 2014 GOP “Chiefs of Staffs Retreat,” a conference to “discuss best practices for constituent services, communications, and other official office operations,” according to a May 19 disclosure filing. Issa staff chief Dale Neugebauer and an unidentified “accompanying relative” ran up $200 in lodging expenses and $458 in total meal costs at the Omni Homestead Hotel, thanks to the show’s sponsor, Congressional Institute, a lobbyist-funded nonprofit.

According to the program, the event, from May 1 through May 3, featured the wit and wisdom of ex–House speaker Newt Gingrich; Ramesh Ponnuru a D.C.-based Indian-American conservative columnist and a senior editor for National Review magazine; and Neil Howe, a historian, economist, and demographer, whose consulting outfit LifeCourse Associates peddles theories about its “generation discoveries.”

Says a blurb on Howe’s website: “Using a visionary blend of social science and history, we interpret the qualitative nature of a generation’s collective personality to help managers and marketers leverage quantitative data in new and remarkable ways — and to lend order, meaning, and predictability to national trends.”