In the spirit of reacting before even reading the whole piece here by NS, I will point out a possible error in transliteration on the part of Lyons. I believe the three letter acronym, OPM, does not refer to the Office of Personnel Management, but rather Other People's Money.
As a long term federal underling I can only say that there are many feds that hop to implement their preferred policies of their preferred party and foot drag or actively sabotage the desires of elected officials of the less-desired party..certain agencies are worse (energy not so much, epa pretty much overtly hostile).
I don't know what the answer is , but some agencies do better than others. A rational government would approach this as a problem worth working on.. snd important for democracy to work.
I have been looking everywhere and hoping someone would address this topic. My stomach has been in knots over this blanket admission and no one thought to cover it beyond a basic statement. Now, I'm hoping you'll tell me there's a way to ignore, override, or change this and other entrenched "rules" put in place by bad actors. Please?
Seems to me that they are removing the schedule F as a pre-emptive measure or a "just in case" anyone gets "in" that could use it to get ride of these manager types.
This said, I hold that Trump is simply being cycled into office to bleed off those that are opposed to the system that are on the 'right-wing'.
Essentially staving off actual opposition to the actual rulers.
With that said I do not hold the same opinion as regards my home in Britain, the situation here as regards the structure is very different.
I agree with the sentiment; Schedule F is a very good idea. But consider the counterpoint of a nation in which a future president, call him perhaps Hunter Biden, can replace people with really important jobs of keeping the lights on and so forth with his cronies. The kind of stuff that can happen and has happened in not so rule-of-law countries like Venezuela and South Africa. Like, I don’t want Frank Biden’s son in law’s cousin of whomever in charge of our water quality, you know what I mean?
“A nonpartisan civil service is essential to governmental effectiveness and fairness because who you vote for should never affect your rightful access to government benefits and services. This regulation will work to protect a civil service that implements the laws of the people and protects the rights and benefits of the people against partisan manipulation.”
I'm not sure what Raskin is inhaling or smoking but this cuts to the heart of what is wrong in the imperial capital.
I have believed for decades, that the administrative state is by far the more dangerous of the administrative/deep state dichotomy. Un-elected and unaccountable which is a frightening reality.
I guess, we the people, wait for the great conflagration to cleanse this deeply corrupt and evil beast. What form that comes in I'll leave to the imagination of the discerning reader.
For an enlightening and short read, I would recommend "Confessions of Congressman X". It is as insightful, as much as it is, a depressing take, on our "elected representatives". After all is it not they who appoint these parasites? Yet we overwhelming re-elect these folks. So one could say that you get what you deserve.
That documentary comes to mind about how the deep state played Trump during the pandemic.
I'm not sure how this situation isn't leading us towards a civil war. If it becomes more and more apparent that the government is essentially a possession of HALF of the country. When the other half 'wins' an election, they're undermined in every way possible. That's not heading anywhere good.
Bureaucracies are a conundrum; the larger a polity is and the more materially developed a society is, the more requirement there is for them. And the larger a bureaucracy is, the more tendency there is toward overcomplexity, hierarchical fiefdoms, petty turf wars, bloating, inefficiency, and unaccountability.
Those problems deserve addressing, and continual vigilance. But it's crucial to take care about the remedies. The cure proposed in the post is much worse than the disease.
In my experience, American bureaucracies- whether Federal, state, or local- work reasonably well, as a rule. I've had problems, but they've been rare. IRS tax forms are worse than ever. But my local post office and DMV work great. I've heard and read complaints about American bureaucracies for decades. Some of the horror stories about bureaucrats and bureaucracies get wide exposure. But no one ever does stories on civil service employees complaining about the iron-headed ignorance, exaggerated entitlement, dishonesty, and obnoxiousness of some of the citizens that they're required to serve- up to and including incidents of physical violence directed at them.
In comparison with the other nations of the world, American government bureaucracies are rated quite highly. Probably the main reason is that our civil service is built on a baseline standard of merit and tenure- rather than bribery, nepotism, and political chicanery. ALL of those problems proliferate to a regime of pervasive corruption once a civil service bureaucracy is converted to "at-will-employment" at the hands of a partisan regime and its elected officials.
The situation is already bad when it's found as an "unofficial" problem. An Official Policy to institutionalize politicization is intolerable. At any level, but especially at the national level. We're supposed to be electing Presidents, not Autocrats. American Presidents have already been ceded the ability to overstep their authorized powers in arenas like foreign policy. Granting them--or their deputized surrogates in the Executive branch--the power to transform Cabinet departments into political patronage plums from top to bottom is no kind of answer for the problems that ail those bureaucracies. Such a regime doesn't enhance transparency in government; it undercuts it.
Also, don't kid yourselves, the size of the bureaucracies doesn't shrink as a result. In fact, they're more likely to balloon. It should be easier to ensure transparency, accountability, and competence in bureaucracies, along with keeping them in check with more reliance on measures like temp staffing projects with a mission expiration date. But political patronage employment only leads in one direction- more of it. Simply in practical terms, the notion of mass staff layoffs and a frenzy of rehiring with politically acceptable minions is a juvenile Revanchist Fantasy. Come on. This is basic.
If the goal is reducing incompetence in the American government, what we really need to be addressing is the current electoral ballot system. Without ranked-choice voting, electoral democracy has degraded into a rigged system that the professional loyalists of the two established political parties and their ordained candidates have learned to work for their own venal private ends at the expense of a functioning democratic republic. Both parties have learned that all they have to do is scare a plurality of voters about the horrors of a victory by the nominee of the opposing major party, and whichever candidate succeeds at that pathetic mission becomes the President of the most powerful nation on the planet.
That bar is too low. We need a ranked choice of two candidates: the candidate we most want in office, and the one we'll settle for. The current system only allows us the second choice- at best. Imagine, a Presidential election reduced to casting a single vote for the candidate who--we hope--might edge out the candidate that we find to be least acceptable. That's a description of nearly every Presidential election in my lifetime. (Then there's this indicator--number of newly elected Presidents since 1976 who entered office with a popular vote majority: two, out of eight.)
The real way to trim or dissolve bureaucracies and Cabinet agencies is through the Congress denying funds to them. That's the appropriate Constitutional check and balance. But see above. My comments on the ballot system also apply to the way nearly all American voters are cornered into electing our Representatives and Senators.
There are suggestions in the comments to disperse the bureaucrats from the Swamp into the States, but note that the IRS has offices in every city in Flyover Country with nothing notable to show for the dispersion. OK, everyone who seeks to address the metastasizing managerial state and its fellow travelers: war, inflation, woke oppression - understands that reducing Federal govt. head-count is a necessary condition, but that cannot be enough.
Self-described conservitives think that if only we could turn back the clock all might be well, but history only moves in one direction: forward. The never-ending task of delaying and bemoaning progressivism only serves to exhaust and discourage. A prerequisite for restoring a non-insane version of America is to stop trying to compromise with the progressive world view and instead offer an alternative vision. An alternative vision should not be shy about dissing the shibboleths that the left uses as weapons. The left has made a holy cult of of the following words: equality, democracy, diversity, feminism. In my opinion, an argument that doesn't start by attacking these four holy words is destined to keep failing.
Whenever I tell people that democracy is an illusion in Europe and north America, they ask me to explain.
This is one of the better answers
In the spirit of reacting before even reading the whole piece here by NS, I will point out a possible error in transliteration on the part of Lyons. I believe the three letter acronym, OPM, does not refer to the Office of Personnel Management, but rather Other People's Money.
the good news is…the Elite are panicking.
the bad news is…the Elite are panicking.
One thing that could potentially help would be decentralization of the Federal Government. Department of Interior in Montana. IRS Kansas. Etc
As a long term federal underling I can only say that there are many feds that hop to implement their preferred policies of their preferred party and foot drag or actively sabotage the desires of elected officials of the less-desired party..certain agencies are worse (energy not so much, epa pretty much overtly hostile).
I don't know what the answer is , but some agencies do better than others. A rational government would approach this as a problem worth working on.. snd important for democracy to work.
I have been looking everywhere and hoping someone would address this topic. My stomach has been in knots over this blanket admission and no one thought to cover it beyond a basic statement. Now, I'm hoping you'll tell me there's a way to ignore, override, or change this and other entrenched "rules" put in place by bad actors. Please?
Who is willing to cross the Rubicon? The managerial state will go to war. They are at war with Trump and trump voters. It will need to become kinetic.
“The U.S. funds wars, while China funds development.”
Yellen Dispatched to Beg China for Face-Saving Slowdown – Simplicius - Apr. 9, 2024
https://substack.com/inbox/post/143376573
Worth careful reading -- Such a thought / analysis is VERY rarely stated:
Seems to me that they are removing the schedule F as a pre-emptive measure or a "just in case" anyone gets "in" that could use it to get ride of these manager types.
This said, I hold that Trump is simply being cycled into office to bleed off those that are opposed to the system that are on the 'right-wing'.
Essentially staving off actual opposition to the actual rulers.
With that said I do not hold the same opinion as regards my home in Britain, the situation here as regards the structure is very different.
Brilliant - thank you for explaining this so clearly...
I agree with the sentiment; Schedule F is a very good idea. But consider the counterpoint of a nation in which a future president, call him perhaps Hunter Biden, can replace people with really important jobs of keeping the lights on and so forth with his cronies. The kind of stuff that can happen and has happened in not so rule-of-law countries like Venezuela and South Africa. Like, I don’t want Frank Biden’s son in law’s cousin of whomever in charge of our water quality, you know what I mean?
“A nonpartisan civil service is essential to governmental effectiveness and fairness because who you vote for should never affect your rightful access to government benefits and services. This regulation will work to protect a civil service that implements the laws of the people and protects the rights and benefits of the people against partisan manipulation.”
I'm not sure what Raskin is inhaling or smoking but this cuts to the heart of what is wrong in the imperial capital.
I have believed for decades, that the administrative state is by far the more dangerous of the administrative/deep state dichotomy. Un-elected and unaccountable which is a frightening reality.
I guess, we the people, wait for the great conflagration to cleanse this deeply corrupt and evil beast. What form that comes in I'll leave to the imagination of the discerning reader.
For an enlightening and short read, I would recommend "Confessions of Congressman X". It is as insightful, as much as it is, a depressing take, on our "elected representatives". After all is it not they who appoint these parasites? Yet we overwhelming re-elect these folks. So one could say that you get what you deserve.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjadCd0VRBw&list=WL&index=10
That documentary comes to mind about how the deep state played Trump during the pandemic.
I'm not sure how this situation isn't leading us towards a civil war. If it becomes more and more apparent that the government is essentially a possession of HALF of the country. When the other half 'wins' an election, they're undermined in every way possible. That's not heading anywhere good.
Bureaucracies are a conundrum; the larger a polity is and the more materially developed a society is, the more requirement there is for them. And the larger a bureaucracy is, the more tendency there is toward overcomplexity, hierarchical fiefdoms, petty turf wars, bloating, inefficiency, and unaccountability.
Those problems deserve addressing, and continual vigilance. But it's crucial to take care about the remedies. The cure proposed in the post is much worse than the disease.
In my experience, American bureaucracies- whether Federal, state, or local- work reasonably well, as a rule. I've had problems, but they've been rare. IRS tax forms are worse than ever. But my local post office and DMV work great. I've heard and read complaints about American bureaucracies for decades. Some of the horror stories about bureaucrats and bureaucracies get wide exposure. But no one ever does stories on civil service employees complaining about the iron-headed ignorance, exaggerated entitlement, dishonesty, and obnoxiousness of some of the citizens that they're required to serve- up to and including incidents of physical violence directed at them.
In comparison with the other nations of the world, American government bureaucracies are rated quite highly. Probably the main reason is that our civil service is built on a baseline standard of merit and tenure- rather than bribery, nepotism, and political chicanery. ALL of those problems proliferate to a regime of pervasive corruption once a civil service bureaucracy is converted to "at-will-employment" at the hands of a partisan regime and its elected officials.
The situation is already bad when it's found as an "unofficial" problem. An Official Policy to institutionalize politicization is intolerable. At any level, but especially at the national level. We're supposed to be electing Presidents, not Autocrats. American Presidents have already been ceded the ability to overstep their authorized powers in arenas like foreign policy. Granting them--or their deputized surrogates in the Executive branch--the power to transform Cabinet departments into political patronage plums from top to bottom is no kind of answer for the problems that ail those bureaucracies. Such a regime doesn't enhance transparency in government; it undercuts it.
Also, don't kid yourselves, the size of the bureaucracies doesn't shrink as a result. In fact, they're more likely to balloon. It should be easier to ensure transparency, accountability, and competence in bureaucracies, along with keeping them in check with more reliance on measures like temp staffing projects with a mission expiration date. But political patronage employment only leads in one direction- more of it. Simply in practical terms, the notion of mass staff layoffs and a frenzy of rehiring with politically acceptable minions is a juvenile Revanchist Fantasy. Come on. This is basic.
If the goal is reducing incompetence in the American government, what we really need to be addressing is the current electoral ballot system. Without ranked-choice voting, electoral democracy has degraded into a rigged system that the professional loyalists of the two established political parties and their ordained candidates have learned to work for their own venal private ends at the expense of a functioning democratic republic. Both parties have learned that all they have to do is scare a plurality of voters about the horrors of a victory by the nominee of the opposing major party, and whichever candidate succeeds at that pathetic mission becomes the President of the most powerful nation on the planet.
That bar is too low. We need a ranked choice of two candidates: the candidate we most want in office, and the one we'll settle for. The current system only allows us the second choice- at best. Imagine, a Presidential election reduced to casting a single vote for the candidate who--we hope--might edge out the candidate that we find to be least acceptable. That's a description of nearly every Presidential election in my lifetime. (Then there's this indicator--number of newly elected Presidents since 1976 who entered office with a popular vote majority: two, out of eight.)
The real way to trim or dissolve bureaucracies and Cabinet agencies is through the Congress denying funds to them. That's the appropriate Constitutional check and balance. But see above. My comments on the ballot system also apply to the way nearly all American voters are cornered into electing our Representatives and Senators.
There are suggestions in the comments to disperse the bureaucrats from the Swamp into the States, but note that the IRS has offices in every city in Flyover Country with nothing notable to show for the dispersion. OK, everyone who seeks to address the metastasizing managerial state and its fellow travelers: war, inflation, woke oppression - understands that reducing Federal govt. head-count is a necessary condition, but that cannot be enough.
Self-described conservitives think that if only we could turn back the clock all might be well, but history only moves in one direction: forward. The never-ending task of delaying and bemoaning progressivism only serves to exhaust and discourage. A prerequisite for restoring a non-insane version of America is to stop trying to compromise with the progressive world view and instead offer an alternative vision. An alternative vision should not be shy about dissing the shibboleths that the left uses as weapons. The left has made a holy cult of of the following words: equality, democracy, diversity, feminism. In my opinion, an argument that doesn't start by attacking these four holy words is destined to keep failing.
President Trump's chief of staff needs to be...Curtis Yarvin!
Only way to solve this.