« BACK  |  PRINT

RS

EDITOR OF REDSTATE

Obama Administration Intends to Purge Republicans From the Civil Service

Remember how the Democrats reacted when the Bush Administration started replacing U.S. Attorneys? At least they were actually political appointees employed at the will and whim of the President.

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  November 12th, 2009 at 11:42 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Please see the update at the bottom of this post. — Erick

“This is what happens in third world kleptocracies and totalitarian regimes.”

Via Instapundit comes word that the federal government’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) intends to purge the federal government of Republican civil servants all in the name of purify the federal bureaucracy.

You can read the OPM memo here.

It is a typical Washington process that many political appointees are able to take jobs within the civil service once their political appointment expires — usually at the conclusion of one administration. What often happens as well is Congressional staffers, before an election or shortly thereafter, will move over to the Executive Branch placed into the civil service, in effect, by appointment.

So, for example, when George Bush became President in 2001, a number of Clinton political appointees became civil service employees. As a result, they became subject to civil service hiring and firing rules, which meant they could no longer be replaced simply for having been a Democratic appointee.

Barack Obama is changing that. He intends to purge all Republicans from the federal bureaucracy retroactive to five years ago.

Under his new rules, made retroactive for five years, the Office of Personnel Management will examine civil service employees who got their start as political appointees in the Bush administration and terminate those employees. The order is retroactive to 2004, that moment when a number of Republican congressional staffers and others sought to embed into the second Bush administration right after the election.

According to John Berry, the Director of OPM:

Beginning January 1, 2010, agencies must seek prior approval from OPM before they can appoint a current or recent political appointee to a competitive or non-political excepted service position at any level under the provisions of title 5, United States Code. OPM will review these proposed appointments to ensure they comply with merit system principles and applicable civil service laws. I have delegated decisionmaking authority over these matters to career Senior Executives at OPM to avoid any hint of political influence.

The memorandum goes on to apply this change to civil servants who were political appointees in the last five years, in effect freezing these employees out of other positions, denying them promotions, and forcing them out of their jobs.

No one is allowed to stand in the way of Barack Obama’s agenda, including his own bureaucracy. This is what happens in third world kleptocracies and totalitarian regimes.

This is scary stuff.

Just for perspective: remember the Democrats threatened to throw Bush administration people in jail for firing United States Attorneys who happened to be Democrats. In that case, it was clear as crystal that U.S. Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President and he can fire them whenever he wants. In this case, these people are now civil service employees who do not serve at the pleasure of the President and cannot be fired just because they are Republicans. in fact, the law is very clear on that point.

UPDATE: Media Matters and the left came out quickly to deny this one. That in and of itself means we hit the nail on the head. But because it is painfully obvious the guys at Media Matters are ignorant about what’s happening and just feel the need to viscerally defend everything Obama does, let’s explain this.

The administration is going to review the merit qualifications of political appointees. What that means is that if the administration finds any irregularities in moving a political appointee into the merit based system, including not being the best pick for the job when they were put into the job five years ago, the administration can freeze them out and given them the boot. In every political system, political appointees are placed into the civil service based on who they know, regardless of their overall merit for the job. It just happens. So now the Obama administration will look at every minor technicality as a way to boot Republicans. And the Republicans will not be able to sue until after they have made their way through the administrative process, including administrative law judge types appointed by Obama. And then it’ll typically be an appeal with a record already built up under Obama appointees unfavorable to the terminated employee.

Mark Tapscott at the Washington Examiner has more.

Tags: , ,

COMMENTS

POSTING RULES  |  LOGIN TO COMMENT  |  REGISTER TODAY
  • makemyday

    If you have a gun, buy more ammo. If you don’t own a gun, buy one and refer back to the first sentence.

    I guess it may be safe to say that I am getting really fed up with this crap and so are many others. I do not condone the use of firearms as a way to get their attention but rather for when they show up at your home, school, workplace or sunninig yourself at the beach. Do not obfuscate my words into a diatribe against Right Wing Wackos. I’m just saying…………

  • http://hillbillypolitics.com Steph C

    under the Constitution. Not that such a thing would stop him doing it because it will be after the fact that anything is fought in court.

    In 2010, if Republicans win the majority, this will be a nightmare for his administration considering all the ruckus they caused over Bush’s firing of attorneys.

    I’m a terrible one for seeing connections from seemingly unrelated issues but no matter how I try to talk myself out of some of the wackier ideas they persist. In the health care legislation, if you don’t obtain insurance you go to jail. Convicts lose the right to vote, don’t they?

    Now, we see him purging the GOP out of the government at the same time…

    Yes, you may call me paranoid. I fully admit it. But, can you call me crazy when everything this administration does gives me reason to be paranoid?

  • Aaron Gardner
  • Achance

    This one is just brazen enough to send out a memo about it. How many times have I said that the Democrats vett down to the clerks and janitors and fire everybody who had a Republican thought.

    I worked for two Republican Administrations that took over from Democrat Administrations. In both cases, when the Ds started to see the handwriting on the wall, many of the political appointees dived down into merit system jobs. In both cases, I proposed to transition teams that they be audited for merit system qualifications and for proper procedures in hiring them. In neither case was the Republican willing to be so partisan. And then they wondered why they were thwarted, leaked, and sabotaged!

    And this Administration isn’t just vetting for political appointees sliding into the merit system, they’re vetting for Republicans generally. My wife needs a job that contributes to Social Security, the State of Alaska doesn’t and she doesn’t have her 40 quarters. She applied for a GS-12 position for which she was supremely qualified and far more qualified than the person that ultimately got the job. The local hiring manager all but told her she had the job but that there had to be OPM and “Washington” approval. And, of course, the R behind my wife’s name on the Voter Registration list disqualified her and she was told point blank that hiring her had been disapproved in DC. I have an application in for a job that I’m certain nobody in Alaska is more qualified for and only a few people in the Country are equally or more qualified. I’m just waiting to see if I even get an interview and what their excuse will be for not hiring me.

  • pilgrim
  • mikedaire

    to his arrogance. He’s running the country like a third world despot. The rule of law means nothing to him. 2010 cannot come fast enough.

  • Achance
  • Achance

    I’ve been on the hit list a few times.

  • http://hillbillypolitics.com Steph C

    nt

  • vettepilot

    do when they’re afraid they’re going to unemployed 13 months from now.

  • USNJIMRET

    are also being implemented, but NOT generally publicized.
    In other words, how many “Republican” registered voters are going to suddenly find problems when they go to vote next year?
    All because of some error or oversight of course.

  • dudette

    EEOC may be a toothless agency when it really comes down to defending an employee from unfair firings (my experience is they are worthless), but there are superb employment attornies who could contest couldnt they? Or is this one of those you-cant-sue-the-govt????

  • Achance

    Government HR people are notorious enablers. They’ll tell you all this crap about the sanctity of the merit system but the little HR girl down the hall lives to make her politicaly appointed boss happy and her ability and promotion potential is pretty much defined by how effectively she can get around those sacrosanct merit system rules. Consequently, if the boss tells HR that she’d really, really like to see John Smith get that job, most likely John Smith will get that job without much regard for whether he was qualified or even if the hiring supervisor wanted to hire him.

    Consequently, it behooves any incoming administration to review recent hires, especially election year hires. In this case, though, they aren’t looking for hiring irregularities, they’re looking for Republicans and they’ll make up the necessary excuses for getting rid of them.

    The abuses of merit system hiring and classification during the Democrat Knowles Administration are the reason that early in the Murkowski Administration, we centralized all HR and LR under the Commissioner of Administration and took away all independent hiring authority from the operating departments and put it all under the Director of Personnel’s authority. Of course, the departments just hated it and hated us, and me specifically, for doing it. I had enough personal horsepower to keep them from undoing it but after I left they went on a charge to get their little HR girl down the hall back. True to the traditions of the Stupid Party, the Palin-Parnell Administration, not knowing much about that governing stuff, is in the process of giving it all back to them in the name of better “custormer service.” Whenever anyone in government talks about giving better customer service, I assure you that somebody is getting screwed, often literally.

  • fishbreath

    …if it weren’t for the blatant targeting of Republicans, this is a move I might actually agree with.

    I certainly think that having worked in government at one point should not effectively guarantee you a civil service job down the line–if, on your resume, you put down your experience as an appointee plus whatever else you’ve done and you don’t get a civil service job, why should you get it because the departing administration says you should?

    It’s a pity that Obama has to turn a reasonable attempt at kicking out career incompetents into a totally unreasonable attempt at kicking out people with an opposing viewpoint.

  • Achance

    Of course, the Administrative agencies are headed by Presidential appointees and even the merit system ALJs are acutely aware of what the Administration wants, so you’ll lose at every step. Then, you get to sue, but it is appellate, so rarely will you get any new facts other than those relied upon by the administrative tribunal. The government has thousands of lawyers that they have to pay every two weeks whether they do anything or not, so they just grind you up with the wheels of justice. If you have the money and grit, you might even win that phyrric victory after five years or so. Meanwhile, since most government jobs are specialized and only governments employ that specialty, you are branded a trouble maker on the outs with the Administration and become unemployable. Time to go back to school and learn a new specialty. Don’t ask me how I know!

  • gekster

    This is not exacyly the same, but very simular.
    from this article at Frontpagemag:

    http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35168

    “FP: Alek Boyd, welcome to Frontpage Interview.
    I would like to talk to you today about the antics of the post-modern dictator and how character assassination thorough media has become the tool of choice.
    Let?s begin with how foes of Chavez have been victimized in this way, by a very powerful propaganda apparatus.”

    and also:

    “But the use of the judiciary has its limits, so he goes and orders the legislative to pass new laws that effectively strip elected officials of all administrative powers, while at the same time he orders budgets to be deviated to new, unelected officials appointed by him, that seat over and above the administrative rank of elected officials. Case in point: Antonio Ledezma, Mayor of Caracas.”

    Like I said, not quit the same, but simular.

  • http://redlense.blogspot.com/ jlynnr

    Obama is so brazen. It’s as if he knows we can’t stop him.

    Can we? And how???

  • newsjunkie585

    I think it would be a good idea for everyone to, er, read the memo before grabbing their guns and heading for the bunker (or the White House lawn). Most of Erick’s original post seems a very poor interpretation of the text. Specifically, the idea that this change would authorize termination or “freezing out” of applicants based on political affiliation is just, well, wrong, unless you can make some further, much broader argument that indicts the specific legal measures proposed in the memo. (For instance, you would need to delineate a specific causal mechanism that would guarantee that the *explicitly* non-partisan oversight panel created here would be unable to function without partisan bias). But Erick doesn’t seem to want to deal with details and particulars.

  • Alex

    Over at the lefty nut house OpenLeft, they want to press for using 100-200 billion from the TARP fund for job creation by the Obama regime. Help organize to fight it!

  • Alex

    Over at the lefty nut house OpenLeft, they want to press for using 100-200 billion from the TARP fund for job creation by the Obama regime. Help organize to fight it!

  • Tom_Holsinger

    I’m for this as it sets a good precedent for de factor termination of civil service protection for Democrats when we regain control of the White House. I’ve like to start that by firing all the lawyers in the Civil Rights division of the Justice Department.

    As a practical matter, we have a much bigger problem with entrenched lefties in the federal bureaucracy than the Democrats have with conservatives there, for two reasons. First, conservatives tend not to seek careerrs in the federal bureaucracy. Second, the liberals who dominate the federal bureaucracy have so discriminated against those conservatives who do try to make careers there as to effectively eliminate the latter.

    So this new Obama administation proposal is usefu, and should be extended to a thirty-year period after the GOP wins the White House in 2012. Provided, of course, that we have a President with more energy than a three-toed sloth (Bush gave a good imitation of one), and who sees himself as the leader of the Republican Party. Bush did not want to be, and wasn’t, a leader at all, let alone leader of a political party.

  • alchemist17

    Finding an Appleseed shoot (or similar training) and learning how to use your gun.

    I very much hope that this can be resolved in a reasonable, non-violent manner, but we currently have a Congress that shows nothing but contempt for the idea that there are any real limits placed on them by the Constitution, and that see no problem forcing citizens to act the way they dictate. The idea that our choices are our own or that we have the claim of ownership to our labor and the payment resulting from such labor are entirely foreign to them.

    I personally don’t care that they “won” or even that a slight majority voted them in to steal from the 48% and give to the 52%. Theft is wrong, even when done under the auspices of “government largess”, and eventually this whole mess is going to come to a head. Best be prepared for the worst when it does.

  • Achance

    You audit all the hires of former appointees for the last five years. OPM rules are very complex about qualifications and processes. I’ll guarantee you that I can find some merit system rule violation in ANY hire by ANY government. So, I determine that your hiring wasn’t legal because you didn’t meet the MQs or that some process or approval wasn’t done or done properly. And, of course, the merit system rules require me to fire you if you were hired illegally. Of course, the state run media will go along with the meme that it was just the Republican culture of corruption at work hiring all those wannabe Mike Browns and displacing real, qualified employees. You do remember the mess they made of Katrina. We don’t need more Mike Browns, we need dedicated professionals, not political hacks. If I can write it, so can they.

  • gekster
  • janis

    jumping to conclusions about the massacre at Fort Hood because we said it was radical Islam terrorism. He shook his PC little finger at us for being so evil as to turn it into a “political event.”

    He’s either a fool or a troll or both.

  • newsjunkie585

    I guess I should be clapping louder.

  • IJB

    …When we get in there.

    The good thing about this is that Obama is establishing a bunch of precedents likes this that *we* can use (and throw it back in the Press’ face when challenged on it) when we get back in.

    Provided we have some GOP Presidents with b***s.

    That’s what we need to work on going into 2012…

  • janis

    But you can’t fight an enemy that you refuse to even name. We weren’t afraid to name it for what it was. It was your side that preferred to fumble around for the meaning of the event and you are still fumbling.

    We prefer to see clearly and shoot straight when it’s necessary. You can continue to wander around in the tall grass and be afraid to see what’s right in front of you. Or, conversely, you can continue to tut-tut at us for calling your side anti-American, anti-Constititutional, pro-tyranny thugs. Either way works for me.

  • Achance

    If you’re not just a troll, you doing a good imitation of one.

  • Achance

    Republicans should fire EVERY political appointee within milliseconds of the President’s hand coming off the Bible. But then, I’ve been saying that for years here.

  • antisocial

    You can take your moral compass to the place where the virgins wait for Jihadis.

  • onemorevoice

    The retroactive bit seems mistaken as well. It doesn’t look like a review of hires from the last 5 years, but a restriction against people who held the position in the last 5 years; here is the text:

    ” 1. The appointment of a current political Schedule A or Schedule C Executive Branch employee or a former political Schedule A or Schedule C Executive Branch employee who held the position within the last five years to a competitive or non-political excepted service position under title 5 of the U.S. Code.

    2. The appointment of a current Non-career SES Executive Branch employee or a former Non-career SES Executive Branch employee who held the position within the last five years to a competitive or non-political excepted service position under title 5 of the U.S. Code. ”

    I’m more surprised that InstaPundit posted this without reading it; I expect more from him. If anything, this seems like a shot against tenure, and it will count equally against members of the Obama administration when the next administration comes in.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    Get lost you fascist follower.

  • Finrod

    I would have expected him to make it retroactive for 10 years, not 5.

  • IJB
  • Achance
  • california_red

    yes, it is scary that someone in a non-political jonbn would be fired for thier poltical affiliation. yes, this administration will usurp power where and whenever it can.

    But I just would like to say that these beaurocrats who run from politics to civil servants are part of our government’s problem. we end up with an entrenched class of government workers who are political and who look out for thier own interests. I say no political appointees at all to begin with. Or if Obama wants to play this game, then his guys will be out in Jan 2013.

  • mschmitt
  • fishbreath
  • wv619

    I cannot find the word “retroactive” in the text of the memo. There’s nothing there to suggest that there will be retroactive investigations of the Civil Service hirings of former political appointees.

    This administration is perpetrating some very real travesties, but I’m sorry, this is not one of them.

  • Streiff

    political appointees currently in civil service to the extent of terminating them, my reading of the memo is that doesn’t, but it certainly prevents former political appointees now in the system from applying for new jobs or promotions.

    Ironically, this will hit the Dems really hard next year when they loose a couple dozen House seats and some Senate seats and again in 2012 when first term political appointees are moved aside to make room for new ones.

  • mschmitt

    “employees… or former employees… within the last five years…”

  • http://twitter.com/CFHeather cowgirl_from_hell

    This sounds alot like what the Soviets did. This is especially disturbing when considering Obamas other agenda items, policies and pending legislation. How much more will WE THE PEOPLE take???

  • Dan McLaughlin

    Isn’t this basically what the Kentucky Democrats tried to criminally prosecute Fletcher for doing when he became Governor and wanted to roust some of the long-entrenched Democrats out of the state bureaucracies?

  • Marcus_Traianus

    Oh, lookie. A Socialist leaning US President surrounded in his upbringing by communist sympathizers and currently entangled with friends possessing the same proclivities- wants a purge?

    How absolutely and totally unanticipated. Why, I couldn’t have predicted this from a man surrounded by Frank Marshall Davis, Bill Ayers and Reverend Wright, . I also believe Obama also mentioned once he sought out Marxists. Guess he found them……hmmm.

    So, testing my memory, I believe Stalin, the gentle old mustachioed psychotic chap, in 1937-38, started purging the government and then moved along to every other institution including the Army. I guess McCrystal and anyone else easily labeled better watch their six.

    Look I am no huge fan of the civil service system and my WAG is that plenty of reform would help (IDK like getting rid of the substantial old dead wood and taking a burden off taxpayers- stuff like that) make things work more efficiently. But give me a break- assaulting the folks in merit positions to weed out, ooooh- REPUBLICAN SYMPATHIZERS, aaaaah! It’s an amateurish, roguish, foolish, sophomoric, moronic- in other words Obama, move.

    The only thing this will do is put a bunch of lawyers to work. Oh wait- is this a tricky, cloak and dagger part of the Stimulus?.

  • The_Gadfly

    Just like the Dems revised the special election law when Kennedy died, if necessary, they’ll revise this law when they lose the next election cycle. That’s assuming they just don’t step around it with a waiver they way they did all those lobbyist appointments.

  • anotherindyfilmguy

    anything resembling *justice* this memo will end up in court as “exhibit A” when someone is fired and will be overthrown by the courts…
    good luck with that for whom it will matter…

    Maybe I should write a new musical “comrade get your gun!” for celebrating the new order etc…

    sigh…

  • Achance

    from a Republican and sometimes even when one takes over from another Democrat. I was merit system employee who did absolutely nothing political, no contributions, no signs, no fundraisers, when a Democrat candidate for Governor promised the AFL-CIO my head if he was elected; did it in his vote for me speech at their endorsement event. I was still a merit system employee when another Democrat promised to fire my whole work unit, all merit system employees. They don’t routinely look to fire low level employees, but if they’ve angered some constituency, they will.

  • http://random-jumbled-thoughts.blogspot.com tenebrous

    And the myth of the “stupid Republican” lives on, fueled by one of our own.

  • Icythus

    I know back last week the usual suspects on the Left where comparing the conservative grassroots to Stalin for “purging” a “moderate Republican” (read “Huge Liberal”) in the NY-23. There was a good deal of (righteous) outrage on our side that they cheapen the memories of the victims of Communism and Stalinism by so casually tossing those comparisons around. Let’s not be guilty of the same offense (and hypocrisy, to boot).

    Stalin didn’t just fire his political opponents, he shot them. By the bushel. Along with their families, their friends, those poor SOBs families and friends, and anyone else who got in the way or whose name just happened to get blurted out during the interrogation. Often times, those purged were murdered simply because the local NKVD had, like everyone else in the USSR, a quota to fill. A quota of death warrants and 25-year sentences to the GULAG.

    Yes, this OPM memo is disgusting and hypocritcal. And yes, Obama is a bad president. But Stalin was a f%$#ing monster.

  • Achance
  • CincoSolas_del_Bronx

    I was going to warn him but didn’t think I could get it in before you fired.

  • CincoSolas_del_Bronx

    by some of us who know and love many who are still in places really reminiscent of Stalin’s.

  • aesthete

    I get where Marcus is coming from, but Stalin’s purges claimed a life every 90 seconds, if you average it out. Obama’s a piker next to Stalin.

  • Marcus_Traianus

    Stalin’s purges were acts of absolute barbarism and genocide. Nonetheless they started as political acts, especially before the murder of Kirov.

    Purges were actually part of the communist political process somewhat analogous to what Art described above- simple “political” acts commenced as open “threats” to those who didn’t agree politically with the person trying to gain power (in Stalin’s case- Yezhov). Oddly, that sounds like the modern “Democratic” Party led by Mr. Obama. Don’t you think? Stalin just took the seeds to the next level.

    I am simply curious what it will take for many in our modern age to realize this current administration and Democratic Party in Congress look nothing like anything in our previous history. So in reflection, I find many heinous acts that started as “change”.

    Now I have several friends whose parents or relatives were killed by Stalin’s “change” and eerily they are not fans of Obama. Funny how their sense of deja vu led them to that conclusion- certainly it was not some leap of logic or loony conservative talk show host.

    Nonetheless, I am apologetic only if it offended the sensitivity of some person directly impacted by Stalin. However, I don’t grieve for anyone that can’t follow the logical, intellectual analogies. That one will need to wait until this Congress and President are hopefully nothing more than a bad memory.

    Overall, I must say though to get Art, aesthete, cinco and yourself all in one reply- well to use a basketball analogy- “nothing but net”.

  • Achance

    and the propane contractor was here doing the new gas lines etc; we’re switching from electric. So, I was busy with the contractor.

    Long before anybody here even knew who Sarah Palin was, I was on record saying the greatest liability the Republican Party had was that Republicans didn’t know how to run a government. Sarah Palin is no exception.

  • Achance

    is just an over-reaction to using hyperbole as a form of argument. PC has made many of us too sensitive to this sort of stuff.

    I agree it is the same dynamic. Those leftwing wimp/castrati are just aching to be Strelnikov on his train extracting vengence for every time they were tripped or the other guy got the girl.

  • Achance

    They said they were going to review the hires for compliance with merit system rules. If you don’t know what that means and what it portends, you probably aren’t competent to participate in this discussion.

  • mbecker908

    1 – nobody will be fired.
    2 – no court will overturn it.

  • furious

    “…before Kirov’s murder…”, “…Strelnikov on the his train”…

    Pasha: The private life is dead – for a man with any manhood.
    Zhivago: I saw some of your ‘manhood’ on the way at a place called Mink.
    Pasha: They were selling horses to the Whites.
    Zhivago: It seems you’ve burnt the wrong village.
    Pasha: They always say that, and what does it matter? A village betrays us, a village is burned. The point’s made.

  • Section9

    Republicans need to know how to run governments on a
    national level. Few people in our party know how to shake
    out a beuracracy and winnow out the parasites and the D
    hangers-on. It’s just not what we do.

    So, we leave the D’s in power in the interest of “getting things
    done.”. Art is right, of course. Palin and Parnell are both
    conservatives, and they probably thought they could work
    with the D’s. Palin knows better. Parnell will find out, much to his
    sorrow.

    Obama is merely doing what Art suggested Republicans do.
    He is going in and waging a scorched earth campaign to
    winnow out Republicans from the buracracy.

    When we win again, and we will, we will have to do the
    same thing to them. Republicans, if we are to survive and learn again to be a governing party, are going to have to learn to be mean to govern.

    Palin learned that the hard way, I suspect. Let’s hope Sean Parnell is a quick study. As to the next Republican President, let’s hope that he (or she) isn’t placing any naive hopes in “bipartisan” cooperation. That’s bollocks.

  • Section9

    Trust the man. The D’s want to conduct a blood purge.

    That means anyone who is not a member of the Red Guard gets kicked to the curb.

  • mschmitt
  • dt

    I don’t want to incur your wrath, but I believe that the memo really does just focus on prospective hires. It says that “OPM will review these proposed appointments to ensure they comply with merit system principles and applicable civil service laws[] ” and “OPM will continue to conduct merit staffing reviews for all proposed career SES selections . . . ” and “Agencies should carefully review all proposed SES selections . . . .” Doesn’t that just mean that this policy applies to appointments from January 1, 2010 and going forward? What am I missing here?

  • Finrod

    .

  • andysmith

    The only problem is finding a Republican who actually has the stones to do it.

  • dclamage

    The Federal gov’t is already thick with Democrats. I’ll bet when Bush left the Feds were 80% Dem. Now Obama-boy wants to make it 100%.

    So next time a Republican is President (in 2012) he/she should fire every Democrat civil servant out of hand — that alone will reduce the Federal payroll by hundreds of billions! Think of the money the taxpayer will be saved!

    Here in Pittsburgh, Nepotism reigns. I said the city could reduce payroll significantly just by firing everyone’s nephew/niece.

  • http://www.gopmom.com GOPMOM

    would more accurately describe these actions.

    Elections have consequences. God help us.

  • Oz

    It’s not really a BAD idea …. it’s just currently illegal.

    One of the things that has hamstrung Republicans so much over the years is that the Democratic operatives do the same st*ff even though they have Republican bosses telling them otherwise.

  • qurys

    to watch an administration which, in its own hiring/appointing practices, seems to have absolutely no idea whatsoever of the definition of merit. That this administration would even PRESUME to define merit or to have one of its officials define merit is laughable. We could start with something as simple as the meritorious Nobel Prize and move on to the vanishing cabinet appointees as well as those who managed to survive the nomination process, in spite of themselves. We can glance again at the questioned merit of a Supreme Court nominee. We might actually question the merit of the President himself, however, his lack of experience is woefully obvious. Of course there are those pesky czars, whose merits – or lack thereof – must give pause to anyone who would think for a minute that MERIT is something that this administration has a handle on. “Republican” – that they might know….but “merit” is not in their vocabulary

  • vicrgreen

    I thought that they founded the Civil Service to do away with the Spoils System, of which this reeks.

    There is NOTHING so low the Obama Administration won’t sink to it.

  • mbecker908

    And you won’t incur anybody’s “wrath”. We don’t much waste time on the stupid.

  • mbecker908

    You’ve willfully misread and then you’ve projected your ignorance.

  • mschmitt

    The memo wasn’t in latin; if you’re going to call me ignorant, then I suggest you please explain to me exactly how “within the last five years” doesn’t imply “retroactive” to five years ago.

    I await my education.

  • lwe6576

    I don’t agree with the way the OPM statement was interpreted. People who got a civil service job and who were previously political appointees won’t be removed from their jobs, but those who were political appointees during the past 5 years will have to be reviewed and approved before geting a civil service job. You can’t just fire someone working as a government employee even if they were hired for a job they weren’t qualified for. They would just move them around to something else to say counting toothpicks but getting paid the same. I’ve been witness to that. So even Rush got this one wrong based on how I read it.

  • 6eorge Jetson

    31 year-old Brian Deese. Nevermind that he has no auto industry experience.

  • Warrior

    Yeah, there is no such thing as “bi-partisan” cooperation with this bunch. They want conservatives/Republicans to do all the compromising…

  • http://www.clinefamily.us pcnnc

    I have some ocean front property in D.C. you can get real cheap!

    If you believe that, after all the lies and obfuscations Mr. O has vomited out over the past 10 months, he doesn’t intend to give rise to a modern day Spoils System then you have indeed been sucked into the Obama-frenzied media protection system. Not only are we returning to 19th century politics but doing so in Banana Republic fashion! May God forgive our stupid selves for electing this complete idiot into office!

    Now, where is my gun!?

  • Warrior

    The same with the Nazi’s. They didn’t START OUT with gas chambers. They started out by “classifying” Jews. Then making them wear yellow stars. Then curtailing their rights. Then prohibiting them from certain jobs. Then vandalizing their stores. Then rounding them up. Then came the gas chambers.

    I am in the process of analyzing the intellectual foundations of this very process as an adjunct to reviewing Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism. Fascism was just communism with a nationalist flavor. Sometimes, totalitarianism starts slowly and incrementally…like, no conservatives can buy football teams, no Republicans can keep their jobs, no Republicans can get hired by the very gubmint they support, no media outlet can have an opposition “perspective”, etc.

  • Warrior

    Man, now that’s scary…

  • rivahmitch

    I agree totally,,,I’m just waiting for someone to show up at the front door to count my toilets, check my thermostat, or ask if I have firearms….

    My only suggestion is that you add about 20 gallons of gasoline to your mix. I figure that, even old and fat as I now am, my Marine Corps training will let me get the first few… After that, scorched earth will make sure there are no assets which the little marxists in DC can redistribute.

  • scubadiver49er

    Very well said. Approx. $4.2 million a year on the 30+ “czars” who are doing what the vetted Cabinet members are supposed to do, led by BHO who didn’t even run a snow cone stand before becoming the “President”. Get ready for the U.S.S.A. (sound familiar? Only one letter different here) if this keeps up. Better get used to it – The United Socialist States of America.

  • darjon38

    He hasn’t done too well at filling the cabinent posts and admin seats. Why does he think he can find enough socialist, communist, Chicago stlye characters to replace all those repubs who are doing the job at present?

  • john_barry

    The US has elected a crypto Stalinist administration. It has a detestation of a free media. Witness the obsession with Fox News. Now it is proceeding to create a Civil Service populated by far left lackeys. It is systematically setting about the destruction of the GOP. It is endeavouring to frighten off support for the Republican Party by threatening jobs. Obama is Erich Honecker with a smile.
    The US electorate married Radical Socialism in haste. Now it can repent at leisure.

  • leehazel

    This exercise (aka purge) by the Obama administration regarding Republican holdovers in the Civil Service should be more than a little interesting.

    Based on personal experience it is all but impossible to ‘fire’ a civil servant. Short of finding one with their arm up to the elbow in the proverbial financial cookie jar it was impossible to get rid of one.

    To be really blunt, even if caught stealing, in large numbers, the person could ‘work’ the system to run out all the reviews and reviews of reviews, ad nauseum. In the meantime their time-in-service toward retirement, etc, went right on. More than likely they are allowed to walk with full benifits. And, if they happen to be a minority, oh well…..

    Obama is by no means the first president to want a “purge” of certain civil servants and in certain departments. They did not succeed but then again they were not trained in The Chicago Method of governing. I can hardly wait for Obama to hold Cabinet and Czar meetings with ‘ball bat’ in hand.

    As I said, this should be interesting.

    PC is Thought Control
    Lee

  • olddog

    democrat or republican= anticonstitution=fascist. to greater or lesser degrees, all unpalatable, for those who love our country.
    1st entry In the O.O.D. dictionary
    One Old Dog

  • mbecker908

    When I read your comment I thought you were indicating that Art was guilty of “willful misreading”. I, obviously and in a caffeinated state, see you talking about the troll at the top.

    Sorry.

  • rubicon01

    All I know is, every time someone gets into office, there are leaks about their plans all over the place. I always attributed such leaks to ‘planted’ party loyalists. This was done during virtually all of the past administrations in my lifetime. (A fair amount of time unfortunately).
    I admit, it seemed mean spirited during the Bush years. While Clinton got rocked for his sexual proclivities & apparent Grand Jury distortions, he too had some of this. Reagan had a lot of it, but again, Bush got it the most.
    It is disingenuous to attack Bush for dumping political appointees whose jobs are subject to such goings-on, then enacting a policy that would enable the exact same activities, even down to the clerk levels.
    Guess some folks want to make sure we have true blue bureaucrats in office who believe in big government, high taxes, & federal authority over everything.
    In the end, I trust few politicians. I trust almost NO bureaucrats. This is why we need less government & more personal responsibility. The more of these folks we have in place, the more difficult it is to get anything done, and for less than ten times the original estimate.

  • mschmitt

    … but wasn’t quite going to let it slide, either :P

  • Icythus

    I agree with you that Obama’s politics and policies (on many fronts) are eerily reminiscent of those used by communists throughout history, including Stalin. I also believe that Mr. Obama is cut from the same political cloth as those whom we fought in the Cold War. It’s important that we make that connection and emphasize it publicly, to remind people where this road leads.

    My concern (which I didn’t articulate well enough) is that, if we overuse the Obama:Stalin analogy, we risk expanding Godwin’s Law to cover the Red Czar, and then any comparison we might want to make, however valid, becomes as useless in a political fight as invoking Hitler.

    And yeah, the accusations “This is just like Brezhnez!” or “This is just like Zhou Enlai!” don’t have the same ring as they do with Stalin and Mao inserted. I honestly don’t have an easy answer to the question of how to strike the appropriate balance. I just worry that, in trying to illustrate how Obama resembles Stalin, we may end up bringing Stalin down to the level of Obama.

  • Icythus

    It was not my intention to give offense, and if I did, I sincerely apologize for that. I’ve followed this site on a daily basis for a number of years now, and since I my contributions tend to be few and far between, I strive to make them as constructive as I possibly can. I wasn’t as clear as should have been about my concerns in my initial post, and that is my fault.

  • Icythus

    n/t

  • Icythus

    Even if they are a fascist, in the general political lexicon, fascist simply means “bad person”, not “nationalist militaristic socialist”. For all useful purposes, it’s a meaningless term. I don’t want to see the same thing happen to communism (see below).

  • mschmitt

    Well, I guess it depends on whether you care how it makes the pig feel and whether the public education system still teaches the little kiddies what pigs are.

  • CincoSolas_del_Bronx

    I was actually in agreement with your first 2 paragraphs, was about to title mine “What Icythus said -nt-” but couldn’t really do that ’cause it wouldn’t have applied to the adjectives in you 3rd paragraph…

    But for the substance of your comment, I was in agreement, no apologies needed.

  • Achance

    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/067440419X/ref=ox_ya_oh_product

    Hitler’s Justice shows how the German positivist legal system was “coordinated” with the policies of the NSDAP. What gets lost in the usually emotional discussions of the Nazi era is that the fact that at least early in the Nazi Era, Germany was far and away more democratic and liberal than any of the other nations that were to become combatants in the Second World War. Most of the things now viewed as crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Nazis were democratically enacted and countenanced by the German judicial system.

    I took a class on The Holocaust or Shoah a few years back and wrote my paper on “The Legal Basis of the Holocaust.” If you’d like to make a lefty Ph.D’s head explode, show him graphically with lots of footnotes and citations what happens to democracy unchecked and remind him that the most common phrase in Nazi Era court decisions that made the Holocaust and other Nazi depradations possible was, “the healthy opinion of The Volk.”

    You might also try Hilgard’s “The Destruction of the European Jews” considered by many the magisterial work on The Holocaust and Goldhagen’s “Hitler’s Willing Executioners.”

  • afriscam

    … the Republicans prove that every time they get into office.

    Reagan and Bush replaced competent appointees with White Wing demagogues and made them PERMANENT employees as part of their path to a “permanent Republican Majority.” James Watt and other clueless Christian Chimpublicans made the government into a “GOP ONLY” club. Bush II accelerated this process, the only criteria for appointment being fanatical “loyal Bushie” status. Competence was no longer necessary.

    This policy brought us Alberto “I Don’t Recall” Gonzales, Monica “I’ll take The Fifth” Goodling and Mike “Heckuva Job” Brown. These and other Bush era schmucktards barely qualify as halfwits. From Alan “Our Mental Model Of The World Is Flawed” Greenspan to Scooter “What’s A Little Treason Among Friends?” Libby, Bush hired ethically handicapped dopes. He destroyed the U.S. economy and let Nidal Hasan, the 9/11 terrorists and anthrax killer operate in a law-enforcement vacuum. Team Bush was too busy repealing money-laundering and other regulations to defend the nation.

    Bush replaced veteran experts in the Dept. of Defense with gibbering idiots sans any relevant experience. How’s that for protecting our country? General Shinseki told Bush that he was going to war unprepared, so Bush sacked him. Thousands of our troops died because Bush sent them in without armor, adequate support or leadership. Let’s not forget the wonderful job KBR did electrocuting our soldiers in the showers. Privatizing defense let the Invisible Hand of the Market snuff our soldiers.

    I guess what I’m saying is, quit whining, you can trade competence for cretinism the next time you steal the executive and legislative branches, in the year 3,000. Of course by then, all the intelligent people will have left the planet, so you will be able to rob, rape and ravage to your little heart’s content. At long last you will have your permanent Republican Majority.

  • afriscam

    All you have to do is eliminate their position or department, offer them some position counting grains of sand in the desert and watch them quit.

  • Achance

    Most of the difficulty of dismissing merit system public employees is excuse making by supervisors and managers who can’t, won’t, or aren’t allowed to actually supervise.

    And I’ve known plenty who would be happy to sit there counting grains of sand until that magic retirement day. But it is the kind of go-getter employee that Democrats usually try to get rid of who will quit when he comes in and finds his office now has no windows, his seat flushes, he doesn’t have a phone or computer and he doesn’t have any work to do any more.

  • http://www.redstate.com/tnjim TNJim

    And you like to trot out the rascist slurs, too.

    Nice.

  • Achance

    and we’re simply going to exterminate Democrats in goverment. The “nice” Republican is a thing of the past and we’re going to start smashing, literally if necessary people like you. Remember, we have you lefty castrati surrounded and most of us, unlike you punks, are armed and know how to use the weapons. Many of us actually fought for this Country to make it safe for smartass little nutless punks like you.

  • afriscam

    Is this where you pull all your statistics from?

  • afriscam

    It is illegal to discriminate in hiring/firing for government jobs based on political party affiliation. The only relevant criteria are competence and eligibility. The Hatch Act also affects this issue, but it sounds like your pal Ernie broke federal law.

  • Achance
  • afriscam

    Stalin’s goons hacked up thousands of suspected disloyal persons with hatchets and dumped them in mass graves and rivers. Oh, how you must be suffering.

  • afriscam

    … from employment in jobs the Republicans can’t send overseas.

  • JadedByPolitics

    I guess you have conveniently forgotten that Clinton signed NAFTA now didn’t he? how many jobs do you think that cost America? and I guess your brilliance also will somehow negate the HIGH COST that the debt your idiot in chief is placing on our country will soar onto businesses. Who do you think would want to run a business in America where they are RAPED by you idiot socialist D’s? I wouldn’t!

  • JadedByPolitics

    that WE hardworking Americans will then pay for beginning next year for the REST OF OUR LIVES!! Leftists love nothing else then FORCING everyone else to pay for LAZY government workers!

  • JadedByPolitics

    .

  • afriscam

    states that political party affiliation cannot be used in hiring/firing federal or state employees. “Loyal Bushies” were exempted from this requirement, because the Bush DOJ was asleep at the wheel.

  • afriscam

    How many million Republicans have been dumped in mass graves because of Obama purges? If Obama were anything like Mao/Stalin, you’d be in a landfill. Get a clue.

  • afriscam

    You mean Obama intends to undo what Reagan and Bush started in 1981 when they fired competent political appointees and replaced them with White-Wing hacks, then made them permanent employees?

    What unmitigated not-niceness. You are so right. Obama is just like Chavez for doing what the Republicans did.

  • afriscam

    … unlike the “loyal Bushies.”

  • afriscam

    … did it get shot off in the war?

  • http://www.redstate.com/tnjim TNJim

    Competence is no more required by law than having a clean tax record is required to become Secretary of the treasury.

  • afriscam

    If you think Fascists, AKA, “Estato Corporativo” (The Corporate State) is just another form of Communism, you need to go back to school.

    The Republicans as fiscal conservatives no longer exist. They have been replaced by Corporate Welfare queens, B of A, AIG, KBR, Exxon, etc., to pave the way for the next Fascist (AKA Pro-Business) power grab.

    Jonah Goldberg is so far off base he’s not even in the ball park anymore. He can’t confront the fact that he’s a Jewish Fascist, so he’s created this elaborate mirror world where Liberal is Fascist and he’s an intellectual.

    That’s what happens when you leave the Reality-Based Community.

  • Warrior

    the Nazi connection to fascism, the book actually only spends one chapter on that history. And the book’s purpose is to show why modern liberals are far more deserving of the name “fascist” than conservatives, who are often accused of it.

    However, there can never be enough denunciation or examination of the intellectual rationaliztions which led to the Holocaust…

  • Warrior

    do you have any actual evidence for your nonsensical claims or are you just blowin’ wind?

  • Achance

    where your unreality fits in a lot better. You’re not entertaining any more and trolls have proven not to be tasty if killed and eaten.

  • afriscam

    … since loyal Bushies compromised the nation’s security and let the 9/11 hijackers in, and let the anthrax killer escape, and let Nidal Hasan stay in the army after he posted his religious fanaticism online, and let bin Laden escape, and let Wall Street bankrupt Main Street, and let New Orleans drown and rot, perhaps you fellows should stand aside and let people who value COMPETENCE run things.

    Warrior, do you make war on anything besides reality?

  • afriscam

    … how have you been forced to act as Congress dictates?

  • Warrior

    been calling us “fascists” for years and personally, I’m sick of it.

    It’s useful to set the record straight insofar as we MUST counter and destroy every lame argument they use against us.

    This particular issue is more useful than denying the accusation that conservatives are “greedy” for example, because not only is there a lengthy and well documented intellectual history, it’s also a perfect illustration of classic Freudian “projection.” That is, the left has been accusing us of the very thing of which they are exquisitely guilty.

    It’s the perfect poetic justice…

  • aesthete

    That’s pretty much what I meant, too.

  • afriscam

    If you don’t like what America is becoming, you know where the door is.

    Love it or leave it, hippie.

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    Guys: Don’t feed the trolls.

  • penguin2

    unacceptable and offensive.

  • Warrior

    “Note that the Law itself is not a value judgement of the thread affected. The stigma of having Godwin’s Law invoked is strictly an emergent effect: it’s a meme built on a meme.

    The rule does not make any statement about whether any particular reference or comparison to Adolf Hitler or the Nazis might be appropriate, but only asserts that the likelihood of such a reference or comparison arising increases as the discussion progresses.

    Godwin’s law is not really about Nazis, as some posters seem to assume; that just happens to be a particularly common epithet used (or was at one time) in collapsing threads, often regardless of the context. The actual insult could be any slur or imputation that demonizes the target – depending on the forum, the triggers words could be ‘communist’, ‘capitalist’, ‘pedophile’, ‘Suethor’, or anything else meant solely to evoke rage and disgust from the other posters.

    The point of the law is that the more protracted and bitter the argument, the more likely it is that someone will resort to name-calling or some other form of ad hominem attack. The corellary is that this usually causes a chain reaction as everyone begins to reply in kind, and any intelligent debate still remaining will get pushed aside by increasingly strident and vicious mudslinging.” – Wiki entry

    Godwin’s law does not apply to the discussion of the intellectual antecedents, historical charaters and past political movements which illustrate the ideology of fascism. Please go peddle that somewhere else…

  • Warrior

    this afriscam guy must be some kind of troll..

  • Warrior

    Bush fired a few appointies who served at his pleasure.

    And don’t think it started with him. Your boy Clinton fired ALL the attorneys. Were they ALL incompetent?

    Of course not, it was just cover to get rid of political opponents, a maneuver executed in Clinton’s inimitably selfish style…

  • Achance
  • Warrior

    start out with mass graves you moron. But that’s what Obama-esque statism led to…

  • http://www.redstate.com/tnjim TNJim
  • Warrior

    women and children alive like your hero Janet Reno.

  • Warrior

    didn’t you mean a DE-caffeinated state. Sorry, I’m sooo compulsive.. ; – )

  • Warrior

    I need to be in a caffeinated state.– like Florida and on a beach maybe…

  • Warrior

    because any incident can be used to claim “incompetence” and it would take years, as achance has already mentioned, to fight through the “administrative” process to attempt redress, and by then the body of evidence would be stacked against you.

    Try paying attention or get off the thread…

  • Warrior

    And I am tired of shooting down your stupid posts. Why don’t you go back to Daily kos and suck up to the other mental midgets who think obama is qualified for anything…

  • Warrior

    eating supper and when I came backI didn’t notice the time stamp on afriscam’s posts — mea culpa!

  • makemyday

    specifically? State you case for ignoring the Constitution and the limitations placed on the Federal government. Show me where you/they have our permission for taking over 1/6 of the economy. Show me where enacting over 4000 new federal laws streamlines society.

    I feel what America is becoming already exists in the world and that maybe it would be easier for you to go elsewhere and live in a society more conducive to you personally. We happen to like it the way it is.

    Love it or leave it, Idiot

  • Icythus

    Guess I need to work on my thread tracking skills. [chagrined face] Glad to hear you’re in agreement though!

  • Icythus

    the notion of legalistic, back-and-forth appeals to a Wikipedia article, on the merits, definitions, and proper limitations of an INTERNET MEME feels somewhat akin to intellectual wrist-cutting. I think we can both agree that there are bigger fish to fry. :-P

  • Warrior

    those are Mike Godwin’s own words. You may not realize this, but Godwin was general counsel for Wikipedia and is famous (infamous) for commenting on his own entries. I found other sources, but why not use the man’s own sentiments?

    And Godwin’s law does not appliy to a discussion of the historical precursors to fascism. It would be like discussing 1960′s era Vietnam without mentioning the war.

  • asafsb

    In Carter, Clinton and so far BHO’s (undocumented worker) administrations there were some leaks probably by other liberals. They do eat their own although they prefer to dine in private. The “Mass Media” tends to ignore these liberal on liberal leaks with one day coverage then bury it.
    On the other hand when a Republican is in office there’s leak after leak not only trying to destroy them but puts our national security in danger. It was imbarrasing at how Bush was torn apart day after day by the Media and Democrats and still had that goofy smile on his face when he got in front of the camera. He isn’t stupid but at some point he needed to stand up to the Marxists, which he NEVER did. These leaks come from operatives planted, over the decades, by the Liberals to destroy anyone who isn’t a Communist. They are using the FDR model of planting Marxist’s in the State Dept. only they have moved on to the Civil Service. This is Treason.

  • garhighway4

    Unless the meaning of “purge” has changed, I don’t think the memo says what he claims. There is nothing in there about firing anyone. It is all prospective in application, dealing with political appointees who now want to convert to civil service. I read the memo several times trying to find language that goes where Erick says it does, and I don’t see it.

    I think wv619 and lwe6576 were right. BHO and his boys have done lots of bad stuff, but this one is not as advertised.

  • garhighway4

    Unless the meaning of “purge” has changed, I don’t think the memo says what he claims. There is nothing in there about firing anyone. It is all prospective in application, dealing with political appointees who now want to convert to civil service. I read the memo several times trying to find language that goes where Erick says it does, and I don’t see it.

    I think wv619 and lwe6576 were right. BHO and his boys have done lots of bad stuff, but this one is not as advertised.

  • garhighway4

    My internet connection has been a little screwy. Sorry.