One comment to the point of “what would Trump do that would be so bad?” — since everyone here is a big fan of the meritocracy I invite you all to be as upset as I am at Trump/Trump surrogates wanting to reform the government bureaucracy. The current practice of government employees being hired for their ability to actually do the job and basically be immune from the political cycle would end. Instead all federal employees would be political hires, that can be hired and fired based on how well they tow the party line. First world countries have competent bureaucracies, third (and second world, assuming that’s still what we call communist countries) world countries don’t. I know the bureaucracy is characterized as the “unelected bureaucrats” and “the deep state”. It is also known as the competent, experienced technical experts that when allowed to, make the government work. Bear in mind all the people you think of at “the bureacracy” (like Fauci) are actually high ranking political appointees.
Well, clearly any big organization has all kinds. “Whether there should be an ideological litmus test” is exactly the problem. I don’t know what agency you are in… but clearly if the whole agency changes over every time a new president is elected it would be a disaster. Continuing resolutions because congress can’t get its job done is bad enough. No one is talking about making the government work better. Trump just wants less push back on bad ideas.
I worked for an agency that was over 95% outsourced. If they went through and fired all the federal employees who didn’t support Trump, let’s say half… how could that possibly help anything?
So, to be clear, the Trump plan would be to make the entire federal government be schedule c. I don’t know what your agency is like, but mine had a very few spines among ranks of the schedule c. In the regular bureaucracy, it was mostly engineers, scientists, and a few lawyers - so no shortage of opinions… I realize all the agencies are different in how many feds there are (relative to contractors) and how many of them are political appointees.
I’m curious about your experience. Are these informal litmus tests being conducted by supervisors (who may be political appointees) or just the usual self-important fiefdom building? (Apologies if you don’t know what I mean, in my experience some people’s only meaning in work was to try to build their bureaucratic power to maintain relevance as there were reorgs, priority changes etc).
My understanding of the plan would that it would follow the model DoD developed at the end of the first Trump administration, where people’s social media was scrubbed and people were asked for loyalty oaths to the president not the constitution. It sounds just soooo dystopian. Or Soviet or CCP or something, definitely not American — where idiots can rant on the internet to vent without it costing them their livelihoods.
One comment to the point of “what would Trump do that would be so bad?” — since everyone here is a big fan of the meritocracy I invite you all to be as upset as I am at Trump/Trump surrogates wanting to reform the government bureaucracy. The current practice of government employees being hired for their ability to actually do the job and basically be immune from the political cycle would end. Instead all federal employees would be political hires, that can be hired and fired based on how well they tow the party line. First world countries have competent bureaucracies, third (and second world, assuming that’s still what we call communist countries) world countries don’t. I know the bureaucracy is characterized as the “unelected bureaucrats” and “the deep state”. It is also known as the competent, experienced technical experts that when allowed to, make the government work. Bear in mind all the people you think of at “the bureacracy” (like Fauci) are actually high ranking political appointees.
Well, clearly any big organization has all kinds. “Whether there should be an ideological litmus test” is exactly the problem. I don’t know what agency you are in… but clearly if the whole agency changes over every time a new president is elected it would be a disaster. Continuing resolutions because congress can’t get its job done is bad enough. No one is talking about making the government work better. Trump just wants less push back on bad ideas.
I worked for an agency that was over 95% outsourced. If they went through and fired all the federal employees who didn’t support Trump, let’s say half… how could that possibly help anything?
So, to be clear, the Trump plan would be to make the entire federal government be schedule c. I don’t know what your agency is like, but mine had a very few spines among ranks of the schedule c. In the regular bureaucracy, it was mostly engineers, scientists, and a few lawyers - so no shortage of opinions… I realize all the agencies are different in how many feds there are (relative to contractors) and how many of them are political appointees.
I’m curious about your experience. Are these informal litmus tests being conducted by supervisors (who may be political appointees) or just the usual self-important fiefdom building? (Apologies if you don’t know what I mean, in my experience some people’s only meaning in work was to try to build their bureaucratic power to maintain relevance as there were reorgs, priority changes etc).
My understanding of the plan would that it would follow the model DoD developed at the end of the first Trump administration, where people’s social media was scrubbed and people were asked for loyalty oaths to the president not the constitution. It sounds just soooo dystopian. Or Soviet or CCP or something, definitely not American — where idiots can rant on the internet to vent without it costing them their livelihoods.