A number of servants were shown the door without any great unpleasantness, and Spymould [the food taster] was even allowed to remove his toad farm in peace. But those who filled the grates and dusted the furniture and swept the floor stayed on, as they had stayed on before, because they seldom payed any attention to, or possibly didn't even know, who their lord was, and, in any case, were too useful and knew where the brooms were kept. Men come and go, but dust accumulates.
Step 1 of the Commie playbook is to purge your enemmies from the bureaucracy.
Step 2 is to purge those not in lockstep with the party ideals from from the bureaucracy, as well as your own party.
Step 3: once you found all your enemies or cowed potential ones into submission, still keep up the purges even if they're important or innocent. C'mon, Dems, those gulags aren't going to build themselves, you know.
Proving once again that when the left says "bipartisan", they actually mean "my way or the highway". "Compromise" means "you give up everything, we give up nothing."
Not sure how I feel about this. I don't like the idea of party line"purges", but handing out cushy jobs with nice benefits to political appointees doesn't sound too cool either, regardless of whether "it's the way things are done" or not...
Meanwhile, the Republicans are spending their time worring over how many people like them, and trying to figure out what they should pretend to believe.
"But he apparently deeply understands how to manipulate the levers of power."
And how do we know it's Obama himself doing this, and not someone like Rahm?
My paranoia might be showing, but I'm thinking The Won has little to nothing to do with this, for no other reason than plausible deniability.
Send it out, see if it works. If it does, great! One more move shored up. If not, have Obama tsk tsk and toss someone else under the bus and out on their ear.
Either way, politicians suck. Why won't D.C. implode yet? It reached critical mass over a yeah ago. It should be a super-dense black hole by now.
By the way, 2012 is a whole lot of fun. Oddly enough, being a hardcore disaster-porn lover, the scenes of the destruction actually made me sick to my stomach. I'd say it was very well done, just from that fact alone. I now long for a nice, calm, moment of zen scene. *nudges Kevin*
It's been my experience that the party in power usually hands the party out of power the cudgel with which to flog them with, so turnabout being fair play and all, the GOP can return the favor when they return to office.
And if you're hunting "burrowed-in",(the DC term for this Political Appointee/Civil Service practice), statist Democrats, the Fed GS and SES ranks are a far more target-rich environment than it is for Conservatives.
The Spoils System, you say?
Well, I'd observe that the Republic managed to grow by leaps and bounds, with minimal taxation, more than adequate defense, and the most stable currency on the planet throughout the 19th century when we had the Spoils System.
Can we boast the same record of achievement with a professional,"apolitical",(...waits for the snorts of disbelief and the guffaws of laughter to subside...), Civil Service?
There's nothing like a gig that offers employment for life to turn a partisan into an extremist ideologue...look at our tenured faculty, or labor union bosses.
If the schmuck who manages the DMV knows that his job goes down the toilet if the Guv'nah loses the next election, he or she might tend to drag their feet at complying with the more onerous initiatives that come down from "Moscow Center".
Generally, nothing in God's Creation is more intransigent than a bureaucrat who doesn't want to do what he's being directed to.
And if that directive could mean the 'crat's own impending unemployment, then the Almighty himself would be hard-pressed to persuade him,(at least without resorting to some of the more noteworthily drastic methods available).
Note:
All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost;
references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>
JS-Kit/Echo comments for article at http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2009/11/in-mature-society-civil-servant-is.html (16 comments)
Tentative mapping of comments to original article, corrections solicited.
A number of servants were shown the door without any great unpleasantness, and Spymould [the food taster] was even allowed to remove his toad farm in peace. But those who filled the grates and dusted the furniture and swept the floor stayed on, as they had stayed on before, because they seldom payed any attention to, or possibly didn't even know, who their lord was, and, in any case, were too useful and knew where the brooms were kept. Men come and go, but dust accumulates.
- Sir Terry Pratchett, Night Watch
Bask in the glow of the great ones bipartisanship.
Step 1 of the Commie playbook is to purge your enemmies from the bureaucracy.
Step 2 is to purge those not in lockstep with the party ideals from from the bureaucracy, as well as your own party.
Step 3: once you found all your enemies or cowed potential ones into submission, still keep up the purges even if they're important or innocent. C'mon, Dems, those gulags aren't going to build themselves, you know.
Proving once again that when the left says "bipartisan", they actually mean "my way or the highway". "Compromise" means "you give up everything, we give up nothing."
The worst part, Ed, is that many Republicans seem willing to go right along with that.
There still are Republicans in Washington? I mean, not ersatz ones, but actual Republicans?
I fear not, Russell. I should've specified RINOs.
Not sure how I feel about this. I don't like the idea of party line"purges", but handing out cushy jobs with nice benefits to political appointees doesn't sound too cool either, regardless of whether "it's the way things are done" or not...
I'd be more inclined to allow for a spoils system of handing out offices, if you scrap the civil service statutes first.
Meanwhile, the Republicans are spending their time worring over how many people like them, and trying to figure out what they should pretend to believe.
...and trying to figure out what they should pretend to believe.
That's it in a nutshell. Once you can fake sincerity, you've got it whipped!
"But he apparently deeply understands how to manipulate the levers of power."
And how do we know it's Obama himself doing this, and not someone like Rahm?
My paranoia might be showing, but I'm thinking The Won has little to nothing to do with this, for no other reason than plausible deniability.
Send it out, see if it works. If it does, great! One more move shored up. If not, have Obama tsk tsk and toss someone else under the bus and out on their ear.
Remember, purges aren't fascist when THEY do it.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Or, very, very, smart.
Either way, politicians suck. Why won't D.C. implode yet? It reached critical mass over a yeah ago. It should be a super-dense black hole by now.
By the way, 2012 is a whole lot of fun. Oddly enough, being a hardcore disaster-porn lover, the scenes of the destruction actually made me sick to my stomach. I'd say it was very well done, just from that fact alone. I now long for a nice, calm, moment of zen scene. *nudges Kevin*
Done!
Not only are there no republicans in washington, I no longer believe there are many (if ANY) AMERICANS.
Rinos and AINOS.
Americans
In
Name
Only
Tired of your chains yet?
Revoltion - the only thing missing is "u"...
Color me ambivalent on this.
It's been my experience that the party in power usually hands the party out of power the cudgel with which to flog them with, so turnabout being fair play and all, the GOP can return the favor when they return to office.
And if you're hunting "burrowed-in",(the DC term for this Political Appointee/Civil Service practice), statist Democrats, the Fed GS and SES ranks are a far more target-rich environment than it is for Conservatives.
The Spoils System, you say?
Well, I'd observe that the Republic managed to grow by leaps and bounds, with minimal taxation, more than adequate defense, and the most stable currency on the planet throughout the 19th century when we had the Spoils System.
Can we boast the same record of achievement with a professional,"apolitical",(...waits for the snorts of disbelief and the guffaws of laughter to subside...), Civil Service?
There's nothing like a gig that offers employment for life to turn a partisan into an extremist ideologue...look at our tenured faculty, or labor union bosses.
If the schmuck who manages the DMV knows that his job goes down the toilet if the Guv'nah loses the next election, he or she might tend to drag their feet at complying with the more onerous initiatives that come down from "Moscow Center".
Generally, nothing in God's Creation is more intransigent than a bureaucrat who doesn't want to do what he's being directed to.
And if that directive could mean the 'crat's own impending unemployment, then the Almighty himself would be hard-pressed to persuade him,(at least without resorting to some of the more noteworthily drastic methods available).
Note: All avatars and any images or other media embedded in comments were hosted on the JS-Kit website and have been lost; references to haloscan comments have been partially automatically remapped, but accuracy is not guaranteed and corrections are solicited.
If you notice any problems with this page or wish to have your home page link updated, please contact John Hardin <jhardin@impsec.org>