You, gentle Shakers, are probably aware that Rachel Maddow has a running watch on the outgoing lame-duck administration she calls, "Quackitude." Her efforts are noble, but no one person is up to the task of keeping an eye on every possible way Bush can foul the well in his last two months in office. Liss tipped me off to this one.
In a nutshell, the Bushoids are trying to make sure their own spies and saboteurs are not only in safe, secure locations at the lower levels of government; they've decided to up the ante and turn many political appointees into career civil servants, who are protected by law and cannot be removed without cause. President Obama is going to be stuck with people in policy-making positions who are ideologically committed to the failure of his administration.
Those of you who read the link will note that this, like many of this administration's abuses, is not new. President Clinton approved seven such appointments at the executive level in his last year in office. What is new is the haste with which this is done and the high concentration of this permanent roadblock to implementing the new president's policies in one key Department: Interior. That would be the department in charge of the new uranium mining on the Colorado River under the new administration rules.
Rather than vent at the obvious evil intent here (because honestly, are any of us shocked by evil intent from the Bush Administration anymore?), my thoughts turned to how President Obama can undo this. Frankly, I'm stumped for an answer. Career civil servants have wonderful job protections written into law (wonderful for them), and there is good policy reason not to undo those protections. Probably no one wants to go back to the days when every federal job was appointed and turned over every election, and we as a country decided that it is best if our civil servants couldn't be subjected to the highest levels of political pressure. So the civil service acts won't be repealed.
I suppose President Obama could transfer these "burrowing" bureaucrats into posts in North Dakota, but that takes months under the rules and does nothing for their pay scale or their place in the pecking order. Basically, the new president would be paying two people for one job position, an easy thing with which the Right could demagogue him as "wasteful" and "political." (Yes, the hypocrisy of them calling Obama's reaction to a political move political is noxious, but that has never stopped the GOP before now.) A related reaction might be to create an entirely new level of administration above the moles, but that invites charges both of "waste" and of "growing government."
So, I leave this as an open question for Shakesville: what legal steps could the new president take to undo this power grab by the Bush Administration? Or perhaps there are political maneuvers you can think of which elude me.
In a nutshell, the Bushoids are trying to make sure their own spies and saboteurs are not only in safe, secure locations at the lower levels of government; they've decided to up the ante and turn many political appointees into career civil servants, who are protected by law and cannot be removed without cause. President Obama is going to be stuck with people in policy-making positions who are ideologically committed to the failure of his administration.
Those of you who read the link will note that this, like many of this administration's abuses, is not new. President Clinton approved seven such appointments at the executive level in his last year in office. What is new is the haste with which this is done and the high concentration of this permanent roadblock to implementing the new president's policies in one key Department: Interior. That would be the department in charge of the new uranium mining on the Colorado River under the new administration rules.
Rather than vent at the obvious evil intent here (because honestly, are any of us shocked by evil intent from the Bush Administration anymore?), my thoughts turned to how President Obama can undo this. Frankly, I'm stumped for an answer. Career civil servants have wonderful job protections written into law (wonderful for them), and there is good policy reason not to undo those protections. Probably no one wants to go back to the days when every federal job was appointed and turned over every election, and we as a country decided that it is best if our civil servants couldn't be subjected to the highest levels of political pressure. So the civil service acts won't be repealed.
I suppose President Obama could transfer these "burrowing" bureaucrats into posts in North Dakota, but that takes months under the rules and does nothing for their pay scale or their place in the pecking order. Basically, the new president would be paying two people for one job position, an easy thing with which the Right could demagogue him as "wasteful" and "political." (Yes, the hypocrisy of them calling Obama's reaction to a political move political is noxious, but that has never stopped the GOP before now.) A related reaction might be to create an entirely new level of administration above the moles, but that invites charges both of "waste" and of "growing government."
So, I leave this as an open question for Shakesville: what legal steps could the new president take to undo this power grab by the Bush Administration? Or perhaps there are political maneuvers you can think of which elude me.
