After the stunt at Mar-a-Lago, Democrats and their supporters need ask whether they support a constitutional republic and if not, be honest. Just say so. It will save us a lot of time and effort separating the good from the bad. If you thought a meaningless early morning raid/fishing expedition on a former president’s house was what our Justice Department should be doing (while major U.S. cities are devolving into anarchy) then you probably need to leave the country immediately. This type of political intimidation is better suited in Venezuela and so are you. Give my regards to Nicolás Maduro. He’s waiting for you with open arms.
And chains.
Fire the Swamp
The Deep State, broadly defined, comprises the massive bureaucratic institutions that report to the executive branch. The definition would also include all of the slick politicians, lobbyists, and private contractors who have built their fiefdoms upon the backs of the civil service.
As of 2021, there are almost three million federal employees. However, if outside contractors, military personnel, USPS employees, and grant employees are added to that total, the number is closer to 9 million, a number that has been consistent since the 1980s. By comparison, the top 12 companies worldwide collectively employ about 9 million.
On October 21, 2020, Donald Trump signed an executive order providing the ability to hold tens of thousands of federal employees to account. The order, Schedule F, would reassign management as “at will” employees who could then be fired without the protection of civil service laws and codes.
Obviously, the order was rescinded by the swamp creature-in-chief, Joe Biden.
“To drain the swamp, we need to fire the swamp,” Trump has stated.
With experience in his back pocket, the former president is in the process of not only restoring Schedule F but identifying those to be fired and who their replacements would be—assuming, of course, he is reelected.
Well-funded [Trump supported] groups are already developing lists of candidates selected often for their animus against the system — in line with Trump’s long-running obsession with draining “the swamp.” This includes building extensive databases of people vetted as being committed to Trump and his agenda.
The preparations are far more advanced and ambitious than previously reported. What is happening now is an inversion of the slapdash and virtually non-existent infrastructure surrounding Trump ahead of his 2017 presidential transition.
These groups are operating on multiple fronts: shaping policies, identifying top lieutenants, curating an alternative labor force of unprecedented scale, and preparing for legal challenges and defenses that might go before Trump-friendly judges, all the way to a 6-3 Supreme Court.
This July 22 Axios article is comprehensive in detailing Trump’s efforts to pave the way to “drain the swamp”.
Donald Trump’s best buddy, Jim Acosta, wrote in 2020 a piece on CNN in which he examined the deep state claims:
Asked whether a “deep state” of government employees is actively undermining Trump’s agenda, [acting chief of staff Mick] Mulvaney replied that was “absolutely” the case. “One-hundred percent true,” he told the crowd, adding that he viewed civil servants as employees who should be carrying out the administration’s policies. Federal workers are not in their jobs to “make decisions” and should quit if they disagree with Trump’s agenda, Mulvaney continued. One attendee at the event said Mulvaney was “emphatic” that Democratic-leaning government employees are attempting to thwart Trump at every turn.
The Mendacity of Great Pay
I remember—as a kid looking for a job—that the conventional wisdom stated that federal and other government employees were paid substantially less than the private workforce and so they deserved higher benefits to help offset this discrepancy. I knew the work would be boring and lead to a mental paralysis from which I would never recover and so I never considered government work. (I’ll relate an antidotal experience at the end.)
But we were lied to.
Federal guaranteed salaries are amazingly high compared to private sector pay however, it is when you throw in perks like Cadillac health insurance and gold-plated retirement plans, the differences are truly astonishing.
One of the points that can be taken away from this is that many of the highly paid federal government employees are not facing the stifling inflation that we mere peons must struggle through. And, thanks to covid protocols, much of this workforce is still “working” from home, being spared the high cost of commuting. So don’t be surprised if there is little empathy for our struggles coming from these folks.
And these asshats will add 87,000 IRS employees—many armed to the teeth—at a cost of $80 billion. One billion would close the border. Just saying…
There are three components to this. First are the salaries/benefits these government employees enjoy and why these employees fight tooth and nail to retain the status quo. The second is the political use of these employees to crush middle-income citizens and small businesses. The third being the fiefdoms that congress, contractors—military, intelligence, and law enforcement— and lobbyists must protect at all costs. Then, as an added bonus, there are those creepy globalists that are intent in putting America in her place by use of our Deep State.
We are entering an end phase where these employees will be marshaled by the fascist state to attempt the takeover, so to speak, but these Deep State leaders are simpletons with no sense of strategy; brute force is all they understand. When a beast is cornered is when the beast is most dangerous. It is the terrifying reason the Deep State is out to destroy Donald Trump and, through him, us.
Follow the Money
The rank and file Deep State is the gift that keeps on giving:
Several agencies have employee donations in the 2020 political cycle that total in the millions. The agency with the largest total donations was the State Department with more than $5.2 million. This agency also had the largest percentage of donations to Republicans (46.14%). The Department of Defense was a close second with more than $5.2 million [rounding error?] donated during the same political cycle. 65% of donations from these employees went to Democrats.
The Department of Justice had more than $2.3 million in donations with 87.6% going to Democrats.
The agency with the highest percentage going to Democrats was the Federal Communications Commission (also, probably the smallest agency depicted and the one with the smallest amount of total donations). 99.29% of donations from people in this agency went to Democrats. The largest total amount going to Democrats was $3,356,391 from the Department of Defense.
It’s interesting to see that DOJ and DOD had the most contributions to Democratic candidates and causes. Seeing that Republicans have always had a strong affinity for those two departments, maybe we should be rethinking which ones need to be cleaned out first and foremost. I was surprised to see that State was a bit closer to even.
The federal unions exert influence, however, not quite as much as one would believe. The total amount of contributions from federal employee unions during the 2020 election cycle was $13.9M with only $1.6M going to Republican candidates and causes. Put that in contrast with the national teachers unions, such as the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, that contributed $66M, with only $145,000 going to Republicans during the 2020 cycle. No wonder upset parents are now considered domestic terrorists.
This is a primary reason I suggested in an earlier piece that federal employees be banned from contributing to federal candidates and this would include all national public sector unions. I would further suggest that federal employees should be banned from belonging to a union. This isn’t harsh; even the progressive king Franklin D. Roosevelt believed there should be no public sector unions.
An interesting side note: contributions were less monetarily in 2016 but favored Democrats, of course, by wide margins. This article speculates how the bureaucracy would perform under the incoming Trump administration in 2017. I think we all know how that turned out.
I’m from the Government and I’m here to Help
This is where I get a bit cattie. I can’t help it. These people and their fanboys believe that they are above the simpleton taxpayers that fund their way of life. In fact, they speak of us with great disdain. (Yes, I am painting with a broad brush; the majority of civil servants are probably good people doing a good job but there is an arrogance that we can all see from those who are exposed to the public so, I apologize if you’re a great civil servant; be mindful most of us have about had enough of paying your salaries with very little to show for it nor any apparent appreciation for that fact.)
This obscure piece from an obscure online publication, Government Executive is interesting. In his breathless way, the author titled the March 2022 piece:
Trump Is Threatening the Return and Expansion of Schedule F
Oh! The horror!
Former President Trump over the weekend [March 13, 2022] effectively advocated for the demolition of the nonpartisan federal civil service system, providing the latest indication that while President Biden halted the abortive effort to cancel the civil service protections of “policy-related” federal workers, the fight over merit systems principles is not over. [Emphasis mine]
Nonpartisan, when examining the history of political contributions by civil servants, is a laughable assertion. And of course the reforms being discussed affects people like Andy McCabe, not Joe Blow in the mailroom.
Earlier this year, Donald Moynihan, Georgetown University’s McCourt chair of the McCourt School of Public Policy, published a report in the Public Administration Review on the looming dangers that populists and conservatives who subscribe to the so-called unitary executive theory [defined here] could pose to the civil service system. Moynihan said in an interview that although it can be hard to discern whether Trump would “literally” make federal workers at-will employees by executive fiat, it seems likely that at the very least he would seek to reinstitute Schedule F on Day 1 of a second presidential term.
In the “report”, which was actually labeled an opinion piece, Schedule F was done in secrecy, Moynihan claims, and caught the civil service completely off guard. If that was the case, keeping it a secret for so long was a commendable and monumental task pulled off by Trump within the leaky White House.
When a “professional” slips in “hard to discern whether Trump would ‘literally’ make federal workers at-will employees by executive fiat”, he or she is fear mongering.
And how about the attitude: the civil service is beyond the president, beyond the American people. Obviously they believe they are beyond the law.
Panic porn alert:
Moynihan added that the threat does not come from Trump alone. Even if he does not run, several candidates will seek to fill the same populist lane that he did, and some members of Congress have already spoken positively about Schedule F as a “needed” reform.
Translation: Don’t vote Republican.
When the study group was constituted in the Trump White House, it was believed that Schedule F “could apply to as many as 50,000 federal workers”, out of the almost three million employees. Trump officials also stated that they wouldn’t need to fire 50,000 employees. The belief is that a select few in each policy related agency would be enough to return employees to the “non-partisan” positions they are supposed to have under the civil service laws. I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Don Kettl, professor emeritus at the University of Maryland and former dean of its School of Public Policy, said that while the dangers of returning to the spoils system of the 19th century were heavily discussed during the Schedule F debate, a less-understood result of stripping federal workers’ civil service rights could be the degradation of the government’s ability to deliver services to the public. [The only rights I know of are enumerated in the Constitution. Possibly be honest by saying “protections”.]
“That’s really the core question: the fact is there are things that we want and expect government to do, and we want and expect the government to do it in a way that doesn’t have a partisan tinge, [again, we know about the “non-partisan tinge” these employees possess] and to be able to do that, the government needs a certain capacity,” he said. “It’s a question of mission, and there are lots of things that we do take for granted in government work, whether that’s air traffic control, distributing Social Security checks, providing basic research or even the fundamentals of environmental protection.” [Emphasis mine]
(The masters and commanders of the Deep State are trying to scare—which I suppose isn’t that difficult—the rank and file to take up arms against an imaginary monster named Orange Man Bad. I wonder if he’s like Corn Pop?)
I did a bit of digging on this Government Executive publication and found that it is attached not to some think tank that advises government executives but rather a consulting firm, GovExec that provides:
Tools that enable government contractors to win at every phase of the customer journey and accelerate their growth.
GovExec provides government contractors with real-time, predictive intelligence and community activation and performance marketing tools, empowering industry to target the right solutions to the right government decision makers to solve society's biggest challenges.
In other words, they’re shysters stirring the pot, trying to make a buck at the feeding trough, just like all of the other scum. It also means they have a ton of contacts within the corrupt procurement system in our government and are selling that access.
GovExec lists their “partners” on their website. Eleven of the 12 are confirmed partners with the World Economic Forum. What long tentacles the WEF has.
Hidden in all of this is the fact that the bureaucracy is there to service the needs of the American taxpayer/citizen. It must be responsive to the needs of the people. There are programs that should absolutely be pulled out by the hair but until that happens, these people better be running them as non-biased, efficiently, and cost effectively as possible. They are a service industry. They make nothing of value—only destroying capital—and if they aren’t providing good service then why have them?
As far as their managers, the true Deep State, they need to go. Somewhere these people have lost the understanding that they are not there to serve their bureaucracy; they are not there to serve some congressional king; they aren’t there to subvert the will of the people or play patty cakes with the WEF; they aren’t even there for shits and grins. They are there to serve the people and the president in which the people have spoken through. If the president says jump, their response must be “how high?”. If they cannot do that then they need to leave public service.
If Donald Trump is fortunate to be elected again, then my greatest interest is in destroying the Deep State. Obviously, bringing back his highly successful economic, domestic, and foreign policies are musts but so is breaking up this gang of gangsters.
I did not know that Substack newsletters had a word count limit. I, obviously, went over it (as those of you who made it this far probably know). If you would like to read the story of my experience with the true Deep State bureaucracy, please click here and it will take you to the browser version of my Substack columns. While there, you might want to browse other stories you may have missed.
Please leave comments if so desired!