This was suppose to be part of a larger write up I was working towards a couple weeks ago until I found myself out of my element. I wanted to take a moment to highlight an aspect to what will hopefully unfold into a larger, more connected opinion piece to follow. I was prompted to highlight part of that op after a news release of a Michael Cohen statement today.
Cohen went on to say that, while "Trump can try to shift responsibility" and scream "fake news," "the math doesn’t lie."
"You screw over 72.5 million people, and you pay the price," he then added. "Unfortunately, [Americans] will suffer. But, there is a light at the end of the tunnel…Musk’s economic jihad against working Americans will be the thing that sinks Trump’s presidency and the Republican party. And for once, the chaos will actually work in the favor of the American people."
No one can deny that Trump is exceptionally good at shifting responsibility, that incredible ability is one of very few things he could actually win some sort of performance award for. He certainly hasn't disappointed shifting blame onto Elon Musk for taking his firing of the deep state well past its intended boundaries he campaigned on.
Most individuals by now are fully aware of the Supreme Court's ruling on presidential immunity. What most don't understand and I have tried to convey to no avail, that the whole immunity case came about not because of actual wrong doing, but perceived wrong doing to bring about a case to the SC to test a Trump advisors theory that presidents have presidential immunity. You can't test a theory without having a case for one. This same individual, James Sherk, also proposed another constitutional option, a legal theory that the president has power through Article II to dismiss any federal employee for any reason. Sherk argued that civil service legislation and union contracts impeded that authority.
James Sherk suggested in a memo that the white should examine a so called "constitutional option", a legal theory that the president has power through Article II to dismiss any federal employee for any reason.
"This would imply civil service legislation and union contracts impeding that authority are unconstitutional", he wrote. "If so, the president could issue an executive order outlining a streamlined new process for dismissing federal employees. This would facilitate the swift removal of poor performers."
While looking through the document, the article states, it became apparent that this was a goal early on for the Trump administration. Many elements of the memo became federal policy almost unchanged from how Sherk proposed them:
A look elsewhere in the document shows that from the earliest days of the Trump administration officials have sought ways to weaken federal sector unions and reduce the pay, benefits and workforce protections of federal employees.
Many elements of the memo became federal policy nearly unchanged form how Sherk first proposed them. For instance, Shrek called for a series of executive orders on collective bargaining in the federal government, specifically limiting the subjects upon which unions may negotiate with agencies, encouraging federal agencies to fire poor performers and limiting union employees ability to use official time to perform representational duties.
The news has highlighted how employees that were recently fired complaining that they had good performance reviews. The reason they got fired with good performance reviews was that Trump, through an executive order, exempted performance reviews and disciplinary actions from being part of the grievance procedures.
Roughly a year after the document was drafted, President Trump signed three executive orders on these topics. One sought to make it easier for agencies to fire federal workers, another streamlined the collective bargaining process and removed a series of topics like performance reviews and disciplinary actions from grievance procedures and a third drastically reduced the amount of time union workers can spend on official time.
Really makes you wonder why they'd exempt performance reviews from the grievance process if an employee was getting good reviews. Could it have had anything to do with some of the recommendation for changes that US Digital Service came up with, such as no more thirty year tenured employment, four year tours of duty and having to go through the application process using Subject Matter Specialist, (SME) before advancing to the governmental human resource departments I talked about in my op:
The New Secret DEI Ingredient
https://hive.blog/deepdives/@sunlit7/the-new-secret-dei-ingredient
Most does not mean all those fired were probationary employees, the question remaining would be were they rehired in the traditional manner accustomed to. Sherk didn't stop there, he recommended that changes be made in the way intelligence and security departments were handled.
Another initiative originating with the 2017 memo came to fruition to exempt the DOD from the law governing collective bargaining in the federal government to defense Secretary Mark Esper in a memo first uncovered by Government Executive. To date Esper has not exercised this new authority.
But in the document, Sherk contemplated a much broader application of the president's authority to exempt national security agencies from federal labor laws.
"Government unions impede the efficiency of federal operations and direct the government to put the interest of the government employees first", he wrote. "Curtailing collective bargaining in government serves the public good....POTUS should issue an EO exempting DOD from collective bargaining. Explore the possibility of adding the VA to this list, possibly parts of DHA, state and OPM. Our (TSA) administrator should cease collective bargaining with security screeners."
The next part that was part of the document is intriguing given Trump's authority over the independent boards has been unfolding in court the last few weeks.
Additionally the document accuses the federal employee unions of filing "abusive" unfair labor practices, charges, arguing that many complaints should instead be subject to arbitration. HIs solution to this was for Federal Labor Relations Authority to refuse to hear cases that could be sent to arbitration, or to "abolish the FLRA (general counsel)". The general counsel position has remained vacant since 2017, effectively halting all unfair labor practice proceedings unless they first arise through an arbitrated grievance.
The last part of Sherk's recommendations, it should come as no surprise were abandon by Trump in his 2020 alternative pay plan and fiscal budget proposal. Realistically, it would be a bad call trying to run for re-election while cutting millions of federal employees pay and benefits.
Sherk's memo also appears to have set the white house agenda when it came to federal pay and benefits. In the document, he called for a pay freeze every year "until congress sends (Trump), legislation comprehensively overhauling federal compensation". Although the president abandon this approach in his 2020 alternative pay plan and fiscal 2021 budget proposal.
The document also calls for a series of cuts to federal employee benefits, most of which have featured heavily in each of the Trump administration's budget proposals but have failed to gain traction in congress. Sherk called for eliminating the Federal Employees Retirement System for new employees in favor of increasing the employer match to the thrift savings plan, increasing FERS contributions rats for existing federal employees, and eliminating the "requirement that federal employees pay 25% of their health care premiums" which he suggested would encourage "greater competition on cost".
They are all willing to pass the buck and run people around in circles to achieve their objectives, and this memo shows how far they were willing to go not only to achieve this objective, but to apply the breaks close to an election cycle to keep it from millions of potential voters. Honestly, who'd vote for someone who had a plan to oust people out of their jobs, cut benefits even if it meant firing then rehiring them under new benefit and retirement rules.
It doesn't stop there either, I just need to get my mojo back to start doing some elaborate connecting between all the players, and I've been saying it for months, and time, in my opinion, is getting close, but if what I've been saying for months now comes to fruition, it won't be Elon Musk who'll be enforcing Trump's orders for department heads to get busy axing people from their jobs.
People have to start becoming more conscience of what's taking place here, this is by far not the end of it. This is just those working for or for government entities who dole out funding on a global scale to contractors abroad. When it comes times to cut that eight hundred eighty billion from Medcaid, it won't be the doctors and hospitals getting the cut, it will be those organizations that government departments contract out for things like home health care, ride assist programs for the elderly, mental health organizations that assist in the stability of the mentally ill in society, or any number of services that provide a healthy, viable stable community for many.
White House Advisor Sought Legal Opinion Trump Can Fire Anyone
https://www.govexec.com/management/2020/06/white-house-advisor-sought-legal-opinion-trump-can-fire-anyone-government/166445/
Well, I'm very happy to be availed your thoughts in a shortened format from what you intended originally. Baby steps allow consumers of your thoughts to absorb them. This is a relatively long post compared to the capacity of folks to understand your exposition of politics that is largely new to them. I strongly recommend you post more of smaller posts, rather than less frequent comprehensive posts.
I strongly disagree. The fact that the Republican Party literally rickrolled people instead of providing any information - even the useless redacted flight logs that are all that was released as the 'Epstein client list' - is proof that the firings haven't even touched the relevant demographic promised. That is the swamp, and AFAIK fresh sewage just keeps on filling it in instead of firings draining it.
It's blatantly obvious why. The previous administration was the champion of DIE and ESG, and employee reviews a fundamental component of that policy implementation. Since 2020 racism has been the primary hiring metric across corporate and government institutions, such that ~95% of new hires were DIE hires, and CIS White Men were the class discriminated against. Trump has stated his administration will strangle DIE to death, and will hire according to merit, ignoring DIE completely. That is why employee reviews based on DIE are antithetical to the mass firing of the DIE bolus of government employees being undertaken.
It isn't hard to understand the wretched hive of villainy Congress' antipathy to reining in privilege they are a primary vector for doling out. It is hard to actually envision the quantity of power the Fed has spewed out of it's printing presses from 2020 forwards, having pushed >80% of the dollars that exist today into rentiers wallets by BlackRock buying their stocks. Wagies such as government bureaucrats have essentially been impoverished by that means, and wages and benefits Congress can use to put their DIE electorate powerbase at the top of the wagie population is the best tool to ensure their support.
The real power of increasing the quantity of dollars 5x and putting 100% of that increase in the pockets of the rentiers in the last 4 years is that those rentiers are the Epstein clients, the blackmailed. The rickrolling of the electorate instead of the Nuremberg II trials and executions of the kiddy diddlers and baby rapers being blackmailed by AIPAC demonstrates that Trump is just the continuation of the Hegelian Dialectic of controlled opposition that the utterly evil rentiers maintain their political power by.
Trump's rearrangement of the Titanic's deckchairs is irrelevant to that actual power to rule that the electorate has (again) been fooled to think is wagie bureaucrats. The real power is blackmailed rentiers, as it always has been, and since Biden was elected their economic power has been increased by ~5x over the rest of us.
Thanks!