Newsome pushed back against Democracy to achieve his political goals
- By eclipsenow
- American Politics
- 364 Replies
We see here again broad claims, but without saying where these things are (certainly I spotted various blatant falsehoods on your linked page, such as its absurd claim that Project 2025 wanted "a ban on in vitro fertilization" despite not mentioning in vitro fertilization once in the document).
Schedule F and the war-on-drugs
The challenge is sometimes the language in the PDF does not spell out "Schedule F" in each and every instance where it speaks of stacking the ranks with MAGA. EG: Page 62 is about the White House push to continue the so-called 'war on drugs'.The National Drug Control Program agencies represented a total of $41 billion in fiscal year 2022. Whereas the position for overseeing budget activities is traditionally held by a career official, it is imperative that a political appointee lead the ONDCP budget office to ensure coordination between the OMB Program Associate Director and the ONDCP budgetary appointee.
... While it makes sense to transfer these programs eventually to the Department of Justice and Department of Health and Human Services, respectively, it is vital that the ONDCP Director ensure in the immediate term that these grant programs are funding the President’s drug control priorities and not woke nonprofits with leftist policy agendas. Thus, the President must insure that the ONDCP is managed by political appointees who are committed to the Administration’s agenda and not acquiesce to management by political
or career military personnel who oversaw the prior Administration’s ONDCP.
What they call 'woke nonprofits with leftist policy agendas' is probably the very stuff I studied (many years ago) in my Advanced Diploma Social Sciences. It's harm minimization. It's robbing the cartels of their business model. It's about ending the war on drugs - which limits street supply therefore driving up the street price and increasing the financial reward and incentive to cartels that are now bigger than Walmart - indeed - bigger than many governments!
Instead, do what the Europeans do and offering safe drug injecting rooms, and alternatives like free methadone programs, while having social workers in there that can gently encourage these victims of addiction and help guide them out of drugs and into rehab, safe housing, and work programs. It works.
The USA has 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s inmates.
That's 5 times the jails! How much does that cost in extra policing, legal cases, court time - let alone the penal system?
Are Americans really 5 times more criminal than the rest of the world?
No - they are suffering from a failed drug criminalisation scheme.
Comparison of United States incarceration rate with other countries - Wikipedia
With your war on drugs and your for-profit healthcare costing twice as much as OECD nations - no wonder your country is getting into debt and cannot cover everyone's healthcare!
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Schedule F and general civil servant protections
The end of page 80.
Frustrated with these activities by top career executives, the Trump Administration issued Executive Order 1395724 to make career professionals in positions that are not normally subject to change as a result of a presidential transition but who discharge significant duties and exercise significant discretion in formulating and implementing executive branch policy and programs an exception to the competitive hiring rules and examinations for career positions under a new Schedule F. It ordered the Director of OPM and agency heads to set procedures to prepare lists of such confidential, policy-determining, policymaking, or policy-advocating positions and prepare procedures to create exceptions from civil service rules when careerists hold such positions, from which they can relocate back to the regular civil service after such service. The order was subsequently reversed by President Biden at the demand of the civil service associations and unions. It should be reinstated, but SES responsibility should come first.
It could be argued that ''policy-advocating" could mean anyone in the civil service! Chatting about sensible harm minimization drug programs over the water cooler could get someone replaced with a 'loyalist'. As the wiki says:
Schedule Policy/Career, commonly known by its former name Schedule F, is a job classification for appointments in the excepted service of the United States federal civil service for permanent policy-related positions. The purpose of the provision is to increase the president's control over the federal career civil service by removing their civil service protections and making them easier to dismiss, which proponents stated would increase flexibility and accountability to elected officials. It was widely criticized as providing a means to retaliate against federal officials for political reasons, impede the effective functioning of government, and creating risk to democracy. It has been estimated that tens or hundreds of thousands of career employees could be reclassified, increasing the number of political appointments by a factor of ten. Schedule F appointment - Wikipedia
It undermines professionalism
It erodes their freedom of speech in what should be neutral matters of handling bureaucracy - and can create partisan political bias in hiring decisions. As the wiki says:The creation of Schedule F was controversial. Critics feared a transition from a non-partisan government of subject-matter experts to one where partisan or presidential loyalty tests had a role in the hiring process.[4] At the time, it was estimated that tens or hundreds of thousands of career employees could lose their civil service protections including union representation,[4][41] and that it would increase the number of political appointments by a factor of ten.[42] Conversely, there was concern that political appointees of Trump, whose appointments are supposed to expire at the end of his term, could "burrow in" by being converted to positions that are harder to dismiss.[19][41]
Rebecca Beitsch, writing for The Hill, wrote that unions were criticizing Trump's executive order as "the biggest change to federal workforce protections in a century, converting many federal workers to 'at will' employment."[43] The National Treasury Employees Union sued the administration in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia over the executive order, arguing that the administration did not properly justify it satisfied the legal requirement that the changes are "necessary" and as "conditions of good administration warrant."[17][44]
An official statement from Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) further stated that the executive order was "alarming".[43] The six authors, all infectious disease specialists and epidemiologists, wrote:
It reduces constraints on stupid political decisions that fly in the face of good science and public policy. It's another shift in the road to Kingship - in having the King's orders followed no matter the cost to the public!We rely on the judgment of civil service experts to lead responses against the pandemic, inform the public, drive research, update guidance and review data supporting the use and distribution of vaccines and treatments to address the impacts of COVID-19. Replacing our scientists and public health experts with politically motivated staff will reduce our ability to respond, and reduce public confidence in our response, to COVID-19 and other public health crises.[45]
I mean - it's concerning enough that the very top roles have such bizarre picks. An anti-vaxxer gets health, a real-estate buddy gets to play peacemaker with Putin (and goes into the meeting without an interpreter! - that's junior high school behaviour!), and "Big Lie" believers who challenged the legal authority of the democratic institutions that 64 courts validated duly elected Biden - these anti-law, anti-election Tinfoil hat types get placed in charge of law enforcement agencies like the FBI and DOJ!
I guess in that light - strip the civil service of anyone competent. When the leaders are spitting in the face of reality, who cares if the rank and file employees know what's going on? Hire MAGA QANON Anti-vax anti-climate Big Lie tinfoil hat types. I don't care anymore. American leadership of the western project is over. With 75% of American scientists considering fleeing the country, I'm just going to sit back and watch as America kneecaps itself.
Congress passes intentionally vague laws that delegate decision-making over a given issue to a federal agency. That agency’s bureaucrats—not just unelected but seemingly un-fireable—then leap at the chance to fill the vacuum created by Congress’s preening cowardice. The federal government is growing larger and less constitutionally accountable—even to the President—every year.
(Sighs). Maybe - but it depends what we are talking about! Laws should be shaped by a sound knowledge base of the latest scientific studies into medicine, vaccines, climate, and even social sciences such as the European mental health model for drug addicts - rather than the punitive "war on drugs" model of the USA.
Countries run on Federal Laws, State laws, local by-laws - and sometimes the policies and procedures determined by the latest expertise of various departments. Sometimes Federal bodies SHOULD hand over decision making to the experts in these areas! EG: Climate science determines there's a problem, some energy systems modellers determine the cheapest mix of energy sources and create a Federal program to encourage the right energy mix gets deployed across the country, and various social sciences are employed to help consumers make better choices, live in better Ecocities that radically reduce climate impact and increase quality of life, etc! And that's just climate science! In some of these instances the various expert departments would make recommendations that then head back up the chain of command to congress and become new laws.
Which is why having ALL available voices, from the most professionally educated experts, is important in the civil service to ensure most perspectives are heard when developing these reports.
You're just not going to get that when the place is loaded with Antivaxxer RFK MAHA loyalists!
And when it comes to JD Vance and Trump spanking Zalenskyy in the Oval Office, or Trump sending Witkof in to Putin who then reports back that there will be some land swaps and they have a 'deal' when Witkof completely misunderstood the whole meeting because of the lack of an interpreter - the whole Trump regime is a JOKE!
Expertise? Who needs it.
We may as well be in North Korea with the "Great Leader" in the White House. (Which will soon be the "Trump House" given he's adding a gaudy ballroom to it. Gold plated toilet seats included?)
As the NYT said:-
“President Trump does not seem to notice or care that if you betray people, or jerk them around, they will revile you. Over the last few weeks, the Europeans have gone from shock to bewilderment to revulsion. ...
This is not just a Trump problem; America’s whole reputation is shot. I don’t care if Abraham Lincoln himself walked into the White House in 2029, no foreign leader can responsibly trust a nation that is perpetually four years away from electing another authoritarian nihilist...
NATO is over ... The West is (temporarily) over ...”
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