Katrina vanden Heuvel: The relentless GOP attack on the very idea of professional government

[marmar]

from The Nation:


BLOG | Posted 05/22/2007 @ 10:23am
From Justice to Agriculture Department
Katrina vanden Heuvel


Did you see the letter in the New York Times on Monday by a man who suggests that this White House's politicization crept down to the state level of the Agriculture Department? It should lead all enterprising journalists to investigate how this Administration not only hyper-politicized the Justice Department, the Coalition Provisional Authority (see Rajiv Chandrasekaran's revealing "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," the Interior Department and the FDA but also state level positions in various federal departments.

As Michael Scherger recounts, after "reading Thomas Friedman's column "Failing by Example" (May 16), I was reminded of a job interview I had in the late summer of 2002. I had applied for a position with the Department of Agriculture's Farm Service Agency, the state administrative officer position in Indiana, and had a phone interview scheduled. As the interview was winding up, I was feeling very good about it, when the question came up: "How do you feel about the Bush tax cuts and the rebates."

Scherger says that he "was floored." He'd been working "in the human resources field for years. and recognized right away that this question bordered on inappropriate." He "mustered the best response he could think of and the interview concluded." Like so many of us today, a man applying to be a state administrative officer in Indiana learned of the unprecedented attempt by the Bush Administration to exert direct political control deep into areas throughout the executive bureaucracy. As Dan Zegart reported in his prescient article for The Nation last year, "the executive branch is undergoing a brain transplant. An entire culture of civil service professionals loyal to their agency's mission is being systematically replaced with a conservative cadre accountable to the White House." And, yes, this isn't entirely a novel precept. Every President appoints his own "politicals" to run departments. But, as Zegart's reporting--based on more than fifty current and former government officials interviewed during an 8-month long investigation--revealed: "...the scale and coordination with which it is being done under this Administration seem unprecedented."

Partisan Loyalty has trumped judgment, competence, common good/common sense--and, above all, it has defined a relentless GOP attack on the very idea of professional government.

It turns out that the sickbed showdown between John Ashcroft and upstanding Department bureaucrat James Comey and the politicos Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card--which throws into dark and stark relief the corrupt politicizing of the Justice Department--is just one piece of a wider story. I'm going to try to reach Michael Scherger, who applied for that Farm Service Agency position, to try and find out more about this metastasizing politicization.

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?bid=15

[Wetzelbill]

1. how can anti=government authoritarians be expected to run a government?

That's the Republic Party. They can't govern seriously because they don't believe in government in the first place. But government has valid functions. The most classic example is Joe Allbaugh, Brownie and Katrina. To this new breed of Republic that Reagan spawned, government is simply a playground to pay back campaign contributors etc. They don't take it seriously, and that is dangerous.

[rusty charly]

2. Isn't this like making an Atheist the Pope?

[Wetzelbill]

3. Or like putting Mark Foley in charge of....

ok that was too easy. I'll pass out of fairness. :)

Yeah, it's ridiculous. How can anybody expect somebody to run something effectively when it's antithetical to their belief system? I have a friend of mine who works for the government, in law enforcement, and he is always bragging around about Republicans etc, and spouting off goofball viewpoints. It turns out all these Republican Congressman were looking at his unit, planning on isolating it and giving them their own budget etc. He kept using this as an example about how Republicans care about law enforcement, the drug war and all this other bs.

I told him he should start looking for another job because he'll need one soon.

He couldn't grasp it. I told him that once anti-government Republicans - and the guys he talked about are very far right- start messing around like that it only means bad things. He nearly flipped out at me. I said that it sounds like you guys are going to be cut out of the budget next year and maybe eliminated.

He refused to believe me.

So within a year a few things happened. First of all, they never got their own budget. That money that would have normally went to them also wasn't included in the regular agency budget either. They were stuck with nothing, so they had to siphon off what they could from their former Homeland Security handlers. This meant the unit then had to face significant cutbacks in all areas.

In short, my friend had to go find a new job. :)

It never fails, you can always see the signs. Republicans are the anti-Midas when it comes to government. Everything they touch turns to shit.

[Demeter]

5. I'll Bet Your Friend Still Doesn't Get It, Either n/t

[Wetzelbill]

6. I am not sure if he does or not

He gets some things, like he questioned the war as earlier as the summer of 2003, and he seemed to think it was a good thing Dems won the midterms, but, by and large, I don't think he "gets" it. Like he doesn't believe in supply-side economics either, but he votes mostly Republican. He's a sucker for anti-Clinton bullshit too. The simple rhetoric gets him, even though he's a pretty smart guy. It's easy to listen to the GOP, they make stuff simple and all black and white. That's part of the appeal and why people vote against themselves economically etc. I mean seriously we all like the idea of having moral or family "values." That sounds good to everybody, fuck, let's be moral I'm all for that. Let's strengthen families, sure. It sounds great. But that bullshit is code for pure bigotry and homophobia. But "values" sounds much better than "hatred" so it's framed like that.

Lots of people fall for it too. We are indoctrined to absorbed soundbites, not valid information. It's supposed to be too tough to think critically nowadays. So very few people do it. It's why people think something as ridiculous as Gore saying he "invented the internet" is true. It would take a child about 1 minute to find and read what he said and conclude that he never claimed to have invented the internet. The problem is the GOP knows they can lie their asses off about something like that and nobody will really check. Yeah, maybe that will be debunked by some columnist from the Times or Post or maybe some cable talking head will say Gore (or whomever) didn't say that, but 99 percent of the people out there won't see it or even care to. Then lies become truth. It's screwed up stuff. :)

[Demeter]

4. That Would Probably Be An Improvement, Actually

It's not possible to be an incompetent atheist.

[applegrove]

7. They hate the idea of "good government". They just hate it. They

are running so many agencies down into the gutter. That is what they do. So private enterprise can better compete with many diminished government agencies. They just will not stop with the agenda to make government look bad..at the same time making private corporations look better. That is taught in business schools these days..your competators are everyone that could possibly get in the corporations way. Consumers, regulators, democracy.