Destroying the Deep State

Perhaps the "spoils system" wasn't so bad after all?

This is going to take some time to boil down for you. Over the course of time, the Government of the United States has devolved from the representation of the will of the people through laws to a rule by fiat of an unelected bureaucracy.

Let’s start here.

Schedule F Executive Order by DJ Trump: 2020-23780.pdf (brownstone.org)

Synopsis of this event by Epoch Times The Astonishing Implications of Schedule F | The Epoch Times

In a nutshell, Schedule F was an attempt to control to sprawl of the deep state, particularly poignant at the time because the NIH, under the leadership of Dr. Anthony Fauci imposed drastic restrictions and requirements on the American public, beyond the scope of enacted laws. Schedule F was immediately revoked by executive order of J. Biden on January 22, 2021 2021-01924.pdf (govinfo.gov), and certain biased judicial actions undermined it’s impact (citation needed).

Tangential to this is the operational organization of the deep state laid out in Jason Chaffetz book. Amazon.com: [Jason Chaffetz] The Deep State: How an Army of Bureaucrats Protected Barack Obama and is Working to Destroy The Trump Agenda Well, perhaps not tangential, perhaps central to the theme, but I don’t want to get too distracted by "The Way Things Are" in pursuit of "How Things Got This Bad". Understanding the prevailing laws that the deep state operates under are key to dismantling it.

The Way Things Are

For the sake of argument (and my ardent hope in our very form of Government, let’s rule out that the Trump assassination attempt was a brazen attempt by the administration of a sitting president to eliminate it's opposition.

What we are left with, then is a very clear case of incompetent leadership. Under the law set forth in the Pendleton Act of 1883, we are supposed to be guaranteed competent leaders in our government, so something is horribly amiss.

What took me down this path was trying to understand how we, as a nation, put in place a system of federal employment that would allow an unqualified candidate to sit at the helm of an organization with such great importance as the US Secret Service, to the extent that the safety of our leadership - in power and in opposition - is left unchecked.

Wokeness as a federal hiring practice

This took me to research the roots of Federal Hiring practices to understand how the likes of Faucci and Kimberly Cheatle could be put in positions of power. Well, in the case of Cheatle, that is pretty clear.

Biden Announces New Secret Service Director | The Epoch Times

Executive Order on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Federal Workforce | The White House

This was done by executive order – and stands in direct conflict with the 141 year old LAW – the Civil Service Reform Act of 1883 by placing additional requirements on the hiring practices of the federal government.

How We Got Here

Pendleton Civil Service Act | Civil Service Reform, Merit System & Federal Jobs | Britannica

Pendleton Act (1883) | National Archives

The War on the Deep State goes way back. While it is clear that Schedule F was effectively returning certain job classifications to the earlier spoils system of Andrew Jackson’s administration, it was more importantly an attempt to check the power of bureaucrats and ensure that the federal government operated at the will of the people.

The Pendleton Act was clearly needed. There needs to be solid checks and balances that ensures that hired staff have the qualifications to do their assigned duties. But over the course of the ensuing 141 years successive administrations have usurped these standards.

The Civil Service act of 1978 (Carter) was a major turn, as well as executive action in the Clinton and Obama administrations.

Over time, we have lost any visibility on federal hiring practices by diluting the prevailing laws designed to ensure the federal government carried out the will of the people through faithful execution of their duties to the law. One thing is very clear to me - the intent of the Pendleton Act needs to be upheld and hiring practices need to be traced to the law. The Presidential Transitions Improvements Act of 2015 needs to be strengthened to clearly delineate political appointees, require merit-based independent review of newly appointed individuals, and provide a means for former administration political appointees to be removed by incoming administrations.

I hope to get much more detailed with this, as time permits, but clearly, I have my work cut out for me. My intent is to drive deeper into how this happened to better understand how to fully unwind it. I need to dramatically update my AI scrape of the Federal Register and US Code of Federal Regulations (ecfr.gov) to do this.

This is a bit drafty, I know, and will take time. So please feel free to DM me with any thoughts or questions that will focus my research on near-term actionable results.