To Trump, the Government Is Trump. Period.

[DonViejo]

LE BUREAUCRACY, C’EST MOI

The Ugly, Sad (!) Truth Behind All Those Government Vacancies

Why is the president leaving so many high-level positions unfilled? Because to Trump, the government is Trump. Plus his Cabinet members don’t want smart people to challenge them.
Margaret Carlson

12.26.17 7:39 AM ET

Here is what President Donald Trump likes about his job: open-press events where he is called the greatest president ever, making deals where he doesn’t have to master what’s in it, golfing more than any of his predecessors, TV (watching and being watched), and flooding the courts.

What he doesn’t like: governing. His contempt for what public servants do was expressed early on: “I’m generally not going to make a lot of the appointments that would normally be—because you don’t need them. I mean, you look at some of these agencies, how massive they are, and it’s totally unnecessary.” This came after he was surprised that everyone below Cabinet level didn’t just stay in place.

Filling jobs is a key part of any CEO’s success but casino owner and property manager Trump has little experience at his Mom & Pop operation filled with friends and family. He filled his Cabinet on looks and who liked him, with two gone (one under indictment), a number withdrawn (Scott Garrett just removed from the Ex-Im Bank), and 14 not confirmed. Trump has left 250 of the 620 top level administration posts--those that help a president put his stamp on government and manage a sprawling bureaucracy—empty or with “actings,” many without nominees pending, according to the Partnership for Public Service.

Trump is so far behind in staffing his administration, he’s to the point of illegality. After 300 days, “actings” are acting but on borrowed time, with their actions subject to a court challenge where they can be voided by a lawsuit brought by anyone who doesn’t like what’s been done.

Besides that, actings tend to accept that they’re caretakers not likely to get the job permanently, like substitute teachers who keep the class from anarchy but don’t teach long division. Trump is compensating for not finding confirmable people by having his appointees hire pliant commissars who don’t have to go through the Senate. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has avoided bringing on scientists, for instance, who could challenge him from within, preferring to build a fortress where he can go about his business of dismantling environmental protections unhampered. Get a qualified staff and it might be harder to spend $25,000 on a secure room for super-private discussions, meet almost exclusively with lobbyists, scrub inconvenient phrases like “climate change” from documents, and revive the coal industry with specific permission to pollute streams with runoff from mines.

more
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-ugly-sad-truth-behind-all-those-government-vacancies?ref=home

[PJMcK]

1. L'etat c'est moi (n/t)

[COLGATE4]

2. It's "L'etat c'est moi"

[PJMcK]

5. Thanks!

My "e" key sticks from time to time.

I'll fix it. Happy holidays, COLGATE4.

[dalton99a]

8. Yep.

[Girard442]

3. He's doing what Putin hired him to do.

Whether Putin gives him marching orders every day, or just lets him thrash around aimlessly and break stuff at random like a bull in a china shop, it still ends up badly.

[Orsino]

4. Except he doesn't fucking care about the government, either.

There are things that make him feel good and things that invonvenience him. He does not spend time on the latter, beyond fuming and shouting.

The presidency was supposed to make him feel, finally, safe from criticism. Instead, it's opened him to so much more, and has forced him to spend time with people who keep expecting him to pay attention to words not on a screen. Sad.

[erronis]

16. He's doing his job. Distracting from the growing rot in the judiciary and enforcement.

All that the plutocrats and poutain wanted was to eviscerate the system of justice and to co-opt the legal law enforcement, including the military. Dump's asinine antics just distract from the evisceration of these important parts of real government.

[Orsino]

17. Uh-huh. He wanted to be a big shot...

...and the GOP needed tax cuts for their donors. The deal is: they flatter him, and he signs whatever they put in front of him.

[duforsure]

6. Fascism

Raises its ugly head once again.

[Buns_of_Fire]

7. "Trump" -- the new symbol of inferior, substandard quality.

Betcha Comrade Lardass didn't see THAT coming!

[JohnnyRingo]

9. Excellent piece

K&R for Margaret Carlson.

[hedda_foil]

10. Buried toward the bottom. Who knew that Orrin Hatch sponsored bill to protect drug dealers?

Even a position Trump needs to carry out his promises after declaring the opioid epidemic a national public health emergency lies vacant. With 63,000 people dead from drug overdoses last year, more than from breast cancer or the diseases of old age, he’s yet to follow up with action or hire a head of the White House to carry out the emergency office known as the Drug Czar. Trump’s first choice, former Rep. Tom Marino, was withdrawn after a 60 Minutes report showed that he, along with Sen. Orrin Hatch, sponsored legislation that gutted the government’s power to slow the flood of painkillers to the country’s most vulnerable communities. No one’s been put forward since.

[librechik]

11. l'etat c'est MWA HA HAAAAAH!

[47of74]

12. There isn't enough money left on Earth for me to want to work for the Federal Government....

....as long as Orange Fuck Stick is in charge.

[erronis]

15. Or if any repuglican has any say on how government is run. Now, or forever.

The uglican congresscritters better just find other jobs such as bug terminators (which I'm sure they suck at.)

When is the replacement for the repuglican party going to show up? Are there enough honorable conservatives left to staff it? Has the gene pool been permanently slimed?

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

13. Aprs moi le dluge

is obviously next.

[Cartaphelius]

14. Channeling the "Walking Dead",

the GOP has cast aside the welfare of the electorate, their paymasters. And instead they have sworn allegiance to the current administration regardless of the extreme criminality and destruction we have witnessed.

After initially loudly and apologetically supporting Mueller's investigation, they have individually, and in unison as a party, adopted the moniker, "We R. Trump".

Seems rather telling how the so-called "christians and evangelicals" elected and blindly follow, the anti-Christ of their dogma. Thereby consigning non-believers can just die, soon, and burn in hell forever.