The number one album today in 1976 was Earth Wind & Fire’s “Gratitude” …
The number one British album today in 1999 was Fatboy Slim’s “You’ve Come a Long Way Baby,” and if you like it you have to praise it like you shoo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oould:
Thomas Lifson asks:
Has President Trump suckered Democrats and the Deep State into a trap that will enable a radical downsizing of the federal bureaucracy? In only five more days of the already “longest government shutdown in history” (25 days and counting, as of today), a heretofore obscure threshold will be reached, enabling permanent layoffs of bureaucrats furloughed 30 days or more.
Don’t believe me that federal bureaucrats can be laid off? Well, in bureaucratese, a layoff is called a RIF – a Reduction in Force – and of course, it comes with a slew of civil service protections. But, if the guidelines are followed, bureaucrats can be laid off – as in no more job. It is all explained by Michael Roberts here (updated after the beginning of the partial shutdown):
A reduction in force is a thoughtful and systematic elimination of positions. For all practical purposes, a government RIF is the same thing as a layoff. …
Organizations must stick to predetermined criteria when sorting out what happens to each employee. They must communicate with employees how and why decisions are made. …
In deciding who stays and who goes, federal agencies must take four factors into account:
1. Tenure
2. Veteran status
3. Total federal civilian and military service
4. Performance
Agencies cannot use RIF procedures to fire bad employees.
A lot of procedures must be followed, and merit (“performance”) is the last consideration, but based on the criteria above, employees already furloughed can be laid off (“RIFed”) once they have been furloughed for 30 days or 22 work days:
When agencies furlough employees for more than 30 calendar days or 22 discontinuous work days, they must use RIF procedures.
An employee can be terminated or moved into an available position[.]
This seems to be what was referenced in this remarkable essay written by an “unidentified senior Trump official” published in the Daily Caller, which vouches for the authenticity of the author and explains that it is protecting him from adverse career consequences should the name become known. I strongly recommend reading the whole thing.
The purported senior official makes the case that devotion to “process” eats up most of the time of federal bureaucrats and is also used by enemies of President Trump’s initiatives to stymie the legitimate orders issued by his senior officials:
On an average day, roughly 15 percent of the employees around me are exceptional patriots serving their country. I wish I could give competitive salaries to them and no one else. But 80 percent feel no pressure to produce results. If they don’t feel like doing what they are told, they don’t.
Why would they? We can’t fire them. They avoid attention, plan their weekend, schedule vacation, their second job, their next position – some do this in the same position for more than a decade.
They do nothing that warrants punishment and nothing of external value. That is their workday: errands for the sake of errands – administering, refining, following and collaborating on process. “Process is your friend” is what delusional civil servants tell themselves. Even senior officials must gain approval from every rank across their department, other agencies and work units for basic administrative chores.
Then the senior official notes what I have just called the “trap”:
Most of my career colleagues actively work against the president’s agenda. This means I typically spend about 15 percent of my time on the president’s agenda and 85 percent of my time trying to stop sabotage, and we have no power to get rid of them. Until the shutdown.
Those officials who waste time and stymie the president’s initiatives now are not present because they are not categorized as “essential.”
Due to the lack of funding, many federal agencies are now operating more effectively from the top down on a fraction of their workforce, with only select essential personnel serving national security tasks. …
President Trump can end this abuse. Senior officials can reprioritize during an extended shutdown, focus on valuable results and weed out the saboteurs. We do not want most employees to return, because we are working better without them.
Keep in mind that saboteurs cannot be individually identified and RIFed, but they can be included in the layoffs if they meet the criteria above in terms of seniority and service, and they must be given 60 days’ notice. But once they are gone, they are no longer free to obstruct using the “process” as their friend, because they are gone.
You can expect lawsuits on every conceivable point, and I suspect that the definition of “furlough” will be one matter of dispute.
If this was the plan all along, it would explain why President Trump goaded Chuck and Nancy in his televised meeting with them last year, boasting that he would claim credit for the shutdown. How could they resist a prolonged shutdown when he made it so easy to blame him?
President Trump has proven that he is a “disruptor” who changes the framework of thinking on major issues by refusing to accept the “givens” – the assumptions of how things always have been done and therefore always must be done.
So who is the “senior official”? I don’t know, but I think Stephen Miller is the sort of bold thinker who might volunteer to telegraph the strategy just five days before the deadline. Give Chuck and Nancy something to think about and probably reject as unthinkable. Then they can’t complain that they weren’t warned once the trap is sprung.
Such a mass RIF would be the Trump version of Ronald Reagan firing the air traffic controllers when they went on an illegal strike in 1981. That was completely unexpected by his enemies, vehemently criticized, and successful.
Among other benefits, it taught the leaders of the USSR that Ronald Reagan was a man whose threats cannot be dismissed as mere rhetoric. If you think that Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un, Angela Merkel, and any other foreign leaders would not draw the same conclusion from a massive RIF, then you are kidding yourself.
We can hope. A positive economy is when capitals and nowhere else are in recession.
Brett Healy of the MacIver Institute:
We believe, in general, you should pursue a pro-growth agenda that will sustain Wisconsin’s momentum and keep us heading in the right direction.
Taxes are still too high in Wisconsin. Despite $8 billion in recently passed tax relief, the Badger State ranks 32nd on the Tax Foundation’s Business Tax Climate Index. Worse, we still rank a disappointing 39th in the nation for individual taxes.
If Wisconsin wants to remain competitive, if we want to keep our friends and neighbors from moving to more tax-friendly states, and if we want to attract new businesses and all the family-supporting jobs that come with those new businesses, we need to continue our move to a flatter and more fair tax structure.
Wisconsin’s tax code forces even the lowest-income earners to pay the fourth highest tax rate of any state with a progressive income tax. A 3 percent flat tax would lower the tax rate for the working poor and stop punishing success.
A systematic and meaningful tax overhaul would also be an invaluable opportunity to examine what the fundamental role of government should be, determine the critical services that our citizens deserve and reduce government spending on all unnecessary and extraneous programs. We can save Wisconsin taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars if we exercise fiscal prudence. If government can exercise some restraint and discipline, our citizens will have more money in their checkbooks and they will then have the ability to make their lives better on their own.
Gov. Evers, let’s make the 2019-2021 budget about the taxpayer, not bureaucrats or the special interests.
We agree with you that the escalating cost of health care in the Affordable Care Act era is a big concern going forward. One way to increase access to affordable care and foster innovation is to protect the nascent direct primary care movement in our state. New regulations would quickly kill direct primary care before it has an opportunity to re-establish the doctor-patient relationship and solve our health-care woes.
Direct primary care also holds promise for taxpayers. Lawmakers are attempting to introduce direct primary care into the state’s vast and expensive Medical Assistance programs. A similar reform in Michigan is projected to save taxpayers $3.4 billion—with a B—if fully implemented there.
Price transparency is also critical to keeping health-care costs in check. We hope you will work to give patients all of the information they need in real-time to make smart health-care decisions. If health-care consumers are treated with respect and allowed access to legitimate pricing information, they will make decisions on their own that will drive down the cost of health care.
In your inaugural speech, you said you want to ensure “every kid in our state has access to a quality education — no matter what their zip code.” We could not agree more.
We all know that the education system here in Wisconsin is facing some long-term challenges and immediate emergencies. We have too many kids stuck in a failing school, our achievement gap remains a crisis and the amount of money our parents spend on remedial classes in college so their kids can learn what they should have been taught in high school is embarrassing.
Instead of turning to a tired and predictable solution that gives more power to bureaucrats, we should empower parents to fix all of this. Let’s move to a Super Education Savings Account system where parents are in charge of their kids’ education funding and can “bank” any unused K-12 funding for their child’s college or technical school education. You could kill two birds with one stone — allow parents to make the K-12 system more accountable and give parents a real opportunity to save money for college.
We also believe, governor, that you should stay the course on welfare reform. With the state’s economy roaring, a rock-bottom unemployment rate, and more job openings than workers, it is more important than ever to help our fellow citizens to move their way off taxpayer assistance and find meaningful, family-supporting work. The jobs are out there, governor. Repealing training and job-search requirements will prevent welfare recipients from taking that critical but scary first step toward self-reliance and freedom.
Wisconsin is heading in the right direction, governor. Let’s work together to keep our state moving forward. Good luck.
The number one single today in 1956:
The number one single in Great Britain in 1964:
… and in the U.S. today in 1964:
James Davis, a member of one of the Evil Koch Brothers’ organizations, is full of more optimism than is warranted:
Tools are wonderful things. They can be used to tear down a house or to build one, depending on how you choose to use them.
The same is true of politics.
You can employ partisanship to tear down your opponent. Or you can use the political tools at your disposal differently, and build something.
As Americans, we need to find a way to make better use of politics and rebuild our country, together.
That means overcoming the barriers created by unchecked partisanship and its emotional parent, tribalism, or what I’ll call factionalism.
For several years, like many others, we accepted that to be effective in politics, partisan engagement was the only real way to achieve policy reform. But not anymore. The reality is partisanship too often gets in the way of achieving what’s possible. There’s got to be a better way, and our network is committed to find one. We’re already helping bridge the divide on a host of issues, including but not limited to criminal justice reform, immigration and combating the opioid epidemic — and we’re working to identify more. We invite you to join us.
To get there, we have to start by recognizing that factionalism has deep roots and is not restricted to the realm of politics. Sadly, it pervades the culture, seeping into and draining the joy from sport, and cluttering up civic life — our schools, our businesses and workplaces, even our sense of belonging in our communities.
But for all our apparent attachment to factionalism, this virulent form of partisanship is not solving problems. It’s exacerbating them.
To take just one glaring example, let’s look at education, where the debate has become so divisive that it’s harming our children’s futures.
The factions pick sides — public vs. private schools, traditional vs. charter, college vs. vocational training. Then they enter the ring and slug away.
The result is that both sides are smeared, their views distorted and demonized, and their supporters more entrenched and more adversarial. And our children are left with a failing status quo: low job satisfaction for teachers; declining engagement as students move through the grades and an increasing disconnect between what they learn and who they could be; and families who sometimes aren’t sure which way to turn.
These kinds of debates sorely miss the larger point: We should not be fighting about where our kids go to school; we should be figuring out which type of education is best for each student and best fits their unique needs.
It’s a model of problem-solution rather than problem-blame.
This is good policy and should be good politics. And it happens to be the way most Americans think about issues.
When asked in a recent survey how lawmakers should meet the challenge of a politically divided Congress in 2019, by a margin of 56% to 34%, respondents said Democrats and Republicans should work together and find common ground. And Americans share plenty of common ground on issues such as education, immigration and corporate welfare, even as legislators have wrestled unsuccessfully with them.
While that’s what people said they want to see, what they said they expect to see is the opposite. By more than two-to-one, those surveyed said they believe divided government will remain divided, with the White House and Democrats in Congress failing to cooperate.
So we know the right thing to do, yet seemingly can’t bring ourselves to believe it will happen, or find a way to make it happen. Is something wrong with our brains? Sort of. But like our politics, our brains are fixable.
The growing scientific field of neuroplasticity demonstrates the human brain’s powerful potential for transformation, according to Norman Doidge, author of “The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science.”
History is replete with examples, but we don’t have to search through musty texts to find them. Just take a look at what Congress, that much maligned institution, just accomplished.
Lawmakers put aside fear and partisanship to pass by wide margins in both chambers the FIRST STEP Act, which will expand second chances for formerly incarcerated individuals and help them succeed when they re-enter their communities.
It was a refreshing example of getting government institutions working again to solve problems and make a real difference in people’s lives. It certainly did for Matthew Charles. The Tennessee man had been free for two years, then was ordered back to prison after another judge sided with prosecutors who argued he had not served the required mandatory minimum. US District Judge Aleta Trauger cited the new law as the reason she set Charles free. On his release, Charles talked about the dark cloud that had been hanging over his head, but noted, “today, that dark cloud has evaporated.”
That bipartisan victory can be an example going forward.
I have a difficult time with a lot of this. The writer seems to not grasp that the purpose of politics is to get into and stay in power, not solve problems. (Which is why the parties sometimes do work together, since every partisan legislative body is made up of three parties that sometimes overlap — Democrats, Republicans and incumbents.) The two parties cannot even agree on what is a problem, let alone how to solve a problem. And if you think that’s because of the existence of the parties, you haven’t experienced local government.
We have already seen factionalism rear its ugly head when Gov. Tony Evers replaced all the Walker administration appointees (which one would expect with a new governor of a different party) not merely with Democrats, but with Madison and Milwaukee Democrats, who could not care less about anything outside zip codes that start with 537 and 532. Evers’ goal obviously is to undo all things Walker, not fix any problem this state has (which are problems that cannot be fixed by government anyway).
But factionalism exists within the parties, not just between the parties and their supporters. The Republican Party is divided into pro-Trump and anti-Trump factions. Two years ago the Democratic Party was divided into pro-Hillary Clinton and pro-Bernie Sanders factions, which have morphed into the establishment Democrats (Nancy Pelosi, Charles Schumer and maybe Hillary again if she is stupid enough to run) and the insurgents (Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, etc.).
Today in 1967 was not a good day for fans of artistic freedom or the First Amendment, though the First Amendment applies to government against citizens and not the media against individuals.
Before their appearance on CBS-TV’s Ed Sullivan Shew, the Rolling Stones were compelled to change “Let’s Spend the Night Together …”
… to “Let’s Spend Some Time Together”:
The number one British album today in 1977 was ABBA’s “Arrival” …
Facebook Friend Michael Smith:
Democrats’ mission to ban certain guns has very little to do with the Second Amendment or public safety – the American Psychiatric Association revealed the true purpose – to eliminate masculinity in society.
If you read through the list of weapons in the Feinstein Fantasy Ban Bill, the thing that jumps to the forefront is how much these weapons appear to be masculine and of military design – her list reads like the prop inventory from a John Wick movie – even though these weapons are no more deadly than their non-military looking ones that are not banned (and the bulk of the list have non-scary looking variants).
It should be pointed out that in 2017, the greatest increase (111%) in applications for concealed carry permits came from women, not men.
Feinstein lists “Mass shootings that took place last year using military-style assault rifles” but with mistakes and omissions – along with Parkland (illegally purchased weapon due to federal and local law enforcement failures), she lists the Vegas (legally purchased weapons) and Sutherland Springs (illegally possessed weapon due to a government information sharing issue) shootings that happened in 2017, not in 2018 – and she omits other shootings like the Borderline Bar and Grill shooting in Thousand Oaks, California that involved legally purchased semi-automatic pistols.
I’m not excusing those shootings, I’m merely pointing out that Feinstein and the Democrats lack the courage of their convictions to ban all guns and choose to go after a certain style of weapon for purely political purposes.
Not that I need to tell you that.
J.D. Tuccille writes about a segment of federal workers not getting paid due to the “shutdown”:
Understandably, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees are no more enthusiastic about working when their paychecks are delayed than is anybody else on the planet. That’s why they’ve been calling-in sick in increased numbers—some to seek temporary work elsewhere in order to pay their bills—as the more-theater-than-reality“government shutdown” drags on. But, isn’t this an opportunity for us all? Given that the world is a better place when TSA employees and other government minions don’t do their jobs, and some are already seeking alternative employment, what a great opportunity to shut down their agencies, shrink the government, and make everybody’s lives a little better!
“If you don’t have a check to pay your bills, what are you going to do?” complains Rudy Garcia, president of the chapter of the American Federation of Government Employees that represents Dallas TSA employees, many of whom have been calling in sick in as they seek part-time employment. “You will look for something outside of what you’re doing now.”
And who can argue with that? Nobody wants to work for an employer who holds off on cutting paychecks until a more convenient moment, and that’s just what the federal government is doing during its “shutdown”—a spectacle that almost seems crafted to demonstrate how easy it is to live without the leviathan in Washington, D.C.
Along those lines, it’s nearly ideal that the federal sick-out has begun among TSA employees, since their agency is so astoundingly incompetent and abusive at its assigned tasks and is skilled only at angering travelers of all political persuasions. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) may be more explicitly malevolent, but their fans and detractors tend to break down along ideological lines. Even the Internal Revenue Service can find boosters among whoever it is who keeps weeping over those regurgitated press releases about how hard it is to be a tax collector. But sharing vicious comments about the TSA clowns squeezingpeople’s junk is a game we can all play while suffering in line at the airport.
Not that there’s any point to all of that groping beyond the purely recreational aspect. Undercover investigators were able to smuggle weapons and explosives past TSA agents 95 percent of the time, according to a 2015 Homeland Security Investigator General report. Maybe that’s because agents are relying on dowsing rods or Spidey sense—they’re certainly not depending on the expensive equipment they make travelers and baggage file through.
“Because TSA does not adequately oversee equipment maintenance, it cannot be assured that routine preventive maintenance is performed or that equipment is repaired and ready for operational use,” The Inspector General office also noted.
Given the pointless hassles inherent in passing through the security checkpoints at airports, I’m not sure why we don’t all get ourselves those security badge backstage passes that let airport workers wander hither and yon through secure areas; TSA oversees the issue of those badges and they don’t seem that hard to get.
“An official from the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport said that, over 2 years, more than 1,400 badges were lost or stolen,” the Inspector General added in 2016. “Some members of Congress expressed concern that these missing badges would allow an unauthorized person access to an airport’s secured areas.”
TSA agents aren’t getting paid? Are they sure? Maybe they just misplaced the checks.
I kid. They really aren’t getting paychecks at the moment, but I can’t really think of a good reason why their jobs should exist at all.
“Security theater” is what security expert Bruce Schneier, a lecturer at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of government, calls most of what the TSA does. They’re “measures that make us feel safer without improving security… I’ve repeatedly said that the two things that have made flying safer since 9/11 are reinforcing the cockpit doors and persuading passengers that they need to fight back. Everything beyond that isn’t worth it.”
If it isn’t worth it, why pay for it?
And now many TSA agents are looking for alternative employment. Most of them are probably landing gigs in the private sector (we know the feds aren’t paying at the moment) for employers willing to exchange their own money for what the sometime federal security agents have to offer. That suggests a good chance that their new jobs may well be worth something more than what they do for the government. So let them go!
And maybe they could take their federal colleagues—including those at the ATF and the DEA—with them.
“ATF operations nationwide employed rogue tactics, including tapping those with mental disabilities … then charging them with gun crimes,” the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported in 2013 as part of a series of horrifying stories on the federal agency. Among the failures of the agency tasked with regulating firearms, “ATF agents lost track of dozens of their own guns.”
The DEA “has existed for more than 40 years, but little attention has been given to the role the agency has played in fueling mass incarceration, racial disparities and other drug war problems,” the Drug Policy Alliance notes. That’s what DEA agents do when they’re not enjoying “‘sex parties’ with prostitutes hired by local drug cartels,” as The Washington Post puts it.
Without even turning to the larger federal apparatus, isn’t a widespread sick-out among government workers sounding like a pretty attractive idea right about now?
So, TSA agents, I wish you good luck in finding new jobs as you try to cover your bills. And once you land those new gigs, please, don’t come back.
The number one British single today in 1960:
The number one single today in 1978:
The number one British single today in 1995 came from a Swedish group that did a wacky country-ish song:
The number one single today in 1960 topped the charts for the second time:
It’s not a secret that the number one album today in 1973 was Carly Simon’s “No Secrets”:
Today in 1973, Eric Clapton performed in concert for the first time in several years at the Rainbow Theatre in London:
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 