Shutdown Standoff Week at Legal Insurrection
All the news you may have missed.
We’re now in the longest government shutdown in history. Look what it has wrought.
- Major Networks, Cable News Will Air Trump’s Address as Democrats Demand Equal Airtime
- Trump makes the case for a border wall in address to the nation
- Schumer and Pelosi Response to Trump’s Address Gets the Meme Treatment
Trump keeps working.
- Trump Arrives in Texas to Visit the Border, Meet With Border Patrol
- Trump threatens to end FEMA aid for California over its forest management rules
The Democrat stampede has begun.
- Dem Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is running for president, and that’s important (really, it is)
- Report: Kamala Harris Expected to Enter 2020 Presidential Run Around MLK Day
- ‘Draft Beto 2020’ Already Organizing for O’Rourke
Hmm…
- Ginsburg Misses Oral Arguments for First Time as Supreme Court Justice
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg Watch
- Politico Chief Political Columnist Asks if You’d Give Days Off Your Life for Ginsburg
Our lovely media.
- CNN’s Anna Navarro Files Her Nails During Discussion About Americans Murdered by Illegal Aliens
- Blockbuster Russia collusion story collapses, NY Times issues devastating “correction”
- Media fabricated narrative about conservatives mocking Ocasio-Cortez dance video
Derp!
World news.
- EU Election: Italy’s Salvini Seeks Alliance with Polish Conservatives
- Germany Introduces “Counseling Service” to Combat Radical Islam
- French Ministry broken into as “Yellow Vest” protests continue
Branco cartoons!
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Comments
Where is the debate to TEAR DOWN the existing walls?
That picture should go with this caption:
“This is what you get when you vote Democrat”
Here’s a thought. Why not start entering into emergency agreements with private companies to perform government services impacted by the shutdown? See how the Democrats like it when we are all suddenly better off under the shutdown, and there is no reason why it can’t go on forever.
The Daily Caller is taking the rare step of publishing this anonymous op-ed at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose career would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.
I’m A Senior Trump Official, And I Hope A Long Shutdown Smokes Out The Resistance
As one of the senior officials working without a paycheck, a few words of advice for the president’s next move at shuttered government agencies: lock the doors, sell the furniture, and cut them down.
Federal employees are starting to feel the strain of the shutdown. I am one of them. But for the sake of our nation, I hope it lasts a very long time, till the government is changed and can never return to its previous form.
The lapse in appropriations is more than a battle over a wall. It is an opportunity to strip wasteful government agencies for good.
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.
Process is what we serve, process keeps us safe, process is our core value. It takes a lot of people to maintain the process. Process provides jobs. In fact, there are process experts and certified process managers who protect the process. Then there are the 5 percent with moxie (career managers). At any given time they can change, clarify or add to the process — even to distort or block policy counsel for the president.
Saboteurs peddling opinion as research, tasking their staff on pet projects or pitching wasteful grants to their friends. 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.
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. One might think this is how government should function, but bureaucracies operate from the bottom up — a collective of self-generated ideas. Ideas become initiatives, formalize into offices, they seek funds from Congress and become bureaus or sub-agencies, and maybe one day grow to be their own independent agency, like ours. The nature of a big administrative bureaucracy is to grow to serve itself. I watch it and fight it daily.
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The message to federal supervisors is clear. Maintain the status quo, or face allegations. Many federal employees truly believe that doing tasks more efficiently and cutting out waste, by closing troubled programs instead of expanding them, “is morally wrong,” as one cried to me.
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https://dailycaller.com/2019/01/14/smoke-out-resistance/?utm_medium=email