Recep Tayyip Trump
Contributor Ken W. sees the link between these two stories, both currently appearing in today's top Reuters reports:
"Erdogan targets more than 50,000 in purge after failed Turkish coup" and
"Trump could seek new law to purge government of Obama appointees."
In her lede, Reuters' Emily Flitter has that "could" as a "would":
If he wins the presidency, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump would seek to purge the federal government of officials appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama and could ask Congress to pass legislation making it easier to fire public workers, Trump ally, Chris Christie, said on Tuesday.
Christie, who ... leads Trump's White House transition team, said the campaign was drawing up a list of federal government employees to fire....
'As you know from his other career, Donald likes to fire people,' Christie told a closed-door meeting with dozens of donors at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, according to an audio recording obtained by Reuters and two participants in the meeting.
Trump's transition advisers fear that Obama may convert these [political] appointees to civil servants, who have more job security than officials who have been politically appointed. This would allow officials to keep their jobs in a new, possibly Republican, administration, Christie said.
'It’s called burrowing,' Christie said. 'You take them from the political appointee side into the civil service side, in order to try to set up ... roadblocks for your successor, kind of like when all the Clinton people took all the Ws off the keyboard when George Bush was coming into the White House.'
We're not Turkey -- yet. While Christie's proposed purge does not rise to the level of Ergodan's purges, it is alarming nonetheless. As Christie says, there is a tradition of "burrowing" some political appointees into the civil service. However, those who are transitioned into civil service jobs are hardly Cabinet-level appointees or undersecretaries. Rather, they're functionaries who do the gruntwork of government. Moreover, the Office of Personnel Management routinely sets guidelines and reviews the suitability of each political appointee the administration proposes to convert to a civil servant. So there are strict limits on the extent of the "problem" Christie plans to "fix."
Christie himself is the King of Cronies (which is why we got "Bridgegate" and related indictments) in a state infamous for its tradition of political corruption. Christie's purpose would seem to be to ensure that he & Trump don't miss a single chance to give some useful hack a desk in Washington.
In addition, Christie "justifies" his proposed with a false equivalency. (I'm sure that surprises you.) He claims his purge will prevent minor vandalism/sabotage "kind of like when all the Clinton people took all the Ws off the keyboard." First, "all the Clinton people" did not take "all the Ws" off the keyboards. An initial GAO investigation found no evidence of widespread pranking and concluded that "the condition of the real property was consistent with what we would expect to encounter when tenants vacate office space after an extended occupancy." Only when confederate then-Rep. Bob Barr (Georgia) demanded a more thorough investigation did a subsequent GAO investigation turn up the Ws-off-the-keyboards claim. (No doubt much of the GAO's "evidence" was based on testimony by Bush appointees.) The second GAO report also considered the problem minor & said it occurred mostly in the Executive Office Building, not in the White House.
But here's the thing. It is most likely that the Clinton pranksters, whoever they were, were political appointees who lost their jobs -- that is, ones whom the Clinton administration had not "burrowed" in. If you still had a job _here you had to type reports & memos, etc., _ould you remove the '_' from your keyboard? I didn't think so.
So here we have bully-in-charge Chris Christie, evidently with the approval of Donald Trump, planning to urge Congress to write new law with the purpose of making it easier for a Trump administration to purge experienced federal employees and replace them with Trump loyalists. To that end, Christie is "drawing up a list," which well may remind you of Richard Nixon's dark-side "enemies list." And Christie's team has begun this effort months before the election. Should Trump win, one has to wonder how long the list of Trump "enemies" would be by the time of the inauguration.
Should Americans be worried about this pre-emptive, authoritarian urge-to-purge? I think so.
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Reader Comments (5)
Once purging starts, where does it stop?
Regarding Erdogan, my guess is that most of the purging of educators is happening in Southeast Turkey. When the PKK won its place in parliament, it also got the right to teach in the Kurdish language, and to have other civil issues bilingually written. It looks like Erdogan will really try to purge the Kurds, just like some of his predecessors purged the Greeks and the Armenians.
Another thought regarding purges:
Pol Pot purged the educated classes in Cambodia by simply killing everybody who wore glasses - or so the story goes.
Who knows what comes after the political appointees are purged?
There have been a number of stories purporting to outline the "fall" of Chris Christie, who a couple of years ago was considered one of the stars of the Republican Party and a good bet for a presidential run. Now he's making sure the ice in Donald Trump's drink doesn't melt too quickly and sweeping up the trash around the dumpster in back of Trump Tower.
My contention is that Christie hasn't fallen at all. He's always been a low-life piece of shit. He's a serial bully who, during his high times as governor, before Bridgegate, had an aide follow him around with a video camera to catch "moments" (the Christie staff term) when Chrisco Boy would light into some unsuspecting victim, tear them to shreds and then post the videos on YouTube to demonstrate his manly prowess, such as when he attacked a teacher or stalked a citizen down the Jersey boardwalk yelling "That's right, keep walking" like some asshole 7th grader.
A garden variety bully.
But what most other garden variety bullies don't have is power. The kind a governor has. And a bully with the power of the state behind him is the kind of dangerous bully likely to call for purges. Christie has a long history of tormenting and continuing to abuse those he considers enemies (anyone who stands in his way or stands up to him). He goes after them both publicly and privately. So it's no wonder that he goes to the convention with a torch and a pitchfork, encouraging the drooling mob to scream "Lock her up!".
The truly humiliating thing is that, Christie prostrated himself in front of Donaldo and put up with Trump making fat jokes at his expense in the hope of the VP nod. Then Trump screwed him and went with the guy from Indiana.
And rather than try to salvage some dignity, he continues to crawl in the mud at Trump's feet and goes to the convention to whip up hatred and promote a sort of kangaroo court justice in hopes of getting something, anything, any kind of crumb that Trump might deign to throw him, some administration post, maybe a low level cabinet job or an ambassadorial posting to some postage stamp country in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Anything. He'll take it. He's done in New Jersey. They hate him, so he has nowhere else to go.
He hasn't fallen. He's always been low-life scum, trolling around on the bottom of the pond for something to munch on while bullying the smaller fish.
Asshole.
N.B. Thinking of Christie as a recent can't miss golden boy in the Republican Party reminds me of all the other can't miss golden boys--that famous "deep bench"--who have fallen off their pedestals into the muck: Bob McDonnell, Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum...if you notice a pattern, there's a good reason for it. These guys are all charlatans and/or crooks. The favored species for Republican politicians.
I have always been haunted by this scenario told by the trainee judge Raimund Pretzel who was sitting on the library of the Berlin courthouse in 1933 when Brownshirts burst in loudly expelling all the Jews.
"A Brownshirt approached me and stood before my work table. 'Are you Aryan?' Before I had a chance to think I said, yes. He took a close look at my nose––and retired. The blood shot to my face. A moment too late I felt the shame–-the defeat–-what a disgrace to buy, with a reply, the right to stay with my documents in peace."
It was the core of Hitler's cultural revolution of Germany: to purge the German spirit of "alien" influence such as Communism, Marxism, Socialism., liberalism, sexual freedom, etc. All these "isms" ascribed to Jews, despite massive evidence to the contrary.
"Another thought regarding purges:
Pol Pot purged the educated classes in Cambodia by simply killing everybody who wore glasses - or so the story goes." wrote Victoria.
And in Germany the educated Jews were the first to lose their positions in Universities, medical facilities,the courts along with writers. Evidently Dorothy Parker's "guys don't make passes at girls with glasses" was not the pattern followed by Pol Pot and Adolf who sought out the smarties like hunters seek possum.
A little purging here, a bit of it there and then...
Christie mischaracterizes the typical motive for burrowing. It is not done by an exiting administration to place "roadblocks" in the policy apparatus. It is done by individuals who want to make a career, but who entered the government in political-appointee (rather than career-competitive) status. Such burrowers are in no position to pursue a political agenda contrary to the new administration's agenda: if they seek to do so they are quickly sidelined, since they no longer have political influence or connections.
Technically, when they change status, they do so in a competitive process (however, that process is often stacked in their favor by job descriptions that are tailored to their background/experience.)
Burrowing does take place, all agencies. But it is not to perpetuate a stealth agenda by an outgoing administration. The hard-core political types typically do not burrow but go back to their previous pursuits (academics, lobbyists, think-tankers, business, etc.)
Crisco is just a prick.
In Germany the cultivated Jews were the 1st to misplace their positions in Colleges, medicinal services, the judges alongside with authors.