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Saturday, February 8, 2020

What Could Possibly Stop Barr From Just Firing People?

That's the question that commenter aNanyMouse just posed. It's the same question that's been asked innumerable times--in one form or another--throughout the past three years.

I couldn't possibly go into all the ins and outs, and I'm anything but an expert on federal employee employment law, but below is a selection from a Daily Caller article (Here’s Why It’s All But Impossible To Fire A Fed) that may give you some idea of why Barr or any other government official doesn't throw the bums out. 

The long and the short of it is--do you want Barr and similarly placed officials to do their jobs, or do you want them to spend their time tilting at windmills, i.e., trying to fire people? No, of course, that shouldn't be the choice, but in the real world it often comes down to that. In other words, Barr tries to do his job, but has to carry either dead weight on his back or people who find subtle ways to slow him down dragging behind him. At a certain point, if he wants to get anything done, he has to find a way to work around these people. He's not trying to "protect the institution" or any of the other nonsensical claims that are made against him. He's simply having to prioritize how he's going to spend his time:


Federal workers are far more likely to be audited by the IRS or get arrested for drunk driving than they are to be fired from the civil service payroll for poor performance or misconduct. 
The odds are one-in-175 for the IRS audit and one-in-200 for the drunk driving arrest, while the odds for a fed to be fired in a given year are one-in-500, according to the Government Accountability Office. The rate is higher for employees who are in the one-year probationary period that follows their hiring. 
... 
With such odds, it’s no wonder that bureaucratic horror stories are so common. The Daily Caller News Foundation, for example, recently reported Environmental Protection Agency officials let an employee convicted of stealing thousands of dollars worth of equipment from the EPA back to work after a 30-day suspension. Another EPA employee was convicted of sneaking marijuana and marijuana pipes into a federal facility, but went back to work after a 21-day suspension. 
The embattled Department of Veterans Affairs said it will take no less than 275 days to take disciplinary action against a nurse charged with operating on a veteran while drunk, due to the complex and time-consuming hoops administrators have to jump through, according another DCNF report. 
Federal workers have enjoyed incredible job security for a long time, thank to layers of bureaucracy, complicated employment laws, well-funded and politically powerful government unions, and multiple incentives against firing anyone, former federal personnel officials told TheDCNF. 
“It ends up being very, very difficult to fire a federal employee even when there is the best of cause,” Joseph Morris, general counsel for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management during the Reagan administration. “At the end of the day, the civil service often ends up being a haven for poorly performing employees, and that drags down the morale of others.” 

Or, worse--ideologically motivated (usually Leftist) employees who wage a guerilla war on behalf of their cause, with little fear of any consequences.

Morris and former colleague Patrick Korten, who worked as OPM’s executive assistant director for communications and policy, would know. They listed every possible step a manager had to take to fire an incompetent federal employee using old computer paper. Their boss, then-OPM Director Donald J. Devine, often rolled that paper out for congressional committees. 
“It was a demonstration of, if someone chooses to follow every single twist and turn in the regulations, this is how it could turn out,” Korten said.
It stretched 30 feet.
The other aspect of all this is that the bias among employees at most federal agencies is definitely left of center. These people network and they get their friends into key positions. Taking control of an agency in these conditions, when it's almost impossible to fire someone just because they're resisting and foot dragging, is a time consuming and very difficult task that is never finished.

16 comments:

  1. I think a 2-year-long government shutdown is coming next year.
    Well, maybe not 2 years, but Trump is pissed, and he's going to force changes. Shutting down the D.C. gov is the best approach. There's no compromising with Democrats.

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    1. Some of my friends have been discussing the possibility of Trump insisting on a 10% across the board budget cut applicable to the Administrative State. Are budget driven reductions in force subject to different rules than individual firings?

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    2. dfp21 may have come close to a Trump strategy. If the government shuts down, after 30 days a reduction-in-force can happen. Trump could lay-off thousands of federal workers permanently. I hope he can pull this off!

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  2. OK on firing-qua-firing, but what could possibly stop Barr from removing Sanz-Rexach and Boente, from such positions (e.g. GC), and transfering them to other places (w/ no pay cut)?
    Or, from demanding that these two recuse themselves, from particular issues, on which they've indulged in prior malpractice?
    Why must foxes still be granted access to specific chicken coops?

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    1. I think it's the same thing as with Bruce Ohr--they keep them in positions where they can control them. Do you expect a public announcement that they're being interviewed, or investigated? I don't. Do I think they have been interviewed? Absolutely.

      As for their access, these FISA recommendations have all been approved from on high, by Wray at the FBI, by Barr at DoJ. It's all basically BS, and the real action will take place in Congress. So their involvement with FISA "reform", while it points to the continued presence of Deep State operators in the bureaucracy, has no real effect.

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  3. Given how you've shown how fed employees can delay/ resist regular disciplinary action, how can these brats be controlled, short of threats of prosecution?
    Are you betting, that Ohr etc. have been given offers they can't refuse?

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  4. As my grandad would say, " A hell'uva way to run a railroad."

    Add to that two other facts: 1) No one knows exactly how many actual departments, commissions, bureaus, agencies, administrations, etc. there really are or even what all their names are. Something north of 420, but no one knows for sure. There is no central list and never has been since it basically got kick-started with the founding of the VA in the 1860's. A few years ago I read a story about a congressional committee that tried to force the compilation of such a list. They gave it up as a lost cause due to the Byzantine, and sometimes administratively incestuous, relationships that had accrued over the decades. 2) No one knows exactly how many gov't employees there really are on any given day. No central authority, no central accounting for bodies. The military is different. Strength is set by statute and each service has (or used to have) a head count (world-wide by command) delivered to the Pentagon everyday by 12 noon EST, and back then a fraudulent or sloppy muster report was a very big deal. Literally every single body was accounted for. Not so the civil service.
    Tom S.

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    1. I believe it was Jimmy Carter who is responsible for the latest Civil Service "reform."

      Inmates running the Interagency, er, asylum.

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  5. The Obama Administration spent the last two years of his presidency hiring and placing thousands of partisan political operatives into the Federal system. Most of these people had no qualifications for these jobs except for their loyalty and allegiance to Progressive ideals. They are a problem that is not going away anytime soon, but the problem can be managed effectively.

    All Barr/Durham has to do is pick out one of these miscreants (hello Ciaramella or Clinesmith) and use standard DOJ procedures for investigating and prosecuting potential criminality by any US citizen (e.g. justice blind, all citizens treated equally, no special exception for Fed employees). Do that, and all the other Fifth Columnists will go dark in a heartbeat.

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    1. Right now the problem with Ciaramella could be his inclusion in the original Ukraine Hoax--the leadup to the Russia Hoax that began in 1/16. That makes him a key conspirator in the big conspiracy.

      They may be forced to "go dark," but they're not going away. This has always been one of the failures of the GOP. As an only marginally conservative party they have always failed at staffing government posts.

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    2. From Monica Showalter today:

      Now aafter after the big Schiff show, with its parade of hostile witnesses testifying in the House, the collaborators are gone. Trump has their names like captured weapons. Col. Yevgeny Vindman and his suspect twin brother, are now gone. Fiona Hill is gone. John Bolton is gone. They smoked themselves out with Schiff's impeachment bid, emptying their bolts on it, and now everyone knows who they are. Now Trump is cleaning house. They can no longer machinate against him in secret -- through leaks, through testimony -- any more. Spent. Gone.

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    3. "The Obama Administration spent the last two years of his presidency hiring and placing thousands of partisan political operatives into the Federal system."

      I would say that it began 21 Jan 2009 but that would be incorrect. It began in earnest 21 Jan 1977; with the torch being passed from the last of the FDR New Deal socialist embedded by Roosevelt. There's no way we arrived at this juncture after a mere 2 years of packing.
      Dana West's "American Betrayal" is much more accurate than the Glosheviks would like people to know (which is why Kristol, Radosh, et.al. are so adamant in dissing it) and make no mistake Globalism is merely an adaptive transmogrification of the ComIntern.
      Tom S.

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  6. With the house in Democrats hands, no chance of changes to the law on dismissals for federal workers.

    By moving agencies out of the DC area, it’s a way to legally downsize. I expect more of this in Trumps second term.

    Unionization of fed government workers was allowed by an executive order by JFK, it could be removed by executive order.

    Mueller centralized the fbi I read, by making upper ranks having to be in dc.

    Trump has done some tinkering in the vet administration, I’m not sure what.

    A huge issue is how biased the federal employment process is, and what is rewarded. Diplomad commented on the state department process and how he slipped in, and that is no longer possible.

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    1. Re downsizing/moving agencies, I would expect that for political reasons that would go slowly--if at all. Sad to say.

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    2. Trump will have to pick his battles. From a vast array of choices.

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