Bag Tax Dilemma

Steve,

Nonsense.  With a strong, charismatic leader it is easier than creating new departments.  It takes lots of lawyers, congressional aids, special interests to write a law, especially one as long, and as badly written as ObamaCare, for example. But to get rid of it only takes passing a bill with one word: "Repealed."

And yet laws are virtually never repealed, and no significant department or agency ever has been. Why do you think that is? There are obviously some legal, social, and political realities you're ignoring in your analysis.

Merlin,

Is it essentially impossible to fire a federal employee? It seems it depends (link).

OK, I should have been more precise. It's difficult but possible to remove certain political appointees, provisional hires and such. What I meant are the career federal employees with tenure (making up the vast majority of the workforce) who are essentially impossible to fire. Oh, I'm sure you can look up a law somewhere that seemingly gives agencies authority to fire employees for cause, but that's a smokescreen and all federal employees know it. To actually remove an employee in practice, there are so many procedural rules, labor laws, and union contractual obligations, that it would take the agency years, multiple grievances, and expensive lawsuits to do it, and after all that effort, the firing is all but certain to be overturned through arbitration. The way federal employees are "fired" in practice is they are a) transferred to another office, b) given incentives to retire, or c) having their workload reduced to zero (i.e., bore them out the door - but this is technically a contractual violation).

Update: I found one of the comments I wrote on arbitration from on Objectivist Living: 

Arbitrators are agreed upon (either directly or indirectly through a process of elimination) by the parties based on how favorably each side believes the arbitrator will rule. The sides look up earlier decisions of the arbitrator or published statistics and eliminate anyone they feel is likely to rule against them. This appears to be making the process more "objective," but in reality it favors arbitrators who rule down the middle ("split the baby") all of the time without regard for principle. The reality of the judicial system is that most cases aren't close on the merits and don't call for a middle solution. A truly impartial judge is free to dismiss frivolous claims or rule wholly for one side or the other, but an arbitrator who depends upon repeat business is forced to reach an unnatural compromise position or face the inevitable reality of never being selected again. This is how public unions are routinely awarded raises their citites cannot afford through arbitration - the city brings an offer of 0% on the basis they are broke, the unions ask for the moon, and the arbitrator comes down in the middle with a 3-10% raise. In the employment context, arbitration results in employees who can't be fired, even for egregious infractions, because the middle position is always reinstatement with some minor penalty or loss of backpay.

 

And look at how civil the conversation I had was... but MSK said I was just a troll who contributed nothing... hmm...

(Edited by Robert Baratheon on 3/17, 10:54am)

Merlin - I thought I did, sorry if I was unclear. There are all sorts of additional statutory requirements, regulations, contractual obligations, union rules, and practical obstacles (such as the inevitable grievances and lawsuits) in the way of any agency that attempts to layoff career employees. It's not as simple as an agency head certifying a need to downsize. They would have to go through a lengthy process (potentially years-long), perform all sorts of additional analyses, exhaust other cost-saving options first, and be prepared to incur huge legal expenses defending the action in arbitration or court. Then, if they were miraculously successful, the laid-off employees would get mandatory preference for any future positions posted. It's no wonder federal downsizing is practically unheard of in practice.

Let's take just one hypothetical example: Department X decides it has to downsize and miraculously gets all its ducks in a row within a year (in reality, departments never *want* to downsize because it reduces their power, but let's ignore that for the moment). Employee X is provided with notice that he will be laid off due to the downsizing action. Employee X files grievances against Department X, alleging retaliation, discrimination, violation of labor laws, and violation of contract. After months or years of resolution processes and mediation, an arbitrator, against all self interest, sides with the agency and greenlights the downsizing action. Then, the employee brings lawsuits in court, seeking to overturn the arbitration award, which the department must defend at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars in internal legal resources. At the same time, Employee X enlists friendly politicians to apply political pressure, and the union is vigorously protesting and resisting the action. Now multiply that by a couple thousand for all the laid-off employees and you can see why federal departments don't even attempt to go down this road.

(Edited by Robert Baratheon on 3/17, 12:03pm)

Are you telling us that a huge, sudden budget cut will not cut such "red tape"?

 

Unfortunately, budget cuts - and indeed any legislative actions - cannot undo contractual and due process rights which are guaranteed to federal employees by the Constitution (or at least the Supreme Court's interpretation of it).

Then it seems you are saying that the MSPB webpage is wrong.

Well... I wouldn't say it's "wrong" because the information there is all technically correct. It's just an incomplete picture of the difficult and unfortunate reality of the situation well known to those who live and experience it every day.

So for example, where it says the following:

Poor performance must be properly documented in formal performance reviews and employees must be provided with the opportunity to correct their behavior. If an employee does not correct his or her behavior, then an agency may follow proper procedures to terminate employment. Those procedures include providing written notice to the employee.

That's carefully worded (by somebody's legal division) and all technically correct information. But my eye immediately focused in on the last sentence: "Those procedures include providing written notice to the employee." LOL - perhaps the understatement of the century. Those procedures could fill a small book. And it doesn't address the myriad means the employee then has to make life hell for the employer over the following years through internal appeal and subsequent litigation.

Edit: I want to clarify one thing that might be unclear: I'm in no way saying that the employee's inevitable challenges to any layoff action will be morally or legally justified. I'm just saying they are available to the employee and will be very expensive and exhausting to make them go away. A similar problem is how any black or female employee can sue an employer who terminates them for alleged discrimination under Title VII. It doesn't matter if the complaint is frivolous - and most such complaints are - the problem is its nearly always cheaper and easier to settle such lawsuits - or to not fire and instead "work around" the employee in the first place.

Edit #2: I also want to add: there *are* ways around these difficulties, but they're incremental, you need to advance in the organizations to do them, and you have to know what you're doing. For example, you can reduce headcount through attrition (encourage people to retire - or wait for them to retire - and then don't rehire anyone to replace them). This can actually work on a relatively short timescale, and the older employees are by far the most expensive. This is why libertarian participation in the organizations themselves is so important. If we let the progressives make all the decisions, they'll just keep expanding headcount according to Parkinson's Law at 5-7% per year.

(Edited by Robert Baratheon on 3/17, 1:16pm)

Well, no, you can't, and that's the difficulty. A nice sentiment, nonetheless - one I happen to share.

Steve - I agree with much of what you've written, but I believe I'm more appreciative of the number of feet on the ground and the sheer amount of hard work and culture reversal it would take to get there. You can disagree with me - it's my opinion based on what I've experienced firsthand and seen around me, living and working in DC.

In many ways your example of the American Revolution isn't appropriate. It's far easier in many situations to start with carte blanche than it is to try to reverse a century-old trend. Some organizations can't practicably be salvaged after they've corroded past a certain point and the trust has gone (I hestitate to say the U.S. is at this point yet, although we're quickly approaching it). Also, I think you're trivializing the enormous difficulties a small country like Great Britain had waging a war across the Atlantic Ocean on a huge continent in 1776 - simple communication with the home country took months during that period, and they lacked the home-field advantage. It's amazing the British held out as long as they did, all factors considered.

As you say, we've gotten to where we are today in an incremental process, block by block by block built by progressives and insiders who have more or less run the show inside the executive branch for the past eight decades. Most of these people aren't appointed and can't legally be fired without cause. I'm not advocating rearranging deck chairs. I want to start pushing back now, at every level. But it's not going to be easy, and it becomes all but impossible with people like Jules screaming their idealist heads off about libertarians in government being hypocrites, liars, and parasites. We need people inside and out of government fighting this battle if we're ever going to get the opportunity to steer the ship off its destructive course and start regaining lost ground. It's not going to happen through magical thinking - people will have to do it - people who have actual knowledge of the system and the power to effect meaningful change.

(Edited by Robert Baratheon on 3/17, 4:13pm)

The more I see Robert's reply to well thought out and completely rational well written replies by Steve and everyone here and his responses of " No no you can't do that blah blah blah", the more that I come to my initial conclusions as to the nature of Parasite Baratheon.

He had been feeding at the government trough for so long and drinking their kool-aid that even if he sees the reality of the nature of government he has in fact sold out to them.

His attempts to ingratiate himself by saying "Hey I am a libertarian and I am doing an inside job, if it was not for my heroic efforts and I simply left then some progressive in my place would be far more destructive.  I only do as much as I am forced to.  " In essence he is saying look how nice I am I only create legislation that slaps businessmen around a bit, if a really bad guy was at the helm he would use a baseball bat and really pound them!" 

He is a kindred soul to Dr. Floyd Ferris and what is worse is he says "there is no way out for me, I had to take this cushy job and garner pull because the alternative would be to go private sector and that prospect seemed quiet hopeless to me.  

Yes we know Baratheon walking up hill and being productive takes effort and a keen observation of reality in order to make proper business decisions.

   John Galt was also asked to serve his government not only did he refuse but when they tortured him he even pointed out how to fix their machine so they could continue torturing him.

  As I said earlier a libertarian would never seek to be a government cog.  The prospect would be morally repugnant.  On top of it all you somehow want our sympathy for your condition.

I do not believe for one second that you are an "inside man" in essence doig what you can to thwart government expansion and intrusion into the lives of the productive.  An inside "mole" would never announce this to the world.  A REAL insider would be silent. A real insider would sabotage selectively and if really smart deflect or set it up so someone else took the fall for every move he made.  He would appear to be a solid fervent believer in the governments cause.  To his superiors and underlings he would appear ruthless and above suspicion.  He would not risk blowing his cover by posting what a heroic job he is doing in the Obama administration to slow the advance of statism on an Internet forum.  (Ever hear of the NSA data collection?).  He would have every reason to use the utmost caution as the big thugs in government are very powerful and rather unforgiving...

He somehow has told himself over and over "I am heroic look at all the good I am doing" and he wants us to pat h on the back and validate his heroism.

He is no different than Dr Floyd Ferris who also sold his soul in the name of the institute and aids the looters.

Taking it up the ass by government isn't the hard part Robert, Its the hot panting on the back of your neck...

Jules:

An inside "mole" would never announce this to the world.  A REAL insider would be silent.

Well duh, why do you think I'm posting as the King of Westeros instead of using my legal name with a big grinning photo of myself for the world to see? You don't get to work in the most powerful federal agencies by being a friggin' idiot wearing subversive politics on your sleeve. I don't talk politics at work - ever. When you Google search my legal name, if you're really dedicated to combing through results, you get some bar registration and employment information - that's it.

I don't share your paranoia of the NSA because I know the animal well. I'm small potatoes and I'm not doing anything illegal or even unethical. If they took all the time to track my IP back to my name, what would they do with that information? Give it to my manager? And say what - "Hey, we, um, kind of illegally spied on this dude (don't tell anyone!), and he has some politics you might not share, so, um... don't promote him beyond where he is now, but keep it on the DL." Come on. The NSA wants to catch terrorists, not read O-land flamewars.

(Edited by Robert Baratheon on 3/17, 6:33pm)

DC speak:

"I saved businessmen millions by way of single handedly watering down some of the legislation aimed at their neck."  

Translated: it would have been much, much worse, so take those millions to the bank.    Sort of like claiming that the recession would have been much, much, worse if only Sport didn't put his boot on the neck of the economies and waited for folks to volunteer to prepay their own ransomes...then acted incredulous when they didn't show up.

We can apply this same logic everyday, in our own lives, and turn these economies around.    Drive by a bank this morning, and refrain from robbing it of $100,000.   Just drive by.   Go around the block again, and do not rob it of a second $100,000.    Keep doing this all day.  At the end of the day, you've 'saved' the bank millions of dollars. 

Walk into the bank and tell they what you didn't do.   Tell them how much you 'saved' them.   Offer to split it with them, let them keep half(you aren't greedy)and tell them to put the other half in your account.    Both you and the bank can pay income tax to the governent on your shared win-win huge windfall.    With access to that much capital(well, OPM), you can hire more folks to drive around banks and not rob them, and up the 'revenue.'   We'll call that the federal government, and before you know it, it is a self-sustaining 'revenue' generating machine, and not just deadwood overhead for the necessary plumbing of state, manned by state plumbers, in some massive extended welfare state, working on their defined benefit public pensions and working overtime only to figure out how to double dip that deal.

This is the new federal definition of the 'win-win' trader principle, value for what you didn't do exchanged for actual value.

Sort of like Obama taking credit for all those millions of jobs that -would- have been lost if he hadn't have sold out GM bondholders and paid off his union slugs.   A two-fer.

Members of the Cabinet serve at the pleasure of the President, which means that the President may dismiss them or reappoint them (to other posts) at will.

At will.

Sure, the process is ratcheted.   By what?   By entrenched critters unable to do anything but ask for ever more.  You don't trade political favors  using OPM and cling to power by saving OPM; you trade favors using OPM by spending OPM.    Whatever it takes.   Including, now, telling sectetaries at treasury to print more zeros on paper, call them bonds, run the printing presses, and then never pay off the bonds except by another self-awarded increase in the ability to tell secretaries at treasury to print yet more zeros on paper and call them bonds, on ad infinitum, inevitably, to an interest rate bomb set to devour the budget.

If treasury had to rely on private bond holders, instead of a captive Fed window(independent my ass, the Fed routinely hands over interest payments to Treasury as 'profits' spendable by the Treasury, purely printing press money)then every time Congress blithely raised the debt ceiling, it would have to find brand new willing holders of debt.    By telling a secretary to print zeros on a piece of paper and then running over to a willing Fed window, we can just skip all that and run the presses again...and again.    With real unemployment at long term near record highs, wages and prices and inflation is suppressed, but shows up as inflated stock prices(also inflatingly 'valued' by self-serving financial industry assessments, intent on staying out in front of all that nowhere else to go tsunami of printed money.)  

So why doesn't more(any?)of those inflated stock portfolios show up as actual increased circulation in the economies?  High unemployment suppresses wages, and still the government printed money flows to Wall Street.  That is some efficient machine...enabled by government printing presses.   Because who wants to prepay their own ransome and become the next whimsically sacrificed GM bondholders, when all that needs to be done is wait for the nowhere else to go cash to end up in the stock market?  This will run for as long as this insanity is permitted to run, unchecked, because that is all these weasels know or have in the tank.    Finesse of the value-proxies.   Carcass carving, not beast building, for as long as there is carvable carcass.   I'm in awe of our financial wizards. They are clinging to the gig long past the bones showing.

I'm also amazed at how long this nation has tolerated it-- both the perps and the victims.   Moreso the perps, because they should know better, this is a cul de sac they are sprinting the nation into.

But no problem.   The cherry trees will be blossoming soon again.  The million dollar non functioning bus kiosks in Arlington will look brighter without all that wintery slop falling from the skies.   Or maybe, at least, that was exposed soon enough to be killed.