Tenured Partisans: The promise of employment for life has bred corruption in the civil service

National Review ^ | 07/21/2014 | Richard Samuelson

[tanknetter]

Excellent post, thanks.

Consevatives should really be seeking out and applying to Federal positions. Sure, we’d all like a smaller government, but it makes no sense for that to be any sort of impediment to getting Conservatives into available positions.

There’s an excellent opportunity right now in that the Gvt is giving all sorts of hiring preferences to veterans, who tend to be both more Conservative and less corruptable to begin with.

[kabar]

I doubt that hiring more conservatives would change the inherent bias for Big Government and the Democrats. Anyone who espouses limited, smaller government will find himself a minority within the the public employee community. It is in one’s vested interest to support the Big Government advocates.

[tanknetter]

I think there’s a window of opportunity to change that, based on two factors.

First is the aging out of the current Federal workforce. Thanks to Reagans hiring freezes the Civil Service is much older than the workforce in general, and the last several years have seen the expected tsunami of Federal retirements start to come to fruition. The 60s and 70s Big Government Liberal Baby Boomers are really starting to check out in numbers.

Second is that, despite Obama’s goal of making government service cool again, the Millenials who are needed to replace the exiting Boomers are really disinclined to see Federal Service as a career path. Not only because Civil Servants and service has a bad rap, but also because with their more laissez fare take on work/life Millennials aren’t tempermentally suited to the constraints and restrictions of a classic government bureaucrat desk job.

The way I see it, there’s a once in a generation, perhaps once in a lifetime opportunity to get Conservatives into government service, where they can refocus from Government doing “good things” (a very subjective thing) to basic good Government (which is much more objective in nature).

[Terry L Smith]

Good luck with that! The AFGE is one of the most
populated unions.

Oh, I forgot to tell you. The union reps are
federal employees, doing their union stuff,
instead of their official position, during
the work day, and still getting paid by YOU!