Posted on 10/14/2019 6:27:30 AM PDT by karpov
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The “deep state”—if we are to use the term—is better defined as consisting of career civil servants, who have growing power in the administrative state but work in the shadows. As government grows, so do the challenges of supervising a bureaucracy swelling in both size and power. Emboldened by employment rules that make it all but impossible to fire career employees, this internal civil “resistance” has proved willing to take ever more outrageous actions against the president and his policies, using the tools of both traditional and social media.
Government-employed resisters received a call to action within weeks of the new administration. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates became acting attorney general on Mr. Trump’s inauguration and Loretta Lynch’s resignation. A week later, the president signed an executive order restricting travel from seven Middle Eastern and African countries. Ms. Yates instructed Justice Department lawyers not to defend the order in court on the grounds that she was not convinced it was “consistent” with the department’s “responsibilities” or even “lawful.” She decreed: “For as long as I am Acting Attorney General, the Department of Justice will not present arguments in defense of the Executive Order.”
Mr. Trump fired her that day, but he shouldn’t have had to. Her obligation was to defend the executive order, or to resign if she felt she couldn’t. Nobody elected Sally Yates.
The Yates memo was the first official act of the internal resistance—not only a precedent but a rallying cry. Subordinates fawningly praised her in emails obtained by Judicial Watch. “You are my new hero,” wrote one federal prosecutor. Another department colleague emailed: “Thank you AG Yates. I’ve been in civil/appellate for 30 years and have never seen an administration with such contempt for democratic values and the rule of law.”
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
We saw this with the Roman empire. It caused many problems and contributed to its demise. Also with the large socialist states throughout history. It always leads to widespread corruption.
Oh stop it WSJ. Of course you guys are in on the corruption too. The civil service is a small part of the "deep state" that extends to all of the NGOs, consultancies and private "support service contractors" in the DC area. It includes all the folks in the "private sector" who earn a very good keep "assisting" 3rd world countries with applying for World Bank loans they will never be able to repay. It includes all the "beltway bandits" providing viewgraphs for pentagon officials trying to flog to other pentagon officials some new scheme for fleacing the taxpayer for some new defense project. It includes K-street of course, but hey those guys are at least honest whore who actually have to provide their paymasters value for money. It's the guy who consults for folks on "internet policy" or the gal who specializes in aranging poverty or AIDs tours to Africa for "fact-fiding"
The DC deepstate are the 96% in DC who voted against Trump and their counterparts in the surrounding mansion inflated "bedroom" communities.
Yes the upper level civil service are certainly part of it. But all they get out of it is a barely adequate by DC standars paycheck - admittedly for a job not worth doing at that requires no real skills.
The bureacracy is only a piece of the problem. The privatized federal bureaucracy is a whole lot larger and that is where the real money goes.
Agreed. And globalization only increases the problems on an exponential scale.
Stuff like this boggles my mind. How can anyone think this?
Didn’t POSObama clamp down on whistleblowers?
“democratic values and rule of law” are just buzz words anymore. They’re meaningless.
Sounds like they are willing to sacrifice pay for deep state membership. At least they get fantastic health care!!
They are not sacrificing pay because they have risen to the top not because of highly demanded job skills but that they are useful idiots for the deep-state. Most of them have no skills you would pay money for.
Yes, it is as broad as you posit. It is the entirety of the permanent non-elected global government workforce that subverts free people and the officials they elected.
The vast array of “deep state” actors you listed is worrisome. Of those, the most worrisome of all is the “Intelligence Community” (which you did not list) because of the vast clandestine power they have to oppose a constitutionally and freely elected government.
About one hundred years ago, government slipped the noose that constrained it to realistic size and it escaped the enumerated powers of the Constitution that had held it somewhat in check for 125 years. The whole edifice is corrupt and, far worse, is toxic to a free people. Putting the leash back onto this escaped leviathan is an almost impossible task and President Trump is to be applauded for attempting to do that.
The growth of the government’s deep state power is in direct proportion to the taxes it collects and the deficits it runs. I am very disappointed that President Trump has not made it a priority to balance the budget. That would be a first realistic step at putting some constraints on the government. If he does not constrain government spending somehow, all that deficit spending buys more Deep State enemies of Trump and freedom. The only way to begin to corral the beast is to cut off its mother’s milk, i.e., its money.
I put a hold at the library on Ms. Strassel’s new book “Resistance (at All Costs): How Trump Haters Are Breaking America.” It comes out tomorrow.
Ms. Strassel is a real warrior in the fight against government corruption and the deep state permanent government.
For a long time I have been saying that the largest government lobby group is the ‘government employees’.
Especially in local elections the government employees are a large bloc of voters who control the result. If the government employees do not have enough votes to sway the election, then they call a ‘special election’ where fewer voters cast their vote.
But none of these people would make any money, if not for the Deep State bureaucrats approving their contracts and grants. Putting a leash on the bureaucracy is key.
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared. The traitor is the carrier of the plague. You have unbarred the gates of Rome to him.”
Taylor Caldwell in her novel based on the life of Cicero, A Pillar of Iron
Yep the true problem is the size of the bureaucracy. Until we cut it in half the problem will never go away.
An out of control bureaucracy is what brought down several Chinese dynasties.
I remember reading a book back in the 1980s called “Nomenklatura”. Sounds familiar. From Dictionary.com: a select list or class of people from which appointees for top-level government positions are drawn, especially from a Communist Party. https://www.amazon.com/Nomenklatura-Soviet-Ruling-Michael-Voslensky/dp/0385176570/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=nomenklatura&qid=1570892149&s=books&sr=1-1
What this dedicated STATEist & LEFTist (and his numerous cohorts of the 'intelligentsia' elites) leaves out is the fact that these bureaucrats are neither elected nor subject to the restraints on abuse of power derived through the Founder's 'Checks & Balances' controls!
Nobody elected Sally Yates.
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