Free Republic

Virtually all Americans believed, until the inauguration of Donald Trump as president on January 20, 2017, that when someone became president, he could begin to implement his agenda. Certainly Old Joe Biden’s handlers have done so with a vengeance since they took over; but when Trump became president, he immediately began to encounter resistance from entrenched members of the government bureaucracy who refused to do as he ordered. Some worked actively against Trump, while the establishment media assured us that these self-appointed “deep state” saboteurs were the courageous guardians of “our democracy.” At his South Carolina rally Saturday night, Trump...

"Federal civilian workers won't see the full pay raise they were promised with President Bush's announcement that he was cutting the planned salary hikes because of the war on terrorism. The workers were to have received an average increase of 18.6 percent, but will now get a 3.1 percent raise. "This is just another slap at federal employees," says Bobby L. Harnage Sr., president of the American Federation of Government Employees [labor union], representing 600,000 federal "workers". Says Harnage: "[t]he Bush administration says they want to recruit the best and the brightest, but they can't even keep the best and...

Government agency halls are filled with people who do not appear to be working. Partially overheard conversations are about break time, vacations, sick leave and other benefits. In federal bureaucracies, it still takes an average of 18 months to hire someone and far longer to fire that person. Meanwhile, more qualified employee candidates are turned away. Mediocrity loves company and is the enemy of efficiency. Competent workers embarrass the mediocre by exposing their laziness and incompetence. It doesn't have to remain this way...