Federal Patronage Losing Ground

I've written about the policy undertaken by the Bush team to reinstate patronage to the federal bureaucracy by the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. In its usual union busting mentality George Bush decided to go back to the days before civil service and gut federal workers of their collective bargaining rights and protections. They even swift boated a true patriot, Max Cleland in the process.

The Washington Post reports today courts are rolling back these extreme provisions. Also, researchers at the Naval Postgraduate School have issued a study examining how this became policy. Some of their conclusions:

The White House bill creating the new department "was drafted in secret," the study said. It adds that "concerns of interested parties were not addressed until the issue was in the public domain where the debates took on a more strident and uncompromising tone."

"The price of secrecy and generality in the design and enactment phases," the study notes, "may very well be delay and discord during the implementation phase."

As usual with this Administration important public policy was developed in great secrecy. Remember Cheney's energy policy task force which resulted in the legislation giving billions of tax dollars to the oil industry recently? Jim Gerlach is actually bragging about voting for that bill as Exxon reports $10 billion/quarter profits and gas hits $3.17/gallon. This obsession with secrecy is hurting Americans.

The other major point to be made is how this Administration manipulates fear to shove through policies that are anathema to what is America. The Patriot Act, the Authorization for Use of Force in Iraq, the current debate over NSA spying on Americans without court orders, it all goes down with a spoonful of fear.

Bush uses fear as a battering ram on the electorate. Do what I say or the terrorists will come to your town and blow up everything! Implement this or you'll be sorry! As Ray McGovern pointed at last weekend these are classic examples of creeping fascism. Use fear to keep them in line, implement your policies limiting rights, expanding executive power, and destroying civil liberties until there's nothing the people can legally do to undo them. If they ever awaken to the reality, that is.

America is better than this. We CAN do better and we will after the November elections.