Apparently I'm not the only one wondering how Lois Lerner could possibly still have her IRS job. We might all have reasonably assumed that she couldn't "take five and survive"; after all, no one has a Constitutional right to a cushy federal job.
No doubt the White House would like to ship Ms. Lerner off to a post in Siberia right about now. Unfortunately, any attempt to discipline her will take months if not years to process, and will be the occasion of awkward questions about why she used to be everyone's favorite administrator and now suddenly is being attacked for carrying out what was so obviously a broadly implemented policy approved from the top. That makes Ms. Lerner a high-profile albatross: a top tax collector who got caught, took the Fifth, and kept her job.
It appears the voting public (that tiny sliver that pays attention) is about to get an object lesson in how the federal government behaves just like one of those bloated unionized workforces everyone hates, larded with chair-warmers who can never be fired no matter how dishonest or incompetent. And for this we hock our financial future to Chinese investors? To pay for a government that's several times bigger than it needs to be? A government whose really active workers do too much as it is, even while a big chunk of their colleagues take a free ride, secure from any meaningful discipline or termination?
Maybe Ms. Lerner is doing more public good staying at her post after all. May this debacle drag on right through the 2014 elections.
7 comments:
Her cafeteria-style approach to the 5th Amendment (I'll talk about this, but I won't answer that) has been out of the norm for decades.
And she's a lawyer. One would think that she (and her lawyer too for that matter) would know better.
This is the caliber of people that we have in positions of trust and responsibility, pulling in megabucks in salary and perks. Nothing more than political hacks. And she got her start at the Federal Elections Commission -- imagine that.
As I said when the story began to break, we have always known this was the way our government was: it should be no surprise. But many people do not wish to see, I suppose.
The French had the right idea, but the wrong implementation. The Founding Fathers had the right idea and the right implementation, but didn't know about the internet or other tools that would have let them get it done better.
"A government whose really active workers do too much as it is, even while a big chunk of their colleagues take a free ride, secure from any meaningful discipline or termination?"
Well Aristos have always needed to eat better and live better than their serfs. Anything else would... unnatural.
Slaves don't see. If they do, the master will destroy those rebelling eyes. That's how obedience is kept in a totalitarian regime. Those that take it lightly, make jokes about it, will see the light of the day.
On a burning stake high up in the sky. You will see the Light, for They will Shine it Down Upon You.
Going back to the gov, the French had the right idea, but the wrong implementation. That old execution scaffold is so old news. Inefficient too.
If the world was naive and gentle enough in order to provide succor to people who thought evil could be treated with using words, promises, compromises, and deals. We wouldn't be where we are right now in US history.
If their methods could have worked... it would have worked by now.
May this debacle drag on right through the 2014 elections.
And what difference will THAT make?
The other arm of Big Government (the Republicans) won't change one damn thing, except the names on the chairs.
I can't accept that. Parties and their platforms aren't etched in stone. If a people want to be free, they can run different candidates in the primaries, and they can stand for office themselves. If we choose not to do that, we're putting the chains on ourselves and have nothing to complain about.
What T99 said. And what the Tea Partiers, however clumsily, are doing. And what we did 225 years, or so, ago. And may need to do again, but I'm not ready to throw in that hat.
I'm certainly not ready to give up, cut my wrists, die quietly.
Eric Hines
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