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Post 06 Dec 2017, 12:48 pm

I dunno, but treason is pretty close.

This first bit is from the NYT:

Agency employees said they were scrutinizing every comment and memo from their new leader for hints about their future.

Some employees, including a few of the bureau’s top officials, have welcomed their new leader. Others, pointing to Mr. Mulvaney’s earlier hostility toward the agency and its mission, are quietly resisting. One small group calls itself “Dumbledore’s Army,” according to two of the people who were familiar with their discussions. The name is a reference to a secret resistance force in the “Harry Potter” books.

An atmosphere of intense anxiety has taken hold, several employees said. In some cases, conversations between staff that used to take place by phone or text now happen almost exclusively in person or through encrypted messaging apps.


Ahem. This is not the story of a plucky band of teenage wizards fighting against an evil sorcerer from the pages of a children’s novel. It’s the story of a federal agency whose employees appear to be violating the Federal Records Act, bypassing transparency, and undermining the lawful authority of the elected president and his team. Even the CFPB’s general counsel concluded that the president had the authority to appoint Mulvaney to the post, an argument with which a federal court agreed immediately.

Elections have consequences, and among those consequences are the priorities and agendas of new presidential administrations. It was no secret that Republicans planned to change the direction of the CFPB if they won the election; Richard Cordray’s performance as director was an explicit issue raised during the Trump campaign. The GOP also contended that its powers were overbroad and its structure unconstitutional and that its rulings unnecessarily, arbitrarily and unfairly burdened credit businesses.

The DC Court of Appeals agreed on the constitutional point last October, ruling that Cordray should have never been invested with so much personal power in the first place. That case has gone back for an en banc review, but the solution ordered by the original ruling was that the president could treat the CFPB director as any other political appointee that serves at his/her pleasure rather than requiring cause for removal. Cordray resigned before that question got fully resolved and tried setting up his chief of staff as his successor in order to maintain a self-perpetuating bureaucracy.

“Dumbledore’s Army” is attempting the exact same thing — the creation of unelected bureaucrats as their own authority, without any accountability to voters or the people they elect to govern. It’s a palace revolt by self-important functionaries and, based on their choice of appellation, callow functionaries suffering from cases of arrested adolescence as well. They should be embarrassed by this revelation, and the New York Times should have at least offered some insight into how these secret communications and actions might violate the federal law these government employees are supposed to uphold.

It’s now cliché to say “this is how you got Trump,” but … this is precisely the vision of the “swamp” which voters angrily rejected in 2016. This is also how the CFPB got Mulvaney, too, and this little anecdote will go a long way in legitimizing Mulvaney’s attempts to dismantle the CFPB. As long as these kinds of stories keep emerging, we’ll continue to see populists like Trump gain strength from them and use them to take a wrecking ball to federal agencies. Keep waving those wands, wizards — you’re working magic, but just not the kind you think.


https://hotair.com/archives/2017/12/06/ ... -cfpb-ops/

One can think whatever one likes, but government employees organizing "resistance" to the lawfully elected government is . . . unacceptable at best, probably illegal, and it smacks of treason.
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Post 06 Dec 2017, 1:33 pm

I wonder how the officers of the LASD would react if a leader of Black Lives Matter was appointed to run their department...

It's just an odd situation where someone who is against the existence of an agency...is brought in to run it. If employees are violating federal law they should be disciplined. But some unhappiness is expected.
Last edited by freeman3 on 06 Dec 2017, 3:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post 06 Dec 2017, 1:43 pm

freeman3 wrote:I wonder how the officers of the LASD would react if a leader of Black Lives Matter was appointed to run their agency...


They would run things at low ebb as they all prepared to go to other agencies. LASD would cease to exist inside of two years because no one would work for it.
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Post 08 Dec 2017, 9:21 am

This is one of my great fears of the damaging impacts of the Trump administration...

Even in instances where good people are trying to act in the best interests of the country... even in situations where people are trying to counter the massage damage that Trump is having on government institutions... the country is still being hurt in the long run.

I feel like it's a very similar situation to cancer. The United States has been attacked by a malignant tumor that is spreading throughout critical systems that keep the country functioning and while it's possible that it can be treated with chemotherapy, it's going to be completely awful during the treatment process.

I don't want unelected and unaccountable people making decisions about the future of the country, but even the current elected officials are unaccountable for their actions. The state of the American government in 2017 is pretty much just horrific all the way through.
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Post 08 Dec 2017, 9:49 am

Southern Marylander wrote:I don't want unelected and unaccountable people making decisions about the future of the country, but even the current elected officials are unaccountable for their actions. The state of the American government in 2017 is pretty much just horrific all the way through.


Huh.

I don't like it. However, I would not call it "horrific all the way through."

I like that Trump has rolled back some of the Federal overreach. For example, what Obama did in the West re national monuments was ridiculous. Sorry, but the land use should, for the most part, be a State issue, not a federal one.

Now, do I think our government is pathetic in the sense that there are no statesmen/women? Yes. Democrats draw a line. Republicans draw a line. No one negotiates. They just stare, call each other names, fail to solve problems, and do little that actually could be accomplished.

I don't understand why tax reform is not a bipartisan issue. Our tax code needs reform.

I don't understand why immigration isn't solved--other than pure partisan nonsense. Our immigration policies need overhauling.

I don't understand why liberals seem to cheer on the entrenching of bureaucracy. This is not "liberal;" it is regressive. No one should support a government within a government.