While sitting at my desk in an office, in front of my company laptop computer this week, I received a message from a young lady who works in the Human Resources Department. She informed me that it was now five years since I did my fingerprints for my background screening just before I joined the agency back in January 2019. The value of the report had expired, she said, and then, after a brief back and forth, she set an appointment for me to see her to provide her with new fingerprints.
In the past I would have gone to a place like the Broward County Sheriff’s Office to have them done, but the agency has, since then, acquired a machine by which the process can be performed in-house. Why the hubbub about fingerprints? It is based upon the nature of the job and upon its funding.
My job is social work in nature — which involves having to deal with young children in subsidized childcare. And, even though I do not deal with children directly, as I did briefly when I was employed in another agency that deals with protective services — when children are often removed from their homes for that reason — it is, nevertheless, a requirement. Not only are there set times for the review of an employee’s background since the date of hire when it was run through the databases of local law enforcement, of state agencies, and of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), it is also conducted whenever an employee is promoted. If something untoward should pop-up on the new background screening report then it could be grounds for immediate dismissal.
Routine background screenings are also based not only upon the fact that I and the people with whom I work are involved in the childcare industry, but also because what we do is mandated and funded by the United States Federal Government. Washington, DC is a stickler for all such employees in every agency, in every state which has entered into agreements with the Federal Government, to always behave circumspectly in their personal and in their professional lives as such behaviours relate to their jobs.
Even if one is academically qualified to the teeth, with professional expertise that would be the envy of the world, it makes no difference. One must be a model of morality. But it is patently clear that such rules can and are often relaxed, or completely overlooked at much higher level appointments, especially, as some will argue, when it matters the most.
The Senate Confirmation Hearings with respect to individuals who have been nominated to head certain key positions within an administration by a sitting US president are crucial. This is not only true with respect to allowing lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle to give such prospective political appointees the “once over” in terms of their qualifications for the position being sought, but also with respect to their backgrounds to ascertain if there is anything there which might reveal gross incompetence that could upset and throw into disarray the smooth running of the affairs of government.
Again, if there was any blotch on one’s record which could pose a threat to US national security, this, too, would be a matter of grave concern. The process, nearly always, involves differences in political ideology and in the attitudes of nominees to existing laws and policies which are held in high regard. The process can be messy, but it is, without a doubt, most necessary. But the incoming Trump Administration and its backers over at the conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation, do not seem to share in that opinion at all.
Project 2025 is a political document — a blueprint of over 900 pages — that was put together by the Heritage Foundation in anticipation that there was going to be a Trump Administration ahead of the 2024 US Presidential election. And now that Mr. Trump is set to assume office on January 20, 2025, everything is in place for its implementation. Section 1 is titled: Taking the Reins of Government; Section 2. is named: The Common Defense; Section 3 is: The General Welfare; Section 4 deals with: The Economy; and Section 5 covers, what they call: Independent Regulatory Agencies.
The document is viewed by many as not only highly controversial, but also quite dangerous. The Heritage Foundation is the same think tank that produced the blueprint for the Reagan Administration. They would like to see the bypassing of the Senate Confirmation Hearings. The president should be able to appoint whoever he wants into whatever position without the humbug of checks and balances. But this rule, it could be assumed, would not apply to my agency nor to a lowly one such as myself nor to any of those with whom I work on the lower end of the totem pole. What is good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander.
Every president has the right to appoint those with whom he or she would like to work in his or her Administration, but appointments should be consistent with established laws — the Constitution being the overarching law — and with all established protocols and guardrails which are aligned with that supreme law of the land. But The Heritage Foundation is pushing their ideas against such examples of General Flynn who worked in the previous Trump Administration and who had ties to Putin’s Russia, and also to Mr. Steve Bannon whose own background is less than stellar. The incoming Trump Administration wants to appoint a man as US Attorney General who, although he was not indicted, has a background that is tainted by scandalous sexual, activities. There is talk of another nominee to a highly sensitive post who has connections to Putin’s Russia. Plans to gut government programmes or to drastically alter the administration of government is one thing — such are part and parcel of our political tradition whether we like it or not — but to violate the Constitution for sheer political expediency, whether based on a conservative or a liberal agenda, is to undermine the foundations of this country.
President-elect Trump has a history of having antagonisms with individuals who have headed the Department of Justice, people who took umbrage with executive orders or requests which were made by him which violated the laws of the land. Although Attorney General Bill Barr, a conservative Republican, did some underhanded things to cover for then President Trump, even he had a line within the confines of the laws of the land that he was not willing to cross on behalf of his former boss.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions, another conservative Republican, was fired in 2018 due to his inaction and to his recusal from the Russian collusion probes involving the president’s election to office in 2016. And before the removal of FBI Director Mr James Comey, another conservative Republican, in 2017, there was the removal of Acting Attorney General Ms Sally Yates, an Obama Administration holdover, in 2016, for refusing to support an illegal executive order banning immigration of individuals into the US from certain countries of the world based upon their ethnicity and their religion.
And so, when Mr. Russ Vought, a contributor to the Project 2025 document, wrote the following words, to use them as a basis for an argument for bypassing congressional review of political appointees, the above examples were, no doubt on his mind:
“Most Presidents have had some difficulty obtaining congressional approval of their appointees, but this has worsened recently. After the 2016 election, President Trump faced special hostility from the opposition party and the media in getting his appointees confirmed or even considered by the Senate. His early Office of Presidential Personnel (PPO) did not generally remove political appointees from the previous Administration but instead relied mostly on prior political appointees and career civil servants to run the government. Such a reliance on holdovers and bureaucrats led to a lack of agency control and the absolute refusal of the Acting Attorney General from the Obama Administration to obey a direct order from the President.”
But against such thinking and its intent to circumvent the law and common sense, the US Constitution is quite clear about the role of the US Senate — the Upper House of the US Congress — in the appointment of individuals to positions within the executive branch of Government as well as in the judicial branch. In addition to its full legislative authority, the US Constitution provides the Senate with two unique responsibilities: first, the power to confirm certain presidential nominees to the federal judiciary and to certain executive branch positions; and second, it also has the power to approve treaties. This is all a part of the checks and balances in government that the founders of the country and the framers of the US Constitution had in mind.
This process is not only one that is based upon the law, but it is one that was born out of common sense and that is oft utilized by corporations, whether like a non-profit agency such as the one I now work for, funded by federal and private entities, or by private for-profit companies. Why should a bank, for example, hire an executive who might have bonafide credentials as long as one’s arm, but who has a rap sheet even much longer which includes grand larceny, armed robbery, prostitution, bootlegging and a spate of gross managerial missed steps which all led to bankruptcy, and then overlook doing a thorough background screening in that regard?
The Heritage Foundation is but one of many conservative think tanks, which, by extension, are a part of a billion-dollar tax-exempt industry with think tanks of different political stripes, which opposes government appointments and the roles played by individuals within the US Civil Service who possess the academic acumen and the technical expertise required to deal competently in their areas of specialty.
The FDR Administration began to use such individuals in order to get away from pork barrel politics as usual, and to utilize data from tried and proven research in order to tackle the myriad problems of government. This heralded the era of what was called “progressivism”. The idea was to solve problems pragmatically — having data driving government policies, instead of using policies which had no basis in reality. The Heritage Foundation eschews and disavows such data and the technocrats who produced them, and yet they, in disingenuous fashion, have elevated and infused themselves into that very role — as technocrats — first with the Reagan Administration and now with the incoming Trump Administration.
Such technocrats, they inveigh, not having been elected by the people, serve to undermine the tenets of democracy. And so, by applying the same yardstick that they have been using to criticize the well-educated, the well-trained, and the seriously dedicated individuals in the Civil Service I ask : Who elected them as bosses over us, or as advisers to the boss over us? Would their role not adequately fit the saying of “the tail wagging the dog?”
The books titled: Think Tanks In America, by Professor Thomas Medvetz, and Right Moves – The Conservative Think Tank In American Political Culture Since 1945, by Dr Jason Stahl, both make for highly informative and very interesting reading. President-elect Trump did not have to do any serious thinking while he was on the campaign trail, because the writers of Project 2025 had already done all of the thinking for him, with the support of an electorate that is not only wholly ignorant of all that it entails and with all of its implications, but which has a penchant of blindly voting against its own best interests.
And so, in the world of Trump, the appointment of people to government posts appears to be a free for all that portends not only utter embarrassment to the country, but also complete chaos and lingering confusion for many years to come.
