It would also make it more difficult for the federal government to recruit the best candidates. Such a move would emasculate federal agencies. Her plan would be a boon to the country’s enemies and to corporate interests that often attempt to outfox or outmaneuver government regulations. But her proposal is fully in sync with Trump’s narrative that demonizes elites and government. (See Tom Nichols’ 2017 book, The Death of Expertise.) She wants to kick all that expertise to the curb. With this stunt, Haley is exploiting the right-wing war on expertise. There are (of course) no firm details to her proposal to toss out “bureaucrats” (a derisive term for often hard-working federal employees), but this would seem to cover TSA officials, federal law enforcement officials, intelligence analysts, food and drug safety officials, National Institues of Health research supervisors, counterterrorism experts, counterintelligence officers, workplace safety regulators, financial regulators, public health officials, border security officials, IRS tax collectors, trade officials, climate change negotiators, and you can fill in the rest. Once touted as a reasonable Republican, Haley has decided to compete with Trump on the anti-government front. (Federal workers now can only be fired for cause and must be afforded due process.) The goal is to destroy what Trump compatriots like Steve Bannon call the “administrative state.” This is but one element of the authoritarian blueprint being drafted for Trump 2.0 by a group of right-wing organizations that have formed Project 2025. Trump has blathered about blasting apart the Deep State, and his allies have cooked up a scheme under which Trump, if he regains the White House, would be able to pink-slip tens of thousands of federal workers not deemed loyal to him or sufficiently enthusiastic about his policies. No bureaucrat should hold the same position for more than five years. Under #TheFreedomPlan, we won’t just have term limits for politicians-we will limit bureaucrats too. No bureaucrat should hold the same position for more than five years.” Yet Haley, trying desperately to gain ground on Donald Trump in the 2024 GOP presidential sweepstakes, has decided to match his know-nothing populism by urging a five-year term limit on government “bureaucrats.” Haley recently tweeted that under her proposed “Freedom Plan, we won’t just have term limits for politicians-we will limit bureaucrats too. It’s a no-brainer: Government works best when it’s run by dedicated civil servants with experience. The turnover would diminish services for the good citizens of the Palmetto State and perhaps even endanger them. Even if vacancies were filled, these departments would be at a loss for institutional memory and expertise. And all the agencies would be in turmoil. Replacing all these state officials and workers would have subsumed her administration. Her government would have come to a standstill. Haley would have been slammed by a tsunami of chaos. And its department of health and environmental control. Imagine if during her tenure, all the people running the state’s agricultural department were forced to leave their jobs. Nikki Haley served six years as governor of South Carolina. Subscribing costs just $5 a month-but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial of Our Land here. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Editor’s note: The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |