Dear Editor,
I have considered myself a Liberal; however, my Wife Mary has said “you are not as Liberal as you think you are”. Therefore, I have considered myself a Practical Liberal.
To me everyone seems cowed by President Trump and his new henchman Musk. However, I have thought Elon Musk or some other Oligarch has been there all along.
As a former federal official, no one, even Democrats are telling you that “No” U.S. federal departments and agencies can simply create positions on their own without oversight and authorization.
The creation of new positions requires approval from Congress, which is done through legislation or budget appropriations. Congress allocates the necessary funds and authorizes the creation of positions within federal departments and agencies.
Office of Personnel Management (OPM) The OPM plays a central role in overseeing the creation and management of federal positions. They establish policies and guidelines for hiring, classification, and compensation of federal employees.
Budget Constraints: Departments and agencies must operate within their allocated budget. Any significant changes to their workforce, such as creating new positions, need to be justified and approved through budgetary processes.
The President and executive branch officials, such as the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), also have oversight over the creation of positions. They ensure that new positions align with the administration’s priorities and overall government efficiency.
The process involves multiple layers of oversight and approval to ensure that new positions are necessary, funded, and aligned with government priorities.
Federal employees do not simply show up and say I am working at this desk. People (Human Beings) are not just a number or worth a tweak. I know I get tired of emails versus hearing a person’s voice at the other end of a telephone call.
Secondly, we say, an agreement between Ukraine and the United States is imminent. My question is whether it is the United States or Trump?
Ukraine is going to give the United States 50 percent of their Rare Materials as reimbursement for assisting in their war with Russia. What company is going to benefit from the Billions of dollars derived from this deal. It certainly will not be a DEI company because it has been outlawed.
Could it be, as Tesla automobiles sales fall in Europe and the United States, that the Doge head (Musk) is the beneficiary or is it a side deal with Russia to gain access to a portion of the rare materials?
A Deal Maker is A Deal Maker!
Clyde Younger
Watertown Resident
Thanks for the lesson on Federal job creation process. Many of our neighbors have been impacted or have family member whom have been impacted. Systematically this will impact health, the enviroment, education, general safety and other area that these workers protect on our behalf.
Don’t get me started on Ukraine. President Zelensky has held of the evil empire through hard work, determination and guts! He is the type that will go down with the ship, and he probably will have to because of the lack of courage from others. We need more leaders like him in the world.
Zelensky will be flying to Switzerland soon to count the billions of dollars skimmed off the USA aid. I don’t know if it will be as fast as his exit from the WH today, however.
So you are okay with cozying up to Putin?
Appeasement didn’t work the last time. Turned out pretty badly. It will this time too.
Blinker and Biden striking fear in the heart of Putin worked very well (not really, in case sarcasm detection fails you). Time to try for something completely different; Sousa’s The Liberty Bell to start now. Enjoy.
I thought leaders are allowed to skim billions of dollars off USA aid! You mean President Trump, Ivanka, Jared, Don Jr., and Erik have to return their billions-of-dollars schemes now? Or can they wait until the money comes in from “Trump Strip in Gaza” and selling crypto-coins?
Read the Pandora Papers which, unlike your unfounded and misguided assertions, was well documented as conducted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) – an ensemble of 600 journalists from 150 media outlets in 117 countries.
Among its findings:
“Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has been vocal on anti-corruption issues, used a network of offshore companies to buy three upmarket properties in London.
His office said it had been a way of protecting himself against the “aggressive actions” of the regime of his predecessor, the pro-Russia president Viktor Yanukovich.” Yup. Sure.
This was about four years ago. One would question whether Mr. Zelensky has continued similar practices once the USA billions were released to Ukraine. We’re not talking Denmark here.
Other people’s guts, I’m sorry to say, spilled on the battlefield. And the only ships that will go down will be those of war profiteers, overloaded with their ill-gotten gains.
Would that the federal government ran the way Mr. Younger described. There would be no need of continuing resolutions; there would be no deficit. Interest payments on the national debt would not have surpassed defense spending, a historic omen of national decline. Bidenflation notoriously burdened the poor; now the country itself is burdened beyond its means to pay.
Unless perhaps government can actually function as Mr. Younger describes it: logically, efficiently, where what you see is what you get. The US Agency for International Development, for example, would spend on—no, seriously—international development only. Better yet, on intra-national development, such as in the hollows of North Carolina abandoned due to the display of incorrect yard signs, or in the blighted neighborhoods of our cities.
Government as it has been run, in which we have to pass laws to find out what’s in them, doesn’t work anymore. If we are lucky (our virtue no longer sufficient on its own), we may have found a better way: first principles. Government does not exist for itself, but for the people. If government is not answerable to the people, “it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government”, as our Declaration of Independence put it. If that sounds like an insurrection, it was. If revealing and eliminating the rampant waste, fraud, and abuse in government sounds like “a new birth of freedom”, as Lincoln said at Gettysburg, it might be. And if “the better angels of our nature” lead to “government of the people, by the people, and for the people”, then as Lincoln might also have said, “I can’t spare this oligarch; he fights.”
“Practical Liberal”? First term that came to mind was oxymoron, particularly after what the self-anointed progressives have done to the John Locke’s version of liberalism, namely that individuals have natural rights to life, liberty, and property, and that the role of government is to protect these rights, said role being limited and restricted to certain actions such as maintaining law and order and protecting property rights. Compare this with what we got with the Biden (read puppeteers behind him) administration.