Krugman, on Crippling Our Civil Service

Today, NY Times columnist Paul Krugman picks up on my earlier post, about how President Bush is following a 2001 Heritage Foundation white paper dictating how to undermine our civil service, ensuring our government doesn't work for us.

The piece is behind the Times Select firewall, but here's an excerpt:

The blueprint for Bush-era governance was laid out in a January 2001 manifesto from the Heritage Foundation, titled ''Taking Charge of Federal Personnel.'' The manifesto's message, in brief, was that the professional civil service should be regarded as the enemy of the new administration's conservative agenda. And there's no question that Heritage's thinking reflected that of many people on the Bush team.

...

The ostensible reason for politicizing and privatizing was to promote the conservative ideal of smaller, more efficient government. But the small-government rhetoric was never sincere: from Day 1, the administration set out to create a vast new patronage machine.

Those political appointees chosen for their loyalty, not their expertise, aren't very good at doing their proper jobs -- as all the world learned after Hurricane Katrina struck. But they have been very good at rewarding campaign contributors, from energy companies that benefit from lax regulation of pollution to pharmaceutical companies that got a Medicare program systematically designed to protect their profits.

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