Tag: Civil Service
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Civil servants and true patriotism in the age of Trump
Many people who wouldn’t ordinarily petition the government are petitioning the Trump Administration and Congress these days. They include my wife and me who have petitioned, assembled and protested many times since Trump’s inauguration. Perhaps the most effective of these were members of the disability rights community that visited House and Senate office buildings recently…
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Kim Davis’s rights are apparently more equal than yours
Kim Davis, the elected county clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky is sitting in a jail in Ashland, Kentucky tonight. She is in jail after being held in contempt of court by a U.S. district court judge for refusing to issue marriage licenses. The thrice-married Davis has been refusing all applicants (gay and straight) since the…
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Laughing all the way: Parks and Recreation
No question about it: NBC’s Parks and Recreation is a funny sitcom! The NBC TV series will begin its seventh and final season next month. I on the other hand have just recently discovered it, and am streaming past episodes on Netflix. I have found that I tend to binge on Parks and Recreation. Sometimes…
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Furlough Diary, Day 3
Our bathtub is looking real nice after its caulking yesterday. With time to spare and prohibited from even touching a government-owned device, this currently “non-excepted” i.e. furloughed federal employee has time to play Tooltime Tim. Unfortunately, I’m not terribly skilled at home improvement, given how I messed up my last three attempts to caulk our…
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Governments should not be run like a business
It’s hard to listen to a politician today without hearing them tell you that the problem with government is that it’s not being run like a business. For example, Mitt Romney says his private sector experience running a venture capital firm (Bain Capital) was great preparation for being governor of Massachusetts and, he hopes, president…
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In Wisconsin: a bridge too far
There is so much exciting news happening in the world these days that it is hard to keep up on it all. Much of my attention is drawn toward the Middle East, where its oppressed people are removing autocrats and trying to stand up institutions that may actually resemble a functioning democracy. Here at home,…
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America begins its death throes
My federal salary has been frozen for two years by law because previous administrations and congresses failed in their duty as national stewards. I am not happy about it, but a frozen salary beats unemployment. Republicans are anxious to do a whole lot more than just freeze federal salaries. They want to cut government, not…
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Am I overpaid?
The Washington Post, the newspaper of record in this federal city and whose suburbs I inhabit decided to poll the country. The subject: me, or more specifically, the 1.9 million employees of Uncle Sam, and whether Joe and Jane Citizen thought we were overpaid and under qualified for our jobs. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the…
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Feds bravely telecommute while the government “closes”
The recent set of snowstorms here in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area made many headlines. It’s not often that federal government offices shuts down at all, let alone for four days straight. Newspapers were full of reports on the cost of the storm including this one: $100M a day in lost productivity because federal workers…
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USGS: a great place to work
For about two years now, I have been working for the U.S. Geological Survey. I work at their headquarters building in Reston, Virginia. I am a civil servant with twenty-three years of federal service. The USGS is actually the fourth federal agency where I have hung my hat. For me there is absolutely no question…
Occam's Razor 