{"id":23931,"date":"2025-02-10T14:31:27","date_gmt":"2025-02-10T19:31:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/?p=23931"},"modified":"2025-02-10T14:31:27","modified_gmt":"2025-02-10T19:31:27","slug":"whodunit-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/whodunit-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Whodunit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Bray nails it clean and tight.<\/p>\n

\n

Your Job Is to Push the Yes Button<\/strong><\/a>
the secretaries make the game clear<\/em><\/p>\n

A gaggle of former Secretaries of the Treasury \u2014 Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner, Jacob Lew and Janet Yellen \u2014 warn in the New York Times<\/em> today that the President of the United States is interfering with the operations of the executive branch. No, really. It remains entirely true that warnings about the threat to \u201cOur Democracy\u201d are, in fact, warnings about the threat to Our Bureaucracy.<\/p>\n

Five people who\u2019ve served at the top levels of the federal government can\u2019t produce one clear and reasonable premise between them. After a bunch of throat clearing, the fourth paragraph begins the actual attempt at an argument:<\/p>\n

The nation\u2019s payment system has historically been operated by a very small group of nonpartisan career civil servants. In recent days, that norm has been upended, and the roles of these nonpartisan officials have been compromised by political actors from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. One has been appointed fiscal assistant secretary \u2014 a post that for the prior eight decades had been reserved exclusively for civil servants to ensure impartiality and public confidence in the handling and payment of federal funds.<\/em><\/p>\n

The administrative state is impartial, honest, accurate, and pure. \u201cCivil servants\u201d are good; political<\/em> people are bad. But this is how Article II begins: \u201cThe executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.\u201d Our entire system of government is premised on the authority of people who, having been elected to office, are accountable to be the people of the country for their choices. A function of government that \u201chas historically been operated by a very small group of nonpartisan career civil servants\u201d: not present in the Constitution. Prove otherwise, if you\u2019d like to try. Show me the authority of that \u201cvery small group of nonpartisan career civil servants\u201d in Article II, and tell me exactly where to find it.<\/p>\n

Five former senior government officials, feeling themselves wonderfully virtuous, have casually upended the entire American system of government without noticing that they\u2019ve done it. Dire warning: The President of the United States is acting like he\u2019s in charge of the executive branch<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Shocking, innit? Matt Margolis has a meme<\/a>\u00a0which explains this strange phenomenon.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

‘Nuff said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Bray nails it clean and tight. Your Job Is to Push the Yes Buttonthe secretaries make the game clear A gaggle of former Secretaries of the Treasury \u2014 Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner, Jacob Lew and Janet Yellen \u2014 warn in the New…<\/p>\n

Would you like to know more? Whodunit<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[210,9,11,22,33,45,204,52,55,62,208,84,94,212,190,111,114],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-are-we-fed-up-yet","category-assholes","category-bah","category-business-as-usual","category-culture-of-corruption","category-domestic-disputes","category-enemies-domestic","category-fuwar","category-gangstergovt","category-hubris-and-nemesis","category-keep-up-the-skeer","category-passthepopcorn","category-royal-privilege","category-thats-entertainment","category-the-more-they-remain-the-same","category-the-ruling-class","category-counter-revolutionary-ideas","wpcat-210-id","wpcat-9-id","wpcat-11-id","wpcat-22-id","wpcat-33-id","wpcat-45-id","wpcat-204-id","wpcat-52-id","wpcat-55-id","wpcat-62-id","wpcat-208-id","wpcat-84-id","wpcat-94-id","wpcat-212-id","wpcat-190-id","wpcat-111-id","wpcat-114-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23931"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23932,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23931\/revisions\/23932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}