Bye Bye Civil Service

Don't say you weren't warned.

When the Homeland Security Bill came up stripping its workers of civil service protections, some of us on the left sat up in alarm. Combined with the ongoing "contract" revolution in the federal bureaucracy - where agencies contract out and manage public services rather than run them - the basic structure of the civil service system is being eroded. Now we have new signs that this effort is gaining momentum, both at the federal level and in the states.

Wow, that's pretty boring. Why do we care?

You should care. You should care a lot. Because there were good reasons we wrote the Pendleton Act and established autonomous civil services at all levels of government. It wasn't just the fact that James Garfield got shot by a frustrated officeholder. It was because of men like this. Before the civil service, public employees were hired and fired on the basis of political affiliation and expediency. Professionals were put under enormous pressure to manufacture the results that pleased those in power. And the patronage system allowed the worst elements in our politics to use public employees as a milch cow. The result was rampant corruption and amazing incompetence.

Which is pretty much the Republicans' ideal of how government should be run.

Civil service "reform," despite its limited media coverage, is in fact on the of the most vital political issues of our time. It doesn't help matters when the Washington Post mentions patronage and corruption as minor objections to civil service reform, even while advancing the right-wing stereotype as public employees as lazy and self-interested "risk adverse" people. (Have the words "public service" entirely left the lexicon?).

I haven't figured out exactly what we can DO about this issue. But our first task is to start paying attention. Or we shall surely regret it.