My second published book back in 1992, Federal Civil Service: America’s Second Welfare Institution, brought a lot of very nasty wishes my way. This was long before social media and even home PCs. It mostly came from radio appearances. Civilians hailed the truth while federal employees melted down.
I opened my book clearly stating there are tens of thousands of hard working federal employees, regardless of skin color or ethnic background, who come to work and do their jobs and that my book was not aimed at them. How do I know? Because I worked with many of them and saw it first hand at several different military installations. I also know because I was one of them until I poked the hornet’s nest. However, that didn’t stop the screeching every time I was a guest on a radio show to promote my book.
Oh, yeah. Here’s a true story. I was a guest on the biggest morning talk radio show at that time in Salt Lake City. After a half hour or so the host started taking calls. Surprise, surprise: They were all federal employees calling in to try and roast me. As the clock was running out I ask the last caller a question: I would like the caller to tell the listening audience: Are you a federal employee on the job right now calling into this show? The caller hung up. I rest my case.
Believe me, I saw it all for the short time I worked for DoD and it all went into my book. In 1991, I became a federal whistler blower. I filed a fraud, waste & abuse against my own job with the IG and outing my stupidvisor for her conniving scheme. In order for her climb the pay ladder she had to supervise one employee so she created a job that was a joke.
There was no job even though I was hired into a GS-11 position in Engineering at Peterson AFB, Air Force Space Command, Colorado Springs, CO. My late husband had been transferred to Ft. Carson so I was able to get on at Pete Field. There were several ‘engineers’ in my area who spent the morning yapping on the phone with friends – every day. I know as I sat in a cubicle that gave little privacy.
Another guy spent every morning for an hour or two looking through his tittie magazines at his desk. Playboy and other trash. The guy at the next cubicle spent time on the phone finding parts for his various car restoration projects. Every day he was on the phone doing personal business. Neither one had passed the required tests to keep their pay grade but were kept on anyway as ‘engineers’ protected as civil service employees and their union. All of them were Caucasian.
After all the hoopla died down, the Inspector General’s audit determined I was right. The GS-11 job I was hired to do was more suited to a 20-hr a week or less intern slot. While I was threatened with termination, it didn’t happen after I informed the pompous ass who headed up personnel he would be seeing me on the news that night. However, nine months later – despite nothing but outstanding performance awards – my one-year contract was not picked up. My stupidvisor who set the whole thing up kept her job and higher pay grade.
I knew I would lose my job but I did what I felt was the right thing to do. The taxpayers were being cheated. The mission for our Air Force was being cheated and I was bored stupid. While the audit was going on I was transferred to contracting where I had a great job. Really interesting and exciting contracts inside Cheyenne Mountain as well as at another AB where Reagan’s Star Wars Initiative was underway. My security clearance was very high. I had to submit to a retinal scan to get onto those facilities. I really loved my job. Then it was gone along with my GS-11 paycheck. That’s how honesty is repaid by a corrupt system.
In 1989 I applied for and was hired as a GS-11 Administrative Officer at Oakland Army Base. Oh, boy, that didn’t go over well. Civilians just don’t come in from the private sector as a GS-11 no matter how qualified they are for the job; the resentment against me was thick. The base Commander was a black 2-star general. The Chief of Staff was black. The head of personnel was black. The individual who didn’t get the job because he had zero qualifications for the job was black.
You see where this was going. The boys did their best to get me on an OPM technicality so I filed a reverse race discrimination lawsuit – long before it was ever done. Who did the deciding? Guess. It was my first real experience with how corrupt the system was and blatant racism against me because even though I had no say in the matter, I was born Caucasian.
While I was there I learned about something called ‘building a case’. Case in point: A black worker showed up every morning in one of the other departments drunk. He would come in, sit at his desk, put his feet up and take a nice long nap. Because he was a ‘lifer’ with over 20 years in civil service, his supervisors spent more than a year documenting his lazy drunk backside before they finally terminated his employment. Act surprised: That drunk filed a racial discrimination complaint and was transferred to the Naval Ship Yard. The Army got rid of him but the taxpayers didn’t.
While still in my job I terminated a black female for her inability to do the job. She was hired because she claimed on her SF-172 (don’t know what it’s called today) she could type 60 wpm and was put into the typing pool. Unfortunately, she couldn’t type 25 wpm nor could she spell even the simplest words. Act surprised: A complaint of racial discrimination was lodged against me as her supervisor; she was reassigned and kept her job.
I called another black female employee on the carpet for walking across the brand new, very expensive indoor basketball court floor in the rec area in 3” spike heels and hot pants that ended right under her butt cheeks. She strutted around the court better than most hookers in downtown Oakland.
You see, the contractor made clear, in writing (a contract I negotiated), only athletic shoes could be worn on that wood floor. I was polite while telling this young female she needed to change her shoes if the need (there was none except to hawk her wares to the troops) arose to cross the basketball court. Act surprised. She filed a racial discrimination complaint against me.
Another black female employee worked in the child care facility. Her fingernails were lethal weapons. Not only close to an inch long but pointed. During my counseling with her I tried to emphasize that she picks up fussy babies and toddlers, sometimes catching them as they toddle around – meaning like toddlers they fall down. For safety reasons, she simply had to cut those nails before one of the little ones ended up blinded, cut or scratched. Act surprised: She filed a racial discrimination complaint against me and was allowed to keep those dangerous fingernails around babies and toddlers.
These were but a few of the factual incidents I covered in my book on the federal civil service system. I gave credit where credit was due but also went into detail about why that system needs to be abolished and federal employees treated just like regular workers in the private sector. Stop protecting incompetent and/or unqualified workers and stop passing them off to another federal agency.
The Federal Civil Service System then and is still an archaic one that has allowed drunks, illiterates and completely unqualified individuals to get away with what anyone else in the private sector would be terminated.
Remember the horror stories about the VA about five years ago? The absolutely deplorable practices at some VA facilities and the despicable treatment of our veterans and the secret lists. I covered this and the only solution in my book, Taking Politics Out of Solutions.
Billions more were then poured into a system that is never going to work and despite all the congressional hearings and exchanging spit, it’s still going on:
Whistleblower: Cockroaches served in food at Chicago-area VA hospital
Flies In Operating Rooms Force VA Hospital To Postpone More Than 80 Surgeries
‘New low’: Dead vets left to ‘decompose’ in VA morgue for weeks without burial
Whistleblower in Billings VA clinic faces removal while office is shut down
Another one of several over the past couple of years:
Veteran Burns Self Alive after VA Appointment Cancellations, Delays
Not all federal employees fall under the OPM (Office of Personnel Management) and can be fired rather quickly. FBI, CIA, State Department, NCIS, Secret Service and the NSA for obvious reasons. The way it should be.
While President Trump has made what I consider to be some of worst (thanks to his crappy aides in the WH) cabinet/agency picks as well as some other missteps, the man is trying his best to not only ‘drain the swamp’ but do what he can to make the federal monster smaller and better. It’s remarkable he’s been able to get anything done considering the vicious attacks he’s been under since he legitimately won the election.
Here is another accomplishment long overdue for which the American people should be thankful. Trump signed three Executive Orders.
Trump makes it easier to fire poor-performing federal workers
“The first executive order aims to strengthen accountability for federal employees and makes it easier to fire poor performers in the federal government.”
Got that? POOR PERFORMING federal employees.
Moving on from the same article:
“The second executive order creates a federal labor relations working group to analyze union contracts with the federal government. It also makes it harder to pay federal unions to appeal firings and to lobby Congress.
“The third executive order, focused on federal unions, is aimed at reducing waste and expenditures and requires federal employees to spend at least 75 percent of their time working on the job they were hired to do, as opposed to working on federal union work. It will also allow the federal government to start charging unions for office space in federal buildings.”
Naturally it is being met with resistance and the usual BS from unions. I’m so fed up with unions who don’t seem to give a damn about job performance, only protecting their numbers giving them more clout.
“These executive orders are a direct assault on the legal rights and protections that Congress has specifically guaranteed to the two million public-sector employees across the country who work for the federal government,” said J. David Cox Sr., president of the American Federation of Government Employees, whose membership includes some 700,000 U.S. government and D.C. workers.
“This administration seems hellbent on replacing a civil service that works for all taxpayers with a political service that serves at its whim,” The Journal quoted Cox as saying.”
Here’s a clue for the union boys and girls: Federal employees work for We the People and are paid for by We the People. I have dealt with some of the worst federal employees over the decades who don’t know what the hell they’re doing or have their own political agendas.
I hope those EO’s survive the sure to come court challenges because getting rid of unqualified federal workers moved up through the system (like passing uneducated students from one grade to the next), non-performing federal workers (those just waiting for retirement and basically do nothing all day) and workers who come to work drunk or use drugs is long overdue.
Here’s one more thing Trump did yesterday and is also long overdue. Republicans finally got off their political butts and did the right thing:
Hot Mic Catches The Four Powerful Words Trump Said To Handicapped Individuals At White House
“Trump signed the “Right to Try” bill today at the White House, joined onstage by Vice President Mike Pence and patients with debilitating diseases who will benefit from the legislation.
“Right to Try” loosens regulations on experimental drugs and treatments for individuals suffering from terminal diseases. In some cases, the legislation will bypass the laborious FDA testing process to expedite treatment for the suffering individuals.
“After exchanging pleasantries with the group onstage, Trump was overhead saying, “We’re going to do this first. This is more important. A speech is just words. This is more important,” as he continued to go one by one shaking hands of the individuals.”
Marc Thiessen: Thank Republicans for your Right to Try
“As Sloan waited, her health deteriorated further. In an interview for the book “The Right to Try: How the Federal Government Prevents Americans from Getting the Lifesaving Treatments They Need,” which I co-wrote, Sloan’s best friend Michelle Wittenberg told me about Sloan’s anguish as she waited on the green light from Washington. “She would say, ‘Michelle, what’s going on? What’s the delay? The drug company’s agreed to give it, why is it taking so long?'” When the FDA finally relented, the drug worked. Scans showed it beating back her cancer. But it was too late. Shortly after getting the scans, Sloan came down with pneumonia. Thirteen days later, she died. “The delay in getting that drug that was working killed her,” Wittenberg said, “The extra month tacked on because of the FDA process? Too long.”
“Only 22 House Democrats voted for the final bill that Trump will sign. In August, a version introduced by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., passed the Senate by unanimous consent, but stalled in the House, which eventually passed a more limited bill from Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore. Last week, Senate Republicans tried to accommodate Democratic objections by bringing up the Walden bill for a vote, but Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer blocked it from coming to the floor. So the House passed the Johnson version, with Democrats nearly united in opposition.
“In other words, Democrats in Washington managed to take an issue that unified thousands of legislators from both parties in 40 states, and turned it into a divisive, party-line vote. Thanks to Trump, Americans facing terminal diagnoses will now have a new chance at life. How tragic — and pathetic — that Democrats refused to join him in making that happen.”
There are positive things happening that are being drown out by the on-going conspiracy to get President Trump out of the White House no matter how many innocent people are destroyed in the process. Let us be thankful for the two above.
© 2018 Devvy Kidd – All Rights Reserved
E-Mail Devvy: devvyk@npn.net
