Executive Departments 3

[GreyhoundFan]

I so love having corporate America running the government /sarcasm

 

[CTRLZero]

From the WaPo article:   Weichert’s rationale for the furloughs is tied to the revenue OPM gets for the government’s background check system for employee security clearances. The system is shifting to the Defense Department on Oct. 1, with 2,500 to 3,000 staff departures to the Pentagon.

Hard to believe there are any security clearances taking place after looking at all the corruption taking place in the Trump administration.  It seems like this will make the system even more chaotic, and easier for people to slip through the cracks, at least temporarily. 

It's a little hard to follow, but about half the staff is going to the Department of Defense (2,500-3,000).  Others will transfer to General Services, etc.  So, who are the 150 that are being threatened?  Is that just a percentage they are working with to force the breakup?  So confusing and frustrating.  I feel for the people who are experiencing employment uncertainty.  I've been through my share of reduction-in-force scenarios. 

Edited June 20, 2019 by CTRLZero
Always a typo!

[GreyhoundFan]

5 minutes ago, CTRLZero said:

It's a little hard to follow, but about half the staff is going to the Department of Defense (2,500-3,000).  Others will transfer to General Services, etc.  So, who are the 150 that are being threatened?  Is that just a percentage they are working with to force the breakup?  So confusing and frustrating.  I feel for the people who are experiencing employment uncertainty.  I've been through my share of reduction-in-force scenarios.  

I'm not sure where the 150 are coming from. With the way this sham administration has been going, I'm assuming they are people who didn't pay homage to Dumpy publicly or some other nonsense.

I've been there too with RIFs. My last company had so many, it was crazy. There was one year we had 15 rounds of layoffs. That was the year it felt like we are all on the show, "Survivor".

[GreyhoundFan]

And another gone... "Top EPA official resigns amid scrutiny over possible ethics violations"

Spoiler

Environmental Protection Agency air chief Bill Wehrum, who helped reverse Obama-era rules aimed at cutting pollutants, is stepping down amid scrutiny over possible violations of federal ethics rules.

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler’s announcement Wednesday did not cite a specific reason for the departure of Wehrum, who as an attorney represented power companies seeking to scale back several air pollution rules before joining the Trump administration. But Wehrum has privately expressed concern about how an ongoing House Energy and Commerce Committee probe was affecting his former law firm, Hunton Andrews Kurth, according to individuals familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

“While I have known of Bill’s desire to leave at the end of this month for quite sometime, the date has still come too soon,” Wheeler said Wednesday, praising Wehrum for “his service, his dedication to his job, the leadership he provided to his staff and the agency, and for his friendship.”

Wehrum, who was confirmed for the post in November 2017, is the latest among Trump appointees to depart after coming under investigation for possible misconduct. Four Cabinet members — EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, and Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin — have all left amid an ethics cloud, along with other senior staffers such as Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator William “Brock” Long.

Interior’s Office of Inspector General is currently investigating seven current or former top appointees for improperly engaging with their former employers or clients on department-related business, including Secretary David Bernhardt. Bernhardt has denied any wrongdoing, and the other officials have not commented publicly on the allegations.

The Energy and Commerce Committee launched its inquiry of Wehrum after The Washington Post reported in February that questions had been raised about his compliance with the Trump ethics pledge, which requires political appointees to recuse themselves from specific matters involving their former employers and clients for two years. If an appointee does meet with a former client, the pledge dictates that the gathering should be open to all interested parties — a requirement that has been interpreted to mean four other participants who were not clients.

Less than one month after joining the EPA, Wehrum met with two former clients at his old firm without consulting in advance with ethics officials, even though they had cautioned him about such interactions. That same month, Wehrum participated in a decision that appeared to benefit a former client, DTE Energy, in which Pruitt issued a memo stating that the agency would not be “second guessing utilities” when they projected whether they would need a few federal permits after expanding their operations.

Wehrum, who heads the air and radiation office at the EPA, acknowledged both incidents in an interview with The Post but said he had determined that he did not violate federal ethics rules.

“I have, from day one, tried to be absolutely strict and assiduous as to what I do about complying with my ethical obligations,” Wehrum said, “because it doesn’t do me any good, and it doesn’t do the agency any good, to be doing things that people see as unethical.”

[Trump administration to relax tailpipe emission standards for cars and trucks, rebuffing automakers' plea for a compromise]

Still, the fallout from reporting on Wehrum’s ties to his former firm and the utility industry by The Post and other outlets — including Politico, the New York Times and E&E News — has continued to reverberate. The Utility Air Regulatory Group, a group of power companies that paid Hunton Andrews Kurth millions in membership dues, disbanded earlier this year.

Still, even Wehrum’s fiercest critics say that he has been able to accomplish some of industry’s long-sought goals even as he’s come under fire for his close ties to energy firms. In doing so, he has rolled back some of President Barack Obama’s most sweeping air policies. Last week the EPA finalized a rule targeting power plants that cuts carbon emissions by less than half of what experts say is needed to avoid catastrophic global warming. He has advanced other proposals as well, including one that would freeze fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks for six years and another that would limit what sort of public health benefits the EPA can count when curbing air pollution from power plants and other sources.

“It is, at the very least, going to take years to undo the damage that has been done,” said John Coequyt, global climate policy director for the advocacy group Sierra Club, in a phone interview.

Coequyt added that as Wehrum returns to the private sector, corporate clients could face blowback from his group and others for enlisting his help. “We believe he’s toxic to their interests, and anyone who hires him will be publicly criticized for doing so.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who joined other Democrats in February in asking EPA’s inspector general to investigate Wehrum, predicted that he would end up representing one of the companies that has sought regulatory relief from Trump’s EPA.

“I can’t wait to see where Bill Wehrum lands once he’s out the door,” Whitehouse said in a statement. “What do you bet it’s with one of the fossil fuel interests he has served so well as air chief, delivering one big handout after another?”

A trained chemical engineer who earned his law degree at night while working for a company in Delaware, Wehrum led the EPA’s air and radiation office on an acting basis under President George W. Bush until Democrats blocked his nomination.

 

[Smash!]

What the hell?

[AmazonGrace]

 

[WiseGirl]

This may be in the Senate thread but I personally first saw these ads yesterday.  wtf  Apologies if already discussed.  Mitchy is a busy bitchy (just because I want to rhyme)

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/449477-mcconnell-aligned-group-launches-4m-round-of-ads-against-medicare-for-all

[smittykins]

I saw one of those ads the other day,

[GreyhoundFan]

Wow. I wonder what evil plan they have to sneak it in: "2020 Census will not include citizenship question, DOJ confirms"

Spoiler

The Trump administration is dropping plans to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, the Justice Department confirmed in an email Tuesday just days after the Supreme Court described the rationale for the question as “contrived.”

The decision to back away from the controversial question was a victory for civil rights advocates concerned that the query would lead to an inaccurate count of immigrant communities that could skew representation and federal funding.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Only the best people... <end sarcasm> "One of Trump’s latest Fed board nominees has a questionable track record — in politics"

Spoiler

THERE ARE two vacancies on the seven-member Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and President Trump has struggled mightily to fill them. His problems are largely of his own making. Mr. Trump has loudly and repeatedly criticized the Fed’s current chairman, Jerome H. Powell, for allegedly failing to keep interest rates sufficiently low — this despite having appointed the capable Mr. Powell himself in 2017. At times, he has even seemed to threaten to fire Mr. Powell, which probably would not be lawful. Given that context, Mr. Trump’s attempt to fill the two Fed spots with political loyalists of questionable qualifications, Herman Cain and Stephen Moore, struck many people as a bid for improper influence over the central bank. There was even pushback from Senate Republicans, albeit of varying degrees of forthrightness, and Mr. Cain and Mr. Moore dropped out of their confirmation bids.

Now Mr. Trump offers two new names, Christopher Waller and Judy Shelton, as likely nominees to the Fed. Mr. Waller is a former chair of the University of Notre Dame economics department who has been in charge of research at the Fed’s St. Louis branch since 2009. He is known to be a “dove” on interest rates, which is undoubtedly one reason Mr. Trump picked him, but he is a nonpolitical expert who wrote in 2011 that central bank independence “is the key tool to ensure a government will not misuse monetary policy for short-term political reasons.”

So far, so reassuring. Ms. Shelton presents a more complicated case. She has some strong academic credentials — a PhD in business administration — and has held public positions, including chair of the National Endowment for Democracy and her current Senate-confirmed post as the United States’ representative on the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

However, hers has been an eminently political career, including stints on Republican nominee Bob Dole’s campaign for president in 1996 as well as that of Ben Carson in 2016 before she signed up with Donald J. Trump for President and, later, with his Treasury Department transition team. Like Mr. Moore, think tank briefs and op-eds in the conservative press, not peer-reviewed research, have been her stock in trade.

She has heaped rhetorical abuse on the Fed over the years, likening it as recently as May to Gosplan, the notorious Soviet economic planning agency. She blasted the Fed for its loose monetary policy when Barack Obama was president, but now that Mr. Trump is in office and demanding lower interest rates, she has concluded that lower rates are in order. The great cause of her career has been a dubious one: the gold standard, which advocates such as Ms. Shelton see as a restraint on central bank currency manipulations, but which opponents — correctly — see as an arbitrary limitation on liquidity that almost strangled the world economy to death in the 1930s. “We make America great again by making America’s money great again,” she wrote last year.

A similar pattern of eccentric ideology, flip-flops and flattery doomed Mr. Moore’s bid for a Fed post. If Senate Republicans give her record the scrutiny it deserves, they might doom Ms. Shelton’s, too.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Yes!

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Excellent op-ed: "One thing is clear from the Jeffrey Epstein revelations: Acosta must step down"

Spoiler

It helps to know people in high places, especially if you’re a sex offender and your name is Jeffrey Epstein.

Some might say that Epstein, the multimillionaire financier, reached the summits of wealth and self-indulgence by his own volition. He is undeniably intelligent, a whiz kid at math and science in his early years who built his fortune, in part, by running a money management firm that catered to the mega-rich. He’s also a philanthropist who specializes in collecting brilliant minds.

His ascent from the middle class in which he was raised to his place among the wealthiest of the wealthy has allowed him to surround himself with the highest and the mightiest, including two presidents, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. Although Trump now denies a relationship with Epstein, in 2002 he told New York magazine a different tale:

“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

Facing a federal indictment in 2007 for sex crimes that could have put him in prison for life, Epstein instead got off easy. His legal team, which included high-priced lawyers Alan Dershowitz and Kenneth W. Starr, secured a sweetheart, non-prosecution deal for Epstein that allowed him to plead guilty to lesser state charges. Epstein’s lawyers received no small amount of cooperation from Alexander Acosta, then U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida and now the labor secretary. Thanks to these two sharp legal minds and one dull puppet, Epstein ultimately served just 13 months in county jail and was allowed to spend up to 12 hours a day on “work release,” six days a week. He also had to pay restitution to some of the victims and register as a sex offender.

This was despite a 53-page federal indictment prepared by the FBI that identified 36 potential victims, some as young as middle-school aged.

There’s little question that Acosta was out-lawyered, but perhaps he was also disarmed by the attentions of these celebrity attorneys. Dershowitz, then a Harvard law professor, had famously defended O.J. Simpson. Starr, of course, was the independent counsel who investigated the Clinton Whitewater case, leading into the Monica Lewinsky cliffhanger.

In a 2011 letter trying to defend himself after the cushy plea deal, Acosta wrote that he faced “a year-long assault on the prosecution and the prosecutors” by “an army of legal superstars.” He also asserted that defense lawyers “investigated individual prosecutors and their families, looking for personal peccadilloes that may provide a basis for disqualification.”

Go on, grab a hankie. Acosta also has said he feared the young accusers might not be their own best witnesses. Perhaps not. Then again, seeing girls interrogated and cross-examined by high-profile lawyers might have worked in their favor. Instead, the alleged victims were kept in the dark about the non-prosecution agreement and the records were sealed, in contravention of the federal Crime Victims’ Rights Act.

Justice is sometimes slow, but she appears to be catching up with Epstein.

On Monday, a new 14-page federal indictment was unsealed in New York accusing Epstein of sex trafficking and abuse of underage girls at his homes in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Fla., between 2002 and 2005. The details are as disgusting as they are creepy. In short, Epstein allegedly had young girls brought to his homes to perform massages and sex acts in exchange for money. After girls had been brought in, they were sometimes enticed to recruit other girls — and so it went on for years, according to the indictment.

No one has ever overestimated the power of money, and its power to corrupt is absolute. The hubris that passeth all understanding belongs to Epstein.

Pending further revelations, one thing is clear: Acosta should step down from his Cabinet position for dereliction of duty in his prior role — and because he has the spine of a mollusk. In deciding not to fully prosecute Epstein in 2007 — and then agreeing to bury the proceedings without advising the victims — he violated the law, betrayed the victims’ trust and displayed rare cowardice before justice.

Finally, nobody likes a whiner.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This is pitiful:

 

[Howl]

#ETTD, muther flucker! Acosta is out at Dept. of Labor! 

Alexander Acosta Out As Labor Secretary Over Cushy Jeffrey Epstein Plea Deal   As a U.S. attorney in Miami, Acosta helped devise a secret agreement granting the accused child sex trafficker immunity from federal prosecution.

This is what desperate damage control looks like. Acosta's presser yesterday was a flaming disaster, and he couldn't be salvaged.

Acosta has just been anointed for sacrifice, and is (sorry to mix metaphors) swingin' in the breeze. 

Edited July 12, 2019 by Howl

[formergothardite]

Will him quitting stop the investigation into what the hell he was doing when he agreed to that plea deal? 

[Howl]

33 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

Will him quitting stop the investigation into what the hell he was doing when he agreed to that plea deal? 

Not at all.  In addition, the Democrats in the house are going to start delving into it. 

 HOWEVER, the article in the previous post has a link to this bad news from the end of June. 

Jeffrey Epstein’s Unusually Light Plea Deal Must Stand, Justice Department Says

Two key elements here: 

1. In February Federal Judge Kenneth Marra "ruled that federal prosecutors working under Acosta had broken the law [Criminal Victims' Rights Act] by concealing the agreement from more than 30 people who accused Epstein of abuse."   
2. Federal prosecutors have "successfully" argued that keeping the victims in the dark should not void the plea. 

Quote

Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s victims were dealt a loss Monday when the Justice Department determined the New York money manager’s lenient plea deal must stand, rejecting a request by victims to prosecute him for molesting dozens of underage girls, The Miami Herald was first to report. 

Barr is in place to protect Trump and Republican interests.  He has already proven shameless in this regard.  His decision to not recuse regarding Epstein tells us all we need to know.  Remember that part of the plea deal bizarrely provides total and global immunity now and in the future to unnamed potential co-conspirators.  This is an indicator that wealthy/politically powerful people are being protected. 

At this point, Barr absolutely DGAF.  I can easily foresee some Barr/DoJ decisions that shock the conscience re: Epstein.  

Epstein's chances of bail should be zero, with jail until trial, but honestly,  I wouldn't be surprised if they arrange for bail with home detention where Epstein, oopsy, "decides" to, ooops again, "accidentally" commit suicide, and the whole thing goes away.  See how crazy this makes me? 

Edited July 12, 2019 by Howl

[formergothardite]

54 minutes ago, Howl said:

I wouldn't be surprised if they arrange for bail with home detention where Epstein, oopsy, "decides" to, ooops again, "accidentally" commit suicide, and the whole thing goes away.  See how crazy this makes me? 

This sort of a thing isn't that crazy anymore. We are not living in normal times. Epstien can bring down a ton of powerful people and there will be a lot of things done to protect them. 

[SilverBeach]

5 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

We are not living in normal times.

Truer words have never been spoken. It is such a nightmare now. I tell myself that this too shall pass.

[GreyhoundFan]

Because this sham administration can't have one person who isn't corrupt:

 

[fraurosena]

They're draining the swamp by filling it with more and more swamp-creatures...

[Smash!]

What means acting secretary? That he isn't confirmed by Congress?

[GreyhoundFan]

29 minutes ago, Smash! said:

What means acting secretary? That he isn't confirmed by Congress?

Yes. And there is a 300 day limit on "acting". This explains it fairly well.

 

[Smash!]

From the same blog: Trump’s Preference for Acting Officials Puts National Security at Risk

 

[GreyhoundFan]

2 hours ago, Smash! said:

From the same blog: Trump’s Preference for Acting Officials Puts National Security at Risk

 

That's just the way his boss, Putin, wants it.

[GreyhoundFan]

Because this sham administration wants to screw over as many federal employees as possible: "Interior to move top managers of Bureau of Land Management’s D.C. staff out west as part of larger reorganization push"

Spoiler

The Trump administration plans to relocate more than a fifth of the Bureau of Land Management’s D.C. workforce to west of the Rockies, part of its broader push to shift power away from Washington and shrink the size of the federal government.

The proposal to move nearly 80 employees from a key Interior Department agency — the majority top managers — comes as Trump officials are forcibly reassigning career officials and upending operations across the federal government. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue finalized plans this summer to move about 550 jobs at two of his department’s scientific agencies from the nation’s capital to greater Kansas City. The White House is trying to abolish the Office of Personnel Management, the government’s human resources agency, and has threatened to furlough as many as 150 employees if Congress blocks it.

“The problem with Washington is too many policy makers are far removed from the people they are there to serve,” Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) said in a statement supporting the land agency’s move. “Ninety-nine percent of the land the BLM manages is West of the Mississippi River, and so should be the BLM headquarters.”

But opponents argue that abrupt decisions to relocate or reassign federal workers have not been justified by sufficient analysis, can disrupt families’ lives and already have cost the government valuable expertise.

“If I wanted to dismantle an agency, this would be in my playbook,” said Steve Ellis, who retired as BLM’s deputy director in 2016 after nearly four decades in government service. In a phone interview Monday, he said that transferring so many employees out of Washington could complicate the agency’s relationship with Capitol Hill, budget officials and other federal entities.

He noted that Interior dispatched all of its wildfire and aviation staff to Boise, Idaho, in the 1990s only to reestablish a wildland fire office in the District when lawmakers expected briefings after fires broke out in the West.

“It’s important for these agencies to have a meaningful footprint in D.C.,” Ellis said.

Margaret Weichert, Office of Management and Budge deputy director for management, said in a statement that the move will make the government more efficient and “better serve the American people.”

In a shift long sought by conservatives, Trump’s government has shed thousands of employees overall since he took office, with gains at the Defense Department and Department of Veterans Affairs but an exodus of civil servants at several other agencies, including Labor, Education, and Housing and Urban Development.

Jason A. Briefel, head of the Senior Executive Association that represents 6,000 top government leaders, said it is worth having a public conversation about how to reorganize different agencies. But he questioned whether the Trump administration has made a solid business case for some of these decisions.

“This isn’t just an Interior issue,” he said in an interview. “This is a government-wide issue.”

Many of the 77 BLM employees slated for a job transfer will move to Grand Junction, Colo., according to two federal officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the decision has not been formally announced. But some of the affected workers — who include some top officials, Senior Executive Service staffers and low-level managers — will move to other cities in the West.

Interior officials have been eyeing a possible move for BLM, which manages more than 10 percent of the nation’s land, for more than two years. A handful of Western states, such as Colorado and Utah, have sought to recruit the agency.

While administration officials defend the Agriculture Department and BLM moves as an effort to spread the federal workforce around, 85 percent of the 2.1 million federal employees already live outside the Washington area.

The Bureau of Land Management has just 350 employees in Washington, with 95 percent of its 9,260 employees working in the field.

The idea of shifting the bureau west has received the support of some lawmakers, including the top Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee, Rob Bishop (Utah), as well as Gardner and Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.). In March 2018, the two senators from Colorado urged then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to look at the city lying roughly 280 miles west of Denver.

Bishop said Interior Secretary David Bernhardt is “promoting a thoughtful, methodical approach.”

But House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) accused Bernhardt of being secretive about his plans. Bernhardt’s hometown of Rifle, Colo., is not far from Grand Junction.

“Putting BLM headquarters down the road from Secretary Bernhardt’s hometown just makes it easier for special interests to walk in the door demanding favors without congressional oversight or accountability,” Grijalva said. “The agency will lose a lot of good people because of this move, and I suspect that’s the administration’s real goal here.”

Interior declined to comment on the relocation.

It remains unclear whether Congress would have to explicitly authorize the shift in personnel. The move is expected to cost at least $4 million, according to one federal official.

This is not the first time Interior has reassigned senior executives with little notice. In June 2017, political appointees reshuffled the assignments of more than three dozen career executives, with just 15 days’ notice of their job change. Interior’s Office of Inspector General investigated the matter but did not determine whether the moves were justified, citing the department’s incomplete records.

Denise Sheehan, who worked at Interior for 33 years before retiring last month from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said in an interview that the round of reassignments had a “chilling effect,” limiting what career officials are comfortable saying to political appointees.

“I don’t know if that was intended or not, but that was definitely the effect. It’s the most toxic thing in the senior executive corps I have ever seen,” she said.

In many cases, reassigned federal staffers have chosen to leave the government because they hail from two-career families or for other personal reasons. A majority of scientists and researchers at the USDA agencies slated to move to Kansas City are choosing not to move, and Perdue’s plan has been dogged by questions about its cost and the motivation behind it.

“When you move large numbers of employees from one part of the country to another, you’re going to lose a lot of institutional knowledge,” said Ward Morrow, assistant general counsel for the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union — with 530 members at BLM.

In other instances, the administration has shuttered parts of agencies altogether. The small Federal Labor Relations Authority, which adjudicates disputes between federal employees and their agencies, has closed regional offices in Dallas and Boston, citing declining workloads.

Under federal law, BLM will have to pay all relocation and real estate costs for employees who choose to move west, including what it takes to sell their homes in the Washington region and purchase a new one. Employees and their families will be entitled to four months of hotel stays on the government’s dime, federal personnel experts said, which could cost as much as $100,000 per employee.

The agency probably will offer retirement and buyout packages to employees who decide not to move, which could equal as much as a year’s salary depending on their age and years of service.

The tangerine toddler and his cronies are just looking to get rid of experienced federal employees, so they can replace them with people who will do their bidding.