By Anne Trominski:
In case you were unaware, things are a bit crazy in the United States right now. In an era of shocking news stories, unheard of court cases, and generally unprecedented political events, discourse has gotten a tad tense . . . some might even say divisive.
Can we still discuss the events of the day over the dinner table? Can we realistically look to the past to deal with the problems of today? Is there an appropriate cocktail to serve for the end of times?
Three friends tackle these topics and distract themselves with other tangents in their podcast Civics on the Rocks. Steve’s an engineer, Mack’s a history teacher, and Anne’s just trying to get the mics to work correctly (with varying amounts of success). The long-form episodes are released at the beginning of each month. Living in Texas, they have plenty of political fodder to chew on, but topics cover all types of history and government. The hosts are unrepentant geeks, so they are just as likely to drop movie references as knowledge bombs but, ultimately, their goal is to try and figure out how to be engaged citizens in modern America. They’re also drinking and making cheesy jokes while doing it.
Full episodes with citations (geeks, I say) are available on their website, CivicsOnTheRocks.podbean.com, as well as all the major podcast carriers and socials.
In this episode, the trio examine the U.S. Civil Service’s role, importance, and future.
Read the edited transcript or listen to the entire episode below. And click here for references to the facts and topics discussed throughout.
This episode originally aired January 6, 2025.
Anne: The question of the day: What's the civil service?
Steve: It’s people who serve in a way that is really quite polite and civil.
Anne: Do you have to pass a manners test in order to serve?
Steve: Well, obviously.
Mack: Yeah. You have to know, like, which utensils to use first.
Steve: The butlers know.
Mack: Okay, so let's talk about the Pendleton Act. 1883.
Anne: No, no, no. Let's start with defining what the civil service is first.
Mack: That’s what I'm trying to do.
Anne: All right . . .
Steve: I’m gonna do the dumb version first, which is people work for the government, but they are not political appointees.
Mack: Right. So, yeah.
Anne: Thank you. Steve.
Mack: My apologies.
Anne: Mack, would you like to tell us about the Pendleton Act?
Mack: Yeah. So the Pendleton Act was passed in 1883 because government positions at that time, which were mostly in the executive branch, like they are now, they were all political appointees. And we had what had become known as the spoils system. You know, whichever party won the presidency, if they were displacing the opposite party, like all those people get fired and the party coming in or the president coming in would fill all of the positions. And in practice, I mean, it's not the president filling every individual one of those positions, but it's the people, you know, in the party leadership that he brings in with him and that he appoints to different positions, who are appointing party faithful people that helped in the campaign, donors or whatever, to all of these positions. And a lot of them . . .
Anne: Brothers in law . . .
Mack: Yeah. Oh, sure. Whoever. Yeah.
Steve: Actually, usually probably less of the random family, more of the people who directly contributed to your—directly contributed don't mean financially—but that could be people who specifically helped get you elected.
Anne: Right.
Steve: So that you reward them in that way. You keep this nice political machine going.
Mack: So the issue with the spoils system is that, I mean, it was getting out of hand, but not only that . . . well, okay . . . Let me say, in one of the ways that was getting out of hand was you had people appointed to these positions that were not especially good at them, or were looking at them as ways to enrich themselves, like, they didn't have any particular expertise or skill at the job. They just got it, you know, and . . .
Steve: Nice paycheck or a way to influence government actions in your favor.
Mack: Yeah. So earlier in the 1800s, Britain—the Empire—adopts civil service. And then in the 1850s, they kind of refine it and whatnot. But . . . and they base it, by the way, in part on things they learn about from civil service in China. There was an influence there because, I mean, one of the . . . you had, I mean, the Chinese, the imperial China, like, begins in 221 BC and goes all the way through, like, 1911. And one of the ways that China was maintained, you know, relatively strong, other times relatively weak through dozens of dynasties and whatever, is civil servants and the civil service system. The point of a civil service system is that you get a position based on merit, on your ability. And often there's like a test you have to pass to gain something. Now, it depends on the position. Sometimes, you know, you just need to apply. Do you have the expertise? Okay. There's a hiring manager for that particular sub department of that agency. And then, you know, you get hired, but you're hired in part because of your skill and abilities and not because, you know, you're a crony of somebody that contributed a lot of money to a governor’s campaign.
Steve: You didn't bring in this county for the governor or a president, but you exhibited some sort of exhibition of skill, is the thing, people. You'd have skill.
Mack: So, the Pendleton Act, that was named for, I want to say it was a representative from Ohio, named Pendleton, who authored it. It was signed into law by Chester Allen Arthur, President Chester Allen Arthur, who, and this establishes civil service. So now . . .
Steve: I never knew it was Allen. I always heard Chester A. Arthur.
Anne: Yeah.
Mack: It's Chester Allen Arthur.
Anne: Really?
Steve: Learn something new.
Mack: Yeah.
Anne: No. I didn't realize it was Allen.
Mack: I haven't looked it up lately. We better double check. Make sure that I'm making that up.
Anne: It’ll be in the show notes, y’all.
Mack: Okay, so with that, we now have a bunch of --
Anne: Thought maybe Albert or . . .
Steve: I never stopped to think about it. Aloysius would have been cool.
Anne: Aloysius, nice.
Mack: Alistair. Alexander. Alphonse, or . . . you know, Andrew. That's not a bad name. So, but now you've got these government positions after the Pendleton Act where you get them based on merit and whether or not you advance to a higher position is based on merit.
Steve: Which is as important. I'm going to underscore that, you might get in the door because you looked good on paper. You're not going to climb unless you actually can be effective.
Mack: And that's actually kind of an essential part, because that's where you encourage people to do better at their jobs because of the opportunity to advance.
Anne: Well, I would imagine that's built into the you're going to stay longer than whoever the resident politician is. Because they’re having to go fight for reelection. But if you're staying, there as a lifetime job, not as an appointee, but as a this is my long-term career. You will build up an expertise that is not then going to have to be rebuilt up the next time someone is in office.
Mack: Although I do want to say something about what you said because, like, the political appointees at the top, that they would have to worry about getting reelected. They’re not actually elected. They’re just appointed. It is all on the president, members of Congress.
Steve: They worry about their appointer to being elected.
Anne: Yeah.
Mack: You can't be, like, an elected official and serve in the cabinet, for example. That's actually in the Constitution. You can’t serve in more than one branch at a time.
Anne: But I'm just guessing, you know, people in, like, say, the current cabinet aren’t expecting to be working in the next cabinet.
Mack: Yeah. No, not at all. And so, but, of all of these agencies, which, you know, the vast majority of the people working in them are civil servants. They're part of that system. But the people at the top are the political appointees. Now, having said that, from all the cabinet departments and all the federal agencies and regulatory agencies and whatever, there's something like 1,500 political appointees, and the president has to appoint all of them. And I mean, of course, he's doing it based on the recommendations that his staff gives him. Some of them anyway. And the Senate has to approve almost all of them. And I only say that because, I think there's some that don't actually require Senate approval, but whether or not they do is actually up to Congress when Congress passes the law that creates whatever that position is.
Steve: So Congress can maintain or get rid of them at their whim.
Mack: And so the idea is the people that are doing a lot of the nuts and bolts work, the grunt work in the real… stuff that requires expertise, that's who you have doing it, is people that already have a certain level of expertise and are encouraged to increase their expertise. And then, you know, the quote unquote leadership at the top are the political appointees, cabinet secretaries, or people that are a member of a commission or board or something like that. But one of the reasons why the Pendleton Act got passed when it did, Chester Allen Arthur was not elected president. He was James Garfield's vice president. James Garfield, who, by the way, was a general in the Civil War and had very strong opinions about, like, the South and Reconstruction --
Anne: He was not a cat who liked lasagna.
Steve: Have you ever seen them in the same place?
Mack: You know what, that took me a second. I'm very familiar with the . . . But I was thinking about. Okay. Yeah, well, that caught me off guard. I feel like Odie. Anyway, no love was lost between James Garfield and the South and, you know, the people that he fought. And I kind of wonder how history would have been different if he had not been assassinated by a guy named Charles Guiteau, who was a disgruntled office seeker. When Garfield's elected, the spoils system is still in place. Guiteau thought he should have been awarded some kind of position. Didn't get it. Shoots Garfield in a train station. Garfield lingers for a while, passes away, Chester Allen Arthur becomes president, and there's even a song that was written, the most famous rendition of which is done by Johnny Cash, and it's titled “Mr. Garfield.”
Anne: Really?
Mack: Yeah. And it is, I mean, it's a murder ballad, but it's… And I remember when I saw it for the first time, wasn’t till I was an adult, and I had this CD of Johnny Cash and “Mr. Garfield.” It's like, what's this about? I'm listening to it and I'm like, oh my God, how come this is … and the song is fantastic. And, but yeah, the whole thing is about the assassination of Garfield by Charlie Guiteau.
Anne: Interesting.
Mack: Yeah. So that gave an additional push, where members of Congress who might have been holdouts were like, okay, let's get this done. And now . . . We have a president elect with an incoming team of people that would like to, at the very least, have some of those civil service positions be turned into political appointees.
Anne: But how do you know that?
Mack: Because they said it in Project 2025.
Steve: And before that. Right on their way out, they were trying to do the whole Schedule F thing.
Anne: What is the whole Schedule F thing for people who may not be familiar?
Steve: As best I understand, which is not detailed, is there’s different forms of employment in the civil service, different schedules, different definitions of each of the roles. And Schedule F was a schedule they came up with that would allow any civil servant to be fired. And what they were going to do was redefine people who were currently in not-appointed positions and therefore difficult to fire. You had to have cause, that kind of thing. Redefined it so they could be fired at the whim of the president, essentially.
Mack: Because all of the political appointees of the president serve at the pleasure of the president. They can be fired at any time. And that actually gets into the removal power, which is not specific. There's nothing in the Constitution about it. And so there was a bit of back and forth. And that's one of the reasons why Andrew Johnson was impeached, kind of on a pretext, even though he probably deserved to be impeached anyway.
Steve: Well, it's come up recently. But it's kind of that, we didn't say it in the Constitution because kind of you have to be able to do that. If you're in charge of the government, you ought to be able to hire and fire people. So it's an implied power.
Mack: Or, well, it's usually just for definitions, usually when implied powers get referenced, they're referring to powers of Congress. There's the express ones, and there's those that are implied. With the president, a lot of textbooks and professors will refer to the formal powers and the informal powers, which doesn't quite capture… because, like, the president, there are specific duties that he has and some specific powers that he specifically has --
Steve: “Duty.”
Mack: Yeah, I said “doody.” But the bulk of his power comes from, you know, the executive power of the United States shall be invested in a president, and then president shall be commander-in-chief. Doesn't really elaborate a lot.
Steve: Yeah, what is executive power.
Mack: And so it's responsibility that power goes with. But then, like, it's almost immediately you're, like, you're going to get into some gray areas. So the removal power was . . . then the courts ruled that it is, you know, something, there's also some powers that the court has variously called at times, like, inherent powers or sovereign powers and mean, I think, powers that are incidental to just being a government. Because some people try to say if it was a position that the president could appoint, but it had to be confirmed by the Senate that, therefore, if the president wanted to fire that person, he would also need Senate approval. And the Supreme Court said, doesn’t say that. And it is… and they reasoned that it was an inherent power that the president should be able to make that kind of decision about somebody that's currently working for him. If you know, he or she wants to get rid of them.
Steve: I was gonna point out one of the things the, 1,500 positions, roughly, that are political appointees, quote unquote, and people are familiar, hopefully, with the ones that you see in the news where it's, oh, it's the Secretary of Labor or whatever goes in front of Congress, Senate by themselves, and they get grilled and yada yada. Some of them go that way, most of them don't have that level of at least profile of publicity. I mean, it's more like here’s the 15 people I want to fill this department.
Mack: And they get approved in bulk.
Steve: Yeah, it's more of a bulk . . .
Mack: Some of the process.
Steve: Yeah. Because again, like, also I think so many of the officers, some levels of the officers are kind of bulk batch approved, whereas it's only the higher-level ones that get…
Mack: Well, and sometimes though that involves a certain amount of wrangling within the Senate and, you know, liaisons from the president and maybe negotiating over names. So it's like, okay, here's a batch of 30 that we can sign off on or whatever.
Steve: Yeah, I was going to point out too two of the arguments for making it easier to fire civil servants. One is oh, well, it's just the government’s being run inefficiently, should be run more like a business. And the other one is, well, there's all these people who once you get in a civil service job, you can't be fired so they're all lazy and incompetent.
Anne: Okay, so I work in a business, and it's really hard to fire people in a business.
Mack & Steve: Well, yes.
Anne: You need lots of documentation, ratings, and regular reviews, and . . . before you can legally fire a person, you know. So that makes no sense.
Mack: Well, true. We could also say that that's sometimes, that's because of the business’ policy. But those policies are in place because of things they're afraid they could get sued over. And so those policies are there to, like, make sure all your ducks are in a row in case you do need to fire someone.
Steve: Yeah, so legally they can fire you, but there’s a risk, of lawsuits and so forth. Which is why they… so technically they're legally able to fire you, but they want to have a strong case so they can't get their ass sued.
Anne: But, like, can the U.S. government be sued for wrongful termination?
Steve: Yeah. Has been.
Mack: Well, I… here's what I don't know. I don't know to what extent regular employment laws apply to government positions because I think they kind of have their own employment laws that go along with the settlement service.
Steve: I may have spoken too quickly. I just wanted to point out that I've worked in state government, and I've worked in the private sector, and on both sides, I've seen people linger who aren't really good at their jobs, because it's hard to get rid of them depending on which side you’re on. So I always think that's a dumb argument.
Mack: There’s always somebody with a red stapler.
Anne: Well, and to be honest, I would say that a lot of the employment laws probably do apply to civil servants, because there were things that were established, like, through Supreme Court acts. I mean, think about labor laws and equal rights in hiring, and things like that that really, I mean, they weren't put in place because businesses were like, this is good for people.
Mack: Well, so we're talking about, you mentioned a couple of different things. One would be acts of Congress, and one would be Supreme Court rulings. And sometimes those Supreme Court rulings are based on not necessarily constitutional rights but acts that were passed by Congress. And it's a ruling made under what federal law is. And some things are protections because they are federal law. So, and all I'm saying is, I don't know this for a fact, but I'm saying there's definitely a possibility with, and I kind of think it's true, like, somewhere in the back of my head, this is… that with when it comes to government jobs and civil service, they, like, a lot of the employment law is the same, but they go ahead and define it very specifically for government jobs. And so that there may be some differences between regular employment law that applies to everybody and government. Well, it’s kind of like for teachers. When it comes to, okay, when it comes to salaried employees, okay. Generally speaking, if you're salaried, you can't be told specifically, you know, what hours to keep and when to be there unless, like, time is of essence to the position, unless it is related to your position in the business and related to the business hours or whatever. And so, I mean, that would clearly apply to teachers, you know, because the school has a certain stop time. But there's also, at least in the state of Texas, like, separate laws regarding that for teachers, even though teachers are salaried, so they'd be covered, like, but they went ahead and specified some things for teachers.
Steve: Well, and, like, I think some of the stuff that civil servants do have a fair amount of job security once they're in, some of that, may be driven by laws, some of it's driven by government policy, you know, some kind of, like, corporations have policies that they have to check certain boxes where they can fire someone. Government agencies may have similar procedures in place whether that's dictated by law or not.
Mack: Well, and at a certain point, it can, those kind of policies and how they get implemented and the fidelity with which they're implementing that can lead to inertia. Where it's just like, okay, it's like, do I really you know, you've got a supervisor who's like, do I really want to put this person on a growth plan and have to do all the managing that goes along with that and . . .
Steve: Just stick them in a corner? Yeah. Well, and then there's the flip side, which is not technically civil service, but other government employees who have very little, if any, labor law protections, including the OSHA protections—which are the staff of Congress. That's kind of a that's a civil service.
Anne: So are you talking about like aids?
Steve: Yeah. The aids, the staff.
Anne: Aren’t most of those interns?
Mack: No, no. They have interns, but, like, every member of Congress gets a certain budget allotment for their staff, and how they structure their staff and what they pay them is sort of up to them. And usually somebody who's coming in has got somebody who's like their henchman or right-hand man or whatever, who's like their chief of staff, who helps them arrange that. And in fact, when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was first elected and took office, she did something different with the structure of her staff. I want to say that they, that basically everybody on staff made something like $75,000. I mean, she made it pretty egalitarian across the staff. Whereas there's a lot of members of Congress where there's definitely a hierarchy, and the people that are at the low end are not making enough money to live in Washington, D.C. So people have to move in together and live like they're living in college, but then their, you know, their top people are making, like, almost as much as a member of Congress might make.
Anne: Right. Okay. That's all very interesting. I want to go back to Project 2025. Because in Project 2025, which I don't think we have to pretend anymore that . . .
Mack: It’s going to… at least parts of it are going to get implemented or they’re going to attempt to implement.
Anne: Yeah, but we don't have to pretend that, like, you know, “Trump’s not affiliated with it!” because I don't think he's pretending anymore. Like his administration isn't pretending anymore. Because y'all elected him.
Mack: Some of the authors were people that worked in his first administration. Some of the authors are long-time people in, with right wing interest groups.
Anne: The Heritage Foundation.
Mack: Well, the guy leading it was from the Heritage Foundation. But others too. I want to say there's, well, I won't say that because I don't remember for sure, but people from that sphere and, you know, I kind of do want to say this. You know, you can make an argument, you can stand back and be objective and say, you know, nobody knows for sure exactly how many government agencies there are. You know, different sources will say different. And you can make an argument that maybe it's too big, that you have overlapping functions and that there's like . . .
Anne: Okay, you’re kind of getting ahead of where I'm going.
Mack: Well, okay.
Anne: Well, what is Project 2025 trying to do to the civil service?
Mack: It is trying to, at the very least, like what Steve was saying, make it easier to fire people who are working in the government that would normally have certain employment protections because they're part of civil service, but then also do some restructuring. Some agencies would cease to exist, and some agencies would be consolidated. And under the idea of, like, okay, we could be more efficient, because some of these, you know, these areas of alleged expertise or whatever we don't really need, like what they were saying about the National Weather Service, which I want to get into as a good example.
Steve: Yeah. Well, the activities they want to do is they want to make it easier to fire civil servants and eliminate agencies they don't like or feel aren't effective enough. But, why? Why do they want to do this, and what is the result? It's going to be A) smaller government because they think smaller government, government’s too big. Period. That’s one thing. And they want to make sure the people in government are more beholden to the president.
Mack: Yes, absolutely loyal to him.
Steve: And it becomes a loyalty thing . . . because one of the reasons the civil servants have protection is so they can give objective information to policymakers.
Anne: So they can disagree with them.
Steve: Yeah. Policymakers may not like it, but the civil servants feel free to disagree and push back and explain why these are bad ideas, because they can't get fired for bringing bad news. You start making everybody fire-able over bad news and nobody's going to be that messenger.
Anne: Yeah, okay. So that's kind of what I wanted to get to is what is the benefit of reducing the civil service for this administration, for this group? Okay. They claim they want small government. Hahaha. I can give lots of examples of why that's bullshit. But they want small government in certain areas. This particular area.
Mack: Yes. In a number of particular areas.
Anne: And so it's a control thing, because that you have that many more people that are loyal to you and doing what you say?
Steve: Yeah, I mean, you want to eliminate the agencies that get in the way of you making money. You want to eliminate agencies so that . . .
Mack: That get in the way of your policies. This is why they want to go after the National Weather Service and NOAA.
Anne: Right. So why don’t we use that example.
Mack: Okay. So… so to start with, sort of the big picture part of their argument is that --
Steve: Hold on. One scene-setting thing. So, we're talking about NOAA and the National Weather Service. We’re talking about the agencies that collect and analyze atmospheric and oceanographic information primarily for the purpose of recording weather history and analyzing weather data and looking and observing for short-term and long-term trends. Both weather forecasting, as we're used to seeing for the next 5 to 10 days, as well as climate forecasting.
Anne: Well, and also as a warning system, correct me if I'm wrong, if there's inclement weather that could kill people.
Steve: Yes, yes. Weather alert system. And both the short-term things like tornadoes as well as things that change and so forth.
Mack: Yes. Well, and even, well they don't do earthquakes, it's the U.S. Geological Survey. So in Article II, and I mentioned this a little bit ago, the executive powers vested in the president of the United States. And so the argument of the Project 2025 people is that that means it should be like anything in the executive branch, including all of these agencies, should be doing what the president wants. And they were specifically targeting NOAA and the National Weather Service because they say there are some of these agencies that are part of the, what did they call it, like, the climate, fear, whatever, suggesting that a lot of the data that they've collected, they're just making up bullshit and that there is really no climate change, you know, notwithstanding the evidence that we experience in a yearly basis. And so there's this part in [Project] 2025 where—the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, they also do surveys. They have survey ships to do soundings. So we make sure that we don't have ships run aground and things like that. They generate the nautical charts and other things. National Weather Service, as we said, collects data and tries to develop advanced forecasting models so that we could be better about tornado warnings, hurricane warnings, and that sort of thing, and be good about communicating to the public in a way that the public will actually pay attention and respond. But what they say is we don't really need the National Weather Service. And they cite, and there's specifically there's a footnote where they cite that private entities like AccuWeather, and they specifically mention AccuWeather, among others, like have a much better track record of forecasting. Well, that footnote cites some kind of report, and I went to and I followed the link, and it was a dead link, at least at the time. And this was a few months ago, but it was like a dead, like, the report was not there. And I looked for anything, any kind of data that says that they have a better track record of forecasting. Maybe it's out there, maybe we can look at it for the show notes. I wasn't able to find anything that definitively said they had a better track record in forecasting.
Anne: And where are they getting their data from?
Mack: From the National Weather Service.
Anne: Thank you.
Mack: Yeah. And they use data that is collected by the National Weather Service from all the weather stations.
Anne: Right. They have different people analyzing it.
Steve: Correct. So the vast majority and expenditure of effort and money and time and resources goes into the collection of the data because they're doing it all over the fricking country. Weather balloons, all this other kind of stuff. And there's been a longstanding, I forget the guy's name, but he's a Republican, longstanding Republican donor who owns AccuWeather. Who has been trying for a very long time to make the National Weather Service data not publicly available. He can still get. And then he can be the weather.
Mack: Or any other company that wants to be willing . . .
Anne: So it's privatizing the news --
Mack & Steve: The weather.
Anne: Yeah.
Steve: So this NOAA thing cuts two ways. One, it's a guy trying to give his business a monopoly on the access to weather data. And that's just a straight up money grab. And then the other side is some people in this party don't like climate change, so we're just going to stop that.
Anne: So we'll stop talking about the fact that, the reason why there are so many hurricanes this season . . .
Mack: Or the greater severity of hurricanes . . .
Steve: And they're not caring whether or not this impacts severe weather alerts or people knowing whether it's going to rain tomorrow…
Mack: And they don't necessarily care about that. They want people to buy their app. And then as far as the other stuff, that's on the insurance business side of things—and that’s a whole other thing. But anyway. No, he actually convinced Congress, probably some others, Congress passed a law forbidding the National Weather Service from making a weather app. You have other government agencies like NASA who has a great app.
Anne: National Park Service has an app.
Mack: Yes. National Weather Service is specifically prohibited by Congress from making an app so that the presence of that hypothetical app does not take away from the revenue from the billionaire brothers that run AccuWeather.
Steve: But let me also make a parallel in a different field: tax returns. Where again, the IRS has been trying for decades to stand up their own free file, electronic free filing.
Mack: They did.
Anne: But they did.
Steve: In the last couple years, they actually started standing it up and they were finally getting enough leverage that they were overcoming the TurboTax, H&R block, you know, lobby. And that's likely to get shut down.
Anne: And then you see, this makes me so mad. And I tell this to people every year that by law, you can file your taxes free. You do not have to pay to file your taxes. All of those services that you can do it online, they're trying to make it look like you have to pay them, but you don't. There is an option. It's buried under a whole bunch of ads and selections. Where you can file your taxes for free. You never have to pay anyone to file your taxes . . . at least as of right now. Next four years . . .
Steve: All bets are off.
Mack: So what Project 2025… They're doing this in the name of, and Trump is going to be doing this in the name of, you know, smaller government, more efficiency, and, you know, that they don't want the deep state to actually exist. I mean, this is a way for them to get rid of this idea of the deep state, because they can replace anybody they don't like who they feel is, like, stalling or, you know, preventing the policies of the president from being implemented. Although I kind of wonder if we look back at his first term in office, like, what exactly government civil servants prevented him from doing. Well, like, and if we're talking about, like, people that may have prevented or interfered, I mean, we're talking about actually some political appointees. I mean, think about how pissed he was at Jeff Sessions. Think about how he got rid of all of his chiefs of staff, you know, via tweet. Thank you for your service, it was like, it’s news to me. Fired the FBI. . .
Steve: But I don't know. Those people weren't in isolation . . . like Jeff Sessions. You know, had there not been civil servants around him, you know . . .
Mack: To pressure him to actually follow the law?
Steve: Or whatever. Yeah. I mean, he may not have, you know, there's always a context.
Mack: Well, okay. But even so, it's kind of bullshit because it's just a way of, like, we're just going to have in our own people. But here's the other thing. The data collected by the National Weather Service, that's ours. Our tax dollars paid for it. And Congress in prohibiting the National Weather Service, who we also pay for, from developing an app, they are preventing us from realizing the full benefit of our tax dollars. You know, what we pay for. And now it's going to be even more that it's going to be stuff that we're just not, you know, our tax dollars pay for it, but we're not allowed. Then we're just going to turn all of that over to people --
Steve: We’re allowed to get it. If you pay somebody else five bucks a month for the privilege.
Anne: So we pay for it twice. You mean like health care?
Mack: Only twice for health care?
Anne: That’s actually an excellent metaphor that I would like, now that I've thought of it, I would like us all to stop and appreciate, is, like, every government service becoming like our health care system in America. That's what Project 2025 . . .
Steve: That’s an excellent metaphor.
Anne: … would accomplish if it went through the way they want it to.
Mack: Yeah, some of it definitely.
Anne: Absolutely everything functioning like health care in this system. And that's what millions and millions of people voted for.
Mack: It’s a way to structure it for a small number of people to make a shit ton of money. Or, it would be, if they’re able to . . .
Anne: And who cares if a whole bunch of people die and suffer along the way?
Mack: Yep.
Steve: Yep. So, I was going to go to a narrow group of civil servants: inspectors general. And by the way, it’s inspectors general, not inspector generals.
Anne: But they’re generals . . .
Steve: They’re inspectors general. First of all, I learned a lot about them recently. One of which is we've had inspectors general longer than we've had a country.
Anne: How does that work?
Mack: Under the Continental Congress.
Anne: What were they inspecting . . . like the horses?
Steve: The Continental Army. Yeah. Basically, this is the Valley Forge–type thing where the army was in rough shape.
Mack: Well, and technically we had declared independence, but we weren't under the Constitution.
Steve: We weren't a country. We were just a ragtag group of… anyway.
Mack: On a battlestar.
Steve: Tah-tah-tah-tah. Anyway, so they brought over a German officer, to basically, I guess, to take a look at the army and see if he could fix it. And he came in and he had inspector general powers where he was able to go anywhere because . . .
Anne: Was he called the inspector general?
Steve: Yes, I believe so.
Anne: Was he actually a general?
Steve: Apparently he was a captain or a colonel, but Franklin thought he'd be better able to sell the idea if he said he was a general.
Anne: So, he wasn’t an inspector colonel, he was inspector general.
Mack: And incidentally, I mean, he was German, but this was before Germany was formed. I believe he was Prussian.
Steve: Oh, yeah. Yeah . . . German ethnically.
Mack: It was the famous Prussian warrior caste.
Steve: Yes. So like, basically he whipped the Continental Army into shape.
Anne: That’s where the Trominskis came from. Anyway, sorry.
Steve: Well, there you see.
Mack: So that’s where my dad's mother's side of the family, they came from East Prussia.
Anne: Huh. I wonder if we’re related.
Mack: Could be.
Anne: Anyways . . .
Steve: So anyway, it goes back all the way then. There's been a long history of them in the military, and then the civilian side also adopted them. There's a little bit of difference, but almost every agency has, ever since the late 70s, has an office of the inspector general, and they are somebody who is able to look at any document in that agency, is able to review anything, talk to anybody, do whatever they need to to find out what's going on in the agency. And they're in some ways they're an ombudsman for complaints. They can review anything going on, investigate allegations of waste, fraud or . . .
Mack: Abuse.
Steve: Abuse. Thank you.
Mack: I went to law school for a reason.
Steve: So, anyway, Yeah, that's what they do. And everybody has them. And they do these reports, and you'll regularly hear about them testifying to Congress and doing their investigations and things. And they’re—the good ones—are very independent, and they have direct access to the heads of the agencies, all the things. And if the heads to the agencies don't like what they say, they can go to Congress and tell Congress and shame the agency into behaving. So it's a very powerful and interesting role that had already come under fire under Trump I.
Mack: I also want to say usually when an inspector general of something is testifying in front of Congress, which they do regularly, usually it's not something that's covered on television, might be on C-SPAN or something like that, but sometimes there are some hearings and you can see these, like, these are people that are career professionals. They're good at what they do. They're experts. And you can tell there's, like, they know how to answer questions from a committee, including some hostile members. But you can also tell these are people that are not going to put up with bullshit, not even from Congress. Now they're not assholes to Congress, because that would not be professional, and they don't want to, you know, have their job eliminated or anything, but at the same time, you can also tell that they're the adults in the room when you got a lot of children on the other side of the microphones.
Steve: Yeah, it is entertaining. They're always the grown ups, and they're very somber, and they're very disappointed.
Anne: Hahaha . . .
Mack: Yeah. No. Like they're disappointed in Congress usually. . .
Steve: It's funny because one of the guys that I was listening to at one point, he said our job is not just to point out when things are bad, they’re there to provide solutions, and also to point out when things work. It's like they don't get to do that as much, because people always point at the problems. But yeah, it's a very interesting role that balances the agencies and things. So, I thought it was worth highlighting.
[47:55]
Anne: Now it's time for “What's that over there?”
Steve: Squirrel! My squirrel is another podcast. It's called Next Comes What? by Andrea Pitzer. It is about the incoming administration and what to do. So each episode deals with some sort of topic. I think she's about four in at this point. It tries to give you ideas of things you can do or hold on to to take a stand, make your voice heard, or whatever, to take action. They always end with something actionable to give you something. But I will say the lead up to that, to contextualize it for you, is brutally honest. It is not for the faint of heart. I like it. It's good, but it… Yeah, her background is having done like a historical analysis of concentration camps through history.
Mack: Shit. So, we got 1,400 acres that Texas has just offered up.
Steve: Yep. So, she has some grounding in the background, which she does. It’s very informative, but it doesn't sugarcoat anything.
Anne: This reminds me, apparently there's a group of comedians who like split Up Project 2025 to read different sections, and they have a podcast where they explain their section. They are like, it's the world's shittiest book club. So they're trying to present the information, but in a way that's digestible for lay people.
Mack: Yeah. Well… it's 920 pages. I haven’t read all of it, but, like, I got onto that section on the National Weather Service, and it's like, these guys don't know what the fuck they're talking about. Or they do, but they want to write it like it’s, oh, it's just like this or whatever, because it’s like these people over here do better. And no mention of the fact that, like, we pay for the National Weather Service, and, like, just look at the evolution of hurricane warnings and tornado warnings and things like that. Do you think private business would have done that? Insurance companies might. If you turn weather over to the insurance companies, they would have had an incentive to do that, but I mean, maybe . . .
Steve: That's not who they're engaging with anyway. It's kinda like that whole, like, “government oughta be run like a business.” No, it literally shouldn't. Including the post office. Yes, the post office delivers packages and mail and yes, private entities do too, but they have completely different purposes in life. Missions. It's not intended, the whole reason you have a government is to do things business can't do. And don’t do.
Mack: And recently somebody had said in response to the idea of, like, oh, we shouldn't privatize the post office, because there's people out there that, oh, you want to make it more efficient and cost less, and it's like, no, it's going to be less efficient and cost more.
Steve: Or, it might cost more, or be more efficient and cost less, because if I was running the post office, I would stop serving all those rural routes.
Mack: Right. There's going to be people that do not get any mail if you privatize. Because, and somebody responded and pointed out it's like, you know, DHL, Fedex, and whatever, they pay the U.S. Postal Service to deliver to some of those remote places. And it's like that's part of the purpose of the Postal Service. It's like, because look, Loving County, Texas, okay, 89 people on the border of New Mexico near desert, okay. It is still going to benefit the economy of the United States. I mean, if we want to look at it from a cold blooded, you know, like, what are the numbers and what are the . . . it’s going to benefit the economy of the United States if you've got something that can be distributed or be delivered . . .
Steve: Communicate and connect . . .
Mack: … anywhere. You know, and we should be willing to pay for that, because it benefits all of us.
Steve: And the mail does things that you don't want a private industry involved with, like carrying votes, like carrying mailing and literature and legal notices against the entity. You think you think the private post office is going to carry, you know, cease and desist letters or whatever against themselves?
Mack: And when you have a CEO that can say, okay, just trash it. Oh, that's illegal. That's only illegal because there's a post office and federal laws that, if you get rid of that, it ain't going to be illegal.
Steve: That’s the thing. It's… could government be even more efficient? Okay, but what does efficient mean in this case? Government does things to be effective and to get the job done in an outside of the commerce way, because it needs to get done.
Mack: And sometimes there are practices in business that are efficient. I mean if those can be adopted, I mean that's one of the things I've said in public education. I don't necessarily mind the Texas legislature saying, okay, you all need to adopt business practices. I just wish they wouldn’t force the ones on us that don't actually work. But, you know, you look at how many members of the Texas legislature who have a career in business who went bankrupt at some point.
Anne & Steve: Yeah.
[1:06:38]
Anne: So about civil servants, anybody wanna talk about that at all?
Mack: Nah, not really. It’s boring…
Steve: There’s really good reasons to have civil servants. It's not exciting… often. But I mean, the whole point there is to get the job done in a way that is not subject to partisan vicissitudes.
Mack: Sure.
Mack: We support people in jobs, in government, having expertise in what they're hired for and not being political appointees who may be dumbasses, you know, who get their job because, you know, they were the best fundraiser in Topeka.
Steve: We don't want the people who are enforcing the regulations subject to loyalty tests from the president.
Anne: We also don't want the people who would benefit from a lack of regulation to be in charge of said regulation.
Mack and Steve: Yes.
Mack: Or not just benefit from a lack of regulation, or sort of reset things to funnel money to billionaires.
Steve: And we didn't even talk about the most obvious version, which is that the civil servants are the ones who select who gets government contracts.
Mack: And maybe it's better to have somebody who's neutral.
Steve: Yeah.
Mack: Except that the Trump people are like, no, by definition, they're not neutral. Because if they don't support Trump, they’re not neutral.
Steve: Yeah.
Mack: So here’s a big-picture thing. So theoretically, if they go down this route, because there's a reason why we went to civil service in the first place. If we go down this route, there's a potential this could backfire on them and bite them in the ass somehow in a few different ways. Which is why, like, both parties, 1883 are like, yeah, okay, we need to go ahead and do this.
Anne: Besides for an assassination attempt by a disgruntled person, like what happened with Garfield, like, what would be an example of this backfiring on them specifically?
Steve: So if a Democrat gets in and kicks out all the Republican loyal civil servant and installs a bunch of Democrat loyal civil servants, suddenly all the contracts that were going to Republican fundraisers are yanked. So their businesses collapse.
Mack: And so they decide it's best to have a level playing field. And so, you know what? And I'm going to I'm going to say this too, there were some classes in law school which were advocacy classes where our professors were practicing attorneys who were successful, who were teaching us at night. And one of the things when it came to like voir dire, jury selection and that kind of thing, because you'll see stuff on TV and it's like, oh, we want to get that because, you know, we can sort of game the jury selection and get somebody on there that's going to favor our cause or whatever. They all said, to a person, that the best lawyers, what they want in a jury is a level playing field so they can do their thing. And if you can do your thing, whether you're Democrat or Republican, you want a level playing field. And if you don't want a level playing field, if you want to stack the deck, then A) you're really kind of admitting you're in it for yourself, and therefore fuck you, you know, because you're going to be stealing tax dollars from us is ultimately what that means --
Steve: And you also know you can't win on a level playing field. Otherwise you wouldn't go through the effort. Which is why a lot of the stuff the Republican Party has done politically, too, has been to try to stack the deck when it comes to voters and voting power and things like that, because they know they don't actually have a solid majority. But if they can tweak it here and distorted there, they can stay in power.
Mack: And also, you know what, you could argue for, in certain ways, that Democrats don't have a solid majority, but the disturbing thing is the idea that, okay, we don't have a solid majority, so we're not going to try to convince people that our ideas are better. We're going to try to rig the fucking system. Which the Republicans clearly . . . and if you say, oh no, they haven't, you know . . . fuck you, they have, they have gone all in on how can we rig this to benefit us and our billionaire backers. Because look who's, you know, the people in charge of DOGE.
Steve: Doggy.
Mack: I mean what the fuck?
Steve: It’s in the name, it’s the Department of Government Efficiency.
Mack: You know what. And just right there, the idea that, oh to be more efficient we're going to have to create a whole other fucking department. . .
Steve: With two heads. Because that's always how efficiency works. Great.
Mack: Now let me tell you. Okay. Let me tell you what's going to happen.
Anne: Oh, dear.
Mack: No, no, no. Let me tell you what's going to happen. And please include this.
Anne: Okay, try not to cuss too much.
Mack: Okay. So in short order the two of them, okay. Elon Musk and Ramaswamy. That Ramaswamy is going to fall by the wayside. He's just going to, and people are going to say, wasn't there a second person. He's just going to fall by the wayside. It's going to be Elon Musk, number one. And then number two, something is going to happen. There's going to be a falling out, because you can't have, because Trump will not tolerate anybody who he thinks is stealing his limelight. And so there's going to come a time. And it may very well be a tweet where it's like, I would like to thank Elon Musk for his essential contribution to making government more efficient, and we wish him well, and continuing with SpaceX and Tesla. And Elon Musk is going to be like, what? And I mean, it's going to be something like that where there's going to be a falling out. Now, here's the thing. Is Elon Musk going to sort of, okay, I say take it gracefully. It won't be gracefully, but is he going to do like sort of a low key, like, okay, I'm pissed, but okay, I'm still going to play the game, or is he going to all of a sudden turn petty and vindictive as hell and, like, do just everything he can to undermine the Trump administration?
Steve: I disagree with the premise because you described him as turning
vindictive.
Mack: Toward Trump. No, he's got that capacity within him, but I mean, toward Trump.
Steve: No. In fact, at this point, honestly, with what's happened in the last week, and for those listening in a month from now, this is the week where Elon Musk commanded the GOPs in Congress to tank the deal they had already negotiated for themselves. And then he made them turn against it. And then Trump wanted a different deal. And Congress didn't do what Trump wanted and did do what Musk wanted and then ultimately failed altogether. And they barely passed something just now to keep the government open with Democrat votes, because 35, 37 voted against it. And interestingly, the Democrats were a united bloc, and so I'm honestly wondering if Musk and Trump are going to make it to inauguration at this point.
Mack: And that's fair.
Anne: Well, that is something that, like, since our last episode of “Now What?,” you know, and we were having a hard time with perspective at that moment in time. But that is something that has come up with a lot of people. I've heard other people comment on, and then I think we've discussed it amongst ourselves, is that this group is only hanging together because they want power. And as soon as power is threatened, they will turn on one another because that's all they're interested in. And so things like writing to Congress and saying you disagree with something, things like organizing protests or organizing boycotts, will be effective, because if somebody thinks, hey, my personal election bid might be affected by this, I will gladly cut ties with the person I've been supporting up to this point in time if it benefits me. And so let’s—friendly reminder to everybody at home, what happens in two years?
Mack: Congressional elections.
Anne: That’s right. All of their jobs are . . . Not all of them, obviously, but a lot of their jobs are up for vote.
Mack: So all members of the House of Representatives, and like you said, one third of the Senate, and in Texas, as well as other states, really shouldn't be called an off-year election because we're voting for governor. And in Texas, lieutenant governor, and attorney general, railroad commissioner, general land office, etc., Secretary of Agriculture. Sid Miller.
Steve: Sid . . .
Anne: The point is there's a lot of stuff that we can do. And you know, when a child molester tried to be, you know, they tried to put him in charge of things. A really well-timed article took him down.
Mack: Well, and threats to release the House ethics report, which still may get released now. Cause there’s a lot of Republicans that are like, whatever else, you know, different House Republicans may feel about pro Trump or not Trump or whatever, they know they don't want that asshole.
Anne: So when you hear things like Project 2025…
Mack: Except for Marjorie Taylor Green.
Anne: … and attacking the civil service and things where it does seem very dour and feel very grim, there are tools that we can use and can do because they're on a house of cards. This is not a strong coalition.
Mack & Steve: No, it's not. No.
Anne: They put up the front of being a strong coalition, but they're not. They're a clown-car coalition.
Steve: They’re extremely fragile.
Mack: I want to add to that, because it's in any party at any given time, no matter how much of a united front, parties are a coalition, to some extent, and the Republican coalition currently, there are potential lines of fracture that could be exploited. A) if the Democrats get their shit together, and I know that's a tall ask. But people who are dedicated, you know, you want to protest, you want to write to members of Congress, you want to… however active you want to be, that's going to help your cause, because it always has in the past for the causes. It's helped. But that's going to matter. And, you know, there could potentially be things that the Democrats could exploit of the Republicans because those lines of fracture exist even within the Texas Republicans. Like, if we want to talk about, and we can't, I mean, I can raise this, we're not talking about it tonight, but like school vouchers. And that because the reason why it's been killed is because of other conservative Republicans from rural districts who are like, that ain’t going to benefit any of us. You're basically taking our money and giving it to people that are sending their kids private school anyway. It’s bullshit.
Steve: And I’ll say, in addition to the, there are actions you can take that can help promote your causes and further things. And in some ways, what you're doing is sort of providing raw materials and energy for the political parties to do it. It's easier for them to exploit lines of fracture if they've got people writing their congressmen and protesting and so forth. But also, it makes you feel better to take action.
Anne: It does.
Steve: Even if, yes, you're just writing a letter to your congressman. Yes. You're walking in the street and after you're done walking in the street, it's important with your friends. And if you don't see anything happen at the end of the walk, but you're going to feel better. And we need that.
Mack: It’ll mean something.
Steve: Yes, it will. It will mean something in the larger scheme. And you personally will feel better having taken action. When you feel overwhelmed, when you feel like there's nothing you can do to help things, you’ll feel better to take action.
Mack: One letter, one email, one phone call. It does matter.
Anne: They add up.
Steve: Yeah, they do. They do.
Anne: And it's the people who are paying attention that are going to make the change.
Mack: Another thing, like, if for people that want to get active in a party, like, if you're somebody with a more conservative bend but you don't like what's been going on in the Republican Party, be active. If you think, okay, the Democrats, at least in some places, seem to be kind of feckless, it's like, be active. You know, just that, I mean, they have websites, they have ways of volunteering. You can show up to the meetings. They look for volunteers, you can make a difference.
Steve: You don't have to be a magical order to contribute helpfully. You can stuff envelopes. Yeah.
Mack: You can go door-to-door.
Steve: There are ways for you to help with the skills you have.
Mack: Yeah, I mean people do that right now. And, you know, and I can say, and it kind of makes me proud, I've had students, many students, actually recently, who have been politically active in one way or another doing their part and helping out for causes that they believe in. And it makes a difference.
Steve: So here's to making a difference.
Mack & Anne: Making a difference.
Glasses Clink.
Anne Trominski was born and raised in El Paso, Texas, but now resides in San Antonio. She graduated from Trinity University after majoring in English and Communication. She spends her dull working hours as an editor for a major publishing company and her personal time as an oft-frustrated writer and amateur podcast producer. She has written two yet-to-be published novels, countless reams of heartfelt poetry, and has tried her hand at blogging a few times. Anne is also a gastronomist, amateur chef, and student of health science. She is a constant learner and explorer and likes to drop knowledge on others like it’s hot. Most recently, she helps disseminate social science info through the podcast Civics on the Rocks.
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