A pink slip for Smokey Bear?

Chester Arthur would not approve.

Remember when the President did all he could to keep Americans in their jobs? This past week has seen a really extraordinary effort by the White House to move the needle on the unemployment rate – efforts to move it up.

Times sure have changed…

The way things are going, anybody working for a certain fellow who’s run a half dozen businesses into bankruptcy and made himself famous firing people on TV probably has reason to be keeping an eye on the “Help Wanted” ads.

This past week it looks like nobody, from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on down was sheltered from the pink slip blizzard. Heck, I heard it rumored that Smokey Bear was roused from his long winter’s nap with orders to turn in his hat and shovel – Elon claimed the recent wildfires burned up enough that he won’t be needed…

I dunno if ursine unemployment insurance is a thing, but I do know that putting tens of thousands of our friends and neighbors in the unemployment line out of spite and political nastiness is one of two things … Cruel and stupid or stupid and cruel.

Truth is, what it amounts to is a petty political power play dressed up as rooting out waste and inefficiency, and disloyal Deep-staters finally getting what they deserve. Donny T and the Muskrats took after folks with real jobs – park rangers, meat inspectors, bookkeepers -- and to mislead the mush-minded they’re doing their darndest to disparage these hard-working folks and their families as nothing but lazy bureaucrats we’d be better off without.

And that, my friends, is so much bull hockey…

We all do well to remember that federal employees are the folks we depend on for a number of things, rather important things … like putting out forest fires and putting bank robbers in jail. They’re the folks we depend on to get our astronauts home from the space station, keep abscessed pork shoulders from being ground into your breakfast sausage; keep track of bird flu, and make sure airliners land right side up. They make sure your federal crop insurance is properly filed and pay the claim when the rains don’t fall. They see to it your Social Security shows up on time, clean the pigeon poop off the Lincoln Memorial, and collect the taxes to pay for it all.

Of course, they claim it’s all to make government efficient and profitable. But when it comes to government, efficient and profitable are, at best, questionable goals. The KGB was efficient. SAVAK was efficient. Papa Doc Duvalier found being Haiti’s president-for-life extremely profitable. Now, if that made Haiti, Iran, and the USSR wonderful places to live is a particularly pertinent question.

Oh, we all complain about the wait at the DMV, but when’s the last time you had to tip the examiner with a C-note before you could get your license renewed? Dealing with our government may not be fast, efficient, or flexible, but it neither does it involve overt threats, bribery, and coercion, and on the rare occasion it does, there are government watchdogs in place to set it back on the path of righteousness.

Or at least there used to be – those DOGEy fellows have fired most of them…

It appears Mr. Trump is of the opinion that everyone working for the government should answer to him, that all federal workers should be “at will” employees, their tenure in office and job security entirely in the hands of the Current Occupant.

Up until about 142 years ago, that’s pretty much how things worked. They called it the “Spoils System” – as in “To the victor go the spoils.” In practical terms, what it meant is back then, every four years not just the Oval, but the local postmaster’s office was up for grabs…

It was a system that produced no end of chaos and resentment, which really came to public attention when President Garfield turned down Charles Guiteau’s application for a job and Guiteau responded with two shots from a .442 Webley British Bulldog revolver. When Chester Arthur inherited the office after Garfield succumbed, he sought to remove himself from the line of fire by divesting the presidency of its role as employment agency. Two years later, the Congress passed the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883. Since then, the postmaster’s primary job description involved delivering the mail rather than delivering votes. With the advent of civil service protection, a government employee’s political and personal loyalty no longer resulted in “you’re hired,” or “you’re fired!”

Trump calls those the good old days.

The word is out that he is thinking of taking over the post office – any letter carrier not wearing a red MAGA hat may soon be getting a pink slip … probably not in the mail though.

I fear the Postal Service will go the way of Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, Trump University, the Trump Shuttle, and the Trump Taj Mahal.

So, when that tax refund you’re depending on doesn’t show up. When you cancel your trip because your passport renewal got lost in the shuffle. When your mom’s Social Security application doesn’t get processed, and when Uncle Jack’s Medicare payout doesn’t get paid. Don’t worry, it’s just America getting great again.

I guess we’ve been spoiled too long…