> That’s the only rational action when 80-90% of federal civil servants belong to one party.
That's an obvious result of the Republicans making an outright political point of being for a "small state". Like, why should anyone who is a Republican even apply for a job that their own party actively campaigns for to go away?
Unfortunately paywalled so hard that archive(.)today can't index it. Anyway, just blaming a "Democrat-leaning federal civil service" is ignoring the elephant in the room: decades worth of anti-immigration propaganda being shilled by Fox "News" and other TV/radio stations, Murdoch's rags and, last but not least, Russian bot farms on social media.
> decades worth of anti-immigration propaganda being shilled by Fox "News"
Quite the opposite. It takes massive amounts of propaganda to make americans as tolerant of immigration as they are. Most people in the world value their culture, and don’t like foreigners coming into their country in large numbers and changing their societies.
If my home country experienced the kind of immigration the U.S. has seen, where immigrants and their children are so numerous that they’re routinely swinging elections, there would be a civil war.
> Like, why should anyone who is a Republican even apply for a job that their own party actively campaigns for to go away?
Why is that relevant? In a democracy, the voting public has a right to have the federal government reflect what people voted for, regardless of whether any of them choose to work in government or not. Federal workers should be like “dumb pipes” to use an analogy.
> In a democracy, the voting public has a right to have the federal government reflect what people voted for
In Germany, we have a career civil service. Works pretty well, there are almost no complaints about partisanship or corruption. There are complaints that everything takes ages, I'll admit that, but that is mostly due to decades worth of underfunding and sub-competitive wages.
I get the impression that there is less ideological and religious polarization between civil servants and the public in Germany than in the U.S.
Also, keep in mind that U.S. civil servants have far more discretion than in Germany. In Germany, the parliament actively legislates, and the civil service is tasked with carrying out the law. In that system, it’s hard for the civil service to get too far out of step with what the governing coalition in the legislature—who are ultimately elected—wants to happen.
In the U.S., by contrast, Congress hardly legislates. So the civil service not only carries out the law, but in practice uses decades-old laws and applies them to new circumstances they were never intended to cover. Because the elected Congress doesn’t legislate, it has much less control over what the civil service does.
That's an obvious result of the Republicans making an outright political point of being for a "small state". Like, why should anyone who is a Republican even apply for a job that their own party actively campaigns for to go away?
> That’s how we ended up with a federal government that got so extremely out of sync with public opinion on issues like immigration: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/podcasts/the-daily/electi...
Unfortunately paywalled so hard that archive(.)today can't index it. Anyway, just blaming a "Democrat-leaning federal civil service" is ignoring the elephant in the room: decades worth of anti-immigration propaganda being shilled by Fox "News" and other TV/radio stations, Murdoch's rags and, last but not least, Russian bot farms on social media.