You're a federal agent, working for the Drug Enforcement Agency, and you're in Colombia on an assignment to help take down Colombian drug cartels. It's hard work. You'd love some R&R. And hey! It turns out you and a bunch of your fellow agents are invited to a massive orgy with Colombian hookers, being paid for by those very same drug cartels!
A bit of a professional conflict of interest, to be sure, but all work and no play . . .
So when your boss finds out, you're a four-bagger for sure, right? Well see, that's the funny part. Not funny ha ha but funny you want to rip your hair out. Government employees have civil service protections, negotiated collectively by government employee unions, because you wouldn't want the higher-ups in the government just arbitrarily firing DEA agents in some sort of knee-jerk fashion. That might not be fair.
So you're going to get a two-week suspension, and that's it. Then you can come back, at which point, dude, where's the next orgy?
This is simply unreal, but folks, this is how the federal government works. If you don't get that, you'd better get it quickly:
There's no defending Michelle Leonhart's pathetic performance here. Even if it's true that she has no authority, you'd think she'd demonstrate some recognition of what a big problem this is, and some frustration over having no authority to take action. But she's basically just shrugging her shoulder and saying, hey, out of my hands. And oh by the way, yeah, some of them even got bonuses. Funny how government works, huh?
Leonhart has been there 10 years, and Democrats will gleefully point that out because it means she was put in place under the Bush Administration. Fine. Enjoy that talking point. I would simply tell you this: All you liberals who believe so passionately in the idea that the federal government can solve people's problems should understand that what happened here is not an anomaly. It is how the federal government normally works. In fact, it is how the federal government is designed to work. Agency employees can run absolutely wild and agency leaders can do nothing about it, because every wet dream of union leaders about how a workplace should operate is manifest in Washington.
If the members of Congress are as incensed about this as they (even the Democrats) sound in this video clip, then let them take action by defanging the government employee unions and instituting real accountability for federal employees. That won't solve everything that's wrong with the federal government - not by a long shot - but it would be a good place to start.
And if Obama would veto such legislation because he knows Democrats depend on those same unions for campaign cash, then wait two years and pass it again after the voters have wisely declined to elect yet another president who will do the bidding of those same unions.
