What is the deep state?

dilbert firestorm's Avatar
http://www.realclearworld.com/articl...te_112251.html

the deep state is actually the civil service. it was created in 1871.

Carl Schurz, a German-born Union Army general, proposed the idea of a nonpolitical civil service. It would be both a meritocracy and a technocracy – not his words, but his idea. Civil servants would be selected by competitive exams measuring their skills for the job. And the job of civil servants would be to implement laws passed by Congress in the manner the president wanted them enforced.

New administrators would constantly have to learn the complexities of their jobs, and by the time they mastered it, they would have to leave. Government operations had outgrown a president’s term.

Elected politicians provided direction, while technocrats provided expertise, advice and continuity.

By stripping the president of the right to fire those whose performance did not meet his standards, the solution posed a problem: If a civil servant could only be fired for cause and did not serve at the pleasure of the president, how could the president be certain that the policies being followed were legislated and ordered by him?

solution? the creation of the C-list.

This super civil service, known as C-List appointees, was answerable to the president. But because there were thousands of them, they rarely met with the president and took their marching orders via a chain of command. That chain of command began with the president and continued through the ranks of the Cabinet, C-List, and finally, civil servants. If you have ever played the game “Telephone,” you know how garbled messages can become.

Probably time to reform Civil Service. It is not that easy to fire people. It should be easier, but not too easy tho.