By Catherine Mortensen

If President Donald Trump wins a second term, one of his top priorities should be reforming the federal civil service. It could be tougher than brokering peace in the Middle East. Many presidents have tried and failed to root out lazy, incompetent, and even corrupt federal bureaucrats.

A typical federal worker has a less than a 0.5 percent chance of being fired for cause. Some of these entrenched bureaucrats have long been an embarrassment to hard-working Americans whose tax dollars pay their salaries. But now, in the age of the deep state, bad actors in our civil service threaten the very foundation of our democracy and President Trump would be wise to finally clean house.

Who can forget the case of the Environmental Protection Agency employee caught with 7,000 pornographic files on his computer? He had been viewing pornography while at work for years, and even received performance awards for his time at the agency. Incredibly, he was watching porn when inspector general agents visited his office. The employee,  who earned a six-figure salary, was never fired, only placed on administrative leave.

Then there was the case of the EPA employee selling jewelry and weight loss pills out of her office. This same woman also hired 17 of her family members and friends as paid interns. She was also paying her daughter — who also works at the EPA — from her agency’s budget account. But instead of being punished, you guessed it, she received a prestigious Presidential Rank Award in 2010, for which she got $35,000 in cash.

More recently, entrenched deep state federal workers have tried to take down a president. Former FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page — and the entire Russiagate fiasco — are exhibit A for why Congress and President Trump must work together to reform the civil service.

“You can’t drain the swamp unless you can fire the swamp,” said Rick Manning, president of Americans for Limited Government. Manning supports the MERIT Act, legislation introduced by Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) and U.S. Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) that creates a faster pathway for firing incompetent, lazy or recalcitrant federal employees. “It is a necessary first step toward ending the politicization of the federal civil service workforce,” added Manning.

Sen. Perdue says the MERIT Act would bring more accountability to federal employment. According to a 2019 press release on his website, this bill would revise provisions related to federal employment, including the furlough and removal of federal employees, the calculation of federal employee retirement benefits, and the length of the probationary employment period. It would apply the same standards for expedited removal for the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2018 via legislation to the rest of the federal government.

“With a $22 trillion debt crisis, we cannot afford to hold onto bureaucrats who aren’t doing their jobs,” said Perdue. “Government employees should be held to the same standards as private sector employees, yet it is nearly impossible to fire bureaucrats for failing to do their jobs,” added Perdue. “Right now, it can take more than a year to fire or replace a civil service employee, even for poor performance or misconduct.”

U.S. Rep. Loudermilk has also introduced his companion bill in the House. In reintroducing the bill in the current session of congress, Loudermilk stated in a press release, “Unfortunately, some federal employees have learned they can take advantage of this antiquated system and are using their positions for personal gain, or are consistently derelict in their duties. The current federal employment system unfairly protects these bad actors from dismissal, which allows them to game the system without fear of losing their jobs.”

According to Sen. Perdue, since President Trump took office, more than 4,300 bad actors have been fired, demoted, or suspended at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

It’s time to expand those efforts and address problems across the entire federal government. “We must hold federal workers to the same standards as everyone else,” concluded Manning. “If they can’t or won’t do their jobs, they need to go. If any president can succeed in this difficult reform, it is President Trump. He has our full support in this effort.”

Catherine Mortensen is the Vice President of Communications at Americans for Limited Government.

To view online: http://dailytorch.com/2020/09/trump-needs-to-clean-house-in-a-second-term/

Video: California or Califraudia?

 

To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBBItntk1hM&feature=youtu.be

---

Biden’s Green New Deal will end fracking, make America beholden to China

 

By Robert Romano

Former Vice President Joe Biden is promising to implement the Green New Deal, setting a national target for 2035 to cut carbon emissions in half in a move that would end the fossil fuel industry for transportation and electricity as we know it. That means no more oil. No more coal. And no more natural gas.

But in the same breath, Biden is attempting to persuade voters in states like Pennsylvania that he is not going to end hydraulic fracturing that makes it possible to extract petroleum and natural gas from geologic shale formations.

In Pittsburgh on Aug. 31, Biden said, “I am not banning fracking. Let me say that again. I am not banning fracking. No matter how many times Donald Trump lies about me.”

But in the July 2019 debate on CNN, Biden said “We would make sure it’s eliminated,” in response to a question about whether his administration would find any place for “fossil fuels, including coal and fracking”.

And in the March 2020 one-on-one debate with Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (D-Vt.), Biden responded to Sanders’ statement that “I’m talking about stopping fracking as soon as we possibly can” with “No more — no new fracking.”

Now, Biden is saying he means only on federal lands. He told WGAL in Harrisburg that “What I said was I would not permit more fracking on federal lands. The fracking that’s taking place now I would not stop at all.”

Biden cannot have it both ways. Either he wants to eliminate carbon emissions including fracking, or he doesn’t. It’s a complete contradiction.

Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning said Biden brought the confusion on himself, and says he believes the Biden that would implement the Green New Deal, stating, “Here's Joe's problem: He can't win Pennsylvania, and support ending hydraulic fracturing. The Green New Deal destroys that Pennsylvania's economy just as surely the Obama-Biden war on coal destroyed West Virginia's. Joe has made a deal with the devil, Bernie and AOC, and in his own great tradition, he's lying in a desperate attempt to revive his floundering campaign.”

Making matters worse, Biden is not leveling with the American people about what his Green New Deal will mean for the economy. It will have to be entirely transformed.

The U.S. emits about 5.1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide every year as of 2017, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency: 45 percent from petroleum, 29 percent from natural gas and 26 percent from coal.

Of the portion of emissions devoted to natural gas, 1.47 billion metric tons a year, only 506 million is from electricity generation.

So, right off the bat, 62.7 percent of the electric grid — natural gas and coal — would need to be replaced. Biden says he’ll do it with solar and wind, which currently only comprise 9.1 percent of the electric grid.

All consumption of natural gas and petroleum for home heating in the winter and making hot water would have to end and all homes would have to somehow be refitted with electric heat generation and boilers.

Every building in America would have to be “upgrade[d] or replace[d]” to be net-zero carbon emitting.

Every car and truck in America that runs on petroleum would have to be replaced with electric vehicles. The internal combustion engine would have to be banned.

All airlines would have to be grounded.

It would be the end of the industrial revolution, which the world has benefitted from with the explosion of the human population. Right now it is possible to sustain billions of people. Will that still be true under the Green New Deal without conventional energy?

The rest of the world also emits another 30 billion metric tons a year or so of carbon emissions will similarly need to cut in half or eliminated. What if China and Russia won’t comply?

Making matters worse, switching over to solar electricity would make the U.S. largely dependent on China, where with its rare earth mineral monopoly about 60 percent of solar panels are made, according to the International Energy Agency.

In short, Biden’s Green New Deal is nothing more than a Trojan horse to destroy the economy and make the U.S. beholden to China — which has no intention of instituting similar measures — and who we’ll depend on just to keep the lights on. Why would the American people sign up for that?

Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.

To view online: http://dailytorch.com/2020/09/bidens-green-new-deal-will-end-fracking-make-america-beholden-to-china/

---

Video: Don’t Let Communist China Own Your Child!

 

To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vpUs_DQevQ

---

Video: Calif. pandemic unemployment claims rise 4.4 million since July 25, state says claims are backdated

 

To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J5YVQpVjB4

---

ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured editorial from the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel from western Colorado, President Donald Trump is helping brokering Middle East peace between Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates:

A Mideast surprise

Lost amid wall-to-wall coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic and the upcoming election is a glimmer of peace in the Middle East.

For decades, most Arab nations have said they would only establish diplomatic and economic ties with Israel after the Palestinian dispute was settled.

The Palestinians have relied on this unified Arab response to press for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territory and the acceptance of a Palestinian state.

But the United Arab Emirates last month reached a landmark deal to fully normalize relations with Israel and the Gulf state of Bahrain has recently followed suit.

President Trump, who presented his Middle East peace plan in January, helped broker both accords.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, known as a tough critic of President Trump, called the UAE deal “a geopolitical earthquake” in his Aug. 13 column — one that could stabilize the region and encourage other Gulf sheikdoms to normalize relations with Israel for the security and prosperity of all involved.

To fully appreciate the magnitude of the deal, “you need to start with the internal dynamics,” Friedman wrote. “It was Trump’s peace plan drawn up by Jared Kushner, and their willingness to stick with it, that actually created the raw material for this breakthrough.”

The process apparently began in earnest with the UAE ambassador to Washington publishing a letter in an Israeli newspaper warning that Israeli annexation of the West Bank would undermine quiet progress that Israel had made with gulf Arabs.

When Israel did not begin the process of annexing West Bank territory on July 1 as Israeil Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had indicated, the Emiratis “reportedly took the opportuity to promise full normalization of relations if annexation was taken off the table,” according to an analysis by the Council on Foreign Relations

It was the discussions over how to stop annexation “that created a framework where the UAE could be seen as getting something for the Palestinians” in return for its normalization with Israel, Friedman wrote. However, the Palestinians aren’t happy, viewing both the UAE and Bahrain as traitors to the Palestinian cause.

The UAE and Bahrain — both allies of Saudia Arabia — have shared with Israel worries over Iran, leading to unofficial contacts over the years that have now blossomed into normalized relations. These include business relations, tourism, direct flights, scientific cooperation, and, in time, full diplomatic ties at the ambassadorial level.

The big geopolitical losers are Iran and all its proxies, Friedman wrote.

“This was the UAE telling the Iranians and all their proxies: There are really two coalitions in the region today — those who want to let the future bury the past and those who want to let the past keep burying the future. The UAE is taking the helm of the first, and it is leaving Iran to be the leader of the second.”

In a year so hungry for positive news, who would have guessed that it would have come out of the Middle East?

To view online: https://www.gjsentinel.com/opinion/editorials/a-mideast-surprise/article_7955a468-f6e6-11ea-94fe-d76e498e231c.html

---