A Move Towards the Purge of One's Political Enemies

Redstate offers a chilling assessment of recent administration political moves on the hiring of former political appointees. SEE HERE Far be it from me to be too concerned about the civil service except for its sheer size and lack of responsivity. If Redstate is right however, this is a significant partisan political move to eliminate former Republican political appointees from positions they have earned in the civil service and presumably a follow up to staff those positions with Democrats loyal to the administration.

Now it is all papered over in the enabling memorandum with non-partisan language, which seems like a cover. If Redstate is right then this is a totalitarian move. It should be no particular surprise that on the whole the civil service is a pretty leftist bunch on average. Why would you expect anything different? These are folks whose authority grows as government grows. You can make yourself a bureaucracy if the staffing doesn't grow. Work expands to fill the number of positions available so that what one person did in the past grows to be something four people do, then sixteen and so forth. This is just an application of Parkinson's Law properly generalized: "Work expands to fill the time available."