{"id":3356,"date":"2018-08-17T07:38:21","date_gmt":"2018-08-17T12:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lisa.rushworth.us\/?p=3356"},"modified":"2018-08-17T08:47:34","modified_gmt":"2018-08-17T13:47:34","slug":"the-spoils-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/?p=3356","title":{"rendered":"The Spoils System"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>How a company, political organization, or non-profit spends their money doesn&#8217;t bother me that much &#8212; it&#8217;s a factor I consider when donating to &#8220;the cause&#8221; or purchasing from a company. I can appreciate that one feels betrayed when, say, some of your University tuition is used to pay off women and pizza delivery people who have been attacked by the school&#8217;s hockey team, thus suppressing reporting and criminal charges (then bragging to prospective students about the ZERO on-campus crime rate). Or the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/trump-used-258000-from-his-charity-to-settle-legal-problems\/2016\/09\/20\/adc88f9c-7d11-11e6-ac8e-cf8e0dd91dc7_story.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">quasi-celebrity fronted charity uses donations to settle legal disputes involving the quasi-celebrity<\/a>. Or your <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2018\/08\/16\/politics\/omarosa-tape-lara-trump\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">political party offers a decent salary<\/a> to someone they simultaneously claim is a terrible employee who needed to be fired. *But* those were all choices you made. And you&#8217;re free to make new choices next time around based on new information. I can even see how it would really suck to believe the Republican party has the right way of things, and you *want* to provide financial support, but you also have to accept that some percent of your contributions are going to salary for unqualified individuals who they want to keep quiet.<\/p>\n<p>What bothers *me* is that Trump has essentially admitted he handed a <a href=\"http:\/\/lisa.rushworth.us\/?attachment_id=3357\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"attachment noopener wp-att-3357\">179,700$ per year job<\/a> to an utterly unqualified individual because of their personal relationship.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lisa.rushworth.us\/?attachment_id=3359\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3359\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3359\" src=\"http:\/\/lisa.rushworth.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/GriftingForFriends.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"746\" height=\"381\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/GriftingForFriends.png 746w, https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/GriftingForFriends-300x153.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 746px) 100vw, 746px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>*I* didn&#8217;t chose the grifter-in-chief, but it&#8217;s still my tax money going to his friends (at that, to his &#8220;racist dude&#8217;s obligatory non-white, I cannot be a racist because Bob&#8217;s my friend&#8221; friend &#8230; although there are *whole binders full* of unqualified old white dudes grifting in Trump&#8217;s administration too.)<\/p>\n<p>Our tax money going to political supporters who are unqualified for the job? That&#8217;s why we&#8217;ve got the Pendleton Act and the subsequent civil service system &#8212; every politician could find somewhere for their friends and supporters to suck up taxpayer money for a few years. And the inverse: a politician could garner key supporters by offering them cushy government positions. And an unlucky politician could garner a supporter who considered himself key, anger the chap by not giving him one of those cushy jobs, and get shot. Maybe it&#8217;s time to eliminate the remaining &#8220;at the pleasure of the president&#8221; job appointments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How a company, political organization, or non-profit spends their money doesn&#8217;t bother me that much &#8212; it&#8217;s a factor I consider when donating to &#8220;the cause&#8221; or purchasing from a company. I can appreciate that one feels betrayed when, say, some of your University tuition is used to pay off women and pizza delivery people &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[645,644,211],"class_list":["post-3356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-all-the-best-people","tag-grift","tag-maga"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3356"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3360,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3356\/revisions\/3360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rushworth.us\/lisa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}