The actual work of government depends crucially on career civil servants. There’s no public task more vital than recruiting, retaining, and managing a corps of smart, honest, dedicated people who believe in the jobs they’re doing and have the respect of those around them.
And there’s no one less likely to do that task well than Scott Walker. Don Kettl explains why. And Ed Kilgore points out how Walker’s union-busting strategy is a big winner with the increasingly Koch-eyed GOP activist-and-donor class.
Like much contemporary Republican ideology, there’s nothing about bashing public employees that fits any sane definition of the word “conservative.”
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman
Because they are unionized. Das ist verboten.
From the linked article by Don Kettl: Walker told a Palm Beach Club for Growth audience that Reagan’s firing of the controllers was “the most significant foreign policy decision of my lifetime” because “it sent a message around the world [that] we weren’t to be messed with.”
I'm speechless.