Jeffery Wilemon clutched his gut, throbbing in pain as he lay on his bed inside the South Mississippi correctional institution in April. But there was no way for him to cry out – not unless he wanted another beating.
Hours earlier, inmates had slugged the 54-year-old and declared he needed to “follow the rules” their gang had set for prison life, he later wrote in a handwritten pleading filed in Itawamba county circuit court.
After the beating, they escorted him to a gang leader who warned him he couldn’t run or hide because the gang had members everywhere, Wilemon wrote.
No the incorruptible part comes from the restrictions on future employment I’d mandate. You’d struggle to get anyone to agree to do those jobs today without the promise of a high paid corporate job afterwards. At least not competent people.
You can’t have people quitting to go work in the private sector and not have massive corruption basically. You can’t ask people to give up any future career opportunities in exchange for what we pay mid tier civil servants now.
IME we have to be a little more specific about the level of government job. My Dad worked for HUD for about 35 years and was a the top of the civil service. His bosses were political appointees. The people around him at the top of the civil service were almost uniformly dedicated, smart and competent. They were much better on average than the executives at the software company I worked for - people who cashed out for seven figures minimum after the company went public - people who went to Harvard and Stanford business and law school.
The political appointees at the top of the government were usually bad. Even when they may have meant well, like when Bill Clinton tried to reinvent government, they were doing more harm than good, had immense hubris, were never dedicated to the department, and looked at the job just as a stepping stone.
No offense but I get the sense you’re older, which means your dads civil service experience (which seems to have ended in the 90’s when lobbying was bad, but nowhere near as advanced as it is now) has less than nothing to do with how things are in Washington now.
The rules I’m talking about would absolutely apply to political appointees as well. If they didn’t want the restrictions they would be more than welcome to find other opportunities. That would probably dramatically improve the quality of the typical political appointee IMO.
I don’t take offense at being older. I wonder how old you think I am though. My Dad retired twice from the Feds, having gone back after a few years of “retirement”. I know one of the retirements was around 2004 because my approximately 4 year old daughter grabbed the microphone and sang a song during his retirement party speech. I’m pretty sure that was the second retirement.
What should happen is that political appointees should be cut back at least one level, if not all the way. Like choosing the Secretary of HUD from among career HUD employees instead of from some rando Mayor or Congressperson or Neurosurgeon would be a good idea. Obama’s Shaun Donovan may have been the only qualified person ever to be Sec. of HUD.
