Abuse of the Public Trust
Part Two – The Lawless Executive Branch
When federal agencies violate the law they can get away with it. The Federal agency that prosecutes most violations of Federal laws, the US Attorney’s offices, defend Federal agencies that are accused of violating those same laws. This is similar to the situation of the man who judges his own case. When a person makes a complaint about wrongdoing by Federal agencies to the US Attorney’s Offices, the attorney listening to the complaint has a conflict of interest in even hearing it. In part because of this situation, federal agencies have the freedom to be lawless.
When employees of a Federal agency commit a Federal crime against you, there isn’t much of anything that you can do about it. You can not sue for damages unless the law that makes the act a crime provides you with the right to sue. Because of this when Congress passes a law that makes certain acts Federal crimes its an invitation to Federal agencies to engage in that crime. If the act were not a federal crime, you might have a basis for a constitutional claim. But, once an act has been made a Federal crime, and doesn’t provide you with the right to sue, you are out of luck you can’t sue the Federal government.
The allegation of crimes under title 18 does provide for investigation by the FBI. But there are a series of crimes under other titles often do not have any agency designation to investigate them. When Congress makes it is crime for Federal employees to engage in certain acts, and it doesn’t provide for any agency to investigate allegations of those crimes, the crime can not be referred to anyone for prosecution. This is a difficult concept to understand, so I’ll try explaining this a different way. Suppose that an agency has been entrusted to prosecute people who engage in certain acts, but if there is no agency to investigate allegations of those acts, the alleged crime can not be prosecuted because there has been no investigation.
It is a little madding when are trying to stop an agency from committing millions of crimes and you learn that this is how government actually works. The result of all this is that Federal agencies are free to be lawless. The passage of laws by Congress to regulate the acts of the Executive branch might make for interesting news stories, but it is largely a pointless exercise. The Executive branch is free to conduct the people’s business in as incompetent, irresponsible, and lawless manner as the Executive branch wishes to, and the Executive branch knows it.
To protect the rights of those who disclose wrongdoing by agencies, Congress established the Whistleblower Protection Act. The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) is an executive branch agency that is supposed to investigate allegations of individuals who were subject to a personnel action as a result of making a disclosure about wrongdoing. A former head of the office was once quoted as saying that whistleblowers should have the heads blown off. When an individual’s complaint is denied by the OSC, they may appeal to the Merit System Protection Board (MSPB).
At the MSPB, an individual has the right to be heard by an Executive branch judge about the misconduct of the Executive branch. Once a whistleblower losses their complaint before the MSPB, they can file a petition with the Federal Circuit court of Appeals. There they will lose their petition because the Federal Circuit has a limited authority to over turn a ruling of the MSPB.
When an Executive branch agency commits a federal crime, there is a reasonably good likelihood that it understands what it is doing. It can act lawlessly because there is no force that can act or does act to prevent it. Executive branch agencies know that it is extremely unlikely that anyone from the Courts or Congress will stop them from committing crimes against the people. Individuals trying to stop wrongdoing by the Executive branch just don’t stand a chance.
My complaint against the Census Bureau was that I refused to engage in an act that involved the violation of a ministerial duty placed upon the President. It is the kind of law that the President of the United States is bond by his duty to his office to obey. My appeal, before the Executive branch’s MSPB judge, was dismissed because the agency indicated that it was convenient for it to violate a duty that Congress created for the President. Let me repeat this, I refused to engage in acts that were crimes and involved the violation of duties that Congress placed upon the President. The agency didn’t dispute that its actions were crimes, its defense was that it didn’t retaliate against me when I refused to engage in illegal acts, it undertook a personnel action against me because it was its policy to engage in those allegedly illegal acts.
Because Executive branch employees understand they are not answerable for their acts before the Court or Congress, the rights of the individual, which the three branches were created to protect, are obliterated. Under the Constitution the rights of the people were to be protected within the Constitutional framework. The theory was that no one branch would be able to attack the rights of the people because the other two branches would act as a restraining force. Yet, this is not what is happening, the Executive branch has assumed a kind of power that would make old King George green with envy. The courts have enabled the Executive branch to walk over the Constitution by applying the law as it was derived from the Conquering Kings of old, and Congress is impotent to apply any force to correct the distortion. In writing the Constitution the Founders intended the Executive branch to be subject to the law. It is the court, which has by its judicial interpretation introduced the distortion, which has resulted in the nullification of the intent of the Founders.
The result of this is that the United States is being destroyed from within. The example that Government provides to everyone is one of lawlessness. The law is what you can get away with breaking, may well be the epitaph that will be written to describe the cause for downfall of America. It certainly is the operating mode of the Executive branch. Since the Executive branch is not subject to the laws of the United States, one may well ask to what or who is the Executive branch answerable to?
The answer to this question is the interest groups that have joined with congressional and bureaucratic leaderships to form what are called Iron Triangles. In the absence of being answerable to the law, Iron triangles form the dynamic structures under which our government operates. The ultimate purpose of Iron Triangles is to use the power of immunity inherent in government to further the ends of the Bureaucracy, Congressional staffers, and the interest group that the members of the triangle are serving. As Enron demonstrated so masterfully, buying political interest is less expensive than paying taxes.
For example, well connected corporate investors took over US anti-terrorism policy prior to 911. They focused on two acts, buying up companies that promoted products to fight against terrorist releases of biological/chemicals substances and promoting the allocation of funds in Congress for the products those companies produced. Prior to 911 and since 911 we did not and do not have an anti-terrorism policy based on risk threat management. The point I am making here is that because Executive branch agencies have the freedom to be lawless, and their conduct is not controlled by acts of Congress, the end result is that it is controlled by interest groups.
These were the conditions that led to the terrorist acts of 911, the dot.com bubble, the corporate malfeasance that caused investors to lose trillions, and the California energy crisis. That we the people are isolated from and dependent upon our government for our very lives is a fact of nature. While the reality is that the source of government’s power is we the people, within the beltway the interest groups have usurped the source of that power. Interest groups whose very existence is predicated on the blind pursuit of their own interests.
For the past five years I have endeavored to understand how the
federal government works by pursuing a complaint about the abuse of the
public trust by the US Census Bureau. Each step of the way I have been
mindful that it is important that I do my best to resolve this problem
as soon as I possibly could, to prevent a greater disaster from taking
place. I believe that each one of us has a responsibility for the
nature of our world, we are as responsible for the actions of our
government as the victims of Saddam Hussein were responsible for their
own deaths, because the people did not act when the could to stop his
wrongdoing.
I have grown in ways that I never expected to and have been
worn down in ways that I wouldn’t want anyone to experience. People
know that wrongdoing is takng place, but
it is not in their interest to come forward. If we are going to
survive and prosper in the Digital Age we must change this
condition. It is in no ones interest to have a government that is
free to act incompetently.
I undertook this task years ago because I made a promise that I would not stand by if the right of an individual to be considered for employment were illegally taken away from them. That was my line in the sand. After a year of doing this I swore that I would see it through so that no one had to go through what I have in order to stop their government from doing wrong. We are entering the digital age. It is an age in which it is possible to send and receive disaster messages instantly. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Deliberately malicious acts by terrorists or governments should find no refuge in this age.
Next Part Three
– The Legislative branch – Un-representation