Not In Our House!

"I Pray Heaven Bestow the Best of Blessings on This House and All that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but Honest and Wise Men ever rule under this Roof."

So wrote President John Adams on November 2, 1800, in a letter to his wife after spending his first night in the White House. Perhaps to remind future presidents of the expectations placed on them, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had the passage inscribed in the fireplace of the State Dining Room.

Adams, Roosevelt, and all other deceased presidents are no doubt spinning in their graves because the current tenant is neither honest nor wise, nor does he deserve any blessings.

The White House is the oldest government building in Washington, D. C. It is also the most important because it's where we house our president. Yes, "we," not some faceless "they." The government is still of, by, and for us, and we ultimately own it; Blacks have a special claim to it because their ancestors provided the labor to build it.

The Blasphemer-in-Chief has now declared he will deliver his acceptance speech as the Republican presidential candidate from the White House. He is facing a good deal of resistance to this, including from within his party and senior staff. Typically he's giving it no attention. It doesn't matter, because his plan, however distasteful and galling, is legal.

By now you've probably heard a lot about the Hatch Act. I love its official title: "An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities." The act is named for Senator Carl Hatch, a New Mexico Democrat, and was signed into law in August 1939. One wants to ask what Senator Hatch was thinking when he inserted the word "pernicious." Perhaps he had a vision of #45, the Pernicious President.

The gist of the Hatch Act is that it prohibits employees of the executive branch from engaging in partisan political activity while on duty or in the federal workplace. The problem is, it exempts the president and vice-president.

It seems to me that that exemption is a fatal flaw. I suppose back in the day it went without saying that people who had the goods to become president were upstanding individuals of wisdom and honesty. We should apologize to history and bow our heads in shame for having allowed such a putz as DJTrump into the White House.

When we finally get out of all this craziness I'm going to propose doing away with that exemption. No one is above the law, and the chief executive and his assistant should not be allowed to do something their employees can't.¹

Theoretically, if the president does engage in political activity on government property he would have to do it as a solo gig. If he involved on-duty employees in any capacity he would be causing them to break the law. Trump does this frequently, especially in press conferences and interviews when he regularly trash talks Biden and Harris. Any federal staff who assist in such activities are automatically in violation of the act. The same goes for travel on Air Force One to political events. And any executive branch employee, for instance a press secretary, who publicly speaks of partisan political matters is also in violation.

Penalties for violation are not terribly severe, but they're nothing to sneeze at:  "The penalty structure for violations of the Hatch Act by federal employees includes removal from federal service, reduction in grade, debarment from federal employment for a period not to exceed 5 years, suspension, reprimand, or a civil penalty not to exceed $1,000."²

The elements of this structure that would hit employees hardest would be removal and/or debarment from federal service. I have said elsewhere that people who work for the government, particularly at the executive level, tend to be power junkies. Removing them from the federal workforce would be like uprooting a plant.

Does the Slavemaster-in-Chief care? No. Those employees are, to use an archaic term, cannon fodder. He is exempt from the act and that is all that matters to him. So in his employees we see yet another sector of the American public that Trump doesn't realize actually exists. They are lives that he can disrupt and molest without a thought as if they were no more than insects.

That is why we have to say to his plan to speak from the White House: Not In Our House!


--- Diogenes, 8/20/2020

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¹ Perhaps a compromise could be reached in which the president would have to ask permission from the House to hold such an event.
² U. S. Office of Special Counsel: https://osc.gov/Services/Pages/HatchAct-Federal.aspx#tabGroup51