Conquest:
White Horse. War: Red Horse
Famine: Black Horse. Plague: Pale horse
(Right now: All 4 are pale)
Current worse example of breaking the law cited below is
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – article extracts here from NBC News and Business
Insider.
The Hatch Act: In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt
signed the Hatch Act into law.
It is a measure meant to preserve the impartiality of
public servants and states clearly the law’s purpose: (1) to ensure that
federal programs are administered in a nonpartisan fashion, (2) to protect
federal employees from political coercion in the workplace, and (3) to ensure
that federal employees are advanced based on merit and not based on political
affiliation.
Among the
prohibitions included is the one that prohibits Cabinet Secretaries from
leveraging their positions for a political cause. That means that the head of an
Agency can’t appear at a campaign rally.
To be clear,
the Hatch Act specifically prevents government employees from using their
position and their station to promote candidates or political parties as he did
at that rally since the basic idea is that the government, once it’s in
government, is supposed to be nonpartisan and that is to prevent the abuse of
power.
Highlights as introduction:
· In an unprecedented and widely
condemned move, Pompeo will appear at the 2020 RNC convention (August 25) during
an official taxpayer-funded trip to the Middle East via video.
· Ethics experts say his address is
likely a violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from
engaging in political activities in their official positions.
· Pompeo himself warned department
employees in a cable last month that all Department employees — including
political appointees — are barred from partisan activity “even on personal
time.”
· Pompeo, who considered a run for
Senate in Kansas while serving in Trump's administration, has a long and
unusual history of engaging in political activities while serving as Secretary
of State.
· Ethics groups have also condemned the
president and the first lady's use of the White House as the setting for their
convention appearances this week.
Diplomats
who are barred by law from mixing work and politics say they're appalled by Pompeo's decision
that breaks a long-standing tradition aimed at isolating American's foreign
policy from partisan battles at home.
It would be problematic enough, current and former
U.S. diplomats said, if Pompeo were simply showing up at the convention to
speak. But the fact that Pompeo is using a stop in Jerusalem during an official
overseas trip for his recorded speech raises troubling questions. They ask: what
message does that send to other countries and American taxpayers footing the
bill?
One current diplomat said: “It's all just shredding
the Hatch Act.”
Pompeo's
speech in service of President Donald J. Trump's re-election appears to
violate the spirit, if not the letter of three legal memos issued by the State
Department's legal adviser.
One of the legal memos, intended to
guide political appointees, says explicitly in bold letters: “Senate-confirmed
Presidential appointees may not even attend a political party convention” which
is the prohibition on politicking that is hammered into department employees in
regular ethics briefings.
Deputy Secretary,
Stephen Biegun, said in a February email to employees that he was even avoiding
talking politics when responding “to emails from friends,” adding: “In my case,
as a Senate confirmed Department official, I will be sitting on the sidelines
of the political process this year and will not be attending any political
events, to include the national conventions.”
The State Department insists that Pompeo is addressing
the convention in his “personal capacity,” and
the RNC said that “everything is being paid for by the committee and Trump's
campaign.”
A spokeswoman said State Department staff weren't
involved in drafting the remarks or arranging his speech, adding that “the
State Department will not bear any costs in conjunction with this appearance.”
A State Department official with knowledge of the
secretary's usual travel arrangements also said: “… even a
brief detour during Pompeo's visit to Israel to tape a convention speech would
involve motorcade drivers, locally employed workers from the U.S. Embassy and
traveling staff from Washington who accompany the secretary at all times, as
well as his significant security apparatus, all of which is paid for by
taxpayers.
Another State
Department official said. “Employees supporting the secretary's trip to Israel
who have sworn an oath to the U.S. Constitution, not a political party, are
also forced to support these partisan activities at taxpayers' expense. It’s outrageously un-American for a sitting
secretary of state to participate in a political convention.”
That official
and others still working for the government spoke on condition of anonymity for
fear of retribution. Their comments were echoed by many former U.S. diplomats
who said the dismay within the diplomatic community was palpable.
For example,
former Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield (35 years in the Foreign Service)
said: “People are extraordinarily upset about it. This is really a bridge too
far. Pompeo is clearly ensuring the State Department is politicized by using
his position to carry out what is basically a partisan mission.”
Former
Ambassador Nicholas Burns, served in the administrations of Presidents George
H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, said it was particularly egregious that Pompeo was
breaching the tradition that domestic politics stop at the water's edge: “We
should want to speak with one voice. To give the perception that one party is
more supportive than the other of Israel is not smart. It's not good for the
Israelis to have this relationship politicized.”
The State
Department declined to answer specific questions about Pompeo's speech,
including where he was recording it. But Israeli media reported that he was
spotted with a camera crew Monday on the roof of the King David, the famed Jerusalem hotel that
overlooks the Old City.
That raised
the possibility that Pompeo would appear at the convention with some of the
most important sites in Judaism and Christianity as his backdrop, sending a
potentially powerful visual signal to evangelical voters.
In his remarks,
Pompeo is expected to tout the Trump administration's staunchly pro-Israel
record, which includes recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital and the Golan
Heights as Israeli territory while allowing relations with the Palestinians to
grind to a halt.
Other
Secretaries of state in recent history have even attended their party
conventions. Although a few secretaries did attend in the 1970s and the 1980s,
historians could point to no example of a secretary's actually delivering a
speech at a nominating convention.
Sen. Chris
Murphy (D-CT) said: “Pompeo is making a mockery of a sacred American office
violating both the Hatch Act and State Department policy. No secretary of state
should ever use a foreign nation as a political prop for partisan gain.”
My 2 cents: Again we see a high-level Trump official taking
it to the limits and not being held accountable. That is core issue here.
Trump and those around him push the limits of most
laws, deny reports about it, and when cornered, they blame everyone around them,
and seldom themselves.
Thanks for stopping by.
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