Roger O Green

Project 2025: Personnel and staffing

Christian nationalism

I have looked at Google Trends. Since the week of June 3, there has been a definite upward trend in the number of searches for the term Project 2025, “the extreme right-wing agenda for the next Republican administration.” That’s good. Maybe djt is one of them since he claimed he doesn’t know about it but is opposed to many of its aspects. How are both possible?

Leading up to the election, I’ve decided to reiterate its tenets. Regarding Personnel and staffing, “Project 2025’s goals for staffing the next GOP presidency reflect Trump’s idea to gut civil service staff and replace them with potentially tens of thousands of MAGA loyalists. The New York Times describes this plot for a second Trump administration as an ‘expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government’ that would reshape “the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.”

When I first searched for Schedule F, I discovered the IRS Form 1040 to report farm income and expenses. That’s not what we’re looking for.

Here’s an article from The Brookings Institute, a hardly liberal think tank, titled The Risks of Schedule F for Administrative Capacity and Government Accountability.

“Weeks before the 2020 election, President Trump unveiled an executive order that would have created a new class of political appointee, Schedule F. The order would have allowed a president to turn any career official with a policy advisory role into a political appointee, removing job protection and opening the door to vastly politicize the federal workforce.

“President Biden rescinded the order, but Trump has made it a central feature of his re-election campaign as part of his effort to take control of “the deep state…”

“Deep state”

“First, let’s understand the scale of what is being proposed. Among developed countries, the U.S. is an outlier in terms of its existing level of politicization. We use about 4,000 political appointees to run the executive branch, an increase from about 3,000 in the early 1990s…

“Supporters of Schedule F have proposed converting 50,000 career civil servants into political appointee status. That is a massive degree of additional politicization and the most fundamental change to the civil service system since its inception in 1883. Increasing the number of political appointees would create a new venue where political polarization would undermine the quality of governance by replacing moderates with extremists.”

Or, put another way, the cabal would replace people who know how to do their jobs with political hacks. Naturally, the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE) supports legislation to stop it. Unsurprisingly, it was introduced in the House in February 2023, where it languishes.

Pushback

However, back in April 2024, the “Office of Personnel Management issued the final version of its regulation meant to safeguard the civil service from the return of a Trump-era policy that sought to convert most federal employees to at-will workers.”

In a statement, Joe Biden said, “‘My administration is announcing protections for 2.2 million career civil servants from political interference, to guarantee that they can carry out their responsibilities in the best interest of the American people’… Day in and day out, career civil servants provide the expertise and continuity necessary for our democracy to function.”

“The final rule states that an employee’s civil service protections cannot be taken away by an involuntary move from the competitive service to the excepted service; clarifies that the ’employees in confidential, policy-determining, policy-making or policy-advocating positions’ terminology used to define Schedule F employees means noncareer, political appointments and won’t be applied to career civil servants; and sets up an appeals process with the Merit Systems Protection Board for any employees involuntarily transferred from the competitive service to the excepted service and within the excepted service.”

So djt and his people could reinstate Schedule F, but implementing it would be more difficult.

Christian nationalism

Another tenet of Project 2025 is Christian nationalism. It claims that “centralized government ‘subverts’ families by working to ‘replace people’s natural loves and loyalties with unnatural ones,’ utilizing the biblical language of natural versus the unnatural.”

More specifically, “Former Trump official Jonathan Berry’s chapter on the Department of Labor states that ‘the Judeo-Christian tradition, stretching back to Genesis, has always recognized fruitful work as integral to human dignity, as service to God, neighbor, and family’ and claims that Biden’s administration is ‘hostile to people of faith.'”

As a person of faith, I trust my antipathy for Christian nationalism and Christofascism is abundantly clear.

Sunday Stealing: plans for August

Sing Sing

Another Sunday Stealing quiz.

1. What are your plans for August?

My family is going on another trip. I’ll tell you about it after the fact. I will note that my wife and I returned yesterday from the Chautauqua Institution. We were away for a week during its 150th anniversary. I’ll write about it in dribs and drabs in the coming weeks. Also, some major housecleaning is required due to an unexpected development.

2. Your mid-year resolutions or goals

Do more genealogy. My sister Leslie was in our hometown of Binghamton, NY, for a reunion this month, and she got a lot of info from a third cousin (I think) on my mother’s side and my father’s first cousin. Oh, and I plan to do LESS of some other things.

3. Are you good at taking care of plants?

Absolutely not. I have no plants; I’ve never been good with them. My wife has a few, but we must keep them out of reach of our cat Stormy, who will otherwise chew on them and then throw up.

4. What makes you feel nourished?

Interesting question. It depends on what one means by “nourished.” It could be oatmeal or music.

5. Which animals do you see most in your area?

Cats. Lots of cats are in our backyard, so many that our neighbors mistakenly think they are ours.

6. Books on your summer reading list

When folks come to the Friends of the Albany Public Library and present an author talk, I usually buy one of their books. Currently, I have more than a dozen unread. I’ll pick one AFTER the projects are done, which is to say, probably in the autumn.

Hanging like the sword of Damocles

7. Projects you want to tackle this summer

I am editing someone’s book, which I MUST return to; I haven’t touched it all month. Getting our back porch replaced.

8. Do you have weddings, graduations, summer celebrations

We went to the Olin family reunion in July. It’s my MIL’s people.

9. Which summer snacks are you excited to enjoy again?

I can’t think of a thing I eat only in summer.

10. How much time do you like to take for vacations

A minimum of a week. Three-day jaunts can be okay, but it’s not vacating enough.

11. Where are your favorite picnic locations?

Random roadside stops. There’s a nice one on I-86 about a half hour west of Binghamton.

12. Something that would be out of character for you

Not singing.

13. Which summer movies are you excited to see?

I went to the Rolling Stone list of The 44 Most-Anticipated New Movies of Summer 2024. So far, I’ve seen Ghostlight, Inside Out 2, Janet Planet, Thelma, and Daddio, all of which I have reviewed in the links; I liked them all except Janet Planet. Sing Sing is the only movie on the list I know enough about that I would like to see.

14. Your favorite free/cost-effective ways to have fun

Lots of free concerts in Albany

15. Who do you trust most to house & pet sit?

My daughter’s friend Kay

Middle-Road Singles of 1964

different Ray Charles

Billboard began compiling an adult contemporary chart in July 1961. I’m calling this Middle-Road Singles of 1964. What they specifically called the category kept changing.

It went from Easy Listening to Middle-Road Singles in November 1962 to Pop-Standard Singles in May 1964, and back to Middle-Road Singles in November 1964.

Four of the five biggest AC hits were also #1 on the pop charts.

Hello, Dolly – Louis Armstrong, #1 AC for nine weeks AC, #1 for one week pop

Everybody Loves Somebody – Dean Martin, #1 AC for eight weeks, #1 pop for one week. Dean’s NBC variety show began in September 1965 through May 1964, and this was the theme song for the program.

Ringo – Lorne Greene, #1 AC for six weeks, #1 pop for one week. Greene, a Canadian, played patriarch Ben Cartright on the TV western Bonanza starting in the autumn of 1959. After Bonanza moved from Saturday night to the sweet Sunday night slot, the ratings went from #17 (autumn 1960) to #2, #4, #2 (’63-’64), to #1 for three years running.

We’ll Sing In The Sunshine – Gale Garnett, #1 AC for 6 weeks, #4 pop

There! I Said It Again – Bobby Vinton, #1 AC for five weeks, #1 for four weeks pop

Fava – Al Hirt, #1 AC for 4 weeks, #4 pop. Instrumental. The theme of the 1966 ABC show The Green Hornet with Van Williams and Brice Lee was an arrangement of Flight Of The Bumble Bee played by Hirt

Love Me With All Your Heart (Cuando Caliente El Sol) – The Ray Charles Singers, #1 AC for four weeks AC, #3 pop. This Ray Charles was born Charles Raymond Offenberg in Chicago.

People – Barbra Streisand, #1 AC for three weeks, #5 pop

Teen idol

For You – Rick Nelson, #1 AC for two weeks, #6 pop. The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet aired on ABC from 1952 to 1966, with the family, including Rick’s brother David playing themselves.

The Girl From Ipanema – Stan Getz/Astrud Gilberto, #1 AC for two weeks, #5 pop

The Door Is Still Open To My Heart – Dean Martin, #1 AC for two weeks, #6 pop

Navy Blue – Diane Renay, #1 AC for one week, #6 pop

Interestingly, though they dominated the pop charts in 1964, The Beatles were not represented on the AC roster. They didn’t appear on the AC charts until Something, #17 in 1969. Their only AC #1 was Let It Be in 1970.

Lydster: Boggled

Wade In The Water

I am boggled by my daughter’s prowess at the word game Boggle. In 2017, I wrote about the game itself. Then, in 2021, I noted how much better my daughter plays.

Now, she beats me. Every time. I will have a small lead at some point, but she always comes back. She usually beats her mother, too. But my worst results happen when I play both of them. Each of them finds different words that I write down.

Of course, she used words I didn’t see, but also ones I didn’t really know, such as grava and weap.

My wife and I were also boggled by the tattoo she got this month in honor of the late feline Midnight. The design she developed was based on his photo, plus the moon and stars. No, we did not know that was going to happen.

God’s gonna trouble the water.

I was also mildly surprised to hear her singing Wade In The Water around the house. Usually, she’s into a song from 1990s soul artists. Indeed, I did not know she knew the song. I asked her how she learned it, but we got more into the song’s derivation.

Some of her friends suggested it was NOT tied to Harriet Tubman sending a message to enslaved people escaping their bondage. The National Parks Service agrees: “Tubman sang two songs while operating her rescue missions: “Go Down Moses,” and “Bound for the Promised Land.” However, I can find several references stating otherwise. The song is generally considered a recognition that one should venture into even unknown waters because God will be there.

The song was famously included in the 1901 “New Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Fisk Jubilee Singers. The book was published by Frederick J. Work and his brother John Wesley Work Jr., a teacher at the HBCU Fisk University in Nashville who spent years collecting and promulgating songs of this nature.” Here’s a later iteration of the group performing the song.

BlackHistory360 and a United Methodist minister describe the tale’s biblical roots. While it does reference the famous Moses Crossing the Red Sea story in Exodus, the heart is a New Testament tale.

The Gospel

“The refrain… is based upon the narrative of John 5:2-9. It is the story of the pool by the Sheep Gate—Bethzatha in Hebrew. A portion of this passage follows: “Now there is at Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda… In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had .”

It has been embraced by generations of Civil Rights activists. When I was growing up, I thought of it initially as a response to the insane reaction some white communities had to black kids swimming in the local municipal pool or even a particular section of a lake, which I wrote about here; bizarrely, in 2009, there was a then-contemporary example.

Wade In The Water:

Brother John Sellers

Ella Jenkins

The Soul Stirrers

Ramsey Lewis

The Staple Singers

So, my daughter’s venture into older music, which I did not expect, was fruitful.

The 100 best books of the 21st century

The New Jim Crow

“These are the 100 best books of the 21st century, as voted on by 503 novelists, nonfiction writers, poets, and critics.” So sayeth The New York Times. Alas, I’ve read but a few of them. Still, I will mention the ones for which I have… some relationship beyond seeing the author interviewed on CBS Saturday Morning, such as #76 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (2022).

#88 The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (2010)

Around 2012, Lydia Davis spoke at the Albany Public Library, and I picked up this book. A few years later, the Friends and Foundation named her a Literary Legend, and I got to speak with her a half dozen times. “If her work has become a byword for short (nay, microdose) fiction, this collection proves why it is also hard to shake; a conflagration of odd little umami bombs — sometimes several pages, sometimes no more than a sentence — whose casual, almost careless wordsmithery defies their deadpan resonance.”

#69 The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (2010)

Not only did I read it, I reviewed it. It’s an important book.

#48 Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (2003)

I took the graphic novel to a work conference but left it in my hotel room. They shipped it back to me, but it cost me more than buying the book again. It’s here waiting to be read. However, I did watch the movie on a flight from Paris to New York City in May 2023 and liked it.

#36 Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)

In 2016, I wrote that I SHOULD read the book, and subsequently, I did but failed to review it. I found it moving.

A Family Tragicomic

#35 Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (2006)

I did not read the graphic novel, even though ADD said I should, and he’s usually correct. And I probably will. However, I did a touring company production of the musical in 2017 at Proctors Theatre in Schenectady, and I own the Original Cast Album. Here’s the performance from the Tony Awards in 2015

#26 Atonement by Ian McEwan (2002)

I saw the movie adaptation in 2008, which I did not love.

#20 Erasure by Percival Everett 2001

I saw the movie adaptation in January 2024, and I LOVED it! However, they changed the title to American Fiction.

#16 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (2000)

Someone lent this to me years ago, and I got to about page 59 before stopping, and I no longer remember why. It’s still sitting on my shelf, next to Persepolis. Yes, 2000 is in the 20th century; I didn’t make the list.

#7 The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (2016)

It’s been on my Amazon list since 2021.

#2 The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson (2010)

My wife has read and thoroughly enjoyed this 600-page book in the past few years. It’s about the Great Migration of Black Americans from the South to the North and West from 1915 to 1970.