The article below is a “time capsule” back to 1981. We are approaching the same conditions that include a reduction of federal employees, but it didn’t really happen. The only Federal employees who left were Liberal Democrats who quietly retreated to Academia, Liberal Think Tanks and other Liberal-friendly venues. Now in 2025, I expect Liberal Democrat Saboteurs will be fired. Most Democrats who have supported the rule of law could remain.
The end of the US Department of Education is the bell-weather to paring back federal control to comply with the 10th Amendment. Most Federal Agencies will be reviewed for reorganization and reformed. Some may be removed to return to the States. Overlapping Agencies may be consolidated. I named these overlapping agencies as “Department of Redundancy Departments”. I also used to call Republicans who campaigned as Conservatives and voted like Democrats “Demo-publicans”. Later they were called “RINOs”.
I attended a “meet the candidates” gathering in Kansas and most of the attendees were government employees lobbying to save their jobs. It was a scene out of “Damien and the Lepers”. Where the Lepers of Molokai gathered to meet Fr. Damien as he returned with food supplies. That experience prompted me to write the following satire:
Meet Gladys by Norb Leahy, Kansas Business News April 1981
The great hue and cry from the land has been to cut government spending. Beginning with the elections last November, followed by President Reagan’s announcement of cuts in the Federal budget and now the struggle between cutters and defenders is in progress. In one camp we have taxpayers beset by Inflation and demanding a reduction in Government Spending. In the other camp we have special interest groups, proponents of causes, consultants, government contractors and of course the most abused of them all, government employees.
The Leahy family discussed the plight of the government employee, faced with hiring freezes, budget cuts, fewer trips and older office furniture. And with the milk of human kindness flowing in our veins, we resolved as a family to adopt our own government employee. Oh, we discussed adopting a Korean or South American child, but language barriers dissuaded us from this plan. Maybe next year.
At first were weren’t sure we could afford one. But when we sat down to estimate how much our family pays in taxes each year we thought we might be able to swing it.
First we estimated what this year’s Federal withholding contributions might be. When we saw that, we were encouraged to go on. Next we estimated what we’d contributed to Social Security tax, but we still needed more. So we estimated our state withholding, public school tax, local tax and sales tax. As you can see in the table below, we could scrape up $9,569.88
Federal Tax
$4956.64
Social Security Tax
$2467.40
State Tax
$645.84
School & Local Tax
$1000
Sales Tax
$500
Total $9,569.88
We weren’t sure how much we’d need to support a government employee, but we were sure that $9,569.88 might at least support a clerk-typist or something. We discussed it as a family and decided a Clerk-Typist might be nice.
The next problem we encountered was that we souldn’t be allowed to adopt a whole government employee, because the taxes we paid were probably sent to a lot of different government employees we didn’t even know. How impersonal!
So, rather than go through all the red tape of getting permission to send the whole $9,569.88 to one person, I decided we would settle for sort of an honorary adoption. We could exchange letters and photographs. After all that’s the important part of adopting someone from another country.
Our next problem was to find a government employee who earned less than $9569.88 and boy I’ll tell you that was a job! Well, we finally found one, Gladys is a clerk typist in Wichita who, because of fear of reprisals wished to remain anonymous.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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