Cleaning Up After The Elephants: Volume 2-‘You’re FIRED!’

“Some of us are like a shovel brigade that follow a parade down Main Street cleaning up.”–Chief-Of-Staff Donald Regan after a typical Reagan screw-up.

I know it’s like removing ticks from an abused dog.  Here are the MAGAt bloodsuckers who Biden has forced out of government since he took office:

Kathleen Kraninger: Director Of The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau:

Kraninger, who had no previous experience in consumer protection, immediately tried to undermine the agency’s role as a watchdog for the financial sector. She scrapped a landmark rule that restricted predatory payday lending, pressuring staff to downplay the resulting harm to consumers. And she refused to enforce a federal law that protected military personnel against a broad range of predatory lending. Her decision yanked federal support from military families who were defrauded by lenders. In the midst of the pandemic, Kraninger also approved a rule that allows debt collectors to harass Americans with limitless texts and emails demanding repayment.

Peter Robb And Alice Stock: National Labor Relations Board:

Twenty-three minutes after assuming the presidency, Joe Biden demanded the resignation of Peter Robb, the notoriously anti-union general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board appointed by Donald Trump. Robb refused to resign, so Biden fired him. Alice Stock, another anti-union Trump appointee, then assumed the role of acting general counsel—and Biden demanded her resignation the next day. Stock also refused to resign, so Biden fired her, too.

Both Robb and Stock, who relentlessly undermined unions’ ability to organize and bargain, are now complaining that Biden fired them without just cause. Stock went so far as to suggest that Robb’s firing was illegal. She is wrong. Robb and Stock were at-will employees of the executive. Like the countless American workers whom they prevented from unionizing, they had no guarantee against termination without just cause. Biden did not violate any laws. He simply gave the nation’s chief union busters a taste of their own medicine.

Michael Pack: Chief Of The US Agency For Global Media:

Michael Pack resigned as the chief executive office of the US Agency for Global Media just minutes after President Joe Biden was inaugurated on Wednesday. The agency runs the Voice of America and sister networks.

Pack – a political ally of freshly pardoned rightwing ideologue Steve Bannon – had created a furore when he took over the agency last year and fired the boards of all the outlets under his control, along with the leadership of the individual broadcast networks. The actions were criticised as threatening the broadcasters’ prized editorial independence.

Robert Reilly And Elizabeth Robbins: Voice Of America:

In its first full day in office, the Biden administration dismissed the director of Voice of America, Robert Reilly, and his deputy, Elizabeth Robbins, and replaced them with experienced journalists with long careers at VOA and other government-funded networks, according to a statement from the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees the media outlets.

Reilly, a conservative commentator, is the author of such books as “Making Gay Okay: How Rationalizing Homosexual Behavior is Changing Everything.”

Even after Joe Biden was sworn in as president on Wednesday, Robbins and another former Trump administration political appointee at the agency, John Jaggers, continued efforts to try to fire several employees on Thursday, according to David Seide, a lawyer representing the employees.

The two pushed to remove the staff members even though the Biden administration had issued instructions to suspend any personnel actions or proceedings at VOA and other networks.

Steven Dillingham: Director Of The US Census.  Well, he resigned. But he would have been fired if he hadn’t resigned:

The White House installed four high-level political appointees in the Census Bureau and ordered the bureau last year to produce a state-by-state count of unauthorized immigrants so that they could be deducted from population totals used to reapportion House seats later this year.

Attempting to meet that rush order, Mr. Dillingham ordered the census count itself curtailed by a month, loosing a flood of lawsuits and raising more questions about the accuracy of a population count already imperiled by the pandemic.

Advocacy groups and Democrats in Congress began demanding Mr. Dillingham’s resignation last week after the inspector general at the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, revealed that it had opened an inquiry into his management of the agency. Whistleblowers claim that he and other political appointees had pressured career employees to complete a technical report on undocumented immigrants before the Trump administration ended despite deep concerns about its accuracy.

Michael Ellis: NSA General Counsel.  He’s been placed on Administrative Leave following his last-minute appointment to this position by Trump:

The last-minute installation of Ellis drew considerable scrutiny because the role of general counsel at the country’s largest intelligence agency is a civil service position, not a political role, meaning it could be difficult for the Biden administration to remove Ellis.

Before joining the Trump administration, Ellis served as the head counsel to California Rep. Devin Nunes, a Republican who is one of Trump’s staunchest supporters.

Ellis then became a lawyer with the National Security Council, refusing to testify as part of the House’s 2019 impeachment inquiry. In March 2020, Ellis became the senior director for intelligence on the NSC, joining other Trump loyalists in key intelligence positions.