Americans have until April 3 to challenge proposed subjective ‘suitability and fitness’ criteria for selecting Federal employees.
Released February 14, ‘significant’ amendments to 88 FR 6192, appeal to a subjective reading of an individual’s ‘character and conduct,’ to determine whether or not an applicant is suitable for employment.
Put forward by the Office of Personnel Management, the proposal states,
“Suitability, and fitness refer to a decision by an agency that an individual does or does not have the required level of character and conduct necessary to perform work for a Federal agency.”
Eligibility for employment will be ‘based on whether a person’s character or conduct may have an adverse impact on the integrity or efficiency of the service.’
In sum, the proposed changes have the potential to use a man’s or a woman’s politics, faith, social media use, church affiliation, and ideological leaning to deny them employment.
A fact spelled out in Section 731.103:
“Suitability determinations will look at evidence of conduct that falls within any of four new suitability factors.”
These four new criteria are,
- ‘Knowing engagement in an act or activity with the purpose of overthrowing Federal, State, local, or tribal government.’
- ‘An act of force, violence, intimidation, or coercion with the purpose of denying another individual the free exercise of rights under the U.S. Constitution or any state constitution.’
- ‘Attempting to indoctrinate another or to incite another to action in furtherance of an illegal act.’
- ‘Active membership or leadership in a group with knowledge of its unlawful aim, or participation in such a group with a specific intent to further its unlawful aim.’
These four amendments will ‘replace’ current criteria denying government work to felons, or anyone who had engaged in, ‘knowing and wilful acts or activities designed to overthrow the U.S. Government by force.’
Criticising the lack of reporting about the proposals, The Heritage Foundation’s, Hans Von Spakovsky, was right to express concerns that changes to federal hiring laws,
“…could be abused to deny employment to anyone who questions liberal, woke policies, criticizes the government, or belongs to a politically incorrect organization.”
Von Spakovsky, who is a senior legal fellow at HF, described the “four factors” as ‘vague and nebulous.’
He then called the soft totalitarian criteria, a ‘virtual “Conservatives Need Not Apply” sign when it comes to the federal civil service, leaving rejected applicants with little recourse.’
To pad his point, Von Spakovsky turned to the false Leftist doctrine that ‘words and free speech, were a literal form of violence; intimidation and coercion.’
Reason dictates, he argued, that under this falsehood, factor 2 of Section 731.103, leftists can consider anyone ‘expressing the opinion that there is no constitutional right to abortion,’ to have engaged in an act of “intimidation” or “coercion.”
The point has traction.
New ‘disqualifying factors’ for employment with the government neatly coincide with the Biden administration’s political persecution of pro-life advocates, pro-freedom churches, and pro-America, MAGA voters.
It’s no coincidence the four factors neatly connect to Biden’s ‘Four Pillars against Domestic Terrorism.’
They also dangerously correspond with the President’s rhetoric inferring that, “anyone, not a Democrat, was to be viewed as a Domestic Terrorist.”
