A noteworthy commentary in this morning’s Washington Examiner highlights an issue that we’ve previously reported: How few federal employees are fired in a given year.
Is this the true face of Uncle Sam?
The column, which cites our coverage on the issue, criticizes the Office of Personnel Management for failing to analyze why so few employees are fired — just one half of 1 percent of the government’s 2 million employees last year. (It’s also worth noting that the writer of the column, Mark Hemingway, is the husband of one of our former staff writers.)
What I found most interesting, however, was the headline above the column: “More hiring, but little firing, as Leviathan grows.” Not being an expert in Biblical references, I had to google the term to find out what Mr. Hemingway was talking about.
According to trusty Wikipedia, Leviathan is a sea monster referred to in the Old Testament. Many Christian literary sources equate the creature with Satan; in Demonology, Leviathan is the one of the seven princes of Hell and its gatekeeper.
So, what do you think? Is the federal government a good place to work, or the gateway to eternal damnation? Sound off below.
No Comments
I don’t know the answer to the question, but I think the headline writer might have been referencing Hobbes!
Also, I love the picture.
I much prefer John Calvin’s “On Civil Government:” http://www.falsepositives.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/john_calvin_and_thomas_hobbes_by_spacecoyote.jpg
When one considers that works out to some 10,000 people fired each year and that many more likely leave on their own after being threatened with termination, the numbers don’t seem so low.
Leviathan, or “Old Hellmouth” as we call him down here, is a stand up guy who keeps the population of earthly ne’er-do-wells from overflowing Limbo. We have plenty of room down here, so Hellmouth helps scoop up the blaggards before they work out deals with archangels or death bed confessors to have their sorry asses shipped off to Purgatory. If your Federal Government performs a similar function…snaring incompetents and offering them jobs before they can go on the dole or become Welfare Queens…then I guess the reference is apt!
Yours in Satan,
Asmodeus
P.S.
If you’re ever in the neighborhood, look me up. I run some of the best gambling houses in Hell. See ya’!