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Government Executive Editor in Chief Tom Shoop, along with other editors and staff correspondents, look at the federal bureaucracy from the outside in.

Public Service Humbug

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Brandon Arnold, director of government affairs at the Cato Institute, is not getting into the spirit of Public Service Recognition Week. In a piece entitled "Happy Bureaucrat Week" on National Review Online, he writes that the whole idea "reveals Congress’s skewed view of the importance of bureaucrats, and by extension, the government." That government is big, expensive, and ineffective, Arnold says. Even its heroes -- whistleblowers -- wouldn't be needed if the rest of the bureaucrats were doing their jobs properly. He won't even concede that civil servants are drawn to their work by a sense of civic duty and patriotism. "I would guess," he writes, "that many work for the federal government because the pay is pretty good and the job security excellent."

 

Tom Shoop is vice president and editor in chief at Government Executive Media Group, where he oversees both print and online editorial operations. He started as associate editor of Government Executive magazine in 1989; launched the company’s flagship website, GovExec.com, in 1996; and was named editor in chief in 2007.

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