What caused me to reach that conclusion?

Not a belief that federal employees should be as easily terminated as at will employees in the private sector. Unlike private sector workers, federal employees serve beneath presidents, which is to say, ideologue politicians with a bad habit of installing hack cronies wherever they can. Similar dynamics are often present at the state and local level. In theory, it would be possible to afford too little protection to public employees, which would result in a less efficient government.

But top to bottom, we're far closer to the opposite extreme.

A Los Angeles Times investigation, "Firing teachers can be a costly and tortuous task," provides a number of examples that unfolded at the local level. The article contains shocking anecdotes about how hard it was to fire individual teachers whose cartoonish misdeeds are detailed. The most alarming line states, "Jettisoning a teacher solely because he or she can't teach is rare."

That's at one of America's biggest school districts.

The UC police officer caught on camera pepper-spraying student protesters is an instructive example at the state level. I wrote last year about his long, lucrative goodbye: "As of 2010, Lt. Pike's salary was listed at $110,243.12. Using that figure as an approximation of how much he was compensated this year (note we're excluding benefits and pension) think about what that means: by my calculation, he spent 256 days on paid leave. That's roughly $77,170 in salary that taxpayers paid him, getting nothing in return. Is that a prudent way to spend public resources? Or would it make more sense to have a system where Lt. Pike could have been publicly fired by UC Davis months sooner, upon the release of independent reports concluding that he behaved badly?"

There are many more examples at the local, state, and federal level. None so far has prompted Democrats or progressives to acknowledge that public employees are so well-protected that the ability to run well-functioning institutions is sometimes being compromised. In one way, the IRS controversy is sure to be unrepresentative since it is getting so much more press than almost any other act of wrongdoing by federal employees. But it will afford us a high-profile opportunity to watch the process play out. Politico explains the difficulties involved in firing anyone in the present controversy. Will protections for the IRS employees responsible for this mess wind up making it harder than it ought to be to reform the agency?

Coming days and weeks -- or will it be months? -- will tell.

