October 6, 2013, OpEdNews Without Whistleblowers and Real Reform Now, the U.S. Government Will Collapse   By Larry Fisher This article provides a ray of hope and a game plan for eliminating the outright lies and gross waste of our tax dollars, to the tune of 15+ trillion dollars in just 35 years. The very necessary legislative and management changes identified in this article will only occur if we all work together to achieve that end, starting now. by mw238 The only real threat to the U.S. government and the American people's financial and national security is not from terrorists but internally from a successful 3 1/2 decade old corporate assault on the U.S. Constitution's most basic checks and balances. In October 1978, Congress passed an unconstitutional Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) that replaced its non-partisan/merit-based government service (GS) civil servant professional managers with corporate and partisan (Goldman Sachs-type) managers. These corporate managers filled newly-created Senior Executive Service (SES) political appointee managerial positions with the equivalent powers of corporate Presidents, Vice Presidents, CEOs, and CFOs. Then, politicians (Republican and Democrat) used their executive schedule (EX) political appointees, via those corporate SES political appointee managers, to replace GS professionals with corporate contractors. Efficiency and national security were an excuse for implementing corporate-driven deregulation, outsourcing, and war-related agendas. Weakened executive and judicial branch infrastructures were used to cede control of the U.S. government's operation over to American multinational corporations. The last 35 year, 15+ trillion dollar spike in the national debt from a 1978 low of under a trillion dollars to its current 16.7 trillion dollar amount is best described for what it is, a redistribution of wealth from the American taxpayer to the (yet to be convicted) political and corporate criminals who currently manage the U.S. government. The emotional and financial pain and suffering these political and corporate criminals continue to inflict on Americans, and the citizens of all countries, is rooted in their blatant and illegal disregard for the U.S. Constitution,1883 Pendleton Act , and even President Jimmy Carter's 1978 CSRA. Simply stated, all 3 U.S. government documents define our forefather's checks and balances as including 2 fundamental principles, a GS level non-partisan/merit-based bureaucracy and a legislative guarantee that these GS level professionals cannot be legally fired or demoted for political reasons. The last 5 consecutive administration's Presidents and Vice Presidents decimated these principles and illegally transitioned the U.S. government back to a pre-1880's partisan/non merit-based (and unqualified) bureaucracy, solely to transfer all positions of power and authority from GS civil servants to corporate contractors. The current sequestration mandate gives these SES corporate political appointees 10 years to dismantle the dysfunctional 2.8 million civil servant bureaucracy they created, to then hand-over the American people's government to American multinational corporations. This, of course, assumes that the American people will stand idly by while this clandestine takeover of their U.S. government unfolds before their vary eyes. This unconstitutional charade meant that George W. Bush could now order his EX political appointees to contact Department, Bureau, and Agency level SES political appointee managers to fire and demote other SES or GS level civil servants for rightfully questioning his administration's: WMD lies concerning Iraq,SEC abuses to protect wall street criminals, fabricated scientific research on global warming, rubberstamped use of unsafe food and pharmaceuticals , outsourced and unconstitutional National Security Agency (NSA) contractor services that violated the most basic privacy rights of all citizens as detailed by NSA's Thomas Drakeand corroborated by Edward Snowden, an NSA contractor. Then, there was Dick Cheney's firing of a government contracting officer for rightfully questioning a no-bid, multibillion dollar Halliburton contract (as Vice President of the United States and Halliburton's former CEO). Cheney, as we also know, held secret meetings with corporate (SES) energy officials within the Department of Energy (DOE). Recent documentation from aretired DOE professional shows that DOE's infrastructures were covertly undermined over the past 30 years by eliminating the minimal Electrical Engineering (EE) college degree requirement from the Office of Personnel Management's (OPM) EE position standards. Then, DOE was flooded with unqualified employees to ensure its corporate friendly energy policies. Obama, in turn, ignored his promises of an "open, transparent, and accountable government." Instead, he continued an unconstitutional experiment that fashioned the U.S. government into the ultimate Ronald Reagan Republican dream, a corporate entity that supposedly ensured the best interests of its citizens. Other documented outsourcing examples of blatantly illegal activities were raised (indirectly) during the 2009 Congressional hearings when both Vermont's Senator Bernie Sanders and Florida's Representative Alan Grayson questioned the Federal Reserve's Chairman's and Inspector General's inability to identify the recipients of 9 trillion dollars of the taxpayer's money. Representative Grayson also stated that the Federal Reserve had usurped Congress' powers of the purse by spending taxpayer money that had not been appropriated by Congress. This grand scheme to ultimately replace NSA, SEC, EPA, FDA, and DOE civil servants with corporate contractors was confirmed again with the executive branches' also covert elimination of OPM's minimal college accounting degree requirement from its accountant and auditorposition standards. Then, all Department of Defense (DOD) and non DOD accounting and auditing offices were also flooded with unqualified people to rubberstamp the procurement of deficient financial management contractor (FMC) software and related services. Those financial management contractors (FMCs) include American Institute of Certified Public Accountant (AICPA) firms, financial software companies, and management consulting firms. What better way is there to destroy audit trails identifying the corporate recipients of those trillion dollar taxpayer transfers than to replace GS civil servant accountants and auditors with these corporate FMCs? Look at the above documentation and realize the obvious! After 35 years of abuses by both political parties, the U.S. government's operation has imploded. The majority of politicians and public officials within all 3 government branches have profited through their corporate connections. Today's non-functional bureaucracy of 2.8 million civil servants consists of EX/SES corporate political appointee managers and partisan/unqualified GS civil servant managers that were needed to implement the Republican's (and now Obama's) corporate-driven political agendas. The American people have lost trillions of dollars of their savings and investments, and (even worse) their loved ones because of irresponsible and criminal corporate political agendas that precipitated the 1980's collapse of the S&L companies, 2008 economic crisis, two unnecessary wars, the transfer of 9 trillion dollars more of their money to unnamed corporations, and now a broken and dysfunctional bureaucracy that was needed to rubberstamps its illicit procurement of unconstitutional (NSA-type) and bogus (FMC-type) goods/ services. Even more trillions are distributed to these greedy criminals via the U.S. government's bogus grant programs under the guise of helping the poor, also documented by more whistleblowers. Without whistleblowers and real reform (now), the U.S. government will collapse. This 35 year, 15+ trillion dollar spike in the national debt should never have occurred. The executive and legislative branches passed legislation (the 1978 CSRA) for which they had no qualifications, the management of the U.S. government. Instead of allowing GS civil servant professionals to review the recommendations of the politician's corporate friends, the 1978 CSRA not only failed to address the government's most basic management deficiencies it set the stage for the corporate takeover of the U.S. government in the following 2 ways. First, the 1978 CSRA ignored the government's real management problem, the placement/replacement of its top managers (every 4 to 8 years) with an entirely new set of each administration's equally partisan and technically unqualified EX political appointees. Second, this legislation not only legally introduced the fox (corporations) into the federal government's chicken house (its 2.8 million civil servants), it placed the fox in charge of those chickens. The following 2 paragraphs provide yet another example of even more government waste and criminal behavior, taxpayers have unwittingly paid executive and legislative branch politicians and their EX/SES political appointee and GS (unqualified) accountant managers to prevent an accurate accounting of your tax dollars. In October, 1987, and over the past 26 years, the Central Agencies' political appointees, within the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and Treasury Department, have knowingly outsourced deficient FMC software and services to all DOD and non DOD accounting offices. In 1997, Congress mandated that the federal government produce the same accurate federal financial statements as required of all private sector corporations by summarizing all DOD/non DOD accounting/budgeting data in a single set of consolidated financial statements (CFSs). GAO's 1997 thru 2011 written Congressional testimony documents 14 years of collusion and corruption between the Central Agencies' political appointees and corporate FMCs. Congress hid its knowledge of this multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme by replacing GAO's 2012 Congressional testimony with a simple press release. These government-wide and FMC cover-ups were corroborated (again) when GS civil servant whistleblowers consistently reported more cover-ups by the DOD/non DOD political appointee users of that deficient FMC software. Those documented GS civil servant accountantand auditor whistleblower warnings were sent to President Obama ,Congress , and2 GAO Comptroller Generals of the U.S. (Gene Dodaro and David Walker), and many other high level public officials. In September 2010, the Obama administration classified this information as secret and confidential business information (CBI) . Even more egregious, the accountant whistleblower link above describes how Congress and the Central Agencies had been provided with (free) documentation detailing how GS civil servant accountants could have complied with Congress' 1997 CFS mandate back in October 1987. Equally significant, this documentation spelled out how the federal government could design, test, and implement public sector software that generated standard public sector financial statements for all governments (federal, state, local, and even foreign governments). So, why are federal, state, and local governments still using manually-manipulated Excel spreadsheets to prepare their financial statements, despite the untold billions that taxpayers have already paid to these corporate FMCs? The answer to this question is best resolved with President Obama's most basic "trust but verify" management principle. The American people have no reason to trust the U.S. government because the last 5 consecutive administrations (including Obama's) abused that trust by systematically eliminating the whistleblowers who told the truth concerning today's corrupt U.S government. Antonia Juhasz's book, the "BU$H Agenda, Invading the World One Economy at a Time," accurately depicts this federal cancer that has now spread to the state level, as evidenced by North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory's implementation of the same failed corporate-driven policies that precipitated the monumental increase in the federal debt. On the positive side, David Korten's book, "When Corporations Rule the World," describes a global citizen's movement that highlights the need for a more symbiotic relationship between governments, corporations, the planet, and its people to create a world that works for all. A prodemocracy movement that transitions the U.S. government from its current fear-based, despotic, fiscally unsound, and planet-unfriendly practices into the symbiotic government described above requires the following changes:executive branch -- (1) eliminate the practice of: (A) placing EX political appointees in the government's top managerial positions and change that responsibility to a liaison role with the government's new GS civil servant managers, and (B) stop retaliating against civil servants and contractors for political reasons, (2) fire all SES political appointees based upon their sorry management performance, (3) transition the government back to its pre-1978 U.S. Constitutional non-partisan/merit-based status by upgrading all OPM GS professional position standards on a par with the private sector, (4) fire all GS civil servants who do not meet those upgraded OPM (pre-1978) position standards, (5) fill all top managerial GS positions with the highest qualified candidates, (6) GS managers who fail to cut the government's operating costs are replaced; judicial branch-- (1) prosecute political and corporate individuals who played a role in undermining the government's infrastructures and/or in providing unconstitutional and/or bogus goods/services to the U.S. government, and (2) assist whistleblowers in prosecuting those corporations who defrauded the U.S. government by providing unconstitutional and/or bogus goods/services, in violation of the False Claims Act;legislative branch (Congress) -- (1) constitutional amendments declaring the 1978 CSRA, Citizens United decision, and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) unconstitutional, (2) constitutional amendments requiring: (A) retroactive term limits for Congress -- 3 for the House of Representatives and 2 for the Senate, and (B) a single public sector accounting standard and financial software package that complies with Congress' 1997 CFS mandate that is capable of generating standard/user-friendly financial statement for federal state and local governments, alike, to provide an essential management tool for cutting federal/state deficits, and combating the rampant corruption within the United States. Submitters Website: http://www.nawbc.com; Submitters Bio: I graduated from Michigan Technological University (MTU) in June 1968 with a BSBA in accounting and have been a federal accountant for over 40 years, 25 as a whistleblower in the government, and 2 years retired. In the early 1980's, I became aware of the government's lack of accounting procedures as an Accounting Branch Chief at the Veterans Administration (VA). My section was responsible for consolidating the VA hospital's accounting data to prepare its quarterly and annual OMB and Treasury financial statements. When I questioned my staff's use of crib notes to prepare those financial statements, they informed me that they had no written accounting procedures. Roughly translated, this meant that the AICPA had prepared no written accounting procedures for the Central Agencies' (GAO, OMB, and Treasury) political appointees to give to the bureaucracy's accounting offices. In disbelief, I contacted the Central Agencies only to validate that there were no procedures. My requests for the VA's management to pressure the Central Agencies for those procedures were also ignored. Here I was the Branch Chief of one of the largest federal departments and no one within the VA, Central Agencies, and AICPA could explain how or why the government prepared its financial statements. In search of a solution, I spent three or 4 years (of my own time) modifying the AICPA's private sector accounting formula(s) that were based on generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) to accommodate the federal government's unique accounting and budgeting needs. The Government Accounting Prototype (GAP), and public sector GAAP-based accounting formula, that I developed compares on a one-for-one basis with the AICPA's private sector accounting formulas, with one single exception. The AICPA private sector accounting formula(s) generate only accounting-related financial statements that revolve around cash as the basis for all payments while GAP includes both accounting and budgeting financial statements since all procurements and grant-related cash disbursements rely on funded, or cash-backed, budget authority. I also completed a 396 page book that was titled, "Principles of Accounting, Budgeting, and Cash Management for Government." I visited my MTU accounting professor, Sam Tidwell, a couple of times to get his opinion on my GAP model and to find out why MTU provided only a single superficial public sector accounting class. His position was that my idea would never fly because politicians were not interested in an accurate accounting of the taxpayer's money and, thus, there was no basis for writing more detailed public sector accounting textbooks. In October 1986, I took a one-year unpaid sabbatical and used my book to lobby Congress (Senator William Roth) and the Central Agencies to adopt a single public sector GAAP-based accounting standard (and formula) as a basis for designing all future financial software. In October, 1987, I was hired by Treasury, along with 7 other professional GS level accountants, to implement this public sector GAAP-based standard. Instead, the Central Agencies outsourced deficient and non GAAP financial software to an entire federal bureaucracy; a concurrent effort included the systematic replacement of the GS level professional accountants and auditors with unqualified people to hide all levels of wrongdoing. In March 1990, I was hired by EPA as a Branch Chief, Systems and Accounting and in June 1993 was required to critique the AICPA's public sector non GAAP-based financial software which I consistently questioned, at all government levels. After 2 failed attempts to fire me, I filled a data entry clerk position upon my January 2011 retirement, as a GS-14, former VA Branch Chief, Treasury systems accountant, and EPA Branch Chief. Today, after billions in waste, the Feds still use Excel spreadsheets to prepare all financials statements.