Another bit of time-travel, thanks to the Bushies

I'm disheartened, although not surprised, to learn that the Bush Administration has systematically converted the federal government into a giant patronage system -- certainly we know that Brownie wasn't hired for his disaster management expertise...

These are two different pieces of the same story: under the guise of promoting a conservative agenda, the Bush administration has created a supersized version of the 19th-century spoils system.
. . .
Those political appointees chosen for their loyalty, not their expertise, aren’t very good at doing their proper jobs — as all the world learned after Hurricane Katrina struck. But they have been very good at rewarding campaign contributors, from energy companies that benefit from lax regulation of pollution to pharmaceutical companies that got a Medicare program systematically designed to protect their profits.

That they're doing it seems completely in line with everything we've seen; that they have some kind of intellectual argument/underpinning for unraveling the notion of civil service sickens me.