Foxes and Henhouses

Just in case anyone doesn't get it yet, the Trump administration is going to make a mockery of every facet of government. Here is just one example.

News today suggests that Andrew Puzder will be appointed the Secretary of Labor. The Labor Department is specifically charged with looking after the interests of US laborers; that is the reason for its existence. Here is the mission statement taken directly from the official website for the US Department of Labor:

Our Mission

To foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners, job seekers, and retirees of the United States; improve working conditions; advance opportunities for profitable employment; and assure work related benefits and rights.

Puzder, a prominent CEO of several fast food chain restaurant entities, has repeatedly spoken out against efforts to increase minimum wage, and especially to enforce overtime benefits for restaurant workers and management.

Here is one excerpt from a recent speech he made:

Government needs to get out of the way of entrepeneurs and allow economic growth to happen without the restrictions of Obamacare and mandating minimum wages and overtime, among other things. If employers are competing for the best employees, they will pay more. You can't order businesses to be profitable, or place restrictions on them and expect them to grow.

It would be impossible to find anyone with a stated mandate more opposite to the written mission that the Department of Labor is charged with than Mr. Puzder. The Department of Labor is not the Department of Business Owners and it is not supposed to concern itself with making businesses profitable. As a matter of fact, Mr. Puzder and his stated goals are exactly and directly opposite of the function of the government department he is being considered to head up.

You simply can't make this stuff up. I would suggest that maybe the first thing Trump should do is read the mandates of the Departments he is appointing leaders to. Of course that would assume that he cares one iota about actually doing the job he was elected to do instead of conducting a fire sale of every governmental principle we have spent 240 years putting into place to the highest bidder. You simply could not find a better definition of putting a fox in charge of a henhouse than putting Puzder in charge of the Department of Labor. It is absolutely perfect.