#Civil Service Reform

[deadpresidents]

"Damn the President! He is a cold-blooded, narrow-minded, prejudiced, obstinate, timid old-psalm singing Indianapolis politician."

-- Theodore Roosevelt, after an uncomfortable meeting with President Benjamin Harrison, who had appointed him to the United States Civil Service Commission, but who Roosevelt felt was no longer supportive of the Commission's reform work when it began to investigate certain officials close to President Harrison, letter to Congressman Henry Cabot Lodge, October 4, 1890.

[unicornheadnebula]

The Tammany Machine And The Evolution of Machine Politics

The “Tammany Machine,” also known as Tammany Hall, was a powerful and notorious political organization that operated in New York City for much of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It played a significant role in shaping the city’s politics and had a reputation for corruption, patronage, and machine politics. Here are some key points about the Tammany Machine: Origins: Tammany Hall was founded…

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"$700 A YEAR WAGES RIDICULOUS---CONBOY," Toronto Star. October 9, 1942. Page 2. ---- Declares "People Can't Work for That Kind of Money" ---- "It seems to me a salary of $700 a year is ridiculous." Mayor Con- boy remarked yesterday.

Board of control had before it a recommendation for temporary appointment of a junior clerk in the accounting branch. finance department. at a salary of $700 a year. The applicant is 19 and has been rejected for military service.

"Let us set this over." said the mayor. "We'll have to do something about this kind of thing."

"The previous occupant of the post received only $624." said Secretary Norris.

"It's still ridiculous." said the mayor. "People can't work for that kind of money."

"We have heads of departments receiving far too much money and staying on far beyond the time when their usefulness has expired." Con. Duncan stated. "We also have other people receiving too much money and staying too long. It keeps other salaries down and holds other employees back from deserved advancement. "We need a survey of all departments to see who are the drones and who are not the drones. Some form of civil service commission is the answer. It is time we did something for the people who are really doing the work." The same question arose again when a letter was presented from the City Hall Employees' association regarding recent appointment of a stenographer at a salary of $1.450. The letter was not read.

"Have copies made for all members," the mayor instructed. "We will deal with all these things when the heads of departments bring in their report. They will have it ready very shortly."

[moleshow]

corruption and the need for a scientific approach to governance... very intriguing! someone should look into this

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

A group of 14 conservative lawmakers in both chambers of Congress last week reintroduced legislation that would make the federal government an at-will employer and abolish the Merit Systems Protection Board, effectively eviscerating federal workers’ civil service protections and chilling whistleblowing.

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., are the lead sponsors of the Public Service Reform Act (H.R. 3115), which would make career federal workers at-will employees and get rid of most of the avenues currently available to appeal adverse personnel decisions. It also would abolish the MSPB and send most appeals directly to federal appellate courts, although it preserves a 14-day window for whistleblowers to allege retaliation before the Office of Special Counsel.

“It is far past time to reinstate accountability to the people for the federal bureaucracy by requiring that like any private sector employee, federal workers can be removed from their positions,” Roy said in a statement. “Notwithstanding the majority of federal workers who faithfully serve, especially our law enforcement personnel, we should not allow a wall of red tape to shield those engaged in noncompliance with the law and brazen political partisanship. Federal employees should keep their jobs based on merit, just like the people they serve.”

The bill also allows for federal workers to appeal adverse personnel actions they believe were discriminatory to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, although the legislation requires EEOC to scrap its policies relating to the federal workforce and apply private sector rules to the proceedings.

And it creates a disincentive to federal workers filing appeals of their firings through a provision that says that if a court finds a complaint to be “frivolous” or otherwise “brought in bad faith,” the employee’s defined benefit annuity is automatically reduced by 25%.

“It’s clear that the bureaucracy of the federal government is both a waste of taxpayer dollars and inefficient,” Scott said in a statement. “Red tape and bloated federal agencies constantly slow down progress and hamper American innovation. It’s time to change Washington so it actually works for the American people. The Public Service Reform Act will boost accountability and responsiveness across the federal government by making all executive branch employees at-will.”

Roy previously introduced his bill last July, but with Democrats in control of the House, it languished. With a divided Congress, its chance of passage now remains low. But the bill has gained support, with the number of initial cosponsors growing from 5 to 14.

Between this legislation and other initiatives gaining steam within the Republican party, including a proposed revival of Schedule F, which has already been endorsed by The Heritage Foundation, former President Trump and other likely GOP presidential candidates, it is clear that efforts to upend the federal civil service have become a central plank of the party’s platform. These plans, along with early signs of a push to declare federal employee unions unconstitutional, suggest “truly epic storm clouds” are on the horizon, according to Don Kettl, professor emeritus at the University of Maryland and former dean of its School of Public Policy.

“It’s inconceivable that a major Republican candidate would stake out a position any more favorable to federal employees,” Kettl wrote. “[Conservatives] are offering two tracks for remedies: executive action, especially through a revival of Schedule F; and judicial cases, especially through challenges to the role of public employee unions and, even more fundamentally, to the role of the merit system itself.”

[townpostin]

Jharkhand Government Reshuffles Administrative Positions

7 state service officers transferred ahead of elections The Jharkhand government has announced a significant administrative reshuffle, transferring seven officers of the Jharkhand State Service to new positions. RANCHI – The Revenue, Registration, and Land Reforms Department of Jharkhand has issued transfer orders for seven critical administrative officers throughout the state. As part of the…

[sanguinifex]

They don’t even both suck.

One guy is old and not the best public speaker but he has a solid track record as a career civil servant and has accomplished a lot of very good reforms over the course of his presidency. Stuff like “pardoning gay veterans who were dishonorably discharged for gay sex and reinstating their VA benefits,” and environmental reforms including renewable energy and compact nuclear reactors, has been trying to negotiate a ceasefire in Palestine for months, plus about a hundred more things it would take too long to mention here.

The other guy wants to turn the entire civil service into political appointees for anyone ranked higher than janitor, publicly talks about how he wants to use nuclear weapons, supports Russian imperialism, thinks international alliances only matter when they’re convenient to him personally, wants to obliterate queer people, and would gladly enable the complete extermination of Palestine because he likes watching things go boom.

You have one solid but unglamorous choice, and one choice that is corrupt fascistic chaos.

You have one vote.

[minnesotafollower]

Biden Administration Announces Proposed Restrictions on Asylum Applications

On February 21, the Biden Administration announced a proposed rule that would  require rapid deportation of an immigrant at the U.S. border who had failed to request protection from another country while en route to the U.S. or who had not previously notified the U.S. via a mobile app of their plan to seek asylum in the U.S. or who had applied for the new U.S. humanitarian parole programs for…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Prison-tech company bribed jails to ban in-person visits

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in BOSTON with Randall "XKCD" Munroe (Apr 11), then PROVIDENCE (Apr 12), and beyond!

Beware of geeks bearing gifts. When prison-tech companies started offering "free" tablets to America's vast army of prisoners, it set off alarm-bells for prison reform advocates – but not for the law-enforcement agencies that manage the great American carceral enterprise.

The pitch from these prison-tech companies was that they could cut the costs of locking people up while making jails and prisons safer. Hell, they'd even make life better for prisoners. And they'd do it for free!

These prison tablets would give every prisoner their own phone and their own video-conferencing terminal. They'd supply email, of course, and all the world's books, music, movies and games. Prisoners could maintain connections with the outside world, from family to continuing education. Sounds too good to be true, huh?

Here's the catch: all of these services are blisteringly expensive. Prisoners are accustomed to being gouged on phone calls – for years, prisons have done deals with private telcos that charge a fortune for prisoners' calls and split the take with prison administrators – but even by those standards, the calls you make on a tablet are still a ripoff.

Sure, there are some prisoners for whom money is no object – wealthy people who screwed up so bad they can't get bail and are stewing in a county lockup, along with the odd rich murderer or scammer serving a long bid. But most prisoners are poor. They start poor – the cops are more likely to arrest poor people than rich people, even for the same crime, and the poorer you are, the more likely you are to get convicted or be suckered into a plea bargain with a long sentence. State legislatures are easy to whip up into a froth about minimum sentences for shoplifters who steal $7 deodorant sticks, but they are wildly indifferent to the store owner's rampant wage-theft. Wage theft is by far the most costly form of property crime in America and it is almost entirely ignored:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/15/wage-theft-us-workers-employees

So America's prisons are heaving with its poorest citizens, and they're certainly not getting any richer while they're inside. While many prisoners hold jobs – prisoners produce $2b/year in goods and $9b/year in services – the average prison wage is $0.52/hour:

https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2024/0324bowman.html

(In six states, prisoners get nothing; North Carolina law bans paying prisoners more than $1/day, the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution explicitly permits slavery – forced labor without pay – for prisoners.)

Likewise, prisoners' families are poor. They start poor – being poor is a strong correlate of being an American prisoner – and then one of their breadwinners is put behind bars, taking their income with them. The family savings go to paying a lawyer.

Prison-tech is a bet that these poor people, locked up and paid $1/day or less; or their families, deprived of an earner and in debt to a lawyer; will somehow come up with cash to pay $13 for a 20-minute phone call, $3 for an MP3, or double the Kindle price for an ebook.

How do you convince a prisoner earning $0.52/hour to spend $13 on a phone-call?

Well, for Securus and Viapath (AKA Global Tellink) – a pair of private equity backed prison monopolists who have swallowed nearly all their competitors – the answer was simple: they bribed prison officials to get rid of the prison phones.

Not just the phones, either: a pair of Michigan suits brought by the Civil Rights Corps accuse sheriffs and the state Department of Corrections of ending in-person visits in exchange for kickbacks from the money that prisoners' families would pay once the only way to reach their loved ones was over the "free" tablets:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/jails-banned-family-visits-to-make-more-money-on-video-calls-lawsuits-claim/

These two cases are just the tip of the iceberg; Civil Rights Corps says there are hundreds of jails and prisons where Securus and Viapath have struck similar corrupt bargains:

https://civilrightscorps.org/case/port-huron-michigan-right2hug/

And it's not just visits and calls. Prison-tech companies have convinced jails and prisons to eliminate mail and parcels. Letters to prisoners are scanned and delivered their tablets, at a price. Prisoners – and their loved ones – have to buy virtual "postage stamps" and pay one stamp per "page" of email. Scanned letters (say, hand-drawn birthday cards from your kids) cost several stamps:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

Prisons and jails have also been convinced to eliminate their libraries and continuing education programs, and to get rid of TVs and recreational equipment. That way, prisoners will pay vastly inflated prices for streaming videos and DRM-locked music.

The icing on the cake? If the prison changes providers, all that data is wiped out – a prisoner serving decades of time will lose their music library, their kids' letters, the books they love. They can get some of that back – by working for $1/day – but the personal stuff? It's just gone.

Readers of my novels know all this. A prison-tech scam just like the one described in the Civil Rights Corps suits is at the center of my latest novel The Bezzle:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

Prison-tech has haunted me for years. At first, it was just the normal horror anyone with a shred of empathy would feel for prisoners and their families, captive customers for sadistic "businesses" that have figured out how to get the poorest, most desperate people in the country to make them billions. In the novel, I call prison-tech "a machine":

a million-­armed robot whose every limb was tipped with a needle that sank itself into a different place on prisoners and their families and drew out a few more cc’s of blood.

But over time, that furious empathy gave way to dread. Prisoners are at the bottom of the shitty technology adoption curve. They endure the technological torments that haven't yet been sanded down on their bodies, normalized enough to impose them on people with a little more privilege and agency. I'm a long way up the curve from prisoners, but while the shitty technology curve may grind slow, it grinds fine:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

The future isn't here, it's just not evenly distributed. Prisoners are the ultimate early adopters of the technology that the richest, most powerful, most sadistic people in the country's corporate board-rooms would like to force us all to use.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

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[deadpresidents]

The Elegant Mr. Arthur

It was about two hours after midnight on September 20, 1881, and not unusual for the resident of 123 Lexington Avenue in New York City to be awake at such a late hour or to have plenty of guests. In fact, he preferred to keep late hours, entertaining friends deep into the night with late-night dinner, drinks, and endless conversation. Yet, on this night, 123 Lexington Avenue was somber and the mood was grave. Just a few hours earlier -- at 11:30 PM -- a messenger knocked on the door of Vice President Chester Alan Arthur's Manhattan brownstone and handed Arthur a telegram. Surrounded by a few friends and colleagues, Arthur read that President James Garfield, just 49 years old and in office for almost exactly 200 days, had died at a beach cottage rough 60 miles away, in Elberon, New Jersey. Turning to his friends in his sitting room, Arthur said, "I hope -- my God, I do hope it is a mistake."

On July 2nd, President Garfield was shot twice and seriously wounded by Charles Guiteau as he walked through the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C. with Secretary of State James G. Blaine and Secretary of War Robert Todd Lincoln (son of Abraham Lincoln), en route to a speaking engagement at his alma mater, Williams College in Massachusetts. Guiteau was a disgruntled, disturbed, and delusional office-seeker who had been pleading for an appointment as consul to Paris despite an absence of diplomatic or political experience and a complete lack of qualifications. Hounding Garfield throughout the early months of an Administration that had just begun on March 4, 1881, Guiteau's constant harassment of the new President finally resulted in Secretary Blaine ordering Guiteau to never return to the White House again. Guiteau felt that he had been entitled to some office, particularly a high-profile ambassadorship, and was terribly upset that Garfield and his Cabinet members refused to consider his requests. Blaine's order to stay away drove Guiteau to purchase an ivory-handled .44 British Bulldog revolver (specifically chosen because Guiteau felt that particular firearm would look good in a museum) and he began stalking Garfield throughout Washington before finally shooting him in the rail station two days before Independence Day 1881. As police arrested him, Guiteau shouted, "I am a Stalwart of the Stalwarts...Arthur is President now!"

But, Arthur wasn't President; not yet at least. Garfield was a physically robust man and relatively young in comparison to most Presidents. Although one bullet had lodged in Garfield's spine, the other bullet grazed his arm and caused no significant damage. While it appeared that he was gravely immediately following the shooting, Garfield's vital signs soon started to improve and the American people began to get their hopes up about a full recovery. A vigil of sorts was underway as President Garfield convalesced in the White House, and his doctors issued regular bulletins updating his condition. Garfield's doctors also poked and prodded with unsterilized instruments and dirty fingers to attempt to locate the bullet still inside of the President's body. Had they left it alone, Garfield almost certainly would have survived; his wounds were significantly less dangerous than those survived by Ronald Reagan 100 years later. However, the unnecessary poking and prodding resulted in a serious infection that ravaged Garfield's body, weakened his heart, and left the muscular, 215-pound President emaciated and weighing less than 135 pounds. After fighting for his life in the sweltering summer heat of Washington, on September 6th it was finally decided to transport Garfield to a cottage on the Jersey Shore in hopes that he could benefit from the fresh ocean air. Sadly, it was too late. The infections were accompanied by blood poisoning and pneumonia, among other ailments. On September 19th, at 10:35 PM, Garfield suffered a massive heart attack and was pronounced dead. In the 79 days since he had been shot, Garfield had lost over 80 pounds and the 49-year-old President's dark brown hair and beard had turned a ghastly white color. An hour later, the messenger arrived at 123 Lexington Avenue.

•••

The Vice Presidency was a stretch. Chet Arthur of New York as Vice President? When offered the Republican Vice Presidential nomination by James Garfield in 1880, Chester Arthur was urged by his political mentor, the leader of the Stalwart branch of the Republican Party, Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York, to decline the appointment. Arthur, a man who had never spent a day in Congress or been elected to any office at any level, couldn't turn down such an unexpected opportunity. He accepted the nomination and was elected alongside Garfield in November 1880, but most of the country (rightfully) saw Arthur as the poster boy for a machine politician elevated by the spoils system. The Vice Presidency was certainly a stretch for Chester Arthur, but President of the United States? That was an almost frightening thought to a nation still recovering from Civil War and desperately seeking civil service reform, especially now that a disgruntled office-seeker has assassinated the President. The idea of Arthur as President left a lot of Americans worried -- some because Arthur's political background was as the powerful and somewhat shady Collector of the Port of New York, appointed during the controversial Administration of President Ulysses S. Grant and eventually fired by President Rutherford B. Hayes during a housecleaning of corrupt institutions; and some because James Garfield's murderer had claimed to be a Stalwart and, by his own words, insinuated that Garfield's shooting might be a conspiracy on behalf of Arthur's faction of the divided Republican Party.

Chester Arthur was a creature of the era known as the "Gilded Age" and was the symbolic mascot for the widespread corruption of the 1870's due to his position at the Port of New York. Born in Vermont in 1829, Arthur was the son of a preacher and grew up mostly in upstate New York, graduated from Schenectady's Union College in 1848, briefly taught school was studying law, and was admitted to the bar in 1854. As his law practice grew in the 1850's, Arthur immersed himself in New York Republican politics yet never ran for office. A political appointee to the New York State Militia, he found himself serving during the Civil War and his superb organizational skills led to quick promotions all the way to quartermaster general in 1862, a position which carried the rank of brigadier. As a political appointee to the militia, however, Arthur served at the pleasure of the Governor of New York and was forced to resign in 1862 when a Democratic Governor took office. Returning to New York City, Arthur resumed his law practice and political gamesmanship. More appointments came his way as he supported Republican candidates throughout the state and worked on national campaigns such as President Lincoln's 1864 bid for re-election and Ulysses S. Grant's 1868 Presidential campaign.

In 1871, President Grant appointed Arthur as Collector of customs at the Port of New York, which gave Arthur responsibility for about 75% of the nation's customs duties and was one of the most powerful patronage positions available in the United States government. Arthur used his office to efficiently raise money for Republican campaigns and candidates, supporting President Grant's 1872 re-election campaign by seeking contributions from his employees at the customhouse. In 1876, Arthur championed his political mentor, Roscoe Conkling, for the Republican Presidential nomination, but supported Rutherford B. Hayes in the general election, once again using the employees at the customhouse to help raise money to finance the successful Republican campaign. However, once Hayes was elected, the new President made it clear that he was serious about civil service reform and that meant reforming Arthur's customhouse, too. In 1877, Arthur testified before the Jay Commission, which was formed to investigate charges of corruption and eventually recommended that President Hayes reduce the workforce of the customhouse and eliminate the corrupt elements that had worked there for so long. Due to Arthur's longtime support of the Republican Party, President Hayes offered him an appointment as consul in Paris in order to quietly remove him from the Port of New York. When Arthur refused the appointment, the President fired him and Arthur resumed his law practice in New York City (Hayes intended to replace Arthur with Theodore Roosevelt, Sr. -- father of the future President -- but Conkling felt insulted by Hayes's termination of Arthur and worked to kill Roosevelt's appointment during his Senate confirmation ).

When Arthur headed to the 1880 Republican National Convention at the Interstate Exposition Building in Chicago, it was as a New York delegate supporting the aspirations of former President Ulysses S. Grant who was coming out of retirement to seek an unprecedented third term. However, neither of the front-runners for the nomination -- Grant and Senator James G. Blaine of Maine -- could capture enough votes from delegates to clinch the nomination. After thirty-five ballots, Blaine and another prospective candidate, John Sherman of Ohio, threw their support behind a dark horse candidate -- Ohio Congressman James A. Garfield. On the next ballot, Garfield clinched the nomination and reached out to the opposing wing of the Republican Party for his Vice Presidential choice. The first choice, Levi P. Morton of New York (who would later serve as President Benjamin Harrison's Vice President) declined Garfield's offer, and Arthur -- who had never previously held an elective office -- excitedly accepted, much to the chagrin of his angry political mentor, Roscoe Conkling. Not confident in Garfield's chances for election, Conkling told Arthur, "You should drop it as you would a red hot shot from the forge." Arthur replied, "There is something else to be said," and Conkling asked in disbelief, "What, sir, you think of accepting?" Despite the complaints and anger of Conkling, Arthur told him, "The office of Vice President is a greater honor than I have ever dreamed of attaining. I shall accept. In a calmer moment you will look at this differently."

Following the election, Arthur prepared to settle into the quiet role of Vice President during the 19th Century. The Vice President of the United States has only one real Constitutional responsibility -- to preside over the Senate, and even that responsibility is normally delegated to Senators who rotate as presiding officer almost daily. The powerful or even influential American Vice Presidency is a fairly recent evolution, not even 50 years old. While some Vice Presidents were relied upon for advice or counsel or given larger duties than others, most Vice Presidents were so far removed from the Executive Branch that they were not only kept out of the decision-making process but also kept in the dark about certain information. For example, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt died towards the end of World War II in April 1945 and was succeeded by his Vice President, Harry S. Truman, the new President Truman had to be quickly briefed about the existence of the Manhattan Project to develop atomic weaponry. The first Vice President to have an office in the White House was Walter Mondale and that didn't occur until 1977, so in 1881, a Vice President was expected to preside over the Senate on special occasions, cast a tie-breaking vote when necessary, and be available to take the oath of office if the President happened to die or resign.

Like most 19th Century Vice Presidents, Chester Arthur didn't even spend much time in Washington, and he was returning to his regular home in New York City on July 2, 1881 when he stepped off a steamship with Roscoe Conkling and was told that President Garfield had been shot. In fact, the first message that Arthur received erroneously reported that Garfield was already dead and at the request of Garfield's Cabinet, the stunned Vice President immediately returned to Washington, D.C. to proceed with the next steps necessary for maintaining the continuity of government. When Arthur arrived in Washington, President Garfield's condition had improved and his recovery continued to show signs of promise as the Vice President and the nation prayed for him and held vigil throughout the summer. Shaken by rumors that he and his "Stalwart" wing of the Republican Party conspired to assassinate Garfield, Arthur returned home to New York City, hesitant to invite criticism that his continued presence in Washington was merely an eager deathwatch so that he could grab power.

Garfield clung to life for eighty excruciating days with doctors probing him in an effort to remove the bullet in his body, causing infections and leaving the President suffering from blood poisoning which led him to hallucinate at times. The Navy helped rig together an early form of air conditioning in Garfield's White House sickroom in order to give him relief from Washington's stifling summer conditions. When Garfield was taken by train to New Jersey in early-September, it was clear to many that the long vigil was nearly over. More infections set in, along with pneumonia and painful spasms of angina. When the messenger arrived at 123 Lexington Avenue just before midnight on September 20, 1881 to inform Arthur that President Garfield had died just 60 miles away, the new President wasn't surprised, but he also wasn't quite prepared. The nation worried about the lifetime political operative stepping into the position vacated by the promising President assassinated before he could enact the civil service reforms promised in his Inaugural Address. What would Arthur -- the quintessential patronage politician -- do as President? Nobody knew, but Chester Alan Arthur had an idea.

•••

It was fitting that Arthur was surrounded by friends when he took the oath of office at his home in Manhattan at 2:15 AM on September 20, 1881. Arthur's beautiful wife, Nell, died of pneumonia in January 1880 and he was inconsolable for months, regretting for the rest of the life the fact that she never saw his election as Vice President or ascendancy to the Presidency. People who knew Arthur stated that he clearly never fully recovered from her death, and that as a "deeply emotional...romantic person," it was no surprise that he ordered that fresh flowers were placed before her portrait in the White House every day while he was President.

Chester Arthur had a lot of friends. That's what happens when you control as many patronage positions as Arthur controlled for as long as Arthur controlled them. But it wasn't just his political position that gained him friends. Arthur was a great storyteller, a man who loved to hunt and fish, kind, easy-going, charming, graceful, and smooth. During his life he was nicknamed "Elegant Arthur" and is considered one of the most stylish of Presidents. Photographs of Presidents from the 19th Century show us men no different than statues. They dressed the same, they looked the same, and when portrayed in the black and white photos of the time, we feel no differently when we see their pictures than when we see a slab of marble carved in their image. Arthur leaps out of his photographs, however. He was a very large man for his era, standing 6'2" and weighing around 220 pounds during his Presidency. Large muttonchops connected to a bushy mustache and his close-cropped, wavy brown hair seemed to pull back his forehead and place more emphasis on expressive black eyes that easily reflected his moods. While it seems that most Presidents of the 19th Century wore the same boring black suit and black tie like a uniform, Arthur's ties are patterned, his jewelry is visible, collars are crisp, handkerchiefs are folded creatively, and his lapels shine as if they were polished along with his shoes. We see photographs of Arthur in fashionable overcoats, a wide variety of hats, and he employed a personal valet who helped the President change clothes for every occasion and multiple times a day -- he was said to have over 80 pairs of pants.

Most apparent of all is that Arthur was a gentleman -- an interesting man with superb social skills and fastidious manners. Even as one of the top operatives in New York's Republican political machine of the corrupt 1870's, he was nicknamed the "Gentleman Boss." As President, he brought entertainment back to the White House -- something that had been missing on a large scale since before the Civil War twenty years earlier. One of his recent predecessors, Rutherford B. Hayes, was one of the few critics of this development, stating that there was "nothing like it before in the Executive Mansion -- liquor, snobbery, and worse." Arthur also redecorated the White House, hiring Louis Comfort Tiffany to help with the design. To help raise money for the redecoration, Arthur basically held a White House yard sale. On the lawn of the mansion, twenty-four wagons full of history (including a pair of Abraham Lincoln's pants that were left behind in a closet) were sold to citizens. To some, the items were priceless; to President Arthur, they were ugly and a man like Chester Arthur did not live in an ugly home. Several weeks after Garfield died, Arthur got his first look at his new home and quickly stated, "I will not live in a house like this." He didn't end up moving into the White House until three months into his Presidency.

•••

After taking the oath of office at home in Manhattan in the early hours of September 20, 1881, now-President Arthur proceeded to Washington, D.C., stopping in Long Branch, New Jersey to pay respects to the late President Garfield and his grieving family. Once Arthur succeeded to the Presidency upon Garfield's death, there was no Vice President, no president pro tempore of the Senate, and no Speaker of the House because Congress had not elected its leadership yet, thus, there was no Constitutional line of succession. If something had happened to Arthur at that moment, the United States would have faced an unprecedented Constitutional crisis. As his first act as President, Arthur immediately called the Senate into session in order to select their leadership positions and place someone in the line of succession. Upon arriving in Washington, Attorney General Wayne MacVeagh suggested that Arthur take a second oath of office and he did so at the U.S. Capitol on September 22nd in the presence of Garfield's Cabinet, members of Congress, Supreme Court Justices, and former Presidents Grant and Hayes.

Americans worried about the former machine politician's integrity were transformed quickly as Chester Arthur underwent somewhat of a transformation himself. Widely considered a lapdog of New York's Roscoe Conkling, Arthur broke ranks with the party boss and pushed for the same civil service reform championed by James Garfield prior to the assassination. Arthur's former associates in the New York Republican Party were disappointed when he declined their requests for political favors. One former colleague sadly reported, "He isn't 'Chet' Arthur anymore. He's the President." Arthur found that the transformation was almost automatic and out of his control, noting that "Since I came here I have learned that Chester A. Arthur is one man and the President of the United States is another." His old benefactor, Conkling, was one critic of the new President, complaining "I have but one annoyance with the Administration of President Arthur and that is, in contrast with it, the Administration of Hayes becomes respectable, if not heroic." Arthur signed the Pendleton Act in 1883 which created a modern civil service system and eliminated the spoils system that had long dominated American politics. The reform, which Conkling called "snivel service" was the final break between the longtime friends and colleagues.

To the American people, the great surprise of the Arthur Administration was the fact that it was clean, honest, and efficient. Arthur helped lift the gloomy moods that had shadowed Washington through the Civil War, Lincoln's assassination, Andrew Johnson's Impeachment, Reconstruction, the corruption of the Gilded Age, and Garfield's assassination. His popularity rose throughout his term and most critics focused on his lavish entertainment or the fact that he was notoriously late for meetings and seemed bored or lethargic at times. He often procrastinated -- as a White House clerk once said, "President Arthur never did today what he could put off until tomorrow." Still, most Americans were happy with President Arthur and echoed the thoughts of Mark Twain who said, "I am but one in 55 million; still, in the opinion of those one-fifty-five-millionth of the country's population, it would be hard to better President Arthur's Administration."

He was bored, though. President Arthur didn't like being President. He enjoyed the entertaining dinners that he could throw and loved public events or ceremonies that allowed him to meet the people of the United States, but the desk work was tedious and he wasn't interested in policy. Arthur stayed up late and seemed to vacation often, which perplexed many people because it was said that he was constantly exhausted. What they didn't know was that from almost the time he became President, Chester Arthur was dying. In 1882, he was diagnosed with Bright's disease, a fatal kidney ailment at the time. Despite reports that he was suffering from the disease, Arthur hid it from the public, desperately protecting his privacy, as always. Arthur's distaste for the Presidency probably stemmed in part from depression triggered by the Bright's disease. At times, Arthur suffered from debilitating illness and it was always covered with a story about the President catching a cold during a fishing trip or spending too much time in the sun while hunting. In a letter to his son Alan in 1883, the President confided, "I have been so ill that I have hardly been able to dispose of the...business before me."

Despite his popularity, Republican leaders opposed Arthur's nomination as President in his own right in 1884. The man who opposed it most, however, was the President himself, who stated "I do not want to be re-elected." Not only was he disinterested in a second term, but he knew very well that there was a possibility he might not even survive to the end of his current term. He did, and after attending the inauguration of his successor, Grover Cleveland, on March 4, 1885, Arthur returned home to New York City where his health rapidly declined. The former President was aware that he was dying and made plans for a relatively quiet retirement, deciding to practice law, but doing very little work due to his health. When asked about his future, Arthur said, "There doesn't seem anything for an ex-President to do but to go out in the country and raise big pumpkins." On November 16, 1886, Arthur suffered a stroke that paralyzed his left side. Gravely ill, he called his son to his bedside the day before his death and had all of his public and private papers stuffed into trash cans and burned. On November 18, 1886, the 57-year-old former President died in the same place he became President just five years earlier, 123 Lexington Avenue in New York City. After a quiet funeral at the Church of Heavenly Rest on Fifth Avenue in New York, Arthur's remains were buried next to his beloved wife at Rural Cemetery in Albany, New York.

•••

When President Arthur had many of his personal papers burned prior to his death, he eliminated one of the best sources of information for future historians. With a thin resume and a fairly uneventful Presidency, there wasn't much public information about his career, either. This leaves us with very little to remember Chester Alan Arthur by. Research on his life -- particularly his personal life -- is difficult, and Arthur would have appreciated that. During his Presidency, leaders of the temperance movement called on Arthur and urged him to follow the non-alcoholic lifestyle led by President Hayes and his teetotaler wife, who was known as "Lemonade Lucy."

Arthur's response: "Madam, I may be President of the United States, but my private life is nobody's damn business."

And so it isn't.

[charlesoberonn]

A quick alternate history scenario I made for the r/AlternateHistory subreddit:

In 1796, George Washington reluctantly runs for a third term as president to prevent Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans from taking hold of government. His third and final term is more rocky than the first two, with the south being especially unhappy with some of his reforms, though they associate them with his vice-president John Adams and Secretary of State Alexander Hamilton. On December 14th, 1799, George Washington dies in office. The nation is in turmoil and mourning. The Democratic-Republicans call for a special election, but vice-president John Adams is declared president instead. On Christmas 1799 a protest march on DC turns violent when federal forces clash with protestors and revolutionary war veterans. Jefferson declares Adams an illegitimate usurper. Adams calls off next year's election. Several state legislatures , especially in the South, declare Jefferson as a provisional emergency leader for the purpose of ousting the Federalist regime. The American Civil War has begun. On January 15, with DC about to be overtaken, an internal vote within the Federalist war cabinet decide to oust Adams and appoint his vice president and war hero Alexander Hamilton as president instead. The tide of the war turns, with the Federalist forces able to protect the north and much of their territory, but it is short lived. The Federalist are forced to abandon DC on April and retreat to New York City as a provisional capital. Hamilton himself refuses to go. He is captured by the Democratic-Republicans along with Adams. Jefferson is appointed president on April 19th. In July, Senator Gouverneur Morris is appointed as temporary leader of the Federalist forces in New York. The war stalls for several months as the Democratic-Republican forces fail to make inroads into the north. Meanwhile Jefferson's administration is poorly received and he is compared poorly to the Reign of Terror in France, especially after the public executions of Adams and Hamilton, and after the French Revolutionary government acknowledges him as the legitimate president. The British back Morris and the Federalists and provide military assistance in return for territorial concessions out west. Despite the Democratic-Republicans trying to paint Morris as a traitor for his British support, the public hates Jefferson more, compounded by a series of military defeats. On December 14th, during a public memorial service for the 1 year anniversary of Washington's death, Jefferson presents himself as the true heir to the venerated general. This creates outrage and leads to a 6 days siege of the White House, at the end of which Jefferson is dragged out and beaten to death by the public and some of his own soldiers. The Democratic-Republican forces subsequently surrender and the capital is captured by Federalist and British forces. Morris is appointed president and his first act is to call in a new Constitutional Convention in order to draft a new constitution, one with the primary aim of preventing another civil war.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"The Penitentiary Act," Kingston Whig Standard. March 31, 1933. Editorial ==== The Hon. Hugh Guthrie is on the right track in endeavoring to take the administration of our penitentiaries out of the hands of the Civil Service Commission. For if the Civil Service is to continue to make the appointments to the penitentiary staffs, then it is practically administering our penitentiaries. We have just had a series of riots in our Canadian penitentiaries and, when these riots were on, we did not look to the Civil Service Commission to quell them, rather to the Superintendent of Penitentiaries and his staff. It seems only fair. therefore, that if the Superintendent of Penitentiaries is to be responsible for the administration, he should have the final say in the choosing of his officials. So far as this newspaper is concerned, we are not unduly worried about abusive. patronage. If the Department of Justice chooses the right man for superintendent, and the superintendent places picked men at the heads of these institutions, we do not think there is any great danger. A warden with six or seven hundred convicts under his care, and with his own position and prestige to maintain, is not going to appoint an incompetent guard or instructor, simply because he happens to be of some particular political stripe. He is going to pick the best men he can possibly get. We are quite willing to admit that under the old patronage system there were some abuses, but we do not think they were any worse than the abuses that have crept in under our wonderful Civil Service Commission. We agree with Mr. Guthrie a man may be able to pass all the examinations in the world, and still not make a capable penitentiary official. What we want on our penitentiary staffs are men who are capable, efficient and courageous. We believe that our penitentiaries will be better managed by a staff chosen and trained by a capable, conscientious warden a staff that has had to prove itself worthy under his ever-watchful eye than a staff appointed by the Civil Service Commission. Mr. Guthrie's amendment is a good one. and in the interests of penitentiary management it should be adopted.

[simply-ivanka]

Who’s Afraid of Project 2025?

Democrats run against a think-tank paper that Trump disavows. Why?

Wall Street Journal

July 29, 2024

By The Editorial Board

Americans are learning more about Kamala Harris, as Democrats rush to anoint the Vice President’s candidacy after throwing President Biden overboard. Ms. Harris wasted no time saying she’s going to run hard against a policy paper that Donald Trump has disavowed—the supposedly nefarious agenda known as Project 2025. But who’s afraid of a think-tank white paper?

“I will do everything in my power to unite the Democratic Party—and unite our nation—to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme Project 2025 agenda,” Ms. Harris tweeted shortly after President Biden dropped out. She’s picking up this ball from Mr. Biden, and her campaign website claims that Project 2025 would “strip away our freedoms” and “abolish checks and balances.”

***

Sounds terrible, but is it? The 922-page document doesn’t lack for modesty, as a wish list of policy reforms that would touch every part of government from the Justice Department to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The project is led by the Heritage Foundation and melds the work of some 400 scholars and analysts from an eclectic mix of center-right groups. The project is also assembling a Rolodex of those who might work in a Trump Administration.

Most of the Democratic panic-mongering has focused on the project’s aim to rein in the administrative state. That includes civil service reform that would make it easier to remove some government workers, and potentially revisiting the independent status of agencies like the Federal Trade Commission.

The latter isn’t going to happen, but getting firmer presidential control over the bureaucracy would improve accountability. The federal government has become so vast that Presidents have difficulty even knowing what is going on in the executive branch. Americans don’t want to be ruled by a permanent governing class that doesn’t answer to voters.

Some items on this menu are also standard conservative fare. The document calls for an 18% corporate tax rate (now 21%), describing that levy as “the most damaging tax” in the U.S. system that falls heavily on workers. A mountain of economic literature backs that up. The blueprint suggests tying more welfare programs with work; de-regulating health insurance markets; expanding Medicare Advantage plans that seniors like; ending sugar subsidies; revving up U.S. energy production. That all sounds good to us.

Democrats are suggesting the project would gut Social Security, though in fact it bows to Mr. Trump’s preference not to touch the retirement program, which is headed for bankruptcy without reform. No project can profess to care about the rising national debt, as Heritage does, without fixing a program that was 22% of the federal budget in 2023.

At times the paper takes no position. For example: The blueprint features competing essays on trade policy. This is a tacit admission that for all the GOP’s ideological confusion on economics, many conservatives still understand that Mr. Trump’s 10% tariff is a terrible idea.

As for the politics, Mr. Trump recently said online that he knew “nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it.” That may be true. The chance that Mr. Trump has read any of it is remote to nil, and he doesn’t want to be tied to anyone’s ideas since he prizes maximum ideological flexibility.

The document mentions abortion nearly 200 times, but Mr. Trump wants to neutralize that issue. The project’s chief sponsor, Heritage president Kevin Roberts, also gave opponents a sword when he boasted of “a second American revolution” that would be peaceful “if the left allows it to be.” This won’t help Mr. Trump with the swing voters he needs to win re-election.

By our lights the project’s cultural overtones are also too dark and the agenda gives too little spotlight to the economic freedom and strong national defense that defined the think tank’s influence on Ronald Reagan in 1980.

***

But the left’s campaign against Project 2025 is reaching absurd decibels. You’d think Mr. Trump is a political mastermind hiding the secret plans he’ll implement with an army of shock troops marching in lockstep. If his first term is any guide, and it is the best we have, Mr. Trump will govern as a make-it-up-as-he-goes tactician rather than a strategist with a coherent policy guide. He’ll dodge and weave based on the news cycle and often based on whoever talks to him last.

Not much of the Project 2025 agenda is likely to happen, even if Republicans take the House and Senate. Democrats will block legislation with a filibuster. The bureaucracy will leak with abandon and oppose even the most minor reforms to the civil service. The press will revert to full resistance mode, and Mr. Trump’s staff will trip over their own ambitions.

Democrats know this, which is why they fear Trump II less than they claim. They’re targeting Project 2025 to distract from their own failed and unpopular policies.

[fdelopera]

Exactly, Anon. Exactly. This is why the Ivy League Universities being turned into Hamasnik terrorist bases is so horrifying. Especially with Jew-hating students attacking Jewish students and professors on campus, with the Universities' sanction. The Universities could shut these Jew-hate riots down. The fact that they don't shows that they want them to continue. They're trying to chase away the Jewish students and professors from these schools. That's always the first step. That's what the Nazis did first, too.

This article is taken from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum website. I highly recommend that everyone read the whole article. But even if you read the first paragraph, you'll see the parallels to what is happening on Ivy League campuses today:

.

After Adolf Hitler was appointed German Chancellor in January 1933, the new Nazi government began an effort to completely reorder public and private life in Germany. 

The Nazi regime quickly targeted German universities—among the most elite in the world at the time—for restructuring according to Nazi principles. While the Nazi Ministry of Education initiated reforms, local Nazi organizations and student activists worked to bring Nazi ideals to German campuses. These forces, along with increasing antisemitism under Nazi rule, transformed everyday life at German universities. Throughout this period, students, faculty, and staff made individual decisions that both upheld and opposed Nazi ideology.

With the passage of the "Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service" in 1933, most Jewish professors in Germany were dismissed from their positions. Others, such as Professor Eugen Mittwoch, were able to keep their posts temporarily only due to the political value of their research. After purging Jewish and "politically undesirable" faculty, the regime then targeted the student body with the "Law Against Overcrowding in Schools and Universities." As German authorities continued to "Aryanize" German universities, Jews increasingly lost the opportunity to teach or study. Many non-Jewish Germans sought to benefit from their persecution. 

The daily business of university life continued in the wake of these new policies, but political concerns increasingly influenced the way professors and students worked and studied. The practice of denunciation, as demonstrated by the "Request for the Investigation of Professor Hans Peters," illustrates the danger posed to both students and faculty if they failed to follow new ideological norms. Those willing to voice support for the new regime—whether out of enthusiasm or practicality—often received promotions or other rewards. Meanwhile, many others quietly accepted the new policies and passively benefited from the persecution of their Jewish peers. Very few, such as the small student group in Munich known as the White Rose, took any significant action to resist the Nazi dictatorship.

The Nazi government and its supporters manipulated several aspects of the country's traditional university system to turn German higher education into a crucial source of support for the new regime. For example, the German student population had been largely male long before the Nazi rise to power, and German campuses were dominated by fraternities.  Those organizations maintained traditional military discipline and dress codes, and their alumni groups exercised significant political power both before and after 1933. Fraternities—often working with the Student Council and Nazi Student League—served  as a powerful and violent force for implementing Nazi principles at universities, often going beyond the party platform in their radicalism. A Report on the Camaraderie House for Female Students of Göttingen shows how Nazi student groups used the format of traditional student organizations to train both men and women to become the next generation of Nazi leaders.

Although the regime could rely on many committed student activists, the Third Reich also sought the support of German professors to lend legitimacy to their policies. Because German universities were state institutions, professors' academic careers became vulnerable to the whims and wishes of the Nazi state. While only a small minority of professors had been Nazi Party members before 1933, several prominent professors quickly voiced their support for the Third Reich. In the new German university, political loyalty was valued over academic ability in the assessment of students and in the selection and promotion of professors. Authorities infused university classrooms with Nazi ideology—as shown in the document, "Foundation of the Advanced School of the German Reich". But prioritizing politics over academics affected the quality of German higher education. 

Nevertheless, professors—even enthusiastic supporters of the new regime—often spoke out against some aspects of Nazi policy. The case of Eduard Kohlrausch shows how his opposition to  student-led book burnings caused his removal from the university administration. Dissent against individual policies, however, did not give rise to any concerted resistance movements. German universities as a whole formed a solid base of support for the Nazi regime, contributing valuable knowledge to the development of technology for the war effort as well as logistical support for the Holocaust.

The Nazification of universities overwhelmed the daily lives of students with new requirements, including mandatory lectures, physical exercises, labor duties, and political assemblies. Many students resented those requirements, even if they supported the Nazi Party. In Heidelberg, for example, where the daily life of students was dominated by political instruction and mandatory physical training, large numbers of students withdrew from the university in search of other educational opportunities. As illustrated in the "Memo Regarding Maria-Elisabeth Koch," students also showed varying degrees of enthusiasm for the labor service that was often required of them in territories occupied by Nazi Germany.

The Nazi government's project of remaking German universities was broadly successful, but it produced unintended consequences. The quality of education suffered significantly as classes were regularly cancelled for political assemblies and students' schedules became filled with ideological and paramilitary training. Moreover, purging Jewish faculty deprived German universities of valuable expertise. Within a few years, many observers in Germany and abroad became deeply skeptical about the quality of German higher education in the Third Reich. Propaganda efforts such as the Carl Schurz tour for American professors and students—documented with a slickly produced video—did not prevent protest. The 550th-anniversary celebration of Heidelberg University met with opposition in Europe, even while prominent American universities such as Harvard accepted invitations.

With the defeat of the Third Reich in 1945, Allied forces occupying Germany began a long-term effort to remove the influence of Nazi ideology in German society. Many German academics who made significant contributions to the Nazi war effort fled to the United States, where they lived comfortable lives and their expertise was highly valued by American universities and the US military. In postwar Germany, many faculty and students who had benefited from the Nazis' discriminatory policies without being especially vocal or enthusiastic supporters of the regime sought to cast their dissent or their silence as forms of political resistance to obscure their own complicity. Although many Germans denied having supported the Nazi regime, antisemitism persisted in postwar Germany. The case of Hermann Budzislawski shows the difficulties encountered by the relatively few German Jews who decided to return to Germany after World War II.

Sources in this collection document the choices facing students and faculty pursuing their everyday lives in the shadow of Nazism and the Holocaust. Over the course of this period, as antisemitic discrimination escalated to mass murder, the higher education system proved to be a source of support—rather than opposition—to the party's project of remaking German society.

[centrally-unplanned]

I find myself interested in how ineffective integration was for Ireland vis a vis the UK in the 19th century. Certainly after 1832 voting reforms and the 1829 repeal of the ban on Catholics serving in parliament (UK-wide but ofc hitting Ireland the hardest), the Irish were at more-or-less equal footing as the English or Scots when it came to voting rights and the legal system (I think most people don't know this! They think the Irish couldn't vote in the 19th century!) And it wasn't even an "on paper" deal for voting rights, Irish were active in government (they even had Irish PMs, though ofc Protestant), by the latter half of the 19th century economic regulations were equalized, and they got within a hair's breadth of Home Rule before some munitinous unionists and WW1 got in the way. Despite the rep a lot of countries have gigantic ethnic minorities, and liberalism/equal franchise is actually pretty decent solution to that problem. Why didn't ~100 years of representation in the House of Commons, in the era when "nation building" was at its peak, not work?

From what I can tell, timing is of course part of it. At a simple level, World War One was such a nationalist godsend; it created the "radicalism cascade", a weakened center and domino revolutions inspiring everyone with a cause with a sort of temporal Schelling Point. Without it, would the 1912 Home Rule have just been implemented in due time, and Ireland would be like Scotland today? At a more structural level, the timing was particularly rough because WW1 was the tail end of the age of religion in Europe. So much of the conflict was over Protestant vs Catholic, and after WW2 if Ireland was united under one home rule government in the UK it's hard to imagine the secularizing age powering so much conflict. Had they "held on" a few more decades you could see it calming down.

I think those are true enough but you do gotta dig down to another level. "Protestant" wasn't really just a religion in Ireland - it was the Protestant Ascendancy, a ruling class of combined English settlers and converted Irish who, during the imperial era before the 19th century, built an entirely separate ruling class in Ireland. And it was a deep ruling class - Catholics were barred from voting in even the Dublin local parliament, they were banned from being judges or lawyers, inheritance law was rigged to privilege Protestant sons while converting away from the Anglican church came with property confiscations. Depending on what counts, at its peak in the 18th century up to 30% of the country had opportunistically converted, in a system rigged top to bottom against the Catholics.

Imagine for a second India was given representation in the House of Commons and given self-rule. Just ignore the distance and demography issues for now, this obviously wouldn't actually work, instead think about what that transition would look like. The British "Indian Civil Service" would have to be dismantled...which was like 10k brits vs over 100k Indians. Actual british military officers in the country in the 19th century was less than 100k - and it was a rotating duty, they didn't all live there. Dismantling that really isn't that hard! Those people just go home. The core that ruled was deeply integrated into the country, but it was tiny - the vast majority of India was ruled by Indians, in the name of the Crown. They would just...keep going but now be in parliament.

That was impossible in Ireland. Britain had actually launched one of the most intensive cultural conversion programs of a foreign nation around in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was nowhere close to the "light imperial touch" of elsewhere. But it never...worked. Instead it just built this gigantic ruling class, deeply enmeshed in both Ireland and England, completely dependent on that superiority economically, but seen as outsiders by the Catholic Irish majority. "Protestant & Catholic" is at least half a gigantic class war. And in the 19th century the UK brought "laissez faire liberalism" to Ireland and was like "look, we are equal now!" after two+ centuries of rigging the system. It was literally the "kicking out the ladder after climbing up" equality meme.

This was why Home Rule was so bitterly contested, why Protestant Anglo-Irish officers threatened to mutiny in 1912 if it was implemented. They understood that the first acts of Home Rule were going to be, essentially, reparations. Which the Irish almost surely deserved. But Imperial, Liberal, 19th Century UK was not going to give reparations to the fucking Irish, it was not ready to dismantle its dejure and defacto aristocrats in that way - or at least not until it was too late, some land reform for example did begin in 1903. Scotland didn't need it, Wales was too weak to fight it, but Ireland was in the sweet spot of being weak enough to be oppressed but strong enough to oppose it and fight back once the culture changed.

Or at least that is my current read, this is a low-confidence post. Curious to learn more!

[vm-haunts]

Crossover Headcanons: Worldbuilding Edition

A collection of DPxDC headcanons from myself and various posts, in no particular order.

Green stuff

Dionesium is, or is one of the main decay byproduct of, ectoplasm. It is the defining element in Lazarus water.

Lazarus water is a naturally occurring compound that amplifies certain effects of ectoplasm. Concentration of ectoplasm in the waters is surprisingly low despite the appearance.

College trio as the Doctor Three. Who lead the study on dionesium in Gotham University at some point.

Talons created by the Court of Owls are a special type of liminals, and communicates within themselves via a dialect of ghost speak.

Realms stuff

Infinite realms, or pockets within it, had been observed and accessed before, by different civilizations under numerous different names.

The Kryptonians used the realms as a means of banishment, which they called the phantom zone.

GIW stuff

GIW is operating under All Purpose Enforcement Squad (APES), headquarters in mount Rushmore.

Anti-ecto Acts is a set of old laws dating back to civil war era, only brought back into practice in recent years.

Liminals have significantly higher chance of activating metagene. May or may not be causing the metagene mutation in the first place.

Anti-ecto Acts might be intentionally exploited as a backdoor to meta protection acts.

Ring stuff

Pariah Dark's ring of rage turned into the phantom ring after Danny officially claimed it. It enhances all emotions of the owner equally.

Danny lost his ring at some point and it became known to the lanterns as the phantom ring.

In the hands of realm ghosts the phantom ring glows green regardless of the emotion it is enhancing, as ghosts are beings of pure will. Otherwise it is black with a faint white glow. (Can't believe this one matches up, I love lore stitching)

Balance stuff

Danny bears both Life Force and Death Force in equal amounts. His only way to accessing them is channelling a mixture of the two to power his ghost wail.

Ghost Wail infused with both acts like a simple sonic attack. But if powdered only by death force it's functionally the same thing as Void Wind, which 'negates the power and immortality of the gods. Enabling it to shut down any form of arcana used against it'.

Dark Danny only process death force as he no longer have a human side for balance. His death infused wail could be how he destroyed the world without much interference from magic users.

Danny's Wail can be infused with only life force instead, which would eviscerate ghosts. Possibly only possible when he is in human form.

Glitchy stuff (not really DC related)

Dark Danny's attack on Clockwork's tower created some pretty severe glitchs in time (ha) across all of the living realms.

As the clocktower take damage some universes collapsed together, and some timelines became contradictory and paradoxical (typical comic reboot am I right?😅)

After Dan finally calmed down he becomes the ultimate errand boy for clockwork. Showing up an fixing things he broke under the guidance of the ghost of Time.

Stranger stuff

Dan got sentenced to Life (literal) in an alternate ending of glitch in time, which capped his destruction and eventually calmed him off.

Reformed Dan is doing social services as penance, in the DC multiverse he goes by the alias of Phantom Stranger.