Biden White House fires and otherwise ostricizes staffers for acknowledging they used marijuana in the past

Politics & Elections
61

[Scene: Zoom meeting of new White House staffers; logon Uncle Joe, speaks]
“Look, here’s the deal. Whether you used pot or didn’t use pot in the past is yer own beeswax. But from now on as long as alla you hotshot whippersnappers ‘r werkin’ fer the Fedderal Gov’memt, it’s ix-nay on the wacky tobacky - Capeesh?”

Bright line drawn.

Tell me, anyone, why this wouldn’t be just copacetic, if not hunky dory, or even peaches.

No handwringing about Federal laws, or brow-furrowed parsing about how much is too much and how recent is too recent, or dithering about how many were fired, or conjecturing that, well, maybe some of those poor saps lied, or reminiscences about when you did security checks in the beforetime, and, most of all, no apologetics for Biden just because he’s not that a*hole “Florida man”.

What do you think would be the actual real-world negative consequences of Biden giving these pot-heads a retrospective hall pass?

PS. If you say Biden has no choice in the matter, then you really haven’t learned jack in the past four years.

62

That is exactly what the policy is.

So, these five out of a hundred + either lied or used hard drugs. or some other thing failed them, like bad debts.

Oh Biden has a choice, but the President isnt personally consulted on minor White house positions.

63

Did you read the Daily Beast article? If not, you should. If you did, you should read it again. Yes, five were fired, but more were suspended, etc.

64

Yes, but the Beast is long on headlines short on cites.

In response to this news story, White House press secretary Jen Psaki tweeted out on Friday an NBC News report from February stating that the Biden administration wouldn’t automatically disqualify applicants if they admitted to past marijuana use. Psaki said of the hundreds of people hired in the administration, only five who had started working at the White House are “no longer employed as a result of this policy.”

…

“In an effort to ensure that more people have an opportunity to serve the public, we worked in coordination with the security service to ensure that more people have the opportunity to serve than would not have in the past with the same level of recent drug use. While we will not get into individual cases, there were additional factors at play in many instances for the small number of individuals who were terminated,” Psaki said.

there were additional factors at play in many instances for the small number of individuals who were terminated,

Asked about the policy and its effect on the administration’s staffing Thursday night, a White House spokesperson disputed the number of affected staff, but said the Biden administration is “committed to bringing the best people into government—especially the young people whose commitment to public service can deepen in these positions,” and noted that the White House’s approach to past marijuana use is much more flexible than previous administrations.

But read the headline:Dozens of young White House staffers have been suspended, asked to resign, or placed in a remote work program due to past marijuana use, frustrating staffers who were pleased by initial indications from the Biden administration that recreational use of cannabis would not be immediately disqualifying for would-be personnel, according to three people familiar with the situation.
according to three people familiar with the situation (which three? Names? Positions? where are the sources? where are the actual quotes? )

However, the White House said it was five, but others for other reasons.

They also dont get into specifics about why you were fired or not hired due to a security check, so this could be people guessing that was the reason- but in actually they lied somewhere or something else kicked them out, such as hard drug use.

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Yes, @Sam_Stone , I’d also like to know where you got that belief from?

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I for one don’t think ‘but Trump did it!’ is a solid justification for a president to bend the law to put unqualified people in his administration, nor should we be basing precedents for future presidential behavior on his.

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From the article that @DrDeth cited, here is the actual Biden administration policy:

Any individual granted that waiver [for admitted marijuana use] must, in turn, agree to cease all use of marijuana for the entirety of their government service and agree to random drug testing. Those employees would also be required to work remotely for an unspecified period following their last acknowledged use of marijuana.

So, that’s pretty close to the policy you want. They do have to agree to random drug testing, and they have to work remotely for an unspecified period (which sure sounds like they just need to wait until the THC clears their system and they can pass a drug screen), but other than that, prior marijuana use in and of itself isn’t a disqualifying factor.

Five workers have been fired. Some media reports say it’s for past marijuana use, the White House says other factors were involved. Now, of course, Jen Psaki may be wrong about why they were fired. But it seems more than a bit odd for the Biden administration to publicly revise personnel policy on marijuana use, then privately fire staffers for marijuana use because…they’re secretly hardline zero-tolerance anti-pot hardliners that don’t want to admit it?

Many staffers currently have to work remotely. But that’s how the policy is supposed to work. They’re not being “ostracized”. They have to work off-site until they can pass a drug screen.

Other staffers have been suspended, pending further investigation and adjudication of their cases. I know you don’t want any “reminiscences from the before times”, but that’s how the process works. It doesn’t mean that adverse action is being taken, or that they won’t get the job. Just by sheer numbers, some of them were certainly suspended for derogatory information unrelated to marijuana use. And some of them are just having to wait a bit longer and will eventually get cleared.

Also note that the Biden administration is implementing this policy in consultation with and through the offices of the White House Office of Personnel Security and the Office of Personnel Management. President Biden absolutely could just order everyone cleared. That’s within his authority. Instead, he’s choosing to work through the processes and procedures and institutions that have been in use for decades, under presidents of both parties, from the old fuddy-duddies like George H. W. Bush to the young, hip guys with their own admitted history of drug use, like Barack Obama. He’s trusting institutions instead of running rough-shod over them. Also, as DrDeth has pointed out, he’s delegating to those institutions rather than micromanaging the hiring of staffers.

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Oh, and another possibility that I don’t think has been mentioned yet. It could be the “Deep State”. It’s at least possible that career civil service professionals may be having trouble reconciling decades of policy and practice with the newly lenient policy. It may be that some OPS and OPM personnel need some additional training on how to implement the new policy.

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Or reptilians. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Sure “deep state” isnt quite as bad as reptile people, but it is just as bogus.

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Well, not quite. Just to be clear, I put “Deep State” in scare quotes because I was using it ironically. But, the term does refer to a real phenomenon, albeit one that Trumpists distorted and exaggerated. Bureaucracies are made up of actual people, with their own minds. Even the best high-level policies can founder on the reefs of indifference and hostility by the ground-level folks that actually have to implement them (to mix a couple of metaphors).

I’m not saying there’s a conspiracy of hardened drug warriors in the OPS and OPM deliberately obstructing a pot-friendly policy. Just that it’s at least possible that the actual individual personnel responsible for clearing White House staffers may not always be implementing the new policy correctly.

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We already have adequate terms like “red tape” and “officialdom” to describe that phenomenon. No need to perpetuate the previous junta’s crap, even ironically.

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I don’t think those terms actually quite capture the phenomenon, but then, neither does “deep state”, really. It’s also not a hill I want to die on. Please disregard my use of the term, and I apologize for causing confusion by using it.

That being said, and I guess just by the way, the Trump administration wasn’t a “junta”, and there’s no need to use that term to describe it, either. There was no revolutionary seizure of power nor rule by military force, nor, for that matter, rule by a council or committee.

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Fine, fine, you’ve been very gracious and I can’t not reciprocate

“Previous camarilla’s crap” it is, then.

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Wait, since when was there a new policy? I thought you said that things were pretty relaxed about long-enough-ago-to-clear-drug-testing usage fifteen years ago, at least where marijuana is concerned. In fact I was getting the impression from this thread that there is no indication whatsoever that anything unusual is going on here at all, and that it’s a big giant nothingburger.

Are you saying you think otherwise?

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From the article cited by @DrDeth upthread:

The Biden administration is issuing new guidelines Friday meant to address an unexpected hurdle it faced as it aimed to quickly fill key White House positions: recreational marijuana use…marijuana use is…illegal under federal law and is therefore a potentially disqualifying factor in obtaining security clearances. Transition officials quickly identified recreational marijuana use as a potential hurdle for applicants, especially younger ones, in meeting that requirement. After what one official described as “intensive consultation with security officials” and the Personnel Security Division, the White House will now, on a case-by-case basis, waive a requirement that potential appointees in the Executive Office of the President (EOP) be eligible for a “Top Secret” clearance. Officials said a waiver would only be granted to those who have used marijuana on a “limited” basis and who are in positions that don’t ultimately require a security clearance.

Things were relatively relaxed if you were upfront about past drug use, but it was still a potential bar that required additional investigation and adjudication, and if you were a recent habitual user, you would probably not be cleared. What the new policy appears to be is even more lenient. There is effectively an automatic waiver as long as the applicant meets certain criteria.

Also, and this is I think new, they don’t even have to pass a drug screen immediately - they can work remotely until they can pass the screen. In my experience 15 years ago, applicants who admitted to past drug use were often given a spot drug screen - they weren’t given a chance to let the drugs clear their system. Under the Biden policy, it appears you could have lit up the day before you were hired, as long as you were open about it and were willing to work remotely until the THC cleared your system. That’s a shift from what I remember.

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Thanks.

So do you think that there’s a chance that this new policy was being ignored, deliberately or accidentally, by those who were supposed to be implementing it? I’d think that with the scrutiny now being pointed at this such things would be reviewed and adjusted if the policies weren’t followed correctly.

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I think there’s a chance. I think it’s vanishingly unlikely it was being deliberately flouted, but I think there’s a reasonable chance that not everyone on the ground level was completely clear on the full scope and intent of the new policy. And old habits die hard.

I think it’s also quite likely that there other factors involved in the cases of the staffers who were fired or suspended, and it may well be that the administrations policies are being followed, and that some of the staffers were knuckleheads.

We simply don’t have any details, and we’re unlikely to ever get them. Background investigations of ordinary staffers are highly confidential, for obvious reasons.

78

Camarilla? Donald Trump? Surely he’s a member of the Sabbat.

79

Nice one!

80

There’s no way that Trump never diablerized anyone, I’m sure it has happened at some point.