"... of the people, by the people, for the people ..."

" that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not
have died in vain—that this nation, under God,
shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government:
of the people, by the people, for the people,
shall not perish from the earth." wikilink

If you want to file a complaint against your government,
or against anyone in the government,
you do so against the will of the respondent(s), their lawyers,
and every other resource that the government can muster to
defeat or deflect your complaint. And, cost is no object.

Their interests do not lie in providing a principled resolution
to legitimate complaints. They will not be laying the whole
truth on the table, for a fair and impartial adjudication.

Quite the opposite; the oligarchy will defend the oligarch
with every despicable tactic that the law will allow. And
the law, the lowest standards acceptable to civilized humans,
will allow some pretty despicable tactics.

This doesn't sound like the government that Abraham Lincoln
was talking about. This doesn't seem like a government of the
people, by the people, and for the people.

The most important thing that a person can do when they
are entrusted with power, is to ensure that the power cannot
be abused, ever.

It should also be the very first thing that they do.

A government of the people, by the people, and for the people,
should have a place where the least powerful stakeholder can
file a legitimate complaint against the most powerful public
servant, and where that complaint will see a principled resolution;
as a function of government!

It is not impossible for government to protect itself from
corruption and incompetence.

It is absolutely possible to make it impossibly difficult to hide
corruption and incompetence; it is called transparent
accountability to unequivocal standards of conduct and
competence.

How do you get from here to there? How do you go from a
government with no real accountability even to the lowest
imaginable standards, to a government that is transparently
accountable to meaningful standards of conduct and competence?

It is bone crushingly naive to suppose that it will be legislated,
or ordered by a court, or ordered by executive decree.

The "system" has had more than two centuries to finally
police itself. It has not. By deliberate choice.

There is no branch of government that you can look to,
to end public corruption and incompetence.

There is not one of them who will institutionalize honest
accountability to meaningful standards of conduct and
competence, under an impartial system that is
powerful enough to hold them accountable to those standards,
even against their will.

They could do it; they won't.

As an illustrative example; the leadership of the APS could
institutionalize honest accountability to meaningful standards
of conduct and competence, by restoring the role modeling
clause to their own standards of conduct.

They won't.

They could hold themselves honestly accountable to the
Pillars of Character Counts!, thereby ending corruption
and incompetence in the leadership of the APS,

they won't.


And there will be no law which will compel them, and
there will be no court order that will compel them, and
there will be no executive decree that will compel public
servants to hold themselves honestly accountable
to meaningful standards of conduct.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy wrote;

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible,
make violent revolution inevitable.

The leadership of the APS has made it clear that they will not
be held honestly accountable to the Pillars of Character Counts!

The leadership of the APS has made it clear that they will not
hold themselves honestly accountable for their conduct or
competence.

The leadership of the APS has made it clear that they will not
explain, defend, deny, or even acknowledge refusal.

They will not even allow the subject to be discussed in public.

They have declared peaceful revolution, impossible.