"No longer needed!"

At The Last Refuge, Sundance reports,

The term “shadow government” is not a construct of critics; it’s actually the term the professional bureaucrats within the 7th floor of the Washington DC-based Department of State gave to themselves.

The career political operatives who reign within the State Department openly view themselves as a distinctly separate state governing authority, with no attachment to the policies or objectives of the United States presidency or any mere elected official therein.

They live a life of high financed indulgence including: massive expense accounts, chartered airline travel, swanky cocktail parties, expense chauffeurs to take their kids to private school, seasonally designed home decor – appointed by only the very best interior designers, personal security to keep the commoners away, tickets to the best venues and reserved seating at elite DC restaurants.

With first rights to the budget expenditures, the 7th floor group finds no indulgence too extravagant for their intellectual elitism. They demand nothing but the finest because they are the most worthy of the DC professionally privileged – who are more equal than others; and after all, their jobs require them to host and visit like-minded diplomats, and celebrities with exclusive tastes from around the world.

Today, this elite crew collectively choked on their crust-less triangle sandwiches:

Sundance links to an article by Margaret Brennan and Kylie Atwood at CBS News:

While Rex Tillerson is on his first overseas trip as Secretary of State, his aides laid off staff at the State Department on Thursday.

Much of seventh-floor staff, who work for the Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources and the Counselor offices, were told today that their services were no longer needed.

Sundance concludes:

We shall now see if the UniParty (Democrat and Republican) will try to impede such an effort:

“There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new order of things. … Whenever his enemies have occasion to attack the innovator they do so with the passion of partisans, while the others defend him sluggishly so that the innovator and his party alike are vulnerable.”

~ Niccolo Machiavelli

Read more here.