If the 5th Amendment can be used by federal employees, such as Lois Lerner of the IRS, then what is the legal and non-violent process to remove high level federal executives? Federal executives take advantage of government enforced secrecy, strong arm tactics, executive privilege, and presidential pardons. The only time a criminal in the federal government is caught is if and when the federal employee makes a mistake in their scheme and someone has enough guts to blow the whistle. As we see all too often, that requires a rare combination of honest people in government, events, and a persistent and objective mass media effort.
Alternatively, the correct approach, which would maintain public trust in government, is to significantly reward behavior by federal employees which discloses corruption, reward reduction in bureaucracy, reward programs and policies which reduce cost, and reward behavior and policies which result in transparency and simplicity. Our current government does the opposite.
The reason this alternative is highly unlikely to be implemented is that too many government employees benefit from corruption in the government. As reported by the IRS in 2011, federal employees owed the federal government more than $3.5 billion in late federal taxes, despite the fact that their pay and benefits are far better than the average American they serve. How is it that so many federal employees, Congressmen, Senators, Presidents become multi-millionaires while employed by the government? And then most of them leave government for even higher paying jobs and retain government benefits. Why is the federal government allowed to use the power of government, police, military, fear of prison, etc. against the press and against federal employees? The people have allowed the servants to become their masters and celebrities.
On its present course, the U.S. is rapidly regressing to a third world system, like Brazil, where it is common and best practice to ignore laws. The only attention paid to laws there is to avoid getting caught and be prepared to pay someone off if caught. Currently, Brazilians are more free than Americans .
budbromley 