Things Republicans could do - Whistle blower laws

One of the cover stories in the April 1, 2012 San Francisco Chronicle is about the sorry history of California State University (CSUS) employee's who blow the whistle on abuses by other employees.  Often the abusive employees keep their job, the whistle-blower loses their job, and the whole episode is swept under the rug after millions of dollars in settlements to the fired employees.

The same thing happens in business of course, but usually for different reasons.  In business usually whistle-blowers get dumped on because the company is doing something that endangers the public or employees, and the managers of the company want to protect the enterprise's ability to generate money to pay their salary and position.  In government the whistle blowers get dumped on because they upset the complex web of political relationships we allow to flourish in government employment which allows public employee's to protect their own position at the expense of efficiency in achieving the goals of the enterprise.

It is pretty clear the problem with whistle-blower laws is they require the whistle-blower to report the impropriety to the organization first.  The idea is to give the organization an opportunity to correct the problem, but the reality is it just gives the enterprise an opportunity to start marginalizing the whistle blower and building a cover-up.

Republicans complain about government all the time.  Why aren't Republicans taking up this problem?  Why aren't Republicans taking the lead in setting up an independent auditing agency that could investigate allegations of business or government impropriety without revealing the source?  Why aren't Republicans advocating enacting laws to make it a crime for a public employee to impede an investigation into allegations of fraud or abuse in public employment?

Not to let the democrats off the hook, they should also be advocating these changes.  But based on past history I expect they will.  The problem will be the Republicans because they are obsessed with the notion the only thing to do with government is to take an ax to it.  Even though history and economic data demonstrate the taking an ax to government generally cripples the countries economy for decades.

The real problem is Republicans are lazy.  Making government work well is hard work.  It requires research to gather data and ideas, study of options, testing of different ideas.  Advocating swinging an ax is easy, and you don't even actually have to do it if you hand out some tax cuts to placate enough voters.

At least that has been the history of the Republican party for the last 30 years.