November 2, 2022
Background
Joseph (Joe) Carson, PE, is a deeply concerned professional engineer (PE), federal agency employee, Christian, American and crew member of planet earth. He is not optimistic that those born in 2022 will get to enjoy - as he has by any objective standard - a flourishing life; concluded by - as he expects, at age 68, his to be - a natural death, not given the unprecedented collective challenges facing our unprecedented global civilization.
Humanity is now the most successful species in the 4.4 billion year history of the planet and, for all we know, the 13.8 billion year history of the universe. Despite that, it is all-too-possible that the earth of 2122 will be a burnt-out, depopulated, cinder. It is also possible that it could be home of a peaceful, just, and sustainable civilization, characterized by flourishing lives - the "commonwealth of God" that Jesus proclaimed. Mr. Carson, in rest of his life, hopes to improve the chances that our posterity enjoy flourishing lives, including exhibiting a "but not through me" posture to civilization's possible demise, in his spheres of particular public influence. These are: 1) the engineering profession, regarding significant and persistent deficiencies to the scope and implementation of its code of ethics; 2) the federal civil service, regarding significant deficiencies to the implementation of the "Merit Principles," its statutory bedrock; and 3) Christian theology and praxis for secular professions as engineering - it is near non-existent.
The U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) and U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), though tiny and obscure, are the central parts of the "immune system" for all federal agencies - that their employment practices be merit-based, not corruption-based. But they, themselves, are deeply corrupt, in Mr. Carson's public opinion, thereby allowing corruption and dysfunction to take deep root and flourish in many federal agencies and workplaces. The lawyer-leaders of these agencies twist legal ethics to claim that since the agencies they lead are also their clients, their paramount professional duty to protect the interests of their agency by doing whatever they can to prevent any resolution of Mr. Carson's whistleblower disclosures against them, regardless of risk to American health, safety, security and welfare. However, the National Legal Research Group recently issued an independent, objective, opinion of the behavior of the lawyer-leaders of OSC and MSPB and found it contrary to legal ethics and their duties as principal officers of the US Government.
Trust in the federal government and its agencies, as well as other societal institutions (which frequently regulated by federal agencies) are at all-time lows. Mr. Carson's public claims, regardless of risk to his employment and PE license, are that OSC is a decades-long, law-breaking fraud; MSPB is its decades-long, law-breaking enabler; and this compounded, continuing law-breaking precludes federal agencies from being the trustworthy stewards of the common good required for American institutions to merit the trust required civilization to meet its unprecedented collective challenges.
None of this is happening in any corner. The publication Government Executive did a profile of Mr. Carson in late 2015. Robert Scheer, a well-known journalist, interviewed Mr. Carson for his weekly podcast, "Scheer Intelligence," in December 2021.
Mr. Carson's whistleblower disclosures against the lawyer-leaders of OSC and MSPB are undisputed at this point.
The complex, almost bewildering, statutory scheme to regulate the management culture in federal agencies so that their cultures "embody" the merit principles in which agency employees can effectively make whistleblower disclosures - they obtain a timely and objective resolution - while they are adequately protected from reprisal and other types of prohibited personnel practices (PPPs) is somewhat akin to a "3-legged stool" in which the "legs" are the head of the agency, the US Office of Special Counsel, and US Merit Systems Protection Board. The President is responsible to ensure this complex system, involving multiple agencies with complementary roles, is working.