My husband and I were having dinner with friends the other night. I was seated next to Mike, whose son works for a defense contractor in Washington.

“Doesn’t he want to work in that permanent workforce in the executive branch?” I asked, with a huge brain fart preventing me from being more succinct. “You know what I mean…they run everything and never get fired…”

My husband’s buddy, Jim, perked up from across the table. “The shadow government…” he smirked. “Conspiracy theory.”

We ignored him.

“You mean the Senior Executive Service,” said Mike.

“Exactly.” I said. “There are something like 8000 of them.”

“Something like that,” he said and then got a bit angry, “Trump is shifting them around so that years of expertise in say, agriculture, gets lost in a new job say, in commerce.”

“So lot’s of them are probably leaving. There must be openings.”

“Nope. My son may not have job security, but he’s making a boatload of money.”