Bureaucracy

Is There an Honest Government Agency?

Featured image Pretty much everyone has figured out that the Department of Justice, the CIA and the FBI are run by partisan hacks who cannot be trusted. But what about the colorless, worker bee federal agencies that just turn out data? Like, say, the Bureau of Labor Statistics? Have they been corrupted by the Democrats, too? ZeroHedge has been covering the Biden Department of Labor’s press releases on payroll jobs. For an »

Why No One Trusts the CDC

Featured image The Centers for Disease Control is one of a number of formerly-respected federal agencies that now have fallen into disrepute. CDC has become a tool of the Left in general, and the Democratic Party in particular, and it seems that the people who run the Centers are more interested in political activism than in disease control. Thus CDC’s latest initiative: a self-assessment tool for “LGBTQ Inclusivity in Schools.” (Via Breitbart.) »

Sorry About Those Jobs

Featured image Joe Biden’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that over a million jobs were created in the second quarter, a heartening statistic that no doubt helped the Democrats in November. But now, the Philadelphia Federal Reserve says that those million jobs were almost entirely fictitious: The Biden administration vastly overstated its estimate that employers created more than 1 million jobs in the second quarter of this year, claiming historic job growth »

Infant Formula Revisited

Featured image The infant formula shortage is a crisis for many American families, and the end is not in sight. What caused supplies of a staple product to run out? The most thorough explanation I have seen comes from Scott Lincicome of the Cato Institute. (Numerous links in the original are omitted here.) Lincicome fingers government as the culprit, with protectionism as villain number one: U.S. policy has exacerbated the nation’s infant »

Environmentalists vs. Science

Featured image That is an evergreen headline; here is today’s instance. The Environmental Protection Agency has banned the use of the herbicide Enlist Duo in six Minnesota farm counties. Why? The chemicals in Enlist Duo are apparently harmful to the eastern massasauga rattlesnake. Only problem: there are no eastern massasauga rattlesnakes in those counties, and never have been. My colleague Tom Steward reports: The Environmental Protection Agency’s latest overreach in enforcing the »

What Don’t the Bureaucrats Want You to Know?

Featured image The Centers for Disease Control is a federal bureaucracy and, like all government agencies, is political. CDC employs scientists, but the idea that it is some sort of ivory tower representing “science” is ridiculous. We are reminded of this fact by an article in the New York Times that Steve referred to briefly earlier today. The article is headlined, “The C.D.C. isn’t publishing large portions of the Covid data it »

Inside the COVID Pork Bill

Featured image Did you know that today is National Bacon Day? I didn’t—but then I tend to think that every day is national bacon day. Or at least ought to be. Maybe when Homer Simpson is president. In any case, our mind is on pork a lot at the moment because of the 5,593-page COVID relief and omnibus spending mashup Congress passed and President Trump reluctantly signed a couple days ago. There »

Only in California

Featured image Today’s California Crazy comes from the Los Angeles Times. Question: Is electricity for these housing units extra? Housing costs for the homeless rose to $531,000 a unit, L.A. controller’s report says The average cost of building a single unit of housing for the homeless in Los Angeles has risen to $531,000, according to an audit from the city controller, who recommends that L.A. rehab motels and open dormitory-style buildings to »

Noxious diversity training in federal government flourishes under Trump

Featured image Christopher Rufo reports that “critical race theory — the far-left academic discourse centered on the concepts of ‘whiteness,’ ‘white fragility’ and ‘white privilege’ — is coursing through the federal government’s veins. Under a GOP ­administration, no less.” Last month, a private diversity-consulting firm conducted a training titled “Difficult Conversations About Race in Troubling Times” for several federal agencies. The training called on white employees at the Treasury Department, the Federal »

Burn Down the Regulatory House

Featured image The Wuhan epidemic is bringing to light many regulations and processes that have needlessly impeded efforts to fight the virus by private industry, as well as by government. Quite a few such regulations are now being suspended, causing many to ask, why did we have them in the first place? At Center of the American Experiment’s web site, economist John Phelan offers a textbook example from our state of Minnesota. »

A Good Night to Watch PBS

Featured image I wrote here about a doctor who preyed on Indian boys and young men on reservations for decades before finally being brought to justice. One of my closest childhood friends battled the bureaucracy to blow the whistle on the predator, with the result that he–my friend, not the predator–was effectively forced out of the Indian Health Service. That appalling story was reported by the Wall Street Journal and PBS Frontline. »

A Pedophile On the Reservation

Featured image The Wall Street Journal reports the appalling story of Dr. Pat Weber, a pediatrician who apparently preyed on young Indian boys for decades without being held accountable. The story caught my attention because it featured, in a positive role, one of my closest boyhood friends: At first, officials at the U.S. Indian Health Service overlooked the peculiarities of their unmarried new doctor, including the children’s toys he hoarded in his »

Bureaucracy All the Way Down

Featured image People tend to think that bureaucracy is a problem of centralization—of power concentrated in Washington, DC, or in state capitals. I think the problem of bureaucracy is more cultural than organizational or doctrinal. The culture of bureaucracy has taken root in most local governments—the unit of government supposedly closest and most responsive to the people. Like the turtles in the probably apocryphal story of Bertrand Russell, it’s bureaucracy all the »

Trump takes on the bureaucracy with civil service reform

Featured image On Friday, President Trump signed three executive orders aimed reforming the federal bureaucracy. The first order makes it easier to fire incompetent federal employees. The second limits the amount of time federal employees can be paid for union work. The third requires federal agencies to negotiate union contracts in less than a year. Last year, Congress passed a law that made it easier for the Department of Veterans Affairs to »

Breaking: The Memo Is Out!

Featured image The infamous Nunes memo has been released in the last hour. The House website is intermittently clogging up as you might imagine, but you can try to download it yourself here or here. On a quick first read, there is not much in it that we didn’t already know in general terms— the flyblown Steele dossier was the sole “evidence” the FBI used to obtain a FISA warrant to monitor »

Does the VA Point the Way Toward Agency Reform?

Featured image Everyone knows that under Barack Obama, and perhaps prior presidents, the quality of health care rendered by the Veterans Administration slipped. By the end of the Obama administration, the situation had become catastrophic. This is one of many areas where the Trump administration, together with the Republican Congress, has brought about meaningful reform. On the Laura Ingraham show this morning, one of my guests was Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin. »

What Trump (And Everyone Else) Is Up Against

Featured image We had a lively discussion last night on the Power Line VIP video chat about the “permanent government,” or “the swamp” as Trump and others call it, and how difficult it is to conquer. It reminded me that I’ve been thinking for years about teaching an entire course based on episodes of the great “Yes, Minister” and “Yes, Prime Minister” BBC series, which holds up astoundingly well after 30 years »