Posted on 06/13/2022 7:42:32 AM PDT by Heartlander
On July 2, 1881, only four months into the first term of President James A. Garfield, an angry attorney from Illinois named Charles J. Guiteau shot Garfield in the torso at a Baltimore, Maryland, train station. Guiteau had a motive. He was furious because he believed, due to his work for the campaign, that Garfield would give him a job in the new administration. But none was forthcoming. It was revenge. Garfield died of the wounds months later.
It was a shocking thing. Congress immediately got to work figuring out how to prevent the next assassination. They had the theory that they needed to end the system of patronage in government so that way people wouldn’t get mad and shoot the president. Not a very good theory but this is how politics works. The result was the Pendleton Act that created a permanent civil service. The new president, Chester Arthur signed the bill in 1883. It was done: the administrative state was born.
What Congress did not understand at the time was that they had fundamentally altered the American system of government. The Constitution nowhere provides for a permanent class of administrative overlords to whom Congress could outsource its authority. It nowhere said that there would exist a machine technically under the Executive branch that the president could not control. The Pendleton Act created a new layer of statist imposition that was no longer subject to democratic control.
It wasn’t so bad at first but then came the Fed, the income tax, and the Great War. The bureaucracy expanded in scope and power. Each decade, things go worse. The Cold War entrenched the military-industrial complex, and the Great Society built a massive civilian-controlling welfare state. So on it went until today when it is not even clear that elected politicians matter much at all.
As just one example, once Donald Trump figured out that he had been tricked by Anthony Fauci, Trump considered firing him. Then came the message: he cannot. The law doesn’t allow that. Trump was surely amazed to hear this. He must have wondered: How is this possible? It is very much possible. That same status pertains to millions of federal employees, between 2 and 9 million, depending on whom one wants to include as part of the administrative state.
The conventional wisdom is that November will bring dramatic change to the political landscape in Washington. Two years after that, the presidency will change from one party to the next. It’s becoming very apparent that this administration and the party it represents are probably toast. It’s just a matter of waiting for the next election.
Thank goodness for democracy, right? The right question to ask is whether it will change anything. You are not cynical if you doubt that much will change. The problem is baked into the structure of government today, which is not like what the Constitution’s framers imagined it to be.
The idea of democracy is that the people are in charge through their elected representatives. The opposite would be, for example, a vast and permanent class of administrative bureaucrats, who pay no attention at all to public opinion, elections, or elected leaders and their appointments.
Sad to say, but that is exactly the system we have in place today.
The last two years have given us a chilling lesson in who really runs the country. It’s executive-level agencies that are utterly unresponsive to anything or anyone, except perhaps the private-sector forces of power that have revolving doors back and forth. The political appointees tapped to head agencies such as the CDC or HHS or whatever are basically irrelevant, marionettes about whom the career bureaucrats laugh if they pay any attention to them at all.
Years ago, I lived in some condominiums near the Beltway and all my neighbors were career workers for federal agencies. You name it: Transportation, Labor, Agriculture, Housing, whatever. They were lifers and they knew it. Their salaries depended on paper credentials and longevity. There was no way they could ever be fired, short of something impossibly egregious.
Naively, I early on tried to talk about issues of politics. They would stare at me with blank faces. I thought at the time that they must have had strong opinions but were somehow prevented from talking about it.
Later, I came to realize something more chilling: they didn’t care in the slightest bit. Talking to them about politics was like talking to me about hockey teams in Finland. It’s not a subject that affects my life. That’s how it is with these people: they are utterly and completely unaffected by any political shifts. They know it. They take pride in it.
About the same time, for odd reasons, I found myself spending several weeks in the offices of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. I was doing research and had full access to all records, back when something like that was actually possible for a regular citizen. It was a time when the old politically appointed director of HUD was on his way out and a new one was on his way in.
I was quietly working when I heard a series of loud crashes of glass in the hallway. I stuck my head out and watched. A guy was walking along, flicking pictures of the old guy off the wall and letting them crash down to the ground. About an hour later, a guy came along with a broom and swept up the mess. An hour after that, a guy came along and hung new pictures of the new guy on the wall.
During the entire noisy ordeal, not one other employee of the agency showed the slightest curiosity about what was happening. They had seen this dozens of times and just didn’t care. Looking back, it’s pretty obvious that this scene sums it up. The permanent bureaucracy is completely unaffected by any of the cosmetic changes in politics.
Let’s say that 2 million people occupy the permanent administrative state, excluding things like military and postal employees. The political appointments granted to the new president are about 4,000 and they come and go. Politics is mortal; the bureaucracy is immortal.
To be sure, the Republicans could do something about this problem but will they? Nearly every elected leader has something to hide. If they don’t, the media can always make something up. This is how the administrative state keeps the political class in line, as we saw during the Trump years.
Let’s not be naive about the prospects for change. It is going to require far more than merely electing a new class of supposed rulers via the democratic process. The real rulers are too smart to subject themselves to the business of elections. Those are designed to keep our minds busy with the belief that democracy still survives and therefore it is the voters, not the government, that is responsible for outcomes.
Until the public figures this game out, genuine change will still be a very long time away. Meanwhile, the emerging economic crisis is going to unleash the administrative state as never before.
Formal origin: the socialist FDR.
Operation: the utterly unconstitutional Administrative State is a study of the continued attempts to do the wrong things the right way.
Trump could still have placed Fauci on "permanent leave."
I, personally, prefer the solution which Sheriff Buford Pusser implemented in "Walking Tall" (1973): He found out that, while he couldn't fire the (intractable) mayor, according to the town bylaws, the sheriff was responsible for assigning office space.
So he promptly re-assigned the mayor's office - desk and chair and filing cabinets and everything - to the Men's Room.
Regards,
I think we’re going to have to start over. New Declaration of Independence. New Constitution. The Second Republic of the United States. The transition would be rough. Might involve a dictatorship. That could turn out very badly — but “very badly” is the direction we are currently going.
[[As just one example, once Donald Trump figured out that he had been tricked by Anthony Fauci, Trump considered firing him. Then came the message: he cannot. ]]
Should arrested fauci for insurrection. The left are calling everything insurrection these days
Wrong Roosevelt. The bureaucracy got its start from Theodore Roosevelt.
The FDA, what we know today as the BLM got its start with TR’s nationalization efforts related to the national parks, the FBI, the USDA, and several others. The outrageous use of executive orders we suffer under today with president-as-dictator, that also began with Theodore Roosevelt. TR was incredibly petty. When he couldn’t get his way, he did end-run-arounds of congress and was partial to shredding the Constitution and he was the one who was first to run to the liberal media in order to get help from the fake news to help manipulate the populace into big government schemes.
TR’s Bull Moose Platform of 1912 is a Christmas Tree smorgasbord of big government wishlist items, and it includes universal healthcare.
It was all supercharged by Woodrow Wilson, who is generally regarded to have carried through on the Bull Moose platform.
You are stating a direct threat to the US Constitution. You do realize that?
The DOI & CONSTITUTION are not the problem. It’s politicians and judges who think they can read better than the rest of us.
Clearly, anything not specifically authorized to the government is prohibited....
My understanding is that President Martin Van Buren put all the pieces in place that resulted in the Administrative State. Regardless, the Eff Bee Eye and Public Education rank near (if not at the top) of the most harmful institutions of the last 120 years.
Anyone want to throw eggs and rotten tomatoes at me for that second observation?
Very informative article. If ever anyone is confused about the term Deep State, and wants to know exactly what that means, they should read this article.
Don’t forget the progressives’ obsession with “commissions” and “professional bureaucrats” who were supposed to be above and unaffected by politics and corruption.
(I tried erasing that and re-writing it without laughing. Just can’t do it, it’s so pathetic — and sad.)
“It was a shocking thing. Congress immediately got to work figuring out how to prevent the next assassination.”
The last thing a country needs is a “hard working” congress.
It’s almost guaranteed that whatever “solution” they come up for a problem, it will make it worse.
Aided and abetted by Wild Bill Donovan, the granddaddy of the CIA.
“Talking to them about politics was like talking to me about hockey teams in Finland. It’s not a subject that affects my life. That’s how it is with these people: they are utterly and completely unaffected by any political shifts. They know it. They take pride in it.”
Well, it doesn’t seem credible to me. We can see political donations and to my understanding of the fed employees who give supposedly 90% give to the dems. I always thought it would be kind of shocking if it wasn’t that way.
FReegards
Administrative State took off during Woodrow Wilson’s regime, with the help of his right hand man, Colonel House. Also, this is when the feral income tax was instituted, along with the Feral Reserve Bank.
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He was known as Colonel House although his rank was honorary and he had performed no military service. He was a highly influential back-stage politician in Texas before becoming a key supporter of the presidential bid of Wilson in 1912.
We have a long way to go before people are ready to discuss the full breadth of the evils of what progressives have done. Most only want to discuss communism.
I can only create so many audiobooks. Ultimately, it also requires listeners and we aren't quite there yet. We still sadly have people who are unwilling to look prior to the 1960s (which completely ignores FDR) even though there's this little inconvenient thing sitting there called The Progressive Era.
Hmm! What was that era all about?
For anyone interested in this topic, please grab a copy of my new book, “Dragonslayers: Six presidents and their war with the Swamp.” It goes back to Martin Van Buren, the most destructive president in American history, and looks at different presidents’ attempts to deal with the Swamp/administrative state.
“The conventional wisdom is that November will bring dramatic change to the political landscape in Washington.”
My expectations for a House of Representatives headed by Speaker McCarthy and a Senate headed by Mitch McConnell are very low. They, and the majority of GOP representatives and senators have proven they will bend to the leftist media, have little willingness to engage in confrontation with Democrat politicians, and have little respect for the rank and file GOP voters. Most are probably compromised and are afraid of the records the intelligence agencies and FBI have on them.
McConnell effectively has zero opposition for the majority leader position. That says all you need to know about the Republicans in the Senate. If that isn’t enough consider that 7 GOP Senators voted to remove President Trump from office and 10 are lining up to support eviscerating the 2nd amendment.
As to the House of Representatives consider the choices the GOP has made for speaker since the 1990’s. Gingrich who started out well and then self destructed due to his be ego. Then came Hastert the pedeophile who enabled a spending spree through earmarks which destroyed the balanced budget. Followed by John Boehner, the friend of every lobbyist, as well as destroyer of the Tea Party that gave him the majority making him speaker. Followed by Paul Ryan, who continued Boehner’s servile behavior toward K Street and did everything he could to thwart Trump’s agenda.
What is the agenda McCarthy and McConnell propose for America? There is no platform and certainly no updated version of the 1994 Contact for America. They promise they will be “conservative”. What does that mean? Is it the same type of big government compassionate conservatism the GOP Congresscritters have delivered for 30 years? They certainly aren’t running on controlling the southern border. They aren’t running on reversing Biden’s restrictions on the oil and gas industry. They aren’t speaking out against the suppression of constitutional rights to free speech, and due process. They aren’t running on tightening up election laws to eliminate harvesting of ballots, unmonitored ballot boxes and mass mailing of ballots. What happened to past promises to defund Obamacare, Planned Parenthood, and PBS? Any plans to get the government out of the student loan business? By promising nothing, they are strongly signaling their intention to do the bidding of the big donor base and avoid offending the entrenched bureaucracy As for the voters who will elect them, nothing except lip service.
This week they’ve caved on gun control. During the past year most were silent when Biden force government employees and pushed private industry to force private employers to force employees to be vaccinated. Face it, in the face of tyranny, they run away and remain silent, hoping the bad guys won’t come after them.
The old “spoils system” was much safer for the Republic than the Civil Service.
Fauci did make his career in the civil service, so maybe he couldn’t be fired, but he could have been replaced as head of his agency. He wasn’t replaced because had a lot of support in DC and the media. Congress and the media are also part of the “permanent government.”
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