Posted on 01/18/2025 5:27:01 AM PST by MtnClimber
The bureaucracy is a power unto itself. That was never the plan.
Back in the old days, a public service job was security. You received a reasonable salary, nothing extravagant, your job was relatively safe, and the work pressures were expected to be less than in “the real world.” If you wanted more, you ventured out into that real world where there were no limits to what you could achieve and earn. Public service was public service—it wasn’t meant to be Maseratis and mansions.
Today, we pay public servants more than they would get in the real world, where market forces—profitability and competence—are at play.
The phrase “public service union” is an oxymoron. A union holding a company to ransom where there is a market reality controlling the negotiations is arguably a relatively fair system. When there is no profit and loss equation, just threats and handshakes between multiple levels of the same public service, it becomes a joke.
And doing it via an arm’s length committee is an insulting camouflage that no one believes.
SNIP
Public servants doing their job shouldn’t starve. No one disputes that they should be able to live comfortably. However, they should not be elevated above the public they serve. They should not get benefits more than the general public or benefit from other special rules.
Instead, they must be neutral employees doing exemplary work under the Constitution and rule of law. If they are part of the Executive branch, that means following and supporting the President’s agenda or, if they don’t, resigning, which is an honorable alternative.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Will DOGE get the job done? I am not holding my breath.
No they wont’ Vivek blew himself up and Andreesen is a one-dimensional idiot who knows nothing about what the government does and what it should do. The guy thinks what he wants is MORE bureaucrats sitting at their desks 24/7 and wants to give MORE power to the guys who are incharge of petty bureaucracy. There are real jobs in government that have to do with the hard work of figuring out how to execute policy for the good of the nation. E.g. what will war look like, what weapons do we need and how do we get them. For every one of those guys there are ten functional idiots who have jobs in the bureaucracy that get in the way. Andreesen thinks is just guys sitting at a desk coding all day. More desk more coding. That isn’t the job and things don’t work that way.
I once heard a discussion where the person said that term limits would be good, but the real power lies with the unelected bureaucracy
The real problem is going to come from the entrenched bureaucracy who will tell the new administration, we cannot do that because it is against our rules. You bring those guys in along with their bosses up the chain and bring in the rules guys and tell them, this is legal and it’s going to happen and you are going to fix your rules, or 24 hrs from now none of you have jobs, and as of right now that ridiculous rule is canclled and you have 1 hr to bring me the memo so I can sign it or you are dismissed now!
“Will DOGE get the job done? I am not holding my breath.”
All it will take for DOGE to be successful is for two people who hold no official position in government, who “work” for an officially non-existent government office, to usurp the spending powers of Congress. I think there might be a problem.
I believe 15% of the federal workforce are over 60. I expect to see a lot of retirements.
I do expect to see increased efficiency, and a lot of jobs going away.
And there will be a certain amount of “legal problems” that may convince people to move on to other things.
There are definitely ideologues in the bureaucracy, and I think ideologues have been moving up. The leadership is driven by Progressive ideology. If we can get rid of a lot of those people, we may find some lower level people who don’t much care about ideology but who just want steady employment. Or, if they are somewhat ideological, they may be smart enough to realize that shutting up and just pushing their pencils is the safest way to keep out of trouble.
A progressive lifetime income tax on government privilege income is possible (payable prior to standard 1040 income taxation and deductible for standard 1040 income taxation, sort of like state income tax is federally treated):
first $1,000,000 0%
next $1,000,000 10%
next $1,000,000 20%
next $1,000,000 30%
....
over $10,000,000 99%
These brackets be adjusted 3% per year for inflation.
Government privileged income would be any income gained by or with the assistance of government power.
Government-funded school teachers, lawyers, doctors, dentists, licensed contractors who do more than 10% by revenue of government restricted work such as asbestos inspections and clean up, employees and owners of businesses who get more than 10% of income from government, employees of tax-deductible charities and foundations, CDL truck drivers, unionized employees not waiving government union employee protection, government employees including military, elected federal officeholders, etc. would be subject to the tax.
It would be paid on their salaries, wages, pensions, all government funded health care including Medicare & Medicaid, all mandated health care benefits, all government pensions including Social Security and military, government housing assistance, HUD fair market valuations of low income housing, etc.
People would generally shift out of government work and into the pure market sector.
“DOGE”
Limit the federal government to things unrealistic for states to do:
1. military & VA & National Guard funding
2. Social Security & federal railroad retirement
3. Medicare
4. Medicaid FDA-regulated products
5. Indian reservation stuff
6. DC and territorial stuff, with most of DC shifted to Maryland and Puerto Rico financially treated as a state
7. FDA
8. NIH
9. FAA certification & airspace management
10. DoJ
11. Homeland Security (subject to future to state spinoffs)
12. Patent Office
13. Congress
14. federal courts
15. postal service
State block grants for rest:
1. 50% of money by population
2. 50% of money by federal personal income tax paid
Grants to be reduced by listed penultimate year state spending at 50% rate (and to be credited to next year all-state block grant funding):
1. invader benefits
2. freak vote bribery schemes
3. excessive salaries, overtime & pension payouts
Department of State stuff should remain federal.
Easy-peasey. Rotate all depts across nation to different cities. Spread the tax $$ around and shed the losers. When they quit, they get no benefits.
We do not need everything in one place. Zoom is better than the swamp.
There’s also export control and Treasury functions (IRS, Federal Reserve(creating money, banking network), FDIC(which needs reform).
“Rotate all depts across nation to different cities.”
Department should be relocated to relieve poverty.
The FBI might be sent to Gary, Indiana. Metro Chicago has an excellent air transport network.
The Department of Agriculture should be sent to Peoria.
The DoD might be based in Detroit.
The EPA might be sent to Cleveland.
Supreme Court 9, Administrative State 0
On April 14, 2023, the Supreme Court struck a blow supporting our Constitution and individual liberties. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, citizens began losing many freedoms through administrative edicts. Appeals of these regulations had to be made to courts within an agency, which has already found the people guilty. Such power harks back to discretions of English kings unrestrained by Parliament found in such places as King’s Council and the Star Chamber.
The Supreme Court acted to reassert the jurisdiction of district and circuit courts and the legislature as established by the Constitution. All power was to reside there, so Americans could avoid the sad experience of English citizens. Justice Kagan delivered the unanimous opinion of the court saying, “One respondent attacks as well the combination of prosecutorial and adjudicatory functions in a single agency….They maintain in essence that the agencies as currently structured, are unconstitutional in much of their work”.
You and I could relate too many examples of people’s frustrating experiences facing government bureaucrats. Their sufferings cause me to reflect on a passage where Fredrick Douglass describes overseer duties. I only substituted for the words slave, overseer, and master.
“No matter how innocent a citizen might be it availed him nothing when accused by the bureaucrat of any violation of a regulation. To be accused was to be convicted and to be convicted was to be punished….To escape punishment was to escape accusation….few citizens had the fortune to do either under the overseership of the agency.”
Supreme Court 9, Administrative State 0
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4145682/posts
The History and Danger of Administrative Law
https://constitutionclub.wordpress.com/2014/10/01/the-history-and-danger-of-administrative-law/
Administrative law is commonly defended as a new sort of power, a product of the 19th and the 20th centuries that developed to deal with the problems of modern society in all its complexity. From this perspective, the Framers of the Constitution could not have anticipated it and the Constitution could not have barred it. What I will suggest, in contrast, is that administrative power is actually very old. It revives what used to be called prerogative or absolute power, and it is thus something that the Constitution centrally prohibited.
Federal pay might be based on the cheapest federal pay city.
If you clock in in a day, you might get the local area(DC, Denver, etc.) to El Cheapo differential on a 1/300 annual basis.
Your pay will be held up for a time equal to the average permit time, less one week generally, less one month in case of the most significant submission of a client by pages, but obviously not less than zero days.
“DOGE”
Ask not what the federal government can get rid of, but what it needs to have.
Cant remember who said this but when it comes to govt they have overwhelming resources and how do you fight that. The quote is “ the process is the punishment”. That how they got Flynn, bankrupt them and then get them to plea to something they didn’t do
Trump is prime example of this kind of law fare
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