Now having stated my case, what is the solution if not a centralized government?
The answer is, there is no solution, no magic bullet. We cannot pass laws against human nature.
The best we can do is move the power/corruption back to state/local. That should be our goal and the founding fathers knew this. The battle is never won and must be continually engaged.
Now having stated my case, what is the solution if not a centralized government?
*************
One positive step forward would be to elect people who will start eliminating the costly and inefficient redundancy of functions between agencies. Nearly every agency does things that duplicate things other agencies do. There is an enormous amount of wasteful overlap. This would be a good place to start — and then move on to cutting their budgets next. Force the agencies to shrink and get back to doing their core functions only.