That was my main point.
The nut Paul Krugman was complaining about the taxpayers being stingy about “basic services”, today compared to yesteryear, when in fact the issue is that the taxpayers are paying for a zillion things in addition to “basic services” as they were traditionally understood; and the title of the idiot bureaucrat in the article was a perfect example of the modern over-reach beyond traditional basic services.
Now, often, these excess departments at the local level have in fact been created, and the office holders paid for, locally, as a bureaucratic “necessity” for “managing” (politically directing) federal funds that come as either a mandate, an unfunded mandate, a grant, a permanent “federal” program, a permanent program partially funded by the federal government and given federal funds only if state and/or local funds are committed.
In other words, “federal” legislation has induced, in one way or another, not just the zillions of “local” programs beyond traditional basic services, but even with federal funding the programs have required expansion of the need for local funding to support and carryout the local “management” of the programs.
The process has subverted the federal and republican nature of our system of government, with the “national” purse strings tying every level of government into de-facto sub-units of the “central” government in Washington, D.C.; inch by inch, law by law, on EVERYTHING the local government is doing.
Well said.