What Is Really Going on at Federal Agencies?

Brownstone Institute ^ | 8/22/2024 | Jeffrey A. Tucker

[webheart]

Adam Andrzejewski died at 55 following a sudden medical emergency. I suppose he could have just had an ordinary heart attack but given his being the founder of a government watchdog group and all the sudden deaths these days, I go “hmmmm”.

[JennysCool]

That’s one that came under the heading of “more pruning.” :)

[Colinsky]

So I cranked out a quick script to automate most of the job. I got in loads of trouble for that.

Similar thing happened to me in the 80s. A giant defense contractor switched to a new computer system and all of the product manuals had to be transferred into the new system by hand. I was hired as a temp and after a week of tediously keyboarding, I discovered a macro function in the new system's proprietary word processor that enabled me to process six manuals a day instead of two. (There were about 50,000 manuals that had to be transferred.)

I showed the supervisor what I'd discovered and he praised me and told me to take the rest of the week off, with pay, and then I was never called back and that temp agency never used me again.

[M Kehoe]

Bttt.

5.56mm

[Weirdad]

Exactly, so much for the failed Newtonian “Contract with America” — could not even get rid of the least important little nothing of those many things done by the Feds that are not enumerated in the US Constitution.

They could not even get a symbolic victory while holding both houses of Congress.

[Starboard]

The Repukes are always big on rhetoric, but small on results.

[dragnet2]

It lists 429 agencies in the government now

Maybe someone could list them.

[Sparticus]

This is not true. A GOOD President can VETO the entire budget except Defense. At that point maximum PRESSURE is dialed up. NOBODY will be able to cash a check even if they get one. That day will come one way or another no matter what is done or not don

It wouldn't work. The powers that be would rather see it all burn down than allow their fiefdoms to be affected.

[oldbrowser]

" Government is like fire, a dangerous servant and a fearful master"..George Washington.

Some fundamental changes need to be made to the executive branch of government.

[XRdsRev]

Most Federal Employees are not located in Washington DC so moving headquarters would only effect a relative minority of Gov workers.

[T.B. Yoits]

the ‘civil servants’ workforce is supplemented by an army of contractors who do a lot of the serious work that feds do not want to do, or simply cannot do.

Bingo.

I witnessed this quite a bit in the military. One of our worst was software that government civilians oversaw that absolutely had to be updated but the GS civilians couldn't get it right for 18 months.

One day we got a heads up that a civilian contractor was coming to the base. The contractor told us, "I don't know who you called as our company NEVER does government work." He was done in three days with the software working perfectly. Three days, one of which was just making sure everyone in that office knew how to use it without all the workarounds.

[hinckley buzzard]

Unfortunately, Newt’s Contract took effect the same year Bill Clinton became president. While Newt did take up each item in the contract and bring it up for a vote (which is what he promised) he didn’t have the juice to overcome the Clinton admin, the usual rinos, and the democrat caucus, so much of it was blocked.

I give Newt a lot of credit because in addition to bringing a GOP majority for the first time in decades at least he made the effort to do something, unlike his various successors. People who expect everything to be done overnight were of course disappointed.

[T.B. Yoits]

Private industry has the luxury of looking out the window of their offices and saying, "There are ten things in this industry. We're really good at seven of them. Let's do those and ignore the other three."

The government staff looks out the window and says, "There are ten things in this industry, we can't possibly keep up with private industry for seven of those things but we'd love to do them. The other three are a complete loss, a migraine, and require herculean effort for the slightest gain, but we can't ignore them."

The government ends up with military construction, weapon systems, roadways, infrastructure, emergency management, mental health, urban development, waste management, public safety, toxic cleanups, policing, court systems, prisons, etc. and suffers through them.

[TigersEye]

pride, sloth, arrogance, greed, envy, socialism, depravity

treason, sedition, assorted skullduggery

[Weirdad]

There’s always an excuse.

Bill Clinton was actually elected in 1992 and took office January 1993, and “The Contract with America” was in 1994. I paid a lot of attention to it. I was even at a meeting in Washington at the time of the 1994 election.

Newt already knew Clinton was in office when they made their promises.

Stopping the full communist version of Hillary-Care was about the only thing they did, and they barely did that, lifted up that carpet and swept only a little bit of it right under, to dirty our floor again soon.

Taking over both houses of Congress and you don’t have enough horsepower to even get rid of one little symbolic crap “thing” — so much for the 1994, not 1992 promises.

The concrete results? HIPAA (Hillarycare lite, Obamacare-the prequel) and BOB DOLE and his pathetic unnecessary and unconstitutional Federal curb-cutting-where NO ONE even walks “Americans with Disabilities Acts,” pandering yet again to the lawsuit industry, and four more years of BJ Clinton and his hellish wife.

Washington (and its ilk) is the American variety of “the opiate of the people” (really anesthetic of the people) as the continue their fakery.

Here they are — I am not clear which animal is the Rino and which is the Dumkey:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECa1toPGth4

[texanyankee]

I’m betting the USDA is a close second with the DoD as far as corruption & waste.

[texanyankee]

There’s an innumerable number of agencies that compose the Dept of Agriculture.

It’s bloated, corrupt and wasteful.

[grcuster]

The best approach is to eliminate their positions and fire the majority of them. 90% are not needed and is a waste of taxpayer money. In addition, eliminate the government union.

[Nuc 1.1]

Congress cannot simply outsource its job to another branch and then wash its hands of the result.

One must argue that is precisely what congress has done. I argue that Congress no longer possesses the power to reign in or dissolve an Agency. As the article states indirectly, Congress is so powerful it cannot ever find out how an agency's funds are disbursed. We have the fig leaf of an elected government and the actuality of hidden tyranny. All protected by marxist revolutionaries under the disguise of the demonrat party and their associated businesses.

[Cen-Tejas]

I think George Washington probably heard ten times a day ...”it won’t work”.

I’ve been in the business of disbursing large sums of money for 50 years. Attitudes change when the guy signing the checks (in this case Trump) says something like “tough shit boys”....”the game is over”.....”it’s my way or the highway”.

Indeed, cutting off the money is THE ONLY way anything will change and yes a lot of people will be pissed off and I’m sure there will be some gunfire in the streets but that is where this country is.