Free Republic

The real power in America lies with the permanent, Democrat- and union-controlled, and very unconstitutional administrative state. Vivek Ramaswamy spoke about this problem with Philip Howard, who has been writing for decades about the problems with America’s overwhelming bureaucracy. If we are to change America’s destiny, a conservative president must break the Deep State. 1. The Deep State is unconstitutional. The Constitution does not authorize a permanent bureaucracy as a fourth branch of government. It says only that the Article II executive is responsible for certain tasks and implies that he may hire the people he needs to execute them....

Philip Hamburger recently published a piece in the Wall Street Journal arguing that Congress should control administrative bloat by limiting student loan funds given to colleges with too many administrators. He is dead right about the vast increase in non-faculty bureaucracy in recent decades and the need to reduce it. But the sources of the problem are many and the solution not, perhaps, as simple as professor Hamburger suggests. College bureaucracies have been growing at least since the 1980s. I was then editor of a mildly disputatious Duke University publication called the Faculty Newsletter. The one thing that seems to...

Documents obtained by German public radio and television broadcasters NDR and WDR along with German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung detail the complex bureaucratic system set up by the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” (IS) terrorist group. The documents, which the reporters were allowed to peruse and copy in some cases, give extensive insight into the bureaucratic infrastructure IS has implemented in areas captured in Iraq and Syria. Among other things, they detail a complex health care and pension system, marriage benefits along with financial benefits to widows or wives of IS fighters captured in combat. …

President Barack Obama plans to create a U.S. government task force designed to monitor China for possible trade and other commercial violations as part of a larger White House effort to get more assertive with Beijing this election year, people familiar with the matter said.

The lecture below was delivered to the plebe class at the United States Military Academy at West Point in October of last year. My title must seem like a contradiction. What can solitude have to do with leadership? Solitude means being alone, and leadership necessitates the presence of others—the people you’re leading. When we think about leadership in American history we are likely to think of Washington, at the head of an army, or Lincoln, at the head of a nation, or King, at the head of a movement—people with multitudes behind them, looking to them for direction. And when...

Death by Alphabet--Why Tea Parties Won't Work I am certainly not opposed to the so-called Tea-Party Movement, and if wishes would work, I would wish them success. Unfortunately, wishes do not work, and either will the Tea-Pary Movement. There is one real danger in the Tea Parties, which I'm afraid are giving too many people a false hope of changing things in American politics, and of course giving those participating a false sense of "doing something." If I were to characterize the Tea-Party movement, I believe all of the specific issues addressed could be summarized as a movement to...

The House Republican Conference completed the tedious task of compiling an exhaustive (and they must be exhausted!) list of the new federal bureaucracies created in the ObamaCare health care reform bill, H.R. 3962. They counted 111 new bureaucracies, yet the government promises how "efficient" their takeover of health care will be. "Efficient government bureaucracy," must be the greatest oxymoron of all time!

The health-care bill in its current form would create a regulatory mess estimated by one Senator to add100,000 new administrators in over 100 new bureaucracies. Many of these bureaucracies will get between doctors and patients. Others are simply a waste of money.... To pay for all this new bureaucracy there will be dozens of new taxes totaling nearly $800 billion and extending to items such as wheelchairs and hospital gowns. Almost every major recent public opinion poll has shown more Americans oppose Obama/Pelosi/Reid Care than support it. Just this week, in The Wall Street Journal, the Dean of the Harvard...

The Joint Economic Committee (JEC) House Republican staff, which earlier this year created a chart mapping the bureaucratic complexity of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s original health care proposal (H.R. 3200), has combined similar analysis by the House Republican Conference with the earlier chart. The analysis details new additions to the health care bureaucracy contained in the new version of the Speaker’s bill (H.R. 3962) that were not previously listed. Let’s just say the Speaker’s vision for government-run health care hasn’t gotten any simpler.

The Federal Aviation Administration. The Social Security Administration. The National Science Foundation. The Treasury Department. All could lose as much as a quarter of their employees by 2012, mostly because of retirements. They are not alone. Across the government, about a third of full-time employees will retire in the next five years, according to estimates prepared by the Office of Personnel Management. The turnover could be even higher in the ranks of federal executives and supervisors. From the start of the Bush administration, agencies have been preparing for the churning that will be caused by the baby boom retirement wave....

THE DAVOS QUESTION: HELP OTHERS OR HELP YOURSELF?Feb 10, 2005 - FreeMarketNews.comby staff reportsThe International Center for Economic Growth (ICEG) has recently concluded its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. The organization whose stated mission is: “To encourage sustainable and equitable economic opportunity and to find effective solutions to human development challenges.” They hope to do this by “leading economic policy and reform, changing civil society, and investing in the poor.” Bill Bonner of the Daily Reckoning asks whether one should fault those in attendance for their idealism. Should they not be given credit for trying to improve things? His answer...

SANFORD, Fla. - Eleven people directed to the wrong courtroom in the Seminole County Courthouse were arrested and jailed when they didn't appear before the proper judge, who was in an adjoining courtroom less than 100 feet away. The six men and five women spent eight hours Friday in a Seminole County Jail cell before everything was straightened out. "I'm hungry, I'm tired and I'm disgusted," said Frantarshia Coleman, after she was released from jail. "This is ridiculous. This is disgusting." Coleman, 33, of Orlando was in court on a ticket for not having her registration and proof of insurance....

A few years ago, a high official in the Church of England announced that the new prayer books would cost the parishes millions of pounds but the Church of England would make a small profit. It was a slip, of course, but one that revealed how deeply those at the center of the Western churches identify their central structures with the churches themselves. This is a very bad mistake, because these structures have an unfair advantage over the local and personal, from which the most effective, and generally the most orthodox, ministry come. They take from them more than they...

A Commie Christmas Gift December 23, 2003 Christmas this year is brightened by the news that nominally Communist China has taken a big step toward enshrining private property rights in its constitution. For some reason it reminds me of a Christmas story told by the late Leonard Read, a champion of property rights and market economics. One year, on the day before Christmas, Read greeted his heavily laden mailman and asked him how he was doing. The man groaned, “Worst day we’ve ever had!” Later that day Read went to a local store for a bit of last-minute shopping. It...

Today, public schools across North America are often faced with rebellious, unruly students. This phenomenon reflects a mismanagement of the school's code of discipline. There is no standard interpretation of discipline within our public education system. Many schools see discipline as something harsh, punitive and old-fashioned. They want school to be a friendly place that is fun and exciting for the students, without rules to stifle individuality. Paradoxically, school can be fun and exciting for students only when they are learning something worthwhile, and when they feel confident because they know their place and are familiar with the rules of...