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Posts Tagged ‘bureaucracy’
November 4th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
Public Health Care Means Loss of Privacy

One of the selling points for “universal” health care is the notion it carries of making treatment available to everyone.  That’s (somewhat) true, but when government-run health care displaces private companies, something else gets tossed out too: privacy.

According to a notice published in the Federal Register last month, President Barack Obama’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) will be launching a new health-related database that adds to new data sets to one representing federal workers: private citizens who report pre-existing health conditions or use one of the newly created regional exchanges for pooled health insurance.  That information will be made available to any government agency, law enforcement group, or third party researcher that shows a need for it.

What gives OPM the right to collect and disseminate such sensitive health records?  The passage and implementation of ObamaCare.

Charles Krauthammer’s recent column heralding the demise Obama’s legislative agenda contained a paragraph that deserves mention:

Over the next two years, the real action will be not in Congress but in the bowels of the federal bureaucracy. Democrats will advance their agenda on Obamacare, financial reform and energy by means of administrative regulation, such as carbon-emission limits imposed unilaterally by the Environmental Protection Agency.

No doubt, there will be many battles to fight in Congress against enactment of more freedom-killing policies, but voters, activists, and politicians should remember that the threat to liberty only accelerates once the federal bureaucracy gets involved.  OPM is just the most recent example.

August 23rd, 2010 at 5:59 pm
Britain’s ‘Big Society’ Gamble May Be the Best Hope of Shrinking Big Government

Unless you’re looking for it there isn’t much stateside coverage of the political revolution going on in Britain under the country’s Coalition Government.  The stories that to poke through, however, are well worth the read, as is this article in today’s Christian Science Monitor.  A sample:

The final sight – and this is the most difficult to see – is the coalition’s attempt to create a “big society,” or a bolstering of social groups, charities, and entrepreneurs to step in as government withdraws from much of its role. The best example of this altering of Britain’s social fabric are preparations to enlist 16-year-olds into national volunteer service.

The big society is Cameron’s vision, one that assumes people are ready to shed decades of dependency on London and step in to help others.

The concept could be almost as difficult as the biggest of the budget cuts, due in October, which will test the coalition’s finely woven political compromises. And will the private sector be ready to fill the holes left by the cuts.

So, the biggest gamble in the Coalition Government’s plan to reduce the size of England’s central bureaucracy isn’t the “austere” budget reductions or even the controversial referendum to change a century’s worth of election law.  It’s whether Prime Minister David Cameron’s “Big Society” program can inspire enough of the private sector to step into the social services breach created by the receding government.

American conservatives and libertarians have long said that private charity and other civil society institutions are much better at creating a social safety net.  With Britain’s budget forcing policy makers into decisions they would never dream of implementing in good economic times, now is the moment for limited government types to seize the opportunity to deliver a better, more efficient version of the social safety net.  Otherwise, liberals and socialists will be quick to remind voters of all the needs that went unaddressed when government grew “too small.”

July 3rd, 2010 at 9:30 pm
A Humorous – Yet Startling – Brush With Bureaucracy

Near the end of Deroy Murdock’s column discussing the insanity of the federal government’s upcoming incandescent light bulb ban in favor of a mercury-laden replacement comes the iconic gem above.

It’s a detailed “how-to” label design provided ever so helpfully by the Federal Trade Commission to guide bulb packagers.  I don’t know whether to be relieved that the bureaucracy is trying to be this helpful in its mandates or crestfallen that taxpayer money is going to finance this kind of project.

May 24th, 2010 at 12:40 pm
Toxicity of the Feds’ Alphabet Soup More Harmful than BP’s Oil

The most toxic substance floating around Louisiana’s coastline isn’t oil – it’s the confusion that comes with the federal government’s alphabet soup of bureaucracy.  Click on any article describing the feds’ response, and you get a myriad of people and institutions allegedly “in charge” of directing the cleanup activity.  So far, the heads of the EPA, Interior Department, Homeland Security, and Coast Guard have all visited the state and personally weighed in on what should be done.  Now, they are contradicting each other.

In a news conference on Sunday outside the BP headquarters in Houston, Mr. Salazar repeated the phrase that the government would keep its “boot on BP’s neck” for results. He also said the company had repeatedly missed deadlines and had not been open with the public.

Mr. Salazar added, “If we find they’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, we’ll push them out of the way appropriately.”

That statement, however, conflicted with comments made only hours earlier by the Coast Guard commandant, Adm. Thad W. Allen, who said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program that the access BP has to the mile-deep well site meant that the government could not take over the lead in efforts to stop the leak.

“They are necessarily the modality by which this is going to get solved,” he said.

One of the consequences of bloated bureaucracies is overlapping areas of responsibility.  Coupled with a politician’s aversion to risk (an element of bold decision making), and the result is many people responsible, but no one is ultimately in charge.

And while they dither, 65 miles of Louisiana coastline are “oiled.”

April 27th, 2010 at 10:11 am
Ramirez Cartoon: Washington’s Red Tape and Job Creation
Posted by Print

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

April 20th, 2010 at 1:15 pm
Bloated Bureaucracies & a Constipated Congress

One of the measures of successful politicians is how much legislation they author, sponsor, and pass.  Since the activities can be counted, the more a legislator does, the more he can claim to be “doing something” to justify his reelection.

So it must be frustrating for all the Senators who desperately want to “do something” when colleagues in their own party insist on larding unpopular policies into bills that would otherwise sail through the process.  Though the main energy bill claims enough support to pass, Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) are blocking it because its centrist supporters refuse to include the Environmental Left’s demands for cap-and-trade.  When asked to present the cap-and-tax language as a stand-alone amendment, Kerry and Boxer balked because they don’t have the 60 votes to attach it.

Who can blame them?  After the large scale corruption of the legislative process to pass ObamaCare, why wouldn’t a Democratic lawmaker think that rules only apply to Republicans?

Happily, adding text to the United States Code isn’t everyone’s definition of a good legislator.  Senators like Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) pride themselves on reducing the word count of the nation’s legal regime.  Less law means less room for bureaucrats to expand their reach.  Let’s hope the Democrats’ insatiable demand for more government continues to be an obstacle to passing any new laws.