Tricks Bureaucrats Play

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Photo of the closed Washington Monument.
CBS News.
In Warnings, I discuss the hundreds of lives that were lost during Katrina and in other situations due to the decisions of the government bureaucracy. And, how no one has been called to account for those decisions.

While politics does not interest me, the quality of government does. As background, a number of years ago, I was the chair of our trade associations lobbying committee. Washington insiders have -- for at least 20 years -- talked about "the Washington Monument Syndrome" where bureaucrats, when facing budget cuts, offer to cut highly visible services (policeman, closing the Washington Monument) rather than useless fat.

I was reminded of that while reading this morning's Wichita Eagle online:

Independent studies have shown that Kansas has one of the largest number of state employees, per capita, of any state. There is LOTS of fat that can be cut.

It is long past time that this problem be addressed.

UPDATE: 8:05PM Sunday. Even Newsweek is figuring this out, with the free-market value of the property mentioned below likely far too low:


In fact, the U.S. government currently has about $233 billion worth of nondefense “property, plant, and equipment,” according to the Treasury’s Financial Management Service. That is almost certainly an understatement. The government owns somewhere between 600 million and 700 million acres of land, or about 30 percent of the country’s land surface, much of it in the Western states, where as much as half the land is federally owned.
Washington could also sell its stakes in the Southeastern Power Administration and related assets as well as the Tennessee Valley Authority’s electric-power assets.
It is long past time for some of these useless programs to be cut and assets not necessary for the core mission of the federal and state governments to be sold. 

Comments

  1. AnonymousFebruary 20, 2011 at 7:38 PM

    What are your thoughts on various NWS leaders saying the sky will fall if the proposed budget cut of 25-30% takes place. See here for just one example of what's floating around the media: http://www.examiner.com/weather-in-huntsville/the-national-weather-service-is-for-stormy-weather-as-budget-cuts-approve
    -Scott Ferguson

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mike SmithFebruary 20, 2011 at 8:02 PM

    There are somethings that can be cut in the NWS with little loss to programs. Given the problems the NWS has been having with its computer systems during recent winter storms, it might be better to just let the private sector provide that service to give just one example.

    ReplyDelete
  3. RichardPFebruary 21, 2011 at 1:50 PM

    You have the circle the wagons approach to budget cutting in which essential services are threatened (Fire, Police, EMS). And then you have incompetent bureaucrats doing the following: http://freegeographytools.com/2011/how-the-fcc-plans-to-destroy-gps-a-simple-explanation . The FCC wants to allow a high power terrestrial transmitters on the adjacent band for L1 GPS. This would effectively jam many GPS receivers. We now have another example of the laws of physics cannot be regulated out of existence.

    ReplyDelete

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