The Bureaucrasorous Rex, A Pattern of Failure, and Your Vote

The American voter is besieged with two seemingly easy choices.  The conservatives and teabagers are clamoring for smaller government and lower taxes, though they don’t specify which government programs they would cut to balance the budget.  The liberals and the left supposedly are clamoring for more government and higher taxes.  But this seemingly simple picture quickly breaks down when we take a look at what has really been happening in our government.  During the past 30 years we have had the opportunity to see both sides in power.  First we had a Republican president and a Democrat congress.  Then we had a Democrat president and a Republican congress.  Then we had a Republican president and a Republican congress.  Now once again, we have a Democrat president and a Democrat congress.  The one thing that has remained constant is the completely dysfunctional bureaucratic branch of government. 

The great tragedy of 9/11/2001 was in part attributable to the fact that the parts of the government meant to protect us from such horrors regrettably dropped the ball in the few instances they had knowledge of suspicious behavior and information that had it been followed had they investigated would have led them to the plot.  We discovered that the CIA and the FBI weren’t doing a good job of communicating with each other.  We discovered that the security system in place at the time was inadequate to detect the type of instruments used by the hijackers.  Our response was to create a new mega-branch of government that we call Homeland Security. 

Since then we have seen other branches of the bureaucracy fail.  FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), lead by the former head of the Arabian Horse Association –  Michael Brown - failed in dealing with hurricane Katrina.  The SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) failed to respond to warning after warning that was actually mailed to their offices that Madoff was nothing but a giant “Ponzi” scheme and due to that failure thousands of people and even institutions lost billions of dollars.  The SEC failed to properly perform its role in monitoring the management of the banks and their investment branches and the worst financial meltdown since the Great Depression drug down our nation’s economy and brought the world’s economy to the very brink of a failure that we can only imagine.  While there were several dimensions of our economy that played a part in the economic failure of 2008 the role of the SEC should not be minimized.  Now we learn that some of those within the SEC who should have been acting to protect the American economy were actually down loading porn onto their government computers.

Now we have the MMS (Minerals Management Service a part of the U S Department of the Interior) that is supposed to supervise the drilling operations in the United States.  Unfortunately we have learned that, “the government did not require oil firms to have back-up systems for their blowout preventers.”  (Earth Times, Wed. May 12, 2010)  As we have learned elsewhere, unfortunately, large corporations care more about the bottom line than about responsible management and decisions such as having a back-up system for something as critical as a blowout preventer can not be left up to the company.  It is not their eco system that will suffer incredible damage for decades due to a catastrophic spill.  It is ours, the American public’s, that is at risk and we have the right and the responsibility to manage those who would profit from the minerals and the oil to do it in the safest manner possible.

NASA has failed to plan.  Since the shuttle was designed in the late 1970s, no new, replacement system for getting astronauts into space has been developed.  In spite of the evident problems with the shuttle nothing has been done for 30 years to plan what the next step would be.  Now we find ourselves dependent on the Russians to get us to the International Space Station, for at least the next four years.

Unfortunately the bureaucratic failures don’t stop with these.  As we are all painfully aware, we have millions of illegal immigrants that have come to the United States.  Our southern border is more porous than the proverbial “Swiss cheese.”  Not only is the Border Patrol (a department of Homeland Security) at fault, but so are the Department of Labor and the Department of State.  All three of these agencies interact in either closing the border, issuing work permits, and producing the documents that those coming to work in America need.  When a person tries to sort through the maze of regulations, laws, and bureaucratic requirements that should exist to control immigration across the border you quickly realize how amazingly difficult it is.

This brief review is sufficient to illustrate the problems that exist within our governmental agencies that are supposed to be working to make our nation function.  As Joe Klein in a recent article in Time magazine notes, “Democrats tend to be more interested in legislating than in managing.  They come to office filled with irrational exuberance, pass giant fur balls of legislation – stuff that often sounds fabulous, in principle - and expect a stultified bureaucracy, bereft of the incentives and punishments of the private sector, to mange it all with the efficiency of a bounty hunter.  This has always been the strongest conservative argument against government activism.  Traditionally, Republicans were more concerned with the good management than Democrats – until the Reagan era, when the “government is the problem” mantra took hold.  If you don’t believe in the government, you don’t bother much with governing efficiently.  You hire political cronies for jobs that professionals should be doing.  Eventually, you wind up with the former head of the Arabian Horse Association- the infamous Michael Brown-trying to organize federal aid after Hurricane Katrina.”  (Time May 17, 2010)

The pattern is overwhelming.  The government we have simply isn’t functioning.  The bureaucrats aren’t doing their job and our elected officials are so caught up in the political one-up-man-ship-game that they have done nothing to change this pattern of failure.  This cannot be allowed to continue.  One of the first steps that must be taken is to bring accountability back to every level of government.  Until we elect political leaders who understand this,  the problem is going to continue.  Bringing accountability back to the bureaucratic levels of government will be one of my highest priorities if elected.