Peter St. Onge
The catastrophic mismanagement of Hurricane Helene relief is showing the American people that Washington’s dysfunctional but, worse, it doesn’t even seem to be trying to serve the people.
Instead, we serve it. Like livestock.
So how did we get here?
The Long March of Bureaucracy
As with the economy, the seeds of our political crisis began a hundred years ago in the Progressive era.
The Progressives’ big year for taking over the economy was 1913, with the income tax and the Federal Reserve Act.
But the political takeover was earlier — according to historian Murray Rothbard, it began precisely 30 years earlier with something called the Pendleton Act of 1883.
The Act made bureaucrats professionals who are independent of politicians. This was allegedly to fight corruption, but note that a bureaucracy that’s independent of politicians is also independent of voters.
No comments:
Post a Comment