By John McClaughry
My friend Dr. Donald Devine makes a good point about the workings of the Administrative State.
In a review of a book by former Secretary of the Interior Avid Bernhardt, Don writes:
Open cabinet access to the president had been the norm since George Washington, but it violates most modern Washington insiders’ presumed knowledge that the White House Office and the Office of Management and Budget expert staffs should and actually do run the modern presidency. The fundamental administrative fact is that, if the traditional direct presidential relationship fails, it is replaced by irresponsible bureaucracy, both careerist and political.
Bernhardt explains how the government today does not generally work as the Constitution expected. Congress now leaves most of the policy-making to the bureaucracy, the real Article III courts leave legal-policy interpretations mostly to bureaucratic bodies in the executive branch, and the careerist bureaucracy actually performs the major executive functions of the national government — leaving the bureaucracy pretty much unaccountable to anyone.
Having spent a great deal of my career in the executive branch, I am gravely concerned that many people who work there believe that they have little need to comply with the written words of the law or the regulations of their agency, or with the policies of the elected president. The leaders of executive agencies, for their part, too often view themselves as little more than figureheads, allowing their agencies to run on autopilot rather than fulfilling their responsibility to supervise employees and hold them accountable to the American people.
John McClaughry is vice president of the Ethan Allen Institute.
Self-serving apathy and incompetence are endemic to those in power, particularly in Vermont.
Pride-Without-Cause, or “Stupid Pride” as they call it down south is the worst of all human social diseases, the most pathological and the most destructive.
It derives out of the Dunning-Kruger Effect and Acquired Situational Narcissism and just plain-old everyday Vermont Sociopathy.
Those self-absorbed, virtue-signaling, impotent individuals in power in Vermont are particularly prone to these mental disorders. So, when Vermonters gather to lament their many social ills – Be Proud – for Vermonters created their own verdant dystopia.
Administrative state = operatives of the Deep State/NWO/Lobbyists/Corporations/WEF
Seeing they are paid handsomely, they are also easily controlled. They lose their job if they don’t do what they are told. And they don’t take orders from the people, the elected leaders, nor the governor.
It’s a revolving door, Vermont’s specialty is lobbyists hiding under the guise of a non-profit.
I spent close to 13 years in Vermont State government at a high enough level to be a part of the unafraid bureaucracy. The legislature passes the bills to become law and then the bureaucracy is given the job of writing the regulations that are used to administer the law.
The legislators might come into the department and brag about who they were and throw their weight around. OK WE JUST WAITED THEM OUT AND WENT ON DOING WHATEVER WE WANTED. However we respected Dick Snelling because he would come back and check to see if the department did what he had told them to do.
It looks, to me, like the Federal government is run by the bureaucrats also.
Trump may be the only one smart and tough enough to deal with the untouchables??
That seems also how every planning commission; regional planning commission and many towns work these days too. Huh? Coincidence?
Follow the money. These bureaucrats??? They were Vermont lobbyists. There is a complete revolving door, VNRC being a great example, I’m sure planned parenthood, surely affordable housing and of course the teachers unions and medical facilities….surely they are not left out of the game.
We have the illusion of input. Vermont is run by moneyed interests and for cheap. The have complete control of the press.
So before 2016 if you asked Vermonters about Ukraine, they wouldn’t know what it was. But NPR, and company rolled out the propaganda wave and suddenly, there are more Ukraine flags flying across Vermont than old glory!
People might find this video……amusing if it weren’t so sad. They won’t find this in NPR, or VT Digger, or Front Porch Forum, none of which allow free comments and speech.
https://choiceclips.whatfinger.com/2023/06/26/paper-peace-whatfingers-7/
It’s short, and effective.