Roger Kimball has suggested that the next presidential inauguration should "take place somewhere other than Washington."
I agree with Kimball's rationale:
I understand that the inauguration, like the Oscars, is a ceremony festooned with precedent and expectation.
But with each passing day, it becomes clearer that Washington is the source, the living embodiment, of so much that’s wrong with our society.
For this reason (and for others, some related to cost), I have argued that many, if not most, federal agencies should be headquartered outside of Washington, D.C. The city is filled with apparatchiks (elected and otherwise) who care mostly about consolidating their own power, and Washington has become "their" capital, not ours. Symbols have value, and right now D.C. represents a hive of self-important, corrupt, elitist overseers. It is past time to deflate its self-importance.
I agree completely with Kimball's take, especially the part about moving government agencies out of D. C. and dispersing them throughout the country. Why not, since we have state of the art electronic communications? This would also have the effect of trimming down federal payrolls since a lot of feds couldn't bear to leave their cushy little East Coast bubbles.
ReplyDeleteCan you imagine the looks on the faces of the employees of the Department of Transportation when they're told to pack their bags and head for Detroit? Or the cries of anguish over at the EPA when they're transferred to Camden, New Jersey? The schadenfreude alone would be worth the effort.
ReplyDeleteI've known bureaucrats, personally, who threatened to quit because they didn't think the size of their offices was consistent with their sense of personal grandness. What do you think somebody like that is going to say when he's told, "Here's your plane ticket to Nome. Better pick up a parka." I get giddy just thinking about it.
the late Senator Byrd saw it as his mission to move as many government jobs out to West Virginia as possible.
ReplyDeleteA rant follows ... ... the gist of it being, Kimball is spot on ... ...
ReplyDeleteTrump moved much of the staff of the Bureau of Land Management out of their DC headquarters. O! The howls of outrage!
Never mind that the BLM's jurisdiction is *exclusively* west of the Mississippi. Check out their original legislation. But most of their HQ resided within the Beltway.
Nope, the staffers were enraged when this happened. I had some contacts within the BLM, and their sister agency, the Bureau of Reclamation. Whoa, the hate was INTENSE. I'm surprised we didn't see actual cases of spontaneous combustion from BuRec and BLM employees.
After Biden got into the White House, this was reversed by the Department of Agriculture.
And then there was Trump's "blue ribbon" committee which recommended, among other things, moving a lot of functions out of the Corps of Engineers (my former, God be praised, employer) into other, more relevant agencies.
Quoting Donald Rumsfeld (at least in intent, if not correctly), "I don't understand why an agency involved in rebuilding Afghanistan also employs park rangers in the Pacific Northwest". That's what Rumsfeld (who had his issues, but he got this one right) told the then Chief of Engineers while taking the remodeling of the Pentagon away from the CoE, and passing it to a contractor hired by the Army.
Anywho, the recommendations by the committee were roundly urinated on by CoE employees. I know, I was at a regional CoE conference when that report was published. The ensuing "Two Minutes Of Hate" (more like 10 minutes) was quite illuminating.
I must admit to a certain level of personal satisfaction during this unprofessional display, as I shut it down by telling everyone to shut up and move on, given that the odds of those recommendations ever getting through Congress was effectively ZERO. I failed to mention that I actually liked some of the proposals, as that would have ensued in a huge fight.
I should note that I was not in charge of this meeting; the regional manager sat right there and smiled throughout the tirade. The fact that I had routinely told him he (and his staff) was wrong, including in front of a flag officer kept him from retaliating.
Well, that, the fact that I was due to retire in less than a year.
My point being ... ... yeah, the rot in DC is deep. To the core. Paco probably knows this better than I do.
The rot is deep, indeed. Possibly inoperable.
ReplyDeleteYes, these people are mesmerized by the Eye of Sauron, and most can't bear the thought of leaving Mordor.
I'm glad I retired when I did. Had I still been in government after Biden was heaved into the White House, during the hysteria over Jan. 6th that affected so many denizens of D.C., I'm not at all sure that I might not have opened a can of insurrection upside somebody's head.