Look no further than Loudon County, Virginia.
Another great reason for physically decentralizing the federal government: eliminate as many bureaucrats as you can, settle the rest in other areas of the country - preferably in "blue" areas where they can't contaminate local "red-based" politics: EPA to Detroit (assuming it isn't liquidated altogether), Dept. of Health and Human Services to Oakland, the VA to Indianapolis, and so on. Much cheaper rent and a perfect way to trigger attrition in the ranks of the permanent government (believe me, many of these government employees would rather throw themselves in front of an oncoming Metro train than abandon the "prestige" of working in Washington, DC).
One of the more pervasise (and invasive) federal agencies in the western US is the Bureau of Land Management (the original BLM). This agency owns and "manages" a large amount of federal land, the use of which is always contentious. You might remember the Bundy stand off in Nevada during 2014, and the occupation of an Oregon wildlife preserve in 2016. Both involved the BLM.
ReplyDeleteWhile ALL of the lands "managed" by BLM are west of the Mississippi, the majority of the agency staff -- including policy makers, "scientists", and other professional parasites -- were entrenched at the national HQ in Washington, DC. A perfect example of what Paco correctly identifies as a major problem with the National Capital Region. I had to professionally deal with the arbitrary policies and decisions of those clowns more than once.
So I chortled with glee when I heard that President Trump was moving most of the BLM staff out west to be amongst the lands they were responsible for. And closer to the population whose lives they made miserable all too often. The response of the BLM staff was, shall we say, unprofessional. One video of the agency head briefing the DC workforce included a demonstration by his employees, many of whom stood up, and turned their backs to him while he was talking.
Needless to say, many of those clowns weren't interested in moving out of DC and into flyover country. I've no doubt that many of those employees had solid reasons for not moving. On the other hand, no one is entitled to a government job. And I'm sure that the victim flag was often hoisted with little regard to the truth.
I was still working for the feds when this came out, and it scared the bejesus of my co-workers in the Army Corps of Engineers. My retirement was pending, but I would have enjoyed it anyway, since I have long loathed the federal bureaucracy, and especially those who are stationed inside the Beltway.
Another story of this sense of entitlement comes from a blue ribbon committee appointed by Trump; they recommended moving multiple functions out of the Corps into other agencies. Most of those recommendations, viewed objectively, were outside the box and made sense, although carrying through with them would have taken a whole of work. Easy they were not.
The response of the workforce to those recommendations was personnally enraging. One teleconference devolved into a hatefest. I had to speak bluntly, and remind my (God forgive me) peers that was zero chance that Congress would approve those changes, we had other things to do, so let's move on. Oddly enough, that's what we did.
Those ideas wouldn't die from Trump Derangement Syndrome™ (although that would be an excuse, I'm sure), but because Congress is not interested in moving federal jobs between states and/or congressional districts. Not to mention that the professional bureaucrats running the agency would have fought it tooth and nail -- they would be losing parts of their empire.
So decentralizing -- and downsizing! -- the federal government is a good idea. But the Deep State will fight it every single step.
Pardon the rant.
Sing it, brother! I'm with you 100%. I know several individuals who voted in the past for candidates based exclusively on whether this candidate or that represented a better chance of them keeping their damned cushy government jobs, everything else be damned.
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