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Advice to the Next (R) President: If You Would Shrink Government, Move It
I’m hardly the optimist in this crowd about the possibility of us ever having another Republican president, given the implausibility that Joe Biden — that man of plagiarism, exploitation of his family tragedies for political gain, complete and utter foolishness about foreign policy, lack of accomplishment even in the arena of politics (or any kind of real-life endeavor, for that matter) other than getting elected, racist persecutor of Clarence Thomas, questionable cognitive function, and all-around low character — ostensibly got the most votes of any presidential candidate in American history including the deified Barack Obama, while campaigning from his basement.
Sure, he had a lot of help from the DNC-complicit media: Russia hoax, Charlottesville slander, threat to “our” democracy. . . that last bit was a half-truth. Trump was a threat to their Deep State oligarchy. And then there was ballot harvesting and unconstitutional (read, illegal) changes to voting procedures in several states, dodgy ballot counting in key districts, and anomalies like Trump winning 90% of bellwether districts, but still “losing” the election. . . The Left has figured out how to steal national elections. State and local are next.
But, I digress.
If the next Republican president wants to shrink the federal government, he could learn a thing or two from Donald Trump. I take this information from the PJMedia article by Rick Moran titled, Biden Reverses Another Trump Policy: Bureau of Land Management Headquarters to Return to Swamp.
Here’s the Trump administration’s geniosity by the numbers:
*328 BLM positions were slated to move to Grand Junction, CO, from DC.
*287 BLM deep staters — I mean, “public servants” (sneer quotes required) — either quit or retired.
*Just three — that’s right, 3.0 — made the move, and ultimately 80 positions were left unfilled.
Lord, I love Donald Trump. Now, I’m sure someone advised him of the common sense of moving the Bureau of freakin’ Land Management out onto — you know — the land the feds captured (someone else can start a thread about private property versus communism). But, the thing is, DJT was willing to take the advice and do the deeply statist unpopular thing of exiling an agency into the hinterlands away from The Capitol (yes, that’s a dystopian Hunger Games reference, in case you didn’t pick that up).
To get a sense of how much sense it makes to move the BLM from DC to Colorado, check out this map:
You gotta love lefty gaslighting, don’t you? — “Your public lands.” Kind of like it’s “your” money, until it’s tax time and you haven’t paid “your” fair share.
Now Grand Junction isn’t exactly at the heart of BLM administered land, but it’s near the aorta. So, of course, Joe Biden had to undo the eminently sensible thing Trump did and move the agency back to the swamp. Swamp rats will be back on board before you know it.
But, this has given me (diabolical genius) ideas about moving all kinds of swamp inhabitants out of the swamp and into places that make more sense — or at least encourages them to take early retirement. And you’re probably thinking about it, too.
For example, I’d move the Department of Energy to either North Dakota, where federal employees could get a taste of what happens in local communities when fracking regulations become onerous, or to the Texas panhandle, where they’d have to live and work in the middle of a wind farm like rural Americans who aren’t among the protected class (see Kennedy, Ted; Nantucket Sound). The Fed I would offshore to Venezuela — just for perspective.
What are your diabolical genius ideas for diluting federal government agencies by moving them away from the concentrated power in Washington?
Published in General
DOJ to Portland or Minneapolis. Right downtown. Education to the South Side of Chicago, maybe Englewood or Woodlawn, where there ain’t no justice right now. DOD to Guam. Nice historic associations.
Education I would actually move to Hillsdale, Michigan — where they might learn somethin’.
But, I very much approve of DOJ to Portland or Minneapolis. Good thinking.
I like it. Scatter it to the winds.
I believe you are too kind here since the Department of Education is made up of the uneducable, but perhaps I should be more charitable.
Yeah, I wrote a post last year on the same subject (8 Jan); specifically, Senator Josh Hawley’s HIRE Act. When I read the particulars of his bill, I called my Representative (a Republican) to urge him to introduce a similiar bill in the House. The Representative’s aide told me that he (the Representative) would “consider” it. Bottom line: I’m still waiting for the results of that “consideration”.
For a complete restructure to happen, the Republicans would have to control the Presidency and both houses of Congress.
However, the Republicans would also have to have the cajones to make a move such as this. We all know that’s not going to happen.
Shrinkage.
Yes, this–or similar–ideas come up here every now and then. One of the simplest (and perhaps a good place to start) is to have the representatives and senators actually live in their districts and states, among the people they’re supposed to represent, and to whom they’re (ostensibly) accountable. If the Era of Covid has taught us anything, it ought to be that working from home is possible for a great many people whose presence in an office adds little-to-nothing to their ability to do their jobs (sometimes it actually detracts from it), and that Zoom conferences can work perfectly well. If those elected to serve the public actually had to answer to the public, and spent their time with their constituents at the Tuesday Chamber of Commerce meeting, or the Friday evening church and VFD fish-fry, rather than schmoozing with fat-cat lobbyists and agenda-driven PACs eager to part with their money in exchange for supportive votes for their cause-of-the-day, we’d all be a lot better off. Why, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, do they need to be housed 7x24x365, at great expense, in DC at all, commuting “home” on the weekend only for the occasional glancing encounter with the people who employ them, and half of whom most of them seem to hold in contempt?
Term. Limits.
I’m not sure about moving entities–such as the Bureau of Land Management–wholesale to those areas that are most beholden to their success, as I think it could be argued that such a thing would just set up smaller competing pods of desperately-entitled swamp all across the country. It’s a fair question (I think) to ask whether some of those entities are fulfilling roles specified for the federal government in the Constitution, and whether they should just be eliminated altogether. (Department of Education, for example. Maybe the Commerce Department. HUD. I could go on.)
It’s tempting to contemplate moving support services for various departments to a decentralized model. I don’t know about other parts of the country, but here in SW PA, we’ve got lots of boarded up shopping malls–cheap by the square foot–which would be easy to convert to open-office floorplans for government workers. Robert Byrd was quite good at this sort of thing–moving sundry data processing departments and IRS centers to West Virginia. Along the way, and across half-a-century, he moved thousands of workers and millions–more likely billions–of dollars out of DC and to his home state.
From a 30-year-old WaPo article:
Not all Byrd’s visions panned out, but enough of them did that evoking, in my neck of the woods, “Robert Byrd’s plan to move the federal government to his home state of West Virginia,” is well understood. And if nothing else, his actions serve as a cautionary tale that even the laudable objective of breaking up the swamp and returning some of its power to ‘the folks’ can, if undertaken by corrupt, dishonest, and power-hungry wheelers-and-dealers like Robert Byrd, turn into its own deep morass of graft and malfeasance.
Yes, but I hadn’t realized Donald Trump had actually done it until I read the PJMedia article. And I live in Colorado!
I’d like to see Congress moved by law or amendment, to have the proportional representation it had at the founding of the Republic. Let people actually have a chance to interact with their Congress-critters.
That would make a House of Representatives with 10,743 members.
Lobby that!
Good.
But enough about Liz Cheney.
If you want this to be effective, it would be important to require that the Congressional staff members also live in the districts and states with the Members of Congress that they work for. I presume some of them actually do, but it should be a requirement for all of them.
Move the ATF to Chicago . . .
I’m thinking Fairbanks, Alaska, is a great destination. Now which one should go there…?
CIA. You can see Russia from there.
And mandate that they can carry only .22 caliber weapons. Let them feel what it’s like to be out-gunned.
Relocate the Dept of Transportation. Make Mayor Pete return to South Bend.
We just drove Route 30 from Ohio to Gary to pick up I-80 on our way home. I’d prefer Mayor Pete have to live along that corridor in Gary, Indiana. South Bend doesn’t carry enough traffic for the Dept of Transportation. Besides, Gary has its own musical number and I can just picture Pete singing and dancing. . .
Gary is too close to Chicago. Now if he were to live in Gary, that would be worth considering.
One of Trumps few mistakes was the attempt to move Federal bureaucracy to the field. It would have eroded the Forest Service and the BLM field offices, and even the Park Service. The solution is to reduce Washington bureaucrats but not increase regional offices. It would be another layer, expense and would reduce the influence people like ranchers, farmers, game management folk, etc. have on these organizations. These organizations inherited vast Federal Lands and manage them by tradition because they go back to the beginning of US possession of the lands when Washington was remote and , in three areas, insignificant. The Federal bureaucracy is the problem. It shouldn’t exist across the board except where constitutionally established. Borders, defense and foreign Policy. The problem is that the Forest Service and BLM managed lands we bought or took and they evolved focused on their interactions with the folks who lived out there and used the lands. The last thing any of them needs is more Washington influence which is what moving the Feds out would cause.
Only 3 of them moved to Colorado. Did you catch that? The rest quit or retired. It’s very possible the few people who filled the positions in Grand Junction were people already attached to the land rather than deep staters who prefer the swamplands of DC.
We’re not looking for solutions. We’re looking for ways to move the ball down the field. Reducing the federal bureaucracy is not an option available to the president or congress. Shaking up the incestuous pit of vipers is something that can be done. Expect the vipers to resist and turn it into a life or death struggle. Their reaction will be informative, and we need to exploit that information.
Show tunes!
Spot on. If we disperse them without decimating them, we’ll just spread the contagion.
I appreciate the idea of denying them their shared habitat – maybe that will impede their sub rosa interaction, maybe even discourage them from joining. Maybe exposure to the America outside the bubble will mature them.
But I think it’s more likely that technology and transportation would permit them to recreate the bubble. And isn’t it more likely they’d corrupt the places we move them to, more easily and quickly than those places would cure their disease?
We shouldn’t invite the filthy pervert who lives behind the abortion clinic into the public library where children go. We should remove him from society until we can get him cleaned up, and if that doesn’t work then we shouldn’t just move him to another town.
The point is, the pervert refused to move and lost his job perverting. The agency reduced in size by 80 positions and ended up hiring locals.
I WISH my job would tell me I had to move, maybe to Colorado…or Wyoming. Some place with mountains and rivers and trees. I’ve thought a lot of the federal agencies should be moved for a long time. Put Ag out in Kansas. The other suggestions for DOJ and so forth in this thread are good starting points, too.
Exactly! A normal person not utterly tainted by the swamp would be happy to move to Colorado — even rural Colorado, where you’re 30 minutes away from one of the most scenic places on earth (Colorado National Monument). Just goes to show that exactly the wrong people are working in these agencies as “public servants” (sneer quotes mandatory).