Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Steve Hayward is joined this week by Power Line’s own John Hinderaker and Power Line’s eminence grise behind the curtain, Joe Malchow, to dissect the key takeaways of the Inspector General’s findings about the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton. The second half of this episode features Henry Olsen with his latest “surf report” about where the Democrats’ “blue wave” stands at the moment. Hint: Democrats shouldn’t be waxing up their longboards just yet.
Subscribe to Power Line in Apple Podcasts (and leave a 5-star review, please!), or by RSS feed. For all our podcasts in one place, subscribe to the Ricochet Audio Network Superfeed in Apple Podcasts or by RSS feed.
Good discussion. Maybe it’s dawning on folks that there is a deep state. The Federal Government is given responsibilities that are impossible to carry out. There is no way to determine whether their goals conform to the reason they were created, why they were created, nor whether they are making progress toward their own goals let alone those for which they were created if there are any. Nor to know what the unintended consequences are, on whom they fall, nor to link those consequences in some corrective way back to their causes. There are no incentives to innovate, save money, or even think about the reasons for their existence. Of course good people try to do the right thing as they see them, but there is no way for successes if there are any, to spread and be emulated, indeed there are reasons to stop their spread.
Mistakes give rise to rents for someone and are difficult to undo so are worked around or gradually become part of the institutional objectives. People who are dishonest, partisan, inept cannot be fired so at best are moved to less problematic positions where they can’t interfere with the objectives which have emerged over time to serve the interests of the organization. Since we can print our own budgets these things simply grow through time. Like everything else in life they are emergent systems but unlike most, there is no self correction built in, no iterative movement toward agreed upon goals other than survival and growth. These organized interests we call the deep state were given a purpose by the Obama Administration, They were weaponized against a joint enemy, the constitution and the political movements, variously defined, that seek constitutionally limited government.
We must understand that this thing can’t be reformed, fixed, pointed in a constitutional direction, can’t learn nor made efficient, effective and accountable.
There is only one solution; cut it down, remove it’s authorities, decentralize things that are too difficult to eliminate by sending them to the states with no or little money where they might not be reformed but will face natural political and economic limits they don’t face in Washington.