The 1980’s Reagan Revolution promised a smaller federal government and less regulation of business. Instead, the number of executive branch employees grew. (The only period that it declined in the last half of the 20th century was during the Clinton years.) As for regulations, the sheer number of them has become both astronomical and irrelevant. Reaganites wanted a free hand for big business to do as they pleased unfettered by demands to stop polluting the environment, to treat employees fairly, to provide safe working conditions, produce safe products, and not jeopardize public health.
The problem with the federal government is not its size or the number of regulations. A big, complicated nation like the U.S. needs a central government with enough resources to address national issues affecting the overall health and welfare of all persons in every place. I suspect the problem with regulations is not with the big ones, but the little ones that pick away at how to do something rather than allowing room for creative ways to accomplish desired ends with greater efficiency and effectiveness.
For example, I once worked for an organization that operated from the top down, telling its staff what to do and how to do it. My approach was to find out what top management wanted to accomplish and make it happen. To do the job right, I used detailed instructions as guidelines not orders to be obeyed. The vast herd of little federal regulations do not allow that kind of response because the bureaucrats assigned to enforce them are not evaluated by desired end results but by how well they adhered to the method they were instructed to use. It creates an upside down picture of the clientele. I suspect the client many federal employees are hired to serve is an exact method of little regulation enforcement. They are hired to see that the right boxes are checked. Is that true across the board? No.
In firsthand experience with four different governmental departments, I’ve seen the Dept. of Interior people working cooperatively and creatively with local people for the good of everyone. The same is true for the Dept. of Agriculture. The local Social Security office in three different cities I’ve lived in was friendly, helpful and efficient. My experience with HUD was varied.: too much mindless box checking.
The little regulation gremlin is not exclusive to the federal government. Who among us has not had miserable experiences with insurance or cable companies? Companies that seem to be among the most strident voices objecting to being regulated.
As for big regulations, it’s abundantly clear that big business cannot be trusted to act in the public good. Left to their own devices, they are untrustworthy. Large public corporations are not immoral or unethical by nature. They are amoral and will only live up to whatever ethical or moral standards are set for them. Even privately owned corporations are beholden only to the unpredictable ethical standards of their owners. The laissez faire dream of a Reaganite paradise is nothing but a fairy tale, a dystopian one at that.
Things might be working better had far right libertarians not entered a decades long propaganda campaign warning the public that much needed regulation of business was only the first move of “Socialists”to regulate every aspect of public and personal life, depriving ordinary people of their treasured freedom and independence. In reality, that there were no Socialists to speak of was unimportant. Anyone left of center was suspect, and it didn’t matter that liberals worked consistently for greater freedoms for more people. The right wingers knew that horror stories sold well and with a great horror story to tell — they told and sold it well.
So here we are now with a would-be dictator in a close race for president running on a Heritage Foundation plan (Project 2025) to strip Americans of their freedoms and impose corporate statism on the nation. Were such a candidate and his Project 2025 plan to succeed in the presidential election, we would, in short, become more like China and Russia than the America of the constitutional democratic republic we’ve worked hard to build into a nation where the American Dream is a real possibility.
So stop all the hand wringing and get on with seeing that NO MAGA candidate gets elected to ANY office, especially the presidency.
The analysis leading to your conclusive exhortation regarding NO MAGA candidate winning, much less winning the presidency is, as so often, right on the money, Steve.
Except.
Except for the bizarre slow-motion disaster that is Biden’s deluded refusal to withdraw.
That Biden’s personal self-delusion denying the inevitability of his own cognitive decline continues to be unconscionably facilitated by the still predominant Blue Delusive Narrative that “Biden” can win the presidency is going to ensure not just Trump’s re-election but the now very real possibility of a unitary MAGA government.
Each day that goes by in which Biden does not withdraw solidifies the triumph of Delusion over what 50 million Americans watched unfold right before their very eyes.
The story of this critical election has now been recast by the perverse twist by which a Blue Delusive Narrative now serves the Red Delusive Narrative’s triumph over whatever is now left of reality in American political culture.
Tom, we cannot use Biden as an excuse to do nothing. The work is in our hands, regardless of whether he runs or doesn’t.
Of course you are right, Steve. The difficulty is that if Biden does not withdraw, and withdraw very soon, I have no idea how “Biden” will win. But not only that, there are now way too many “downticket” Democrats who fear that the decisiveness of “Biden’s” loss will drag them down with it. All of which amounts to the victory of Delusive Narratives in a relentless slow-motion nightmare that no one, or group of “leaders” in the Demcratic Party, appears to have both the courage and the power to stop.
Amen.