Author Archives: eehines

How Many Bureaucrats?

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James Freeman asked this question in his Tuesday Wall Street Journal op-ed, regarding the bureaucrats in the Federal government.

The government, and I [ahem], answered this question during an earlier Progressive-Democrat-led Federal government shutdown, and we’re about to get an empirical demonstration with the current Schumer Shutdown which began Wednesday morning. Here’s what that earlier shutdown demonstrated about the number of bureaucrats actually needed:

Office Per Cent Nonessential
White House 74
Treasury 82
Labor 82
Interior 81
EPA 94
NASA 97
Housing and Urban Development 96
Education 94
Commerce 87
Smithsonian 84

 

There are others, also, with a different per centage of nonessentials:

Office Per Cent Nonessential
U.S. Commission of Fine Arts 100
U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness 100
USDA Risk Management Agency 100
Federal Maritime Commission 100
Economic Development Administration 100
Minority Business Development Agency 100

There’s a more complete list over at Slate.

The short answer is: not many of the bureaucrats on the payroll are actually needed. The longer answer will be begun to be delivered with the RIF that the OMB has instructed Executive Branch Departments and Agencies to prepare lists for, with those lists beginning with programs and projects currently unfunded and that do not align with Presidential policy. The answer will be expanded on by all the Leftist and Civil Service union lawsuits objecting to the RIF, even to preparing for a RIF. Those lawsuits will prove the lack of need for those bureaucrats.

State Auspices

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Louisiana’s Republican Governor, Jeff Landry, has acknowledged that his State has a crime problem for all that the State has made laudable progress against crime (that’s how bad it had been). It would be good if Progressive-Democrat Governors had the same integrity, introspection, and insight for their States, but they are what they are.

Where I disagree with Landry, though, is this:

Louisiana GOP Governor Jeff Landry has asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth deploy as many as 1,000 state National Guardsmen to help curb crime.

Landry doesn’t need SecDef to Federalize the National Guard to do this. He can call up his State’s 1,000 Guardsmen for the purpose himself. If he needs the Guard, he needs to stop injecting delays and get it done.

New York Post Does the Same

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The New York Post condemned Socialist and Progressive-Democratic Party candidate for Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, over his refusal to condemn Hamas, the terrorist organization that invaded Israel two years ago, butchering Israeli women and children, raping Israeli women, and seizing hundreds of hostages, many of whom have been killed in captivity and many more of whom still are held by the terrorists.

The condemnation is entirely appropriate.

However, the NYP then proceeded to commit the same offense in the second paragraph of its article:

Mamdani stopped short of condemning the militant group after Netanyahu used his defiant address to the United Nations General Assembly on Friday to declare that Israel must “finish the job” in its war against Hamas.

No. Hamas is not a militant group. Far from it. Hamas is a terrorist organization through and through. I would have thought the NYP‘s publisher, if not its editors, knew better than this. Apparently, I’m too optimistic.

“We cannot normalize”

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ICE and CBP are patrolling downtown Chicago and arresting criminals along the way. DHS noted that (with accompanying images)

11 violent rioters were arrested last night in Chicago outside the ICE detention facility: these are two guns that were taken off rioters in Chicago right against the fence at our ICE detention facility. An investigation is underway into what appears to be some sort of explosive device found last night near the ICE Chicago detention facility.

Progressive-Democrat Illinois Governor JB Pritzker is dismayed, and he’s hyping the fact that ICE and CBP agents are armed in a dangerous city while they go about their intrinsically dangerous job of law enforcement. He said this, too:

We cannot normalize militarizing American cities and suburbs. Make sure you know your rights and stay alert.

Neither can we normalize violent lawlessness, even in Chicago. We do know our rights, we are staying alert, and so do—and are—those law enforcement personnel. Pritzker, though, would rather protect the criminals rampant in one of his State’s major cities than protect the residents of that city.

A Glittering Generality

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This one is from Republican candidate for Ohio Governor, Vivek Ramaswamy:

Instead of viewing AI as competition, the next generation should own a stake in improving America’s economic productivity. If every child has $10,000 invested in the S&P 500, every one of them would be a millionaire well before retirement.

From where would that initial $10k stake come? If it’s handed to “every child” from outside (vis., government), that child would have no skin in that game, and he would not find himself at pains to protect that stake by actively participating in improving our economic productivity—for instance, by getting a job and working to his employer’s goals or starting his own business and working to make it grow and prosper. The money would just be found money of no personal value.

On top of that, Ramaswamy did not address another aspect of this “plan:” what does he think the value would be of those millions of dollars in the child’s end game of retirement after a long and fruitful life of doing…something? An increase of all that nominal wealth without a concomitant increase in the supply of goods and services, will simply drive up the cost of those goods and services, which is otherwise known as inflation. Those millions of dollars may well wind up with the purchasing value of today’s thousands of dollars.

This is a plan that sounds good in its base outline, but it badly wants cold, clear-eyed fleshing out with facts; hard logic; and clear, publicly measurable steps to be taken. Especially, but not exclusively, the steps needed to keep productivity growth up with S&P 500 growth in an environment where today’s and lots of prior year’s S&P 500 growth—its price to earnings ratio—has been outstripping goods and services—productivity–growth.