Progress Is Not a Straight Line
The remedy will not be pleasant, but we need to cure the patient before it's too late.
CEO says he sees signs of progress from his radical efforts to reduce bureaucracy.
‘So how’s it going one year in? There have been some positive signs, according to the company. In Fortune last spring Anderson cited drug teams radically compressing the time to human trials, or scientists decreasing plant breeding cycles from five years down to four months. Recently he told Business Insider that while layoffs were ongoing, voluntary attrition has dropped. Still, Wall Street doesn’t seem quite convinced, with the stock having been cut roughly in half over the past year.’
Jimmy Carter’s Education Legacy: The Birth of Bureaucratic Mediocrity
We write about this later this month, but the Department of Education is a classic example of the principle that “the purpose of a system is what it does.”
The Department of Education has nothing to do with improving pedagogical outcomes. It’s pretty good at lighting cash on fire, though.
‘Carter’s bureaucratic brainchild also succeeded in creating a vast and unaccountable administrative apparatus whose primary function appears to be its own perpetuation. Between 1980 and 2020, the department’s budget ballooned from $14 billion to over $70 billion (adjusted for inflation), yet this tidal wave of funding has done little to improve outcomes. Instead, it has fueled an explosion of middle management — consultants, auditors, compliance officers — whose salaries drain resources away from classrooms and into the ever-expanding maw of federal bureaucracy.’
Fed Vice Chair Says He’s Leaving Role Early to Avoid Fight With Trump
Barr should have resigned after the bank failures of 2023. Shameful.
Put a fork in Basel III. It’s done.
‘His departure will effectively freeze any bank regulatory actions until Mr. Trump names someone to the vice chairman role. In announcing his move, the central bank said: “The Board does not intend to take up any major rulemakings until a vice chair for supervision successor is confirmed.”’
Drain the swamp? Yes, 61% of voters say
We’ll see how long this support lasts given the transitional pain, but it’s a good sign nonetheless.
‘With support from a majority of black voters, Hispanics, and independents, the latest Rasmussen Reports survey shared with Secrets on Wednesday found that 61% approve of cutting the size of the federal government.
‘Among Republicans, 82% support new cuts.’
ALEC & DOGE Aligned on Countering Executive Overreach
What will DOGE means for the existing organizations dedicated to reforming bureaucracy?
‘ALEC has led various efforts to tackle the challenges brought by executive bureaucrats for decades. For example, various regulatory reform initiatives, educating on the administrative state dilemma, reigning in the emergency powers of executive officials, enhancing rulemaking accountability through legislative reviews and gubernatorial endorsements, and restructuring the relationship between the judiciary and the executive branches via administrative law judge and judicial deference reforms, have all been active pursuits of ALEC members in recent years, with several proposals achieving legislative success in 2024.
‘Most of these issues are tasked with addressing the problems created by the quasi-legislating of executive branch bureaucrats. For example, judicial deference—the doctrine which requires courts to defer to agency interpretations of the law when unclear (rather than allowing a court to exercise its exclusive interpretive role)—creates a massive power grab for agency rule-makers who know that courts might uphold their interpretation of the law.’