Blurryeyed Loc: NC Mountains.

Well worth the read, it explains a lot of the dysfunction that we see in our government today and Congress's seemingly inability to deal with it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-rise-of-the-fourth-branch-of-government/2013/05/24/c7faaad0-c2ed-11e2-9fe2-6ee52d0eb7c1_story.html

wierdphotoguy Loc: the snow belt in Michigan

While I try to remain strictly apolitical, this article prompts me to rise up and smite the fourth branch of government. I recently have experience the effects that this article speaks of; I broke a regulation inadvertantly, and this regulation (not law) effectively negated my second amendment rights!

Thank you for posting this article Blurryeyed. It is a must read for anyone who enjoys the rights granted to them under the Constitution.

erandolph Loc: La Pine, Oregon USA

Thanks Blurry. Great read. Scary at the least.

FutureLook Loc: Florida, USA

Thanks for sharing. I agree that this is very scary.

Jim_In_Plymouth Loc: Plymouth MN

The following is a not I sent to the author. 12% growth when population has grown 24% is hardly exponential growth it may not even be considered growth.


You lost me several paragraphs in your article when you said.
"In 1962, there were 2,515,000 federal employees. Today, we have 2,840,000 federal workers in 15 departments, 69 agencies and 383 nonmilitary sub-agencies.
This exponential growth has led to increasing power and independence for agencies."
Population has grown about 24% since 1962 while the federal government has grown about 13% (from your figures.) Hardly exponential growth and actually shrinkage by some measures.

You may have had some valid points but you lost much credibility with the "exponential growth".

travelwp Loc: New Jersey

I wonder if the WP article is a well thought out misinformation piece.

If the top people set a culture of not wanting to hear bad news or desent with policies, nobody will report anything. If internal whistleblowers are beatup rather than rewarded, the top people will know nothing.

It's too easy to say that the top people know nothing because the government is too big.

amyinsparta Loc: White county, TN

I can understand how the top dogs in the IRS didn't know what the Cincy office was doing. Does a principal know what each and every teacher does in the classroom? Does the boss in a big company know what every worker is doing? Of course not. The only way they find out is if someone tells them, as happened in this case. That is a result of bigness. It is what it is. When a company is huge and authority has to delegated, things happen. People are making like it's the worse thing that ever happened. I say that if you have nothing to hide, why be so upset? Could it be that you actually did give charity money to your fav candidate? Or is it just another opportunity to diss the President? Considering the stupid law that was passed letting these obviously political groups pretend they are charities, all of them, left, right, and middle, should be tracked all the time.

EdJ0307 Loc: out west someplace

When the author said "exponentially", could it be he was comparing the current number of employees at 2,840,000 to the 1790 figure of 1,000 instead of the 1962 figure. If that is the case, then the number of employees increased by a factor of 2,840. The population of the country in 1790 according to Census Bureau figures was 3.9 million and the population in 2010 was 308.7 million, or an increase factor of 79. I would say the increase in employees was exponential in relation to population from 1790 to date.

Blurryeyed Loc: NC Mountains.

Yes, I agree that that portion of the article is somewhat confusing, but I think that the author was referring to the fact that in 1790 there were 1000 federal workers serving a population of about 4,000,000 and in the days of our modern government that ratio has grown substantially. Our population growth has been about 8,000% yet the growth in federal employment has been close to 280,000%.

The more salient points he makes about the growth of the bureaucratic independence and power within or government was what I found of interest in the article.

PrairieSeasons Loc: Red River of the North

It's probably not a misinformation piece given the author. Jonathan Turley is a fundamentally a libertarian and a "small government" advocate. He really isn't either conservative or liberal in most current senses of those terms and regularly pisses off both sides of that divide.

travelwp Loc: New Jersey

OK, information noted.

ole sarg Loc: south florida

this is a follow ltr to the article. Also, it is good to note that the WP is now owned by Murdoch and has a strong right wing bias to its editorial and guest editorial pages.

V. zerda
5/24/2013 5:28 PM EDT
I'm not too sure of your basic calculations. You are attributing the growth in administrative (civil service, I suppose you mean) to a possibly incorrect basis. The growth is really not exponential if you calculate population growth vs. civil service growth from 1790 to 2010 (~120X for population vs. ~2800X for government). That also fails to consider the great increase in geographic boundaries that has occurred over that time period, which might be presumed to require additional personnel. You also are failing to consider the increase in technology which also may require additional staff. Finally, I think you are forgetting the change in the world today. The effect of globalization is not simply economic. Because of these lacks in your commentary, it is difficult to say whether or what revamping of the civil service might be useful. I also think that you have underestimated changes in the common culture of the US that have likely had a large effect on our present governmental disfunction.

phcaan Loc: Willow Springs, MO

All this argument about the growth of the federal government is not the point. The point is that these autonomous agencies undermine our basic system of checks and balances. This creates a lop sided power to those who were never intended to have it.
When did the constitution ever grant a president the power to declare a person a terrorist of enemy combatant, strip them of their citizenship, all rights granted under the constitution, and imprison them for an undermined amount of time without judicial over-site of charges and a hearing before the court.

Blurryeyed Loc: NC Mountains.

Thank you, I was going to come back to this thread to make a similar statement, it about the growth in bureaucracy such as HHS, the EPA, MLRB, Dept of Education, Dept of Interior, USGA etc, all run by bureaucrats with regulatory authority that rivals and often surpasses congresses legislative authority and the lack of accountability or the peoples ability to hold them accountable or even to fight back against them when they overstep and target individual citizens which there have been several reported cases of in recent years where the government comes in and starts pushing around individual citizens and businesses who's only choice is to spend 100's of thousands of dollars to stand up for themselves or simply do as they are told. Even if the individual or business wins in their effort they have really lost as they are out the time and expense of fighting against a government that does not care about expenses and there is never anyone held to account for the frivolous action in the first place. Lookup Gibson Guitars or the case of the Sacketts which went to the Supreme court. Or the Lobster importer who was sentenced to 8 years for a crime he had no idea he had committed....

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303830204577448351409946024.html

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/03/supreme-court-rules-for-idaho-couple-in-epa-battle/

http://www.overcriminalized.com/CaseStudy/McNab-Imprison-by-Foreign-Laws.aspx

KW Conch Loc: USA

I know the conservatives will find it hard to believe, but the number of government jobs in the bureaucracy has declined under Obama.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/under-obama-a-record-decline-in-government-jobs/