12 thoughts on “America’s Untouchable Class”

  1. How would a willing President eliminate public sector unions at the federal level? I believe that the unionization was begin by an executive order from JFK and extended again by executive order from Nixon. Would a simple executive order rescinding those of JFK and Nixon do the trick?

    I know there would be howls of protest, but would that approach be subject to lawsuits that ultimately would go to SCOTUS for a decision?

    I doubt the House and Senate would take action via legislation, since their efforts mainly are to avoid taking responsibility on anything unless significant graft is involved.

  2. We were taught in Civics class that there are three branches of government. We were taught how laws are made, enacted and enforced. It was a lie.

    There are 547 elected officials in the federal government (435 in the House, 100 in the Senate, the POTUS and VP). By and large, they are the “Hollywood government”. The real government is composed of millions of unelected and unaccountable federal employees who work at the alphabet soup of government agencies. Due to overly broad civil service* laws, they’re essentially untouchable and they know it. They write regulations with the force of law, levy penalties, and in the case of the IRS run their own courts. They know that politicians, especially presidents, come and go but the bureaucracy goes on forever. If they don’t like a president, they can and will actively undermine him (see: Bush, W.) while waiting him out.

    Barring some actual laws that reform civil service* laws to make government employees personally responsible for their actions and making it easier to fire them, there are few problems in DC that couldn’t be resolved with the proper utilization of rope and lamp posts.

    *Civil service is an oxymoron for a lot of the bureaucrats. They aren’t civil and they perform little service.

  3. I have to say that one thing about this piece made it irritating to me as a more-or-less literate writer: The massive misuse of the word “untouchable.” In the Hindu caste system, an Untouchable is at the bottom of the heap, a carrier of dung, with little defense against abuse from everyone else higher on the ladder. (Possibly the writer was conflating Hindi caste with Elliot Ness?)

    “Brahmin” would have been closer to the intended meaning, although a different metaphor entirely for “above-the-law class” might have been better.

    1. “I have to say that one thing about this piece made it irritating to me as a more-or-less literate writer: The massive misuse of the word “untouchable.” In the Hindu caste system, an Untouchable is at the bottom of the heap, a carrier of dung, with little defense against abuse from everyone else higher on the ladder. (Possibly the writer was conflating Hindi caste with Elliot Ness?)”

      I would guess the latter – that the writer was using “Untouchable” in the Elliot Ness sense. While the writer used “caste” twice – hinting at the Hindu system, he clearly meant it in the Ness sense in that they canot be stopped.

      In his last sentence, he used the term “class” instead of caste which is far more correct.

  4. How can you guys say such mean things about people who have given up so much just to live a life of service to the people? These people are saints just like school teachers and social workers.

    1. They give up nothing.
      The original Civil Service was established to staff government agencies. The theory was that they earned less than in the private sector but, at a time when much of America was out of work, they would have stable jobs with guaranteed benefits, insulated from the vagaries of politics.
      Today, we have created a monster. With the help of (arguably illegal) public unions, they are (in many cases) compensated above the private sector, and promoted and rewarded with (in many cases) no review. A complete lack of accountability except, apparently, for cases of murder or rape can only breed a culture of disdain for both the government and the public they purportedly serve.
      They truly are “untouchable”.

  5. To make them personally responsible for their behavior, we will need to be considerably more literal in our efforts.

    Tar, feathers….

  6. Until government bureaucrats face the consequences of meaningful remedies, they will continue to act like America’s untouchable class.

    Which will never happen because we are far beyond the tipping point. For every law made by those we vote for, 50 laws are made by the unelected. As somebody else here has pointed out, unaccountability is a feature rather than a bug for these ‘officials.’

  8. I don’t think it will be possible to change things until the inevitable collapse. Congress lacks both the spine and will to take back power from the apparatchiks. Spine because, well, spin and politician don’t really go together often, do they? And will because the institution likely is happy to cede power to like-minded bureaucrats who will enact laws Congress wants but is afraid to pass, in return for plausible deniability.

    Could it be fixed? Sure. All regulations would have to be affirmed by a vote of Congress, so each politician has a record of approving or disapproving each regulation. Too many regulations to do that? Oh, then maybe we need fewer regulations. This would force politicians to have skin in the game, and maybe even start to care what regulations are being created by their laws. Pass laws making all government employees liable for consequences for malfeasance. Losing pensions and jobs would be a good start. Cap federal bureaucracy employment, then do a 1%/yr drawdown. And none of this BS of exempting ANYBODY in Congress or the bureaucracy from the effects of the rules they create.

    1. Reagan did that in the 80’s . Federal workforce has been shrinking ever since.
      Now we just have giant beltway bandits.

      1. Which part? Fed employment was already pretty stable, none of the rest has happened in a practical (real-world, actual, etc.) sense. I want the drawdown. A little Lord of the Flies would be good for the Untouchables.

        If Reagan had implemented those ideas and they had been followed, thousands of employees would have been severely disciplined for the Obamacare website and IRS fiascos, just to name the most recent egregious examples, instead of sitting smugly like the IRS commissioner. And we wouldn’t have laws written to effectively cede lawmaking authority to bureaucrats.

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