Real Reform, Part 4: The Supreme Court and the Judiciary
The Supreme Court and the judiciary have operated outside of the Constitution since 1803, when the court decided on Marbury v Madison. In this case, the Chief Justice, John Marshall, asserted the court’s right to judicial review. Nothing in…
Real Reform, Part 3: The Bureaucratic Cat Burglar
The cat burglar creeps quietly into his target after doing extensive surveillance and steals the planned target. If the burglar does the job well, there is no evidence of a theft and it may not be detected for weeks…
Real Reform, Part 2: The Allosaurus in the Room
Source: mrwynd from Denver, USA/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 2.0 “Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.” ― Frank Herbert This post picks up from Real Reform, Part1: Introduction. It addresses the Allosaurus in the room: Congress.…
Real Reform, Part 1 Introduction
In A New Contract With America, I included a bullet point about qualifications for congressional committee and subcommittee chairs: “Enact congressional policies to require minimum qualifications for committee and subcommittee chairperson positions. These qualifications will be like qualifications required…
The Bureaucratization of the Military, Part 1: Huntington and the Balance of Forces
When I entered West Point in 1977, we were told the military profession was a calling and something far more than a job. But even then, the forces that would become the social justice movement were already at work.…
The Bureaucratization of the Military, Part 2: The Nutcracker
This piece builds on Part 1 of the series. It morphs the balancing scale in Part 1 into a nutcracker based on the increasing Societal Imperative pressures and complex security environment that place a premium on the Functional Imperative.…
The Bureaucratization of the Military, Part 3: Corporateness and Bureaucracy
Part 1 of this series introduced Samuel Huntington’s The Soldier and the State and discussed careerism and jobs. Part 2 discussed the declining trust the public has in the military and introduced the nutcracker using Huntington’s two imperative: functional and…
Deterrence and the Interagency Process, Part 1: Deterrence
I came across an interesting article on LinkedIn on deterrence and how the military should be in control of it. I started a comment and midway through; I opened another browser tab to a quick search. When I got back…
Regulatory Capture and other Bureaucratic Problems
The preamble to the Constitution states: We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings…
The Rise of the American Bureaucracy
Figure Source: http://clipart-library.com/clipart/rTLobyGkc.htm The US has had a bureaucracy in one form or another since its founding. For the first 100 years, it was small and appointed by the President or his administration leaders. Pundits called this process the…
