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| Home Front: Politix |
| Joe Klein on bureaucrats and political parties |
| 2010-07-02 |
| Found this column recently; he published it in early May. Here's the money quote: And then there is the nature of the bureaucracy itself. Three types of people tend to seek government work: idealists, those looking for sinecures and those who want to build lucrative private-sector careers based on their knowledge of government regulations. All three types present problems. There is a pretty good, but not overpowering, reason government workers are hard to fire: they need to be protected from political pressure. But that protection inevitably produces regulators who, as in a recent notorious case at the Securities and Exchange Commission, spend more time watching porn than riding herd on Wall Street. Too many of their colleagues who are not watching porn are building expertise that will enable them to beat the regulatory system when they exit the revolving door into private finance. Even the idealists, who are prominent in places like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), can cause trouble if they are naive and inflexible in their enforcement of rules and regulations. |
| Posted by:mom |