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| Government Corruption |
| Decentralize gov't, move them all out of Washington |
| 2024-12-11 |
| [Tablet] As the dust settles from the 2024 presidential election, a new administration makes its way to Washington where it will find the same federal bureaucracy, four years older, four years more deeply entrenched, impassively waiting for the new reformers to expend their energy for change like a large ocean wave breaking on an unyielding rocky shoreline. The entire history of the republic has taken place against the backdrop of steady expansion in the scope and concentration of power at the federal level. Once a new federal agency is put in place, to alleviate one or another societal alleged need or political expedient, removing it becomes a Sisyphean task. Good luck getting rid of the Department of Education. Over time, the old physical swamp at the center of Washington, D.C., has been replaced by a bureaucratic swamp—the marshland was drained, to be succeeded by an archipelago of imposing granite and concrete buildings, housing an alphabet soup of government entities: FBI, FTC, FRB, HUD, IRS, ITC, and so on. As more and more power flowed from the states to the central government, the capital became encased in ever-expanding rings of deep blue congressional districts peopled by equally expanding legions of government workers. The growth of the federal government is thus matched by the suburban sprawl that spreads every year farther into the countryside. As power and control accumulates in Washington, tax revenue and other resources flow out of the rest of the country and into Washington like stuff being sucked into a black hole—even economically depressed areas are taxed to "feed the feds," driving up real estate prices and congesting the roadways in the nation’s capital. While too many new presidents have embraced this process, Reagan sought to reverse it, only to slow the sprawl for a few years. Is the lesson, then, that Washington will continue to expand at the expense of the rest of the country? Is this process unstoppable? It needn’t be. While striking a balance between the attributions of the federal and state governments is complicated, controlling the physical location of government activity is much more straightforward. Let’s disperse the government agencies away from the gridlocked highways and overpriced real estate of the Washington, D.C., area to the economically depressed regions of the country they serve, recycling the federal budget back to the economy from which it came. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #12 In Washington there are the FBI headquarters and the Washington FBI field office. I believe they are separate buildings. A high school classmate was stationed at the field office. He is sickened by what the FBI has become. He blames it on the idiots at the headquarters. |
| Posted by: Rambler 2024-12-11 18:46 |
| #11 As long as we are looking outside CONUS, I hear it is nice in the Pleiades this time of year. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2024-12-11 18:45 |
| #10 Little Diomedes? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2024-12-11 18:29 |
| #9 Crazy Fool... AP went out there once to check on it's sewer system. It couldn'd handle 7000 FBI agents. There are really only 2 buildings of any size on that island. One contains the school. The other everybody lives in. AP refused to bid on a contract for that sewer system. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2024-12-11 18:21 |
| #8 They could move the FBI to that town across the strait from Siberia— so they can keep an eye on it, at least clear days. ;-) There's a little island way out at the very end of the Aleutian chain... About 100 miles from Russia... It desperately needs about 7,000 FBI agents from the Washington D.C. office... Might take some time... I don't think the airfield can handle anything over a Cessna. |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2024-12-11 17:52 |
| #7 First close the FBI, or make it back to what its charter originally was. There is no real constitutional right for the feds to police the people, its a states rights issue. Policing the people by order of the president is not supposed to be allowed. |
| Posted by: 49 Pan 2024-12-11 13:27 |
| #6 ^😂 |
| Posted by: Grom the Reflective 2024-12-11 11:25 |
| #5 They could move the FBI to that town across the strait from Siberia— so they can keep an eye on it, at least clear days. ;-) |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2024-12-11 11:12 |
| #4 Move one of them to Manchester, NH - every single person will quit within two weeks. |
| Posted by: Raj 2024-12-11 10:22 |
| #3 Move FBI to Fairbanks and CIA to Barrow. Perhaps BATF to Waco? State to Laredo right next to a border bridge? Justice to Epstein Island where the sharks are fat? |
| Posted by: 3dc 2024-12-11 08:24 |
| #2 Their offices are already empty. First key step accomplomplished. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2024-12-11 07:14 |
| #1 Other than hospitals and prisons, ban all air-conditioning within the Washington metro area. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2024-12-11 07:11 |