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Okay, everyone, practice your sneer, because it's time for the 10 of Diamonds: Bureaucrats! Everyone hates "bureaucrats," whether they ever met one or not. So, the industry denialist often plays the bureaucrat card in order to denigrate proposals that would vest decisionmaking with those fat cats in Washington (Cato has over 3,000 hits for "bureaucrats"). |
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Did you ever notice that everyone is in favor of reducing the bureaucracy, but that they are much less fond of the government reducing hours for services that they use, and downright opposed to having their friends and relatives loose their civil service jobs?
Bureaucracy has just become a pejorative to demonize an infrastructure that's insufficiently compliant to whatever goal is being espoused. Also known as civil service employees that span political administrations and are unimpressed by the political posturing or lobbyist influence.
Bureaucracy is presented as lazy, slovenly, inept, resistant to change, sucking on the teat of public taxes. It has a cousin, government, that is presented as oppressive, mean and thuggish. Sometimes the clearest examples of governmental thuggish oppression is reserved for local school boards. Who knew so many of our neighbors voted into office in local elections were oppressive thugs? Now you know.
I don't think that bureaucracy is the same as government, so expecting one to cover for the other may not be the same.
The irony is that conservatives fear the growth of government, yet have no qualms with policy that creates corporations that rival the size of government - without the oversight, democracy, and motivated purely by money. Yikes!
Jeffk -
Actually, modern conservatives seem to have few problems expanding government when it suits them (cf. the Defence budget).
[Denialist Mode] But the people must want huge mega-corporations, because they buy their products. And 'one dollar one vote' is far more democratic than voting for washington beltway insiders who are all the same; after all, Corporations A, B and C are all completely and would surely never collude to further their own interests and shut out competition and oversight - how could that possibly happen in our capitalist utopia? [/denialist mode]