In this issue we will talk about reallocating responsibility of
which level of government does what. Let us start.
Changes of responsibility: So the federal government is
supposed to do one set of things, State governments another and local another.
Basically, we just make sure each one sticks to its own responsibilities.
For example the federal government has a forestry service. They
basically stop forest fires, preserve the forest and act to aid in conservation
efforts. But some of these things run counter to each other due to
fighting fires in forests meaning that parts of the forest needs to be removed
to act as a fire break. The reason being is that again interest groups
get in the way as conservation groups, in their effort to preserve the forests,
help to enact laws that may hinder firefighters from going in and stopping the
fires. As such the National Guard, primarily a State level institution,
should get the role of fighting forest fires. The conservation role will
be separated as well and turned over to the forest ministries and their
equivalents in their respective States. By doing simple things like this
it eliminates competing doctrines in agencies which can paralyze them and cause
our tax dollars to go to waste. Another example would be the jobs that
homeland security does. The air national guard can do airport security,
the FBI already does counter terrorism, and the Army national guard already
coordinates with fire, police and other rescue personnel in disasters. As
such, the entire apparatus of homeland security is redundant as all their jobs
are done by other bodies in and at all levels of government. New York
City has its own counter terror group and shares info and receive info from the
FBI and CIA. So we can have major cities protect themselves from
terrorists, coordinate with other bodies for broader national defense and areas
that do not have the counter terror teams set up like NYC does can have that
placed in the national guard or FBI branch offices, or simply placed in SWAT
teams run by the States.
Another example would be national
monuments. No one wants them to go away and they are deemed national
treasures. But why is the federal government in charge of them.
States already do a good job with their State parks and monuments, so why
not turn over the national ones to the States who are more than equipped to
handle their upkeep. It is not the federal government's job to maintain
monuments, so why is it doing so? Why is it wasting taxpayer dollars
which can be better spent elsewhere and the States can get the revenue from
those people visiting those monuments as well? Well, lobbying is partly
to blame for all of this. The federal level departments and agencies who
handle monuments also lobby congress. Yes, government even lobbies
itself. And thus sending it to the States makes sense as now the
government lobby is broken up and no longer has an influence. How about
Fannie and Freddie, the mortgage loan giants. They were created and supported
by the federal government to back loans, but that is not the federal
government's responsibility, it is the private sector, so break it up and
privatize it. Welfare is a local government responsibility, and thus
should be turned back over to them. Education and environmental
protection are both State and local government jobs, the federal government
really should not have a say there either. However, environmentalists,
industries, advocacy groups and even the government all lobby for power and control.
But if the jobs were placed where they belong, we may not be having as
many problems as we have now with respect to corruption.
Conclusion: We are centralizing political power
in the higher echelons of government and that causes problems with competing
doctrines, lobbying and of course power struggles that can paralyze our
government. It is time to fix that by giving power back to where it
belongs and doing it smartly.
No comments:
Post a Comment