No Bureaucrat Left Behind

There is a predictable sequence of events associated with any government program, from initiation through its entire life cycle, until we come to the point of complete ossification. The sequence, which varies very little from one program to the next, includes the following steps:

1. An acute problem of some sort is discovered, which usually involves either actual danger or some form of injustice or "unfairness".

2. The problem is dealt with at great length -- and with "in-depth analysis" -- by political/social activists and various muckrakers in the media. (Think: The Washington Post, "60 Minutes", Ralph Nader, Women's Wear Daily, etc.)

3. An ambitious politician -- or a cabal thereof -- latches on to the "cause" and proposes legislation, primarily in order to make a name for himself as a crusader for "rights", "the children", "fairness", or some other high ideal.

4. The legislation is hastily passed. Most of those voting for it haven't read it, and of those who have, few if any were able or disposed to anticipate the costs that would be incurred, or the endless mischief that would result.

5. Executive bodies charged with implementing the legislation spring up overnight. These may be merely "commissions", but can also run to "administrations", "agencies", "departments", and even cabinet posts.

6. Initial enforcement is done in a way that would put the Salem witch hunters to shame. Habeas corpus goes out the window, along with any thought of proportionality between the degree of offense and the intensity of pursuit, or the severity of punishment.

7. Eventually, owing to protests from the grass roots (typically the intended beneficiaries as well and the alleged oppressors), "cooler heads prevail", and the enforcing body adopts a more nuanced approach. We now see more "investigations" and "inquiries" than mass arrests under cover of night.

8. A gradual morphing process appears by which the original adversarial role of the agency turns into an advocacy role for the very people and organizations it was created to police. This is due in part to the constant exchange of personnel between the agency and the target organizations -- a perfectly natural occurrence when one considers that they have a similar knowlege base and similar skill sets.

9. The enforcing body is eventually co-opted and "nutted", and becomes nothing more than a lap dog for the vested interests in question.

10. New outrages against the body politic are exposed, as is the total impotence of the agency. Demands for new legislation are made, and the entire process starts over. This time, the process has one of the following outcomes:

10a. The agency is provided with new "personnel slots" whose job it is to police all the others, and act as "ombudsman" for the agency's "customers", AKA "the public". The agency may even incorporate "whistleblower protection" guidelines into its procedures. None of these measures will even begin to compete with, or outlast, the accumulated weight of the established bureaucracy, and will soon be relegated to mere window-dressing.

10b. A new agency will be set up with a mission virtually identical to that of the old agency. But the old agency will stay in place, because (1) its senior managers have friends in Congress; or (2) the organizational and logistical challenges of disbanding the agency are just too daunting; or (3) since it's impossible to actually fire a government worker, all the employees of the old agency will have to be given new jobs in other agencies, and none of those agencies is too anxious to absorb leeches and dead wood.

10c. A new agency will be set up and the old agency will be disbanded. This outcome is included for the sake of completeness, even though there is no case of it actually having occurred.

Now, according to the above model, one should be able to place any government agency -- and any government program -- somewhere along this spectrum, and sure enough, one can. The Department of Agriculture, for example, is firmly in the grip of "agribusiness", and thus belongs at Stage 9. The FDA is somewhere around Stage 7 or Stage 8, depending on the specific issue at hand. The EEOC is at a slightly earlier stage -- let's say number 7 on most days. The ADA police are gradually moving from Stage 6 to Stage 7, as are the "wetland" police. The IRS is, of course, intractably adversarial, so still belongs firmly at Stage 6. The McCain-Feingold "election police" are at Stage 5, but are definitely warming up for the big event. And, of course, the latest round of Wall Street shenanigans has stimulated a lot of activity at Stage 3. We have seen, in a couple of decades, the AIDS bureaucracy go from Stage 1 to Stage 5, skip Stage 6 entirely, and move on to Stages 7 and 8. The autism "epidemic" has just moved from Stage 1 to Stage 2. And, of course, "global warming" is kind of stuck at Stage 3, with immense pressure to move along to Stage 4.

Now then -- if you've followed the argument so far -- we can deal with a recent development involving the much-maligned Department of Education, and the No Child Left Behind Act. It seems that the federal power has been exerted upon the innocent brows of the states with grievous severity (Stage 6). The states have protested (Stage 7) and now the enforcement criteria have been softened a bit. The feds are relinquishing their ham-handed, "one size fits all" approach for a more tofu-handed, "one size fits none" strategy. Under the new order -- according to an article in the Chicago Tribune -- not all educational sins will be treated as mortal, and minor offenders will no longer be dragged into the Star Chamber for severe interrogation. This, of course, reflects the efforts of the state education bureaucracies, but even more of the teacher's unions, who view accountability about as positively as a vampire views garlic. Margaret Spellings (perfect name, BTW), Secretary of Education, said that "this will not change the guts [she really said "guts"] of No Child Left Behind accountability." Right. That's like saying that allowing every taxpayer to set his own tax rate won't change the guts of the tax law. What it amounts to is, basically, returning all the big decisions to the states -- yes, recognizing their "diversity", and the fact that -- really, now -- no one in their right mind would ever expect Arkansas students to come up to the level of Vermont students.

Now, having read the preceding, one might think that I'm on the side of the Dept. of Education, and against the states. Au contraire! I believe the Dept. of Education is in need of a good dose of "tough love" -- call it Stage 10d, put it out of business but with no new agency to replace it. And I do, in fact, believe that different states ought to be able to set their own standards, and -- yes -- if a certain educational formula conforms better to their "culture", go with it. Frankly, if there is a need for "standardization", it will be manifested in the free market -- as it already is in the case of the SAT, for instance. We're talking about outcomes here anyway -- right? -- not "process". Who cares "how" a kid learns material, as long as he can demonstrate that he has, indeed, learned it? So yes, the morphing of the Dept. of Education and it's silly-assed "Act" into eventual toothlessless is a step in the right direction, since it will afford the states more flexibility while reminding them of what might be in store if they, once again, blow it. The only pieces missing are that the Dept. of Education will live on, in disrepute, and the teachers' unions will continue aiding and abetting our slouch toward a society with a vast, passive, ignorant underclass tyrannized by a ruling elite. But that's a topic for another time.