Your government at work

I received an email from a friend who was recently in Washington, D.C. and had the opportunity to speak to a couple of people who work in the government.  He sent me this disheartening wrap-up of his conversations with them:

1) When you see global or national financial figures emanating from banks (e.g., World Bank, development banks, UN) etc., they are numbers pretty much created out of thin air.

2) Congressmen don’t make policy. Policy-making is generally delegated to 20-somethings to create and write up: congressman are too busy raising money and compromising themselves for votes: they simply vote on the legislation that their interns give them as a finished product. This is a big reason why government policy doesn’t work in real life.

3) Many alarmist defense-related issues that you read about (like us vis-a-vis the Chinese, Russians, etc) are simply designed to protect funding for the various armed forces branches.

4) EVERYTHING driven by the Obama administration is focused on their environmental agenda. They have defunded any and all global initiatives on building coal or nuclear power in developing nations, as well as actively tried to kill hydroelectric power on a global basis. Again, these are policies developed by 20-somethings implemented on the world at large.

5) The 20-somethings also pretty much run the White House and all government agencies. This is how it turns out policy by the Executive Branch.

So if you’re someone who does not have children or grandchildren in or nearing college, you should still be deeply concerned about what’s going on at America’s institutions of higher education. Every bit of misinformation and propaganda that’s being taught there ends up being directly implemented in our government.

My friend, who is one of the smartest, best-informed people I’ve ever met, went on to say that it’s tales such as these that have convinced him that Donald Trump is the better bet in the upcoming election than Hillary: “The Augean stables really need to be flushed out and I don’t see anyone but a true outsider with charismatic appeal and force of presence (a la Andrew Jackson) as having the fortitude and skill to pull it off. The problem, as I see it, is that most Americans really do believe that our government is more functional than it is.”

So far, Trump is saying a lot of the right things about issues that matter to me (Supreme Court, Second Amendment, etc.), but I don’t believe I’ve heard him talk about cleaning up Washington’s vast bureaucracy and making it somewhat functional again. If that was a goal, it’s entirely possible he could make it happen, so I’ll continue to live in hope.