The Bureaucracy Man creates problems. Government and bureaucrats magnify them 100 times. George Van Valkenburg

The Long and Unacceptable Wait for a Veterans Benefit By Susan Seliger The New York Times, May 15, 2013

…each man felt, as he tightened his saber belt, that he was summoned to ride to death. Capt. Henry C. Parsons, 1 st Vermont Cavalry Farnsworths Charge Brigadier General Elon J. Farnsworth

Lt. Perley C.J. Cheney 1 st Vermont Cavalry Gettysburg July 3,1863 5:27 PM

The bullet struck in the small of my back, one and one-half inches from the spine above the hip, below the ribs and came into my watch fob pocket, putting in an hole ten inches through my body, that took six months to heal.

1888

$15 per month… The equivalent of about $350 today. 1908

1888

1912

Perley C.J. Cheney

Types of Bureaucratic Agencies Cabinet departments Regulatory commissions Government corporations Independent executive agencies Foundations

Types of Bureaucratic Agencies Cabinet departments, each of 14 is headed by a secretary, except the Justice Department, which is headed by an Attorney General. Cabinet departments include Defense, Labor, Health and Human Services, etc. Regulatory commissions, each has responsibility for some sector of the economy. They make and enforce rules designed to protect the public interest. Examples include the Federal Reserve Board, the Interstate Commerce Commission, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Government corporations provide a service that could be handled by the private sector, but do so at a cheaper rate. Examples might be the U.S. Postal Service, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), Amtrak, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Independent executive agencies perform specialized functions. Examples include the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Foundations are units that are separated from the rest of government. Most prominent here is the National Science Foundation and foundations for the Arts and the Humanities.

The Department of Homeland Security

Problems of Public Administration Democratic participation Constitutional limitation

Bureaucratic Pathologies New Hampshires dirt- eating children Mother Theresas quest to build a homeless shelter in New York City 9/11 loans administered through the Small Business Administration (SBA) Unused mobile homes following Hurricane Katrina

Bureaucratic Pathologies New Hampshires dirt-eating children Mother Theresas quest to build a homeless shelter in New York City From: Steven Breyer, Supreme Court justice and author of Breaking the Vicious Circle (1993) The first [example] comes from a case in my own court, United States v. Ottati & Goss, arising out of a ten-year effort to force cleanup of a toxic waste dump in southern New Hampshire. The site was mostly cleaned up. All but one of the private parties had settled. The remaining private party litigated the costs of cleaning up the last little bit, a cost of about $9.3 million to remove a small amount of highly diluted PCBs and volatile organic compounds (benzene and gasoline components) by incinerating the dirt. How much extra safety did this $9.3 million buy? The forty-thousand-page record of this ten- year effort indicated (and all the parties seemed to agree) that, without the extra expenditure, the waste dump was clean enough for children playing on the site to eat small amounts of dirt daily for 70 days each year without significant harm. Burning the soil would have made it clean enough for the children to eat small amounts daily for 245 days per year without significant harm. But there were no dirt-eating children likely to appear there, for future building seemed unlikely. The parties also agreed that at least half of the volatile organic chemicals would likely evaporate by the year To spend $9.3 million to protect non-existing dirt-eating children is what I mean by the problem of the last ten percent. Why? Because the site was a swamp… From Philip K. Howards book The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America (1994) In the winter of 1988, nuns of the Missionaries of Charity… developed a plan to provide temporary care for sixty-four homeless men in a communal setting that included a dining room and kitchen on the first floor, a lounge on the second floor, and small dormitories on the third and fourth floors. The only unusual thing about the plan was the Missionaries of Charity, in addition to their vow of poverty, avoid the routine use of modern conveniences. There would be no dishwashers or other appliances; laundry would be done by hand. For New York City, the proposed homeless facility would be (literally) a godsend. Although the city owned the buildings, no official had the authority to transfer them except through an extensive bureaucratic process. For a year and a half the nuns, wanting only to live a life of ascetic service, found themselves instead traveling in their sandals from hearing room to hearing room, presenting the details of the project and then discussing the details again at two high levels of city government. Providence, however, was no match for law. New Yorks building code, they were told after almost two years, requires an elevator in every new or renovated multiple-story building. The Missionaries of Charity explained that because of their beliefs they would never use the elevator, which also would add an upward of $100,000 to the cost. The nuns were told the law could not be waived even if an elevator didnt make sense. Mother Theresa gave up… In a polite letter to the city expressing their regrets, the Missionaries of Charity noted that the episode served to educate us about the law and its many complexities.

Bureaucratic Pathologies 9/11 loans administered through the Small Business Administration (SBA) Unused mobile homes following Hurricane Katrina

Bush Campaign Ad on Gores Prescription Drug Plan Do bureaucrats deserve our wrath? As Lynch points out, they are not all indifferent paper pushers. They are police officers, firefighters, nurses, teachers, and engineers.

Fixing Bureaucracy Under the Clinton Administration in the 1990s, The National Partnership for Reinventing Government sought to make government work better and cost less for its customers, the American people.

Reinventing Government Should citizens and customers be treated the same? In what ways are they different? Does a marketplace mentality help bureaucracies to work more efficiently, or does it merely muddle its goals further? As Philip Howard complains: Politicians spend their lives apologizing for government. They all promise to fix it, but the slogans are tired and the performance so dismal that the overall effect is more like propaganda. Is reinventing government simply more propaganda? Why or why not? Is Charles Kesler right? Is big government back? If so, why? Under the Clinton Administration in the 1990s, The National Partnership for Reinventing Government aimed to make government work better and cost less for its customers, the American people.