Thursday, November 14, 2002

Jesse Walker writes:
. . . it�s hard to devolve decision making when Washington keeps arrogating power to itself. Since 9/11, a Republican administration has federalized airport security, imposed new unfunded mandates on local transportation authorities, and even flirted with moving the military into domestic police work.

He's discussing a Jonah Goldberg piece crowing over the elections, in which he paid homage to the ideal of returning public policy decisions to cities and counties. I could get behind that and the rollbacks of unfunded mandates, but his complaint about anti-terror measures is a little more libertarian than I would go. The legitimate powers of the federal government include national defense, and I see no reason as yet to take it away.


I think that most of the problems so far with the FBI, CIA, etc. are partly due to the civil service protection that causes institutional inertia and the carry-over of the Clinton administration's thinking into the Bush era. Maybe this will change under the new Homeland Security bill, but I doubt it.

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