Bureaucratic Capture
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From the IRS to local police, government bureaucrats at all levels serve their own agendas
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The recent revelations of IRS employees mistreating the tax-exempt applications of conservative groups has caused not only consternation amongst the right and middle America along with full-scale denial and subject changing (see: MSNBC, any show), but also a quest for explanations.
It has been put forth by many that government had become too large, too unwieldy. Yes, given the extraordinary size and growth of government, there is no doubt that government at all levels (federal, state, local) could afford to go on a fiscal Slim Fast diet and society as a whole would benefit. A recent example of this is the sequester in which modest cuts were enacted and voila!, the Republic not only carried on but stock and bond markets actually acted with approval. Last I checked, birds were not falling out of the sky nor the earth swallowing people up because the insane trajectory of federal spending has been slowed.
In the end, too many government bureaucrats are unhelpful and self-serving. Surprise!
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Then there are those who claim that the IRS scandal was politically motivated and urged from the highest echelons of government, including President Obama, if not explicitly then with the mood, tone and atmosphere he and his administration set, as many have argued since this scandal erupted. But just putting the punch bowl out does not mean people can abuse it and then blame the party host. Such tone argument smacks of what Liberals do when some whacknut shoots or blows people up: blame Conservatives or their interests. Bill Clinton did this a few days after the Oklahoma City bombings when he tried to pin the non-ideological, non-partisan Tim McVeigh and his barbaric Oklahoma City bombing atrocity on Conservative talkshow radio. As with most things Clinton, people saw through the sheer cynical nature of what he said and he quickly retreated and, in Clintonesque fashion, would have blamed right-wing talk show radio itself for the ill-conceived assertion.
On the other side of the spectrum there was the recently-fired acting IRS Commissioner who testified before the House Ways and Means Committee and described the targeting (and that’s what it was to any sober and rational person no matter how partisan they may be) of Conservative groups as “foolish mistakes” made by “people trying to be more efficient in their workload selection.” Having read the statements of German leadership on trial after World War II, one could call such “The Nuremberg Defense.”
Liberals also go back to a change in IRS regulations made in…..1959 which while it certainly deviated from the original statute’s wording and intent, by no means could be interpreted as giving the IRS the green light to go after any particular group, Liberal nor Conservative, the way it did.
Which leads to the real reason why career employees at the IRS decided to target Conservative organizations: perceived job security.
The Nobel laureate economist George Stigler pointed out that “Regulatory capture” occurs when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or special concerns of the industry it regulates.
In the case of the IRS targeting Conservative groups, one could surmise a sort of “bureaucratic capture” in which IRS employees, fully aware that Conservative groups are critical of their mission (read: jobs), proceeded, if not on their own, then very happily and with extraordinary zeal when the slightest hint from their leadership came that right-wing groups should be focused on. After all, survival is a very strong instinct whether in animal, human or government apparatchik.
Such self-interest occurs at all levels of government and affects everything from constricted government agency hours to cramped job descriptions to penalties handed out by government for technical violations of laws that have no adverse effect. For anyone who thinks a policeman is handing out a traffic ticket for an insignificant infraction and not thinking about what is likely their unfunded pension, I’ve got some Greek bonds I’d like to sell to you at a premium.
Administrations come and go, along with their ideologies. But bureaucrats are entrenched and will always serve themselves, often to society’s detriment.
-I.M. Windee
