It’s Early, Turley: Why So Surly? Thy Blame Laundering Doth Make Me Hurly

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by Smitty

Instapundit points to Jonathan Turley in the WaPoo:

For much of our nation’s history, the federal government was quite small. In 1790, it had just 1,000 nonmilitary workers. In 1962, there were 2,515,000 federal employees. Today, we have 2,840,000 federal workers in 15 departments, 69 agencies and 383 nonmilitary sub-agencies.
This exponential growth has led to increasing power and independence for agencies. The shift of authority has been staggering. The fourth branch now has a larger practical impact on the lives of citizens than all the other branches combined.

Wait, what? The bio line at the top of the article says “Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University”. Is it in the public interest just to create some fourth branch of our government via rectal pluck? Why stop there, mate? Pass the fifth!

Turley’s three page whinge-fest is disappointing on at least two levels. In the first place, this country elected a super-hero in 2008, and re-elected him in 2012. He was wildly oversold as a Second Coming, but all that’s stuck in a Godot holding pattern now. Hence we see apologists like Turley casting about for excuses as to why It’s All Jacked Up. Part of me wants these Turleys to eat crow, to choke on a pleasant peasant pheasant.  But that’s childish, and really doesn’t address the issue.

The issue, of course, is that the federal government grew malevolently BECAUSE IT COULD. That is, after 1913, when Amendments 16 & 17 + the Federal Reserve Act kicked in, we started growing our federal government to buy votes. ‘Progress’ has devolved into the two branches of the Ruling Class bickering and arguing over who has the deck, as we stack up on the iceberg of debt.

So thanks for nothing, Turley.

15 comments

  8. Turley lost any small measure of respect he might have been accorded by performing contortions of legal thinking that would have impressed a yoga master in order to justify and defend a man who disgraced the Oval Office and lied to his family, staff and the people repeatedly, topping it off with lies under oath and doing everything in his power to thwart investigations into his many questionable practices.

    For that, Turley deserves only undying scorn. Only a filthy leftist propaganda rag like WaPo (say, how much will the newspaper division lose THIS quarter?) would run his pathetic, worthless drivel, and no citizen with respect for the law should read it.

  10. “In 1962, there were 2,515,000 federal employees. Today, we have 2,840,000 federal workers”

    Is your 1962 number off by a factor of 10?

    While I agree government expansion is a problem, the biggest issue (by far).

  11. Gosh, what a brand-new problem! Not.

    Alexander the Great may not have noticed it because he never actually stuck around to head a government, but I suspect the mayor of the first city over 300 inhabitants knew the problem.

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