Pulling Shelves

Removing unconstitutional clutter from the Executive Cabinet.

Atlanta, GA

November 21, 2024

A couple days ago, we examined the type people who typically populate presidential cabinets. Today (as we’ve done before with constitutional amendments) we inspect the shelves, and mark those that should be removed.

For several weeks, Donald Trump has been assembling his team. I lament every pick, even those I applaud.

Because, with a few exceptions, no one should occupy these posts. The departments they lead shouldn’t exist. In a limited constitutional federal republic, they wouldn’t.

If Trump were serious about shrinking government (he isn’t) or making it more “efficient” (he’s not) he’d eliminate departments, not create a new one.

Three Can Stay

Aside from occasionally arbitrating intra-state squabbles, the role of the U.S. government is to negotiate with other nations, protect the states from foreign aggression, and collect revenue to fulfill those functions.

That’s about it. And fifteen departments aren’t needed to get that done. Three should suffice.

State, Treasury, and “Defense” can stay. But only if each narrows its mission and is cut to half its current size… which would still leave outrageous budgets to bisect again (and again).

To prove I’m not radical, I’ll let an Attorney General stick around to do whatever it was Edmund Randolph did. But the Department of “Justice” (in particular the FBI) has long been a criminal organization (wiretapping, Watergate, “Russia collusion”, no-knock raids, political prosecutions). It should be scrapped and its upper echelons indicted.

Americans did without a “Justice” Department for almost a century. They can so again.

Inherently Dangerous

Likewise every other plank in the executive cabinet. The loads they were constructed to carry are unconstitutional, so these supportive shelves need to go.

Their few worthy functions (assuming they can be defined and delimited) could be placed in one of the three remaining compartments.

Most cabinet departments sprang from the “progressive” impulse to centrally plan everything. Ten of them emerged after 1900, and one (Agriculture) arose during the proto-“progressive” Lincoln Administration.

Making anything a cabinet department is inherently dangerous. As Ryan McMaken put it last week,

“…the thing about cabinet-level status is that the move makes it easier for the bureaucrats in charge of the agencies to politically agitate for more government spending in their favor, and to push bigger government in general. It’s no coincidence that as the US government has grown ever larger and more intrusive, so has the number of cabinet-level agencies. So, now we have the EPA, the SBA, and the departments of HUD, Energy, and Education all provided with more direct access to the president and the media. Everything they do is deemed “essential.” Everything they do, we’re told, is a matter of national importance.”

If nothing else, the government is broke, and needs to downsize. It carries $36T in debt (of which Donald Trump contributed almost a quarter) and up to $175T of unfunded liabilities.

Enough. The credit card needs to be cut.

The Department of the Interior is an easy place to swing the axe. Doing so would topple almost $40B of “non-essential” timber.

The “interior” is a euphemism for “the states”. These sovereign entities created the central government, and can manage their internal affairs without busybody puddle-protectors from the Potomac.

The Constitution grants the US government no authority to own sections of any state, much less large swaths as it does today. Selling all “federal” land would raise revenue that could be returned to the people, and enable more productive use of private property.

At the very least, territory would revert to the states, which could preserve existing parks if their people prefer. Or not. Up to them.

Pull the Plug

To be secretary of this unnecessary department, Trump appointed North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, whom he also named “Energy Czar.”

Hold on… wait a minute.

Isn’t that what the Secretary of Energy is supposed to be? Why do we need two?

As it happens, we don’t. We don’t even need one. Energy is essential to life, which means it’s too vital to allow Washington busybodies to muck it up.

Oops. Too late.

Department of Energy was established in 1977, ostensibly to tackle the “energy crisis”…a fiasco the government caused with its phony money, price controls, and Mideast meddling.

Since then, this corrupt agency has become a $50B swindle supporting “industrial policy” masquerading as “innovation.” It decides the types of energy Americans should use, then funnels taxpayer funds to crony industries that claim to provide it.

Some legitimate functions pertain to defense; those can be transferred to that department. But this one is essentially a kennel for pet projects, with about 40% of its budget devoted to the “climate” charade.

Time to pull the plug.

Emptying the Cabinet

The writer’s time and reader’s patience don’t permit us to explain why we’d dispense with every Cabinet department. Commerce, Labor, Agriculture, and Housing are obvious boondoggles that should bite the dust.

They’ve done tremendous damage distorting markets and ripping off taxpayers to enrich favored interests. They have no business persisting.

“Transportation” too. Shipping, the railroads, commercial flight, and Interstate Highway System each preceded a $145B department ostensibly developed to help us move around. We were fine without it then, and the history of this agency suggests we’d be better off now.

That empties most of the Cabinet.

But not the most repugnant parts. Before we go, we need to haul them away.

“Homeland Security” was the most recent cabinet creation, and should be first to receive a last meal, confess its sins, and get the chair. There’s nothing redeeming about this organization.

Among many malignant tumors from the carcinogenic Patriot Act, DHS is an obscenity tasked with surveilling and hassling the American people, mismanaging FEMA (which should also be disbanded), and putting red-carpets and rose petals under the feet of illegal aliens.

But even taking this awful agency at face value, isn’t “homeland security” what the Department of Defense (or local police) is supposed to provide?

Why not restrict the Defense department to its original function of protecting US borders rather than crossing everyone else’s? Airlines could resume providing their own security, and we can extinguish a superfluous agency that pretends to protect us by pushing us around.

The alleged rationale for a $100B department that gropes and nukes Americans at airports while smuggling hundreds of millions in drugs, leaves US borders wide open, and provides tax-funded flights and lodging to illegal intruders…is that it’s needed to repel “terrorists.”

But the way to reduce terrorism is to stop giving potential perpetrators reason to seek revenge. Like a couple Gypsy pick-pockets in a crowded Roman piazza, it’s as if DHS and Defense team-up to harass taxpayers.

The war machine murders and maims hapless populations in distant countries, which requires a domestic “security” apparatus to protect Americans from vengeful survivors. A better option is to leave other countries alone, which would subject us to as much “terrorism” as the Swiss endure.

DHS never should’ve existed, and can’t be gone soon enough.

Big Farm, Food, and Pharma

The department responsible for the most American deaths is doubtless Health and Human Services (HHS). At almost $2T, its budget is easily the largest in the cabinet.

Discredited dietary guidelines, corrupt drug approval (or disapproval) processes, and ascientific covid policy exposed organizations in this department as taxpayer-funded enforcement arms and marketing agents of Big Farm, Food, and Pharma.

For half a century, they’ve discouraged consumption of red meat, demonized eggs, advocated an abundance of grains, subsidized corn syrup, and encouraged industrial seed oils as “healthy” replacements for saturated fats.

Then, after satiating their clients in Farm and Food, they placate Pharma by suggesting a plethora of serums and pills (and prohibiting competing remedies) to manage inevitable ailments.

In many instances, these “recommendations” become an excuse for other entities to mandate ingestion of drugs Americans don’t want, while prohibiting remedies they may desperately need.

Kudzu over Georgia

The U.S. government has no constitutional authority to be involved in people’s (or the “public”) health. Nor is it permitted to mess with their minds. The Department of “Education” is the last log we’ll toss on the fire.

As Jimmy Carter’s payoff to teacher’s unions, this weed took root relatively recently. Despite Ronald Reagan’s pledge to pull it up within a year of planting, it quickly covered the country like kudzu over Georgia.

Cabinet department defenders effectively weaponize the name of the agency against those who question its existence. They’d have us believe anyone opposing Departments of Energy or Transportation must despise power and loathe motion.

As with a lot of propaganda, it’s silly, but effective… nowhere more so than with “education.”

Like most agencies or laws, a nice name evokes unwarranted assumptions that it pursues pleasant things. As with “justice” or “health and human services”, who could object to “education?”

But that’s not what this department provides. As an arm of the government, it does nothing to encourage curiosity, or inspire skepticism of what the regime wants us to believe. Independent thinking is anathema. The idea is to indoctrinate kids to comply and conform.

This assertion shouldn’t be controversial. It’s common sense. Would corporate advertisers encourage consumers to question their client’s product? Of course not.

To nurture lifetime customers, many companies develop marketing campaigns specifically targeting kids. Why would we expect the government’s “Education” department to do anything different?

And its worked. Despite its manifest failures, the DoE has convinced millions of otherwise intelligent people that children can’t be taught without centralized administrators dispensing funds, doing “research”, and providing “guidance”.

Here’s an example of common incoherence:

Without knowing it, she almost nailed it.

As with most cabinet departments and regulatory agencies, this one siphons money from the states, then sends a sliver back with strings attached, after wetting its beak by keeping large cuts for itself.

Why not let people of the states retain their money to educate their own kids?

For two centuries families, communities, and churches managed to teach children without a DC bureaucracy spending a fortune. And results were often superior. Compare diaries from relatively unschooled “Civil War” soldiers with essays penned by many university students today.

American students once learned Latin and Greek in high school. Many now need remedial English in college. And when they get there, the Department of Education drives up tuition by ladling loans that drown them in debt.

It’s not coincidental that college costs have exploded since this department was established. The whole racket is revolting.

Leaving aside the obvious unconstitutionality of the US government being involved in education, even based on the DoE’s own stated objectives this albatross’s expenses are exorbitant and its results abysmal. It budgets almost $240B a year… as costs skyrocket, the Education-Complex is enriched, and kids get dumber.

As with much of the damage the government does, it’s hard to believe this is accidental.

JD