Government Inertia

For John, BLUF:  Even handed reporting is a myth, generated during the 1940s and 1950s, and the early 1960s.  In the mean time the Bureucracy is the real Fourth Estte.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Trump-era inertia bogs down agencies as Biden seeks urgency

From The Boston Globe, by Bloombery reporters Ari Natter and Todd Shields, 5 March 2021, 5:12 pm.

Here is the lede plus two:

Interior Department staffers churned out dozens of drilling permits despite an order for upper-level review. The US Postal Service spurned green alternatives and bought tens of thousands of gasoline-powered vehicles.  And across the government, Donald Trump loyalists remain in influential positions.

President Biden is being defied by his own government as his ambitious plans to undo four years of Trump run into a harsh reality: The government lumbers on, slow to turn course even after an election.  Cumbersome bureaucracy threatens his agenda on everything from fighting climate change to ending the coronavirus pandemic.

“You load these systems up and they are going to keep grinding,” said Paul C. Light, a professor of public service at New York University.  “They don’t stop to congratulate the president on his inauguration.  They keep going and stopping them is difficult.”

The article is correct, but misses the point.  Former President Donald Trump gets copious mention for "embedding" his people, but the former president encountered the same thing, if not worse.  He had to deal with an FBI criminal conspiracy being waged against him and his people as he ran and then was Inaugurated.

By the way, the photo in the article in The Boston Globe is not of the new US Postal Service truvks to be purchased, but of the older model, currently in use.  Not helpful.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff