Writes Greg Privette:

Hi Lew,

I read the above post from Gail Appel today and it reminded me of a couple of things that have stuck with me all these years.

I saw a segment years ago on 60 Minutes, back when they occasionally did real journalism. They were basically trying to see if the old joke about every farmer having his own USDA employee was accurate. It turned out when they looked at the number of farmers in many areas and then visited the local USDA offices, the joke was in fact pretty accurate.

The other thing relates to times in the past when Republican presidential candidates actually paid lip service to the possibility of eliminating agencies. This was typically directed to the Department of Agriculture and Department of Education. I believe the last one to do this was George II who talked mainly about eliminating the Dept. of Education. Of course upon his election we got “no child left behind” and a significant increase in that departments budget. What I most remember though is the first time I heard Harry Browne being interviewed on the radio. This was during his first presidential run. At the time I believe the Republican empty suit was Bob Dole. As usual he was talking about ending the Dept of Education and maybe the USDA as well and the media was all in a tizzy over it even though they knew he had no real intention of doing it. During the Harry Browne radio interview I heard he was asked about his position on that. He said there were at that time something like 21 executive level agencies. He went on to say the issue with eliminating one or two was that each member of congress has their own pet agency. The Iowa and Nebraska delegations for example loved the USDA. So they engage in “bi-partisan cooperation” by agreeing not to vote to abolish each others pet agencies and nothing gets done. Harry said the only option is to abolish all 21 at one time! Based on that answer and Harry’s answers to subsequent questions I started down the path of becoming a life long Harry Browne fan.