Radley Balko at Reason had a post this weekend on a NYT story about Sam Brownback supporting the creation of an Office of the Repealer. Balko’s title for his blogpost was “A New Government Agency I Can Support.” He finds the analysis in the NYT to be predictable and unfair, saying:
True to form, New York Times reporter Monica Davey makes little attempt to hide her bemusement at Brownback’s idea, dismissing its positive reception among Kansas voters as “one more sign, perhaps, of the wave of grumpiness” sweeping the country. Not prudence or good governance or fiscal responsibility. Grumpiness.
Radley Balko is an awesome journalist. His coverage on the drug war (especially the Columbia PD drug raid video he helped make viral this spring) specifically and policing generally in Reason, print and online, is one of my favorite things about the site. Maybe even his point about grumpiness is well-taken.
But to support the idea of creating a government office designed to get rid of other programs and maybe even agencies is just a bad idea. It’s no better than the typical Washington solution of creating a committee to solve a problem and just throwing more money at it. If we are serious about rolling back government, we don’t need to create new offices and expand the state even more.
