Governing Badly Since Democracy Began
The Hamilton Growth Institute and the Meridian Policy Foundation have each released 600-page analyses of the same economic dataset, citing the same peer-reviewed literature, and arrived at conclusions that are, in every meaningful respect, exact opposites. Both organizations are raising money to find out why.
An internal audit at the Social Security Administration has revealed that automated disbursements have been flowing to a corporation legally dissolved in 2011 for the better part of a decade and a half. Agency officials say this is, on balance, good news. A $400,000 consultant's report agrees.
The Legislative Modernization and Efficiency Restoration Act of 2025 was supposed to unclog the congressional pipeline. It has instead reclassified most legislation as 'pre-bills,' a category that did not exist before Tuesday and for which there is currently no approval process. Three committees are looking into this.
A stopgap provision inserted into federal law in 1997 as a brief and targeted intervention has just been renewed for the fourteenth consecutive time, having outlasted three presidencies, two recessions, and at least one of the staffers who originally drafted it. The provision, which was described at the time as a 'transitional measure pending permanent resolution,' has now been in temporary effect for longer than TikTok, most of its overseers, and the career of any sitting member of Congress who
The Bureau of Regulatory Alignment and Procedural Oversight has unveiled a landmark 600-page strategic mission report, the central finding of which appears to be that the bureau has a website. The report, commissioned at a cost of $3.2 million from the consulting firm Meridian Clarity Partners LLC, quotes the agency's own About page on 47 separate occasions, each time with full citations. A follow-up study to evaluate the report's findings has already been budgeted.
The National Convening of Municipal Leadership Excellence — an annual summit of US mayors that has itself been held annually since 2009 — produced this week a landmark joint declaration calling for a significant reduction in non-binding joint declarations. The declaration, which is non-binding, was adopted unanimously following a three-hour panel on the importance of shorter panels. Next year's summit has already been booked.
The nation's political consulting class has once again reached unanimous agreement that 2026 will be the year the American electorate sets aside emotional responses, flag imagery, and memorable three-word slogans in favor of detailed policy analysis. They said this in 1994. They have said it every time since.
The Federal Office of Petroleum Allocation Stabilization was created in 1974 to solve a crisis that ended nine years later. It has since solved nothing, employed everyone, and written a great deal of documentation about why this is actually fine.
The Office of Strategic Public Communications has released its landmark Federal Plain Language and Accessibility Framework, a 340-page document designed to make government messaging easier for ordinary Americans to understand. The plain-language summary is expected in twelve to eighteen months.
The Bureau of Regulatory Standards and Compliance has issued a formal press release praising itself for responding to a public comment submitted in October 2019, describing the four-and-a-half-year turnaround as 'a new benchmark in participatory governance.' The comment concerned a regulation that has since been enacted, repealed, reinstated, and renamed. The Bureau is now accepting public comments on whether to accept public comments more quickly.
Congressman Dale Merritt of Tennessee is twelve points ahead in his Senate race on a platform built almost entirely around fixing a problem that Congress fixed in 2003. His campaign staff discovered this three weeks ago and have collectively decided it is not their problem. A fact-checker who has reviewed his speeches says he has 'moved past caring in a way that felt almost spiritual.'
The nation's leading lobbying firms have stepped forward to clarify that the sweeping ethics reform bill currently moving through Congress was, in all meaningful ways, their project from the start. Experts from a think tank funded primarily by lobbying groups have confirmed this is how democracy is supposed to work. The bill is expected to pass with broad bipartisan support and a 400-page appendix nobody has read.
Dennis Hargrove, 67, of Perrysburg, Ohio, recently learned that he sits on three separate federal advisory boards covering telecommunications infrastructure, coastal erosion policy, and artisanal cheese export standards. He has not responded to a single email. Federal records indicate this places him in the top quarter of advisory board participants nationally.
The Office of Interagency Coordination and Procedural Alignment turns fifty this month, marking half a century of successfully not being abolished. Senior officials describe the anniversary as 'a testament to strategic invisibility,' while budget analysts confirm they cannot find anyone who can explain what the agency actually does.
A panel of Washington's most expensive political strategists convened this week to announce that the 2026 midterm electorate is, at long last, prepared for a sophisticated, evidence-based conversation about policy. Retainer agreements, sources confirm, were signed in January. The consultants were unavailable to explain why they said the same thing in 2022.
After $11.7 million in funding and contributions from 847 experts across six federal agencies, researchers have conclusively determined that the infrastructure thing is indeed still broken. The original napkin remains unfiled in a desk drawer in Topeka.
The Comprehensive Problem-Solving and General Fix-It Act of 1974 has been sitting in the Federal Register for fifty years, unused and apparently forgotten by everyone including the people who wrote it. Congressional leaders are calling for new legislation to address this oversight.
Sources confirm that America's foreign policy apparatus is currently being managed by unpaid 22-year-olds while senior officials attend a three-day retreat focused on 'Strategic Vision Actualization.' The State Department's coffee budget has mysteriously doubled.
The Procedural Reform Acceleration and Coordination to Improve Coordination Act represents a breakthrough in legislative efficiency, successfully establishing a 47-member task force empowered to recommend the formation of a working group that might eventually identify what problem they were supposed to solve. Experts hail it as either revolutionary progress or an elaborate form of government performance art.
Washington's premier political consulting firms have issued their annual joint statement confirming that American voters are definitely about to start paying attention to politics any day now. The prediction, unchanged since 1986, comes with renewed confidence and several pre-invoiced consulting packages for the awakening.