Bureaucratic Authority Quotes

Americans have, at various times, leaned on the FBI for a measure of justice that local and state police couldn't be counted on to deliver, and recoiled in fear at their exercise of raw federal power. That uneasy trust; the combination of need and dread, is the lot that FBI agents live with day to day.

George Tenet was actually a very strong centralizing force. If you met George by personality, George met with the president six days out of seven: nontrivial attribute inside the federal government. And George was head of the CIA.

The License Raj in India was a time when, to set up an industry, you needed a license. Which made the government an omnipresent and sort of all-pervasive authority.

The reality of split government puts a premium on creativity within the administration. President Obama needs to put the right people in charge of the agencies and then have them push the bounds of administrative power to change policy through those agencies. President Obama has a pretty good track record of this.

In many respects, you can argue Dodd-Frank isn't even law. It's a license for unaccountable, un-elected officials to make law.

It is crucial that the House exercises its oversight functions to ensure constitutional accountability of government agencies, especially as the bureaucracies associated with ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank flex their muscles and seek to expand their authority.

It is one of the misfortunes of life that a public figure can forever be associated with one inaccurate remark, taken out of context, and never intended to carry an immortal interpretation. For half a century Douglas Jay suffered as the originator of the sinister aphorism “the man in Whitehall knows best” ... “the Gentleman in Whitehall is usually right”.

The State is a collection of officials, different for difference purposes, drawing comfortable incomes so long as the status quo is preserved. The only alteration they are likely to desire in the status quo is an increase of bureaucracy and the power of bureaucrats.

The EPA, the Gestapo of government, pure and simply has been one of the major claw-hooks that the government maintains on the backs of our constituents.

Governance in India comes in the iron-clad armour of bureaucracy. Anyone in uniform considers it his or her right that we regard them as some sort of deity.

Career bureaucrats see themselves as the men who really make policy and look upon the elected officials as just “temporary occupants”.

It is time the American people saw the incredible power of staff members ...and how little power the members who are elected by the people, as opposed to the unelected, have in the decision-making process.