I live in Louisiana, and the local government is vigorously opposing efforts to restrict and divide power.
In the Diocese of Lafayette, the local government is partially merged, which means that the city of Lafayette has a city council, and the parish has a parish council (the “parish” in Louisiana is equivalent to the “county” in other places), two All work with one city-the parish chairperson. Although the committees are separate, government services are mainly under the same roof as the administration.
A few years ago, there was only one city parish council and one chairperson, but a recent change passed by the parish referendum divided the council into two parts. People think it will give more power to the parish than to the remote, smaller communities in the city. However, it did not really solve this problem, because the government and its bureaucracy are still in the old urban diocese system.
There is a group dedicated to the complete dissolution of the local government, which will create a municipal government independent of the parish government. The organization issued a report recommending this, and the parish committee voted last night to set up its own committee to investigate. The committee they hired has a six-month period, which pushed the issue into the 2022 election cycle at the earliest.
Quite simply, this is a procrastination strategy.
The merged government is too large and bloated to function. For all involved, it is wise to split it up so that the municipal government and the parish government are more manageable and effective. However, no government entity wants to give up power. It will only succeed in accumulating more wealth at the expense of the people it allegedly manages. This happens at the local, state, and federal level.
If the Trump administration has done one thing right, it is that large-scale deregulation efforts have promoted economic development. Americans benefited from the reduced bureaucratic entity and prospered as a result. However, the biggest failure of the Trump administration is not to further break or even shut down some of the bureaucratic nightmares bred by past administrations.
The US government is dominated by non-legislative bodies that make rules and laws they deem appropriate, and they are largely not accountable to voters. Even if they vote for a government, things will not change, because the executive branch can give them power, but they rarely have or use power to reduce or eliminate them. The Trump administration formulated an integration plan, but did not proceed. Similarly, the merger will not help to eliminate some of the bureaucratic nightmares actually caused by these entities.
Although the Republicans own the Congress and the White House, they have disputes over issues such as repealing the Affordable Care Act, but they have not taken any action to truly achieve one thing they claim to represent: reducing the size and scope of the government. This is a failure of the party. Therefore, the Biden administration can step in and undo many of the changes made by the Trump administration because the underlying structure still exists.
The government will always only empower itself. It will never take it away from itself. We cannot be satisfied with those who only maintain the status quo and make superficial changes through administrative orders. We need people who can dismantle some bureaucratic foundations, make our lives easier, and the government can serve the people more effectively. When we deny these people to power, Americans continue to suffer under its control.
