Administrative State Archives

RHODES: The Administrative State’s Hidden Architecture (Part 2)

December 17, 2025 Matthew Rhodes

Education, EFAs, and Administrative Inheritance Entering Charles Merriam’s Marble Cake Factory Education policy in the United States is often framed as a simple contest between federal authority and state authority, as though the two operate in separate spheres. In practice, modern education governance functions through an administrative ecosystem shaped by federal statutes, federal agency rulemaking, … Read more

Democrats DO Love Them Their Administrative State. Shouldn’t This Be A Legislative Action in NJ? Not According to the Guv!

July 22, 2023 Skip

Yesterday, as I write this on Friday for publishing on Saturday) was a complete sinkhole. Got absolutely nothing done in any aspect. Yes, there were reasons, and all of them led to one thing – I was in no mood to write. Hey, it happens.

SCOTUS Takes Another Bite Out of The Admininstrative State (Or Does It?)

April 16, 2023 Steve MacDonald

In an increasingly rare 9-0 decision, the US Supreme Court has given the Administrative Statr a little pat on the bottoms of the Federal Trade Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission, though the decision has broader implications.

The Expansion of The Tyrannical Admininstrative State is In Overdrive – Can It Be Stopped?

April 12, 2023 Skip

The 1948 Administrative Powers Act gave the Executive Branch, 75 years down the line, the Powers to be its own Government. I hate Congress for passing it and, in doing so, making itself irrelevant. Congress can’t even do their primary jobs anymore.

Union Leader Doesn’t See The Big Picture – It’s Not About Vaccines, It’s About the Constitutional Separation Powers

March 28, 2023 Skip

Once again, we can see that the shiny and bright conservative armor that the Union Leader wore in decades past has turned rusty and tarnished. Never would I have expected to read a UL written Op-Ed actively advocating against the separation of responsibilities and Powers between the Legislative Branch and the Executive Branch, A quick … Read more

Hillsdale Education Growth chart admins student and teachers

Growth of the Administrative Public Education “State”

December 18, 2022December 17, 2022 Steve MacDonald

If you read Imprimis from Hillsdale College, this landed in your mailbox last week. President Larry Arn writes about ‘Education as a Battleground,’ which includes that startling graph you see above.

Democrat Values vs. TEA Party Values: Technocrats or Elected Officials – Who Should Actually Govern?

October 27, 2022October 27, 2022 Skip

BUMPED from 9/30/2012: MaggieCare. Having just put up a video, HARD WORK, for Don Bolduc (for US Senate), I remember this about Maggie Hassan’s attempt to “nationalizing” NH’s hospitals and putting with a “Commission” that would have been beyond the reach of voters (sorta like what Democrat US Senator Elizabeth Warren did with the Consumer Protection Bureau – which just got shot down as unconstitutional in its structure and operation).

COVID Nazis Want to Rule Our Lives So Bad, That I Had to Defend the School Board I’m Suing????

December 15, 2021 Skip

Sheesh. Week ago Monday was the Gilford School Board meeting where they were going to revisit Masking on a District basis given the rise of infection in our local area. Both sides were well represented – certainly, I was on the side that it is the PARENTS’ decision even if the kids are “in the care” of the school system while on school grounds.

Notable Quote – George Will, Prof. Don Boudreaux

June 1, 2020 Skip

Can a federal government that acknowledges no limits to its scope, and that responds promiscuously to the multiplying appetites of proliferating factions, make choices that serve the society’s long-term interests? The answer, based on the avalanche of evidence from current governance, is an emphatic “no.” The evidence is in the rise of the administrative state … Read more

“Here’s How Andrew Jackson Stood Up to Unaccountable ‘Elites’”

October 2, 2019October 2, 2019 Skip

I’ve never studied Andrew Jackson’s history but it is clear now why the Democrats “disposed” of him as part of their “Jefferson-Jackson” dinners. He no longer fits their “narrative” nor their ideology.

Supreme Court Considers Paring Back the Power of the Administrative State

March 28, 2019 Steve MacDonald

The current state of affairs often requires judges to side with the rulemaking power of the administrative state even when “they feel it has made the wrong call on a regulation.” But a case currently before them could change that.

Masterpiece Cakeshop Case: Yes, It Was Narrow

September 26, 2018June 7, 2018 Ellen Kolb

The Colorado baker who chose not to be involved in providing services for a ceremony that violated his religious beliefs prevailed in the recent Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission decision at the Supreme Court. The vote was 7-2, and the result was much closer than the score indicates.

How can a 7-2 Supreme Court decision be narrow? If I had a nickel for every social media post along those lines in the past few days, I could cover this blog’s expenses for a good long while. I’m even hearing the question from people who should know better.

It wasn’t the vote that was narrow. It was the decision. The point on which the seven Justices agreed was that the baker hadn’t gotten a fair shake from the Civil Rights Commission. That’s it. That’s enough for now, to be sure, but the narrowness of the decision is fair warning that this was not a First Amendment landmark.

GOP Promises not kept

July 15, 2024July 14, 2015 Steve MacDonald

The Republicans asked for the majority to fix things like ObamaCare and big government and when the voters gave them that majority what did they do with it? That and trimming the administrative state. (Yes, I said that last time – got my segment notes mixed up. It’s in this segment. My apologies.)

Who Else Erases History?

July 15, 2024July 13, 2015 Steve MacDonald

The American left has manufactured another crisis and used it as an excuse to erase history. So who else does that? We also discuss the bureaucratic handmaidens of the central planners – the administrative state; must you cut off each limb or will you have more success if you starve them to death.

More thoughts on Republicans passing SB11

September 26, 2018May 31, 2013 Skip

Grokster Susan has the list with the title of “All your water are belong to them….“; it is still GraniteGrok’s belief that the finger has been removed from the dike with respect to the right to private property concerning the water underneath one’s land and that this may well give the Taxaholics yet another revenue stream of taxing (you watch – 4% of income is a magic number) private wells and septic systems (either directly or via metering). Grokster Steve points out that the idea of New Hampshire-ites being taxed for the rainwater falling on their land has already been breached.

My concern, however, was with the evolving process of Legislators creating more and more “enabling legislation” that creates more opportunities for “UnDemocracy” – as Rich Lowry points out (reformatted, emphasis mine):

It is appropriate that the worst scandal of the Obama administration— the IRS targeting of conservatives — is a scandal of administrators and bureaucrats, of otherwise faceless people endowed with immense power over their fellow citizens and running free of serious oversight from elected officials.

They are the shock troops of the vast bureaucratic apparatus of the federal government. Its growth has been one of President Obama’s chief goals, and the one he has had the most success in achieving. He has greatly enhanced the reach and power of regulatory agencies that are an inherent offense against self-government, even when they aren’t enforcing the law in a biased way.

The administration’s corruption isn’t bags of cash or lies about interns; it is the distortion of our form of government by sidestepping democratic procedures and accountability and vesting authority in bureaucrats. The Administrative State…

Read more

IRS As Political Hammer, Not the First Time, Nor the Last, Unless…

September 26, 2018May 23, 2013 Scott Morales

Sometimes blogging is about creative commentary and piquing the other side while, hopefully, providing a different perspective. Other times, it’s just about spreading information. This is one of those times. I initially dressed this up with all sorts of semi-wittiness (heavy on the “semi”) reminiscent of a tired comic strip, but the length of the blog was inordinately long, so I trimmed it down, but if it’s still too long, I urge you to at least read the brief IRS history of abuse further below.

We Warn and Warn and Warn. The Pimps Ignore. Now, the Pimps Pay!

September 26, 2018January 20, 2013
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We’ve warned and received derision and dismissal in response. We’ve argued and received denouncements and sardonic denials. Our claims were decried and characterized as far right paranoid fantasy. We’ve been told that our observation of what happens with Big Gov are delusional scare tactics and are meant to instill a Mad Max world type fear on the “gullible” listener or reader. And that its baseless and irresponsible for us to continue to disseminate our ideas.

However, the irresponsibility is not the arguing for these ideas but the close minded instant refutation of the ideas based on who is making the argument and ignoring the argument itself.

Conservatives and liberty lovers have made such arguments in many areas that have simply been dismissed or ignored. My particular niche usually focuses on the explosion of debt, lack of morality, and government gigantism and their consequences (i.e., societal decay). One of the manifestations of those things was the passage of Obamacare. I touched on that wretched piece of legislation several times, but the one that I’d like to mention here was in a blog entitled, “Palin for HHS Secretary”.

GrokTV Special Interview-NH State Senator Andy Sanborn (District 9) – Question 4: Administrative based taxes: have all taxes, fees, and fines set by the Legislature?

September 26, 2018July 28, 2012 Skip

Increasingly, we see NH State Agencies setting their own level of taxation (fees, fines, et al) outside of authorization of the Legislature. It is the Executive Branch to self-fund and making itself independent of the taxation authority of the Legislature. And of course, it goes without saying that while Legislators are accountable to the voters, … Read more

The Embrace of Administrative Despotism – A Notable Quote

September 26, 2018July 9, 2012 Steve MacDonald

Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two conflicting passions; they want to be led, and they wish to remain free. As they can not destroy either the one or the other of these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once. They devise a sole, tutelary, and all powerful from of government, but … Read more

Notable Quote – Dr. Thomas L. Krannawiter

September 26, 2018January 26, 2012 Skip

In the Progressive view, the ends of government cannot be limited to protecting natural rights, because nature supplies no rights, and positive rights created by government change over time. Thus limited government is replaced with government of unlimited power and scope, what some political scientists call the administrative state. Rejecting natural justice, the liberal mind … Read more