This isn’t a new idea. Lewis Lapham wrote an article – I wish I could find it online – explaining that many of the “improvements” Republicans add to bills empowering agencies, especially regulatory agencies, are intended to make it easy to tie up the agencies in knots with red-tape, mandatory responses to trivial complaints, etc.
Then, when the agencies have been forced by inane GOP-imposed rules to a low-productivity mode, the Republiopaths complain that the agency is ineffective. (Wit hthe fix, of course, to lower its budget.)
Come to think of it, “Montpelier” does kindasorta rhyme with “R’lyeh,” doesn’t it? (Allowing for the fact that neither name was ever intended to be pronounceable by human vocal apparatus.)
You can see the logic in the proposal, though; take power away from government, who are greedy and only out for themselves, and give it to rich people, who have all our best interests at heart.
His mind is inhabiting a Terry Gilliam film-noir: the government is embodied by the inertial Mr. Helpmann, the befuddled Mr. Kurtzmann and the fiendish Jack Lint; caught up in it all, you and I are Sam Lowry; and he and the rich people are Harry Tuttle, who can rescue everyone and get things done properly if they can just avoid being swallowed up by bureaucratic paperwork.
It is a sad, sad place for a person’s mind to live, not unlike being trapped in some kind of Onion-esque reality.
This is exactly what they do, in both their verbiage and their actions. They do things that on the surface appear to be good intentioned and for noble goals when in fact it’s just the opposite. Voter ID laws are an example.
Another example is what has been done to the Post Office. The Post Office pension fund is required to maintain enough funds to be able to fund retirements for the next 75 years. This sounds very populist and pro-union, but it puts a major financial strain on them, which may be the intent. If the Post Office can’t handle it’s finances, well then let’s privatize!