November 16, 2021
How Many Zombie Agencies Does Government Need?
By Trish Randall
How many federal agencies do we pay for? I bet you think, as I once did, that a quick internet search would tell. But researching for an essay a couple of years ago, I found numbers varying from 78 to 158, and websites saying the exact number was impossible to determine.
Looking at the USA.gov website recently, I discovered a tab for Federal Agencies A to Z (actually there are none past W). Scrolling around the list for two days, subtracting duplicate listings, like Useless Policy, Office of and Office of Useless Policy, I counted 456 (and a few more as I checked some links while drafting this essay).
The large number of agencies was my first, but not my only surprise. Each agency’s listing had a field for government branch, mostly filled with Executive, some Legislative, some Judicial. But sometimes that field contained: Independent, Quasi, or None. How can we have parts of government that are not part of a branch of our government?
It amused me that some agency names made it easy to guess when they were created. Delinquency was a focus in the 1930s; nuclear threats, 1950s; civil rights, 1960s; cyberterrorism, after 2001.
more
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/11/how_many_zombie_agencies_does_government_need.html
