For more than eighty years, beginning with FDR’s New Deal, Americans have witnessed a constant increase in the size and scope of the federal government. This expansion has continued unabated during both Democratic and Republican administrations. 

Whether measured in terms of dollars spent, or in terms of percentage of Gross Domestic Product (“GDP”) consumed by the federal government, big government has become inexorably bigger.

In 1940, federal spending was a relatively modest 9.6% of GDP – or $9.5 billion out of $98.2 billion. In 2009 under President Obama, federal spending hit a high water mark (excluding the World War II years) of 24.4% of GDP – or $3,517.7 billion out of $14,414.6 billion.

The growth of the federal civilian workforce has slowed since 1960 – levelling off between 2.5 and 3 million – but this has masked the transfer of federal programs to state and local bureaucracies. Since 1960, the number of state and local government employees has tripled to over 18 million. This growth has been driven by a tenfold increase in federal grants to cities and states.

For conservatives, this trend has been depressing. We plead for smaller government, but our cries have been futile as Congress and state legislatures refuse to make significant or lasting cuts in the size of government. The growth of the Leviathan has seemed unstoppable.

The forces pushing the expansion of government are powerful. Bureaucrats justify their existence by spending every dime appropriated to their agencies and then asking for more. Politicians of both parties find it easier to win votes by serving up pork than by offering austerity. Congresses deals with every crisis by spending money. And the progressive Left continually pushes the growth of entitlements for its own political advantage.

Fortunately, there is now hope in the fight against big government. There is a demographic sea change at work – something that has the potential to shift the forces in favor of conservatives who are serious about shrinking government. The baby boomers are retiring.

The baby boomer generation – those born between 1946 and 1964 – includes 76 million Americans. Over a 19 year period that started approximately in 2011, virtually all of them will retire. That’s an average of four million people retiring every year, or nearly 11,000 every day.  And a large percentage of them are working for the government. Government agencies across the federal government, as well as in state and local governments, are seeing a slew of retirements.

Take the Social Security Administration. Starting in 2011, the SSA began seeing 4,000 retirements a year. The same is happening throughout the federal government. The bureaucrats see this as a crisis.  Conservatives should see it as an opportunity.

Attrition through retirement is causing federal and state workforces to turn over. Many of these retirees need not be replaced. The size of government can be dramatically reduced simply by making the decision not to fill every vacancy. And it doesn’t take an act of Congress to do it.  All it takes is political will in the executive branch not to fill vacancies. The only exceptions should be law enforcement agencies and the military.

But can it really be done in practice? The answer is yes, it can. I know because I’ve done it. Shortly after I became Kansas Secretary of State in 2011, I saw baby boomer retirements occurring in my own agency. Realizing this opportunity, I directed my deputies to reassign the duties of retiring employees to those who remained. Wherever possible, the open positions were not to be filled. We left approximately 1/3 of the vacancies unfilled.

Over the course of six years, I was able to shrink my agency’s workforce by 18 percent. We did it through natural attrition, without massive layoffs. The smaller payroll, along with other cuts, also allowed me to reduce agency spending by over 30 percent. And the agency is still carrying out all of the same responsibilities that it was back in 2011. 

The same must be done in the federal government and in state governments across the country. President Trump has already taken the first steps.  In January he imposed a freeze on hiring. And in March he issued an executive order directing agencies to find redundancies and other ways to make cuts.  Looking at the bloated federal bureaucracy, he pointed out, “Today there is duplication and redundancy everywhere.” Consequently, “Billions and billions of dollars are being wasted.”

When the hiring freeze is lifted, as it eventually will be, President Trump should order the relevant departments to fill no more than 2/3 of the vacancies that exist. Without such an order, the career bureaucrats will carry on as before, deeming every position necessary to be filled.

The baby boomers are creating those vacancies by the thousand as they retire. Fortunately, this historic opportunity coincides with a President who is serious about cutting the size of government. If he declines to fill those vacancies and if state governors do the same, we could witness the first substantial reduction in big government in our nation’s history. But it will take political will to make it happen.

Kris W. Kobach is the elected Secretary of State of Kansas.  An expert in immigration law and policy, he coauthored the Arizona SB-1070 immigration law and represented in federal court the 10 ICE agents who sued to stop Obama’s 2012 executive amnesty.  In 2017 President Trump named him Vice Chairman of the Presidential Commission on Election Integrity.  His website is kriskobach.com.

On Thursday fellow Downtrend contributor Brian Anderson shared a video of black Trump supporter R.C. Maxwell being assaulted during a rally last Sunday in Laguna Beach, California, after crossing the street to speak respectfully with counter-protesters.

During an interview later Sunday with local station KTTV, Maxwell, who identifies himself as “Black Hannity” on Twitter, dropped a lethal truth bomb about the mainstream media.

“If the optics were completely different and I was a Black Lives Matter supporter, and I was attacked on the Trump side of a protest, I would be in the spotlight on CNN right now,” he said.

Correct.

Yet as of Friday morning, there had still been no mention of Mr. Maxwell by CNN, not to mention The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Huffington Post and almost every other leftist rag. They had clearly buried the story.

In the case of CNN, the network chose instead to run with a “report” about how every supporter of President Donald Trump is a white supremacist …

I’m sure Trump supporter R.C. Maxwell would certainly agree (sarcasm):

I’ll be on with @drdrew today at 4:10pm ET discussing why the fake news talking heads at @CNN refuse to do a segment with me. http://pic.twitter.com/yZzdRkg3f5

— Black Hannity ?? (@rcmaxwellgop) August 24, 2017

“I went over to the left side to see if I could engage them with dialogue, and I was instantly encircled by the so called anti-fascists,” Maxwell continued in his interview Sunday with KTTV.

“I think the fact that I’m a black conservative causes a lot of problems for the left side because there’s no way they can really resolve that according to their narrative of what they think Trump supporters are, so I think that was a bit triggering to the other side,” he told the station. “I was getting lots of specific comments like, ‘You’re a sellout, you’re an Uncle Tom.’”

In my case I’m an “Uncle Ghandi,” but you get the drift …

And judging by how the media treat so-called “sellouts” and “Uncle Toms,” one thing is clear: If they perceive you as a race traitor, your story will get no traction with them, no matter how compelling it may be, unless of course they discern a way by which they can manipulate your tale to boost their preferred narrative.

One word describes this behavior: Bias.

And while I expect bias from any and every news source, including Downtrend, the problem here is that we’re talking about the national media, which frankly almost has a frightening monopoly on what most Americans see everyday.

Because of this immense power they wield, it’d therefore be nice if they’d be 100 percent honest about their bias, not that they ever will.

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When asked during a recent Q&A for a biblical interpretation of the events that transpired earlier this month in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacists duked it out with violent leftist thugs, and one young woman died, pastor John F. MacArthur replied with the truth.

All the current drama and turmoil in society — from the increased media attention on white supremacist groups to the rise of frequent anti-cop, anti-Confederate, anti-you name it protests and riots — has little to do with racism, bigotry, slavery and whatever else, MacAruther said, but rather with a breakdown in basic Christian family values.

“(Y)ou have a whole generation of young people that have been taught a twisted perverted inverted upside down and backwards moral law … And the dominant part of this new morality is, ‘I’m the most important person in the world, it’s all about me.’”

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And the increasingly disturbing acts we see happening around us are merely manifestations of this evil, said MacArthur, the pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California.

“And we have only begun to see it once it’s unleashed,” he said. “And it’s going to start coming in all kinds of forms because of the breakdown of moral law, the breakdown of the conscience, the breakdown of the family, and because of the incessant assaults on governing authorities.”

Take the newfound attention being given to white supremacist groups.

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“No one tolerates white supremacists,” MacArthur rightly noted, the point being that the society-wide racism and bigotry of the Jim Crow era is long gone. And he would know. He saw that racism and bigotry firsthand.

“I was in the room — when Martin Luther King was assassinated — with those black leaders, and we went to Memphis, and I stood on the blood spots on that motel with those men,” he said. “And I stood in the little bathroom on top of the toilet where James Earl Ray shot him out the window. Those men were my friends; that was my community.”

But those days are in the past. What’s happening now, MacArthur maintained, runs much deeper.

“That’s not what’s going on there in Charlottesville or any of these other demonstrations,” he said. “This is the wretched fallen human heart feeling like it can rise to any level that is not completely controlled.”

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Check out his full response below:

What MacArthur said was raw wisdom — the type never seen in media and hated by the left. The fact is there isn’t an epidemic of racism, bigotry and whatever else in America. There’s an epidemic of amorality rooted in the pernicious erosion of basic Christian family values.

And as MacArthur warned at the end: “Get ready, I don’t think it’s going to go away.”

Please share this story on Facebook and Twitter and let us know what you think about pastor John F. MacArthur’s stunning answer.

Charlottesville’s Mayor claimed Thursday that he and other members of the city council “were not given the security plan for August 12,” which was developed and closely held by the City Manager, the Police Chief, and the Fire Chief.

Mayor Mike Signer’s Facebook statement about city preparations in Charlottesville prior to the brawls between self-described white supremacists, white nationalists, and progressive street groups said:

I asked the Police Chief what I could do to be helpful during that day as Mayor, he answered, ‘Stay out of my way.’ Despite repeated requests, I was not allowed into the City’s Command Center (run by City staff) and was instead asked to be in the Emergency Operations Center (where fire, rescue, and other stakeholders were monitoring the situation).

Signer revealed the political motivations behind the City of Charlottesville’s actions leading up to the August 12 “Unite the Right” rally in Emancipation Park:

Understanding from our staff and other experts that the state of our law regarding these events meant that any attempt to cancel the rally would certainly have been shut down in court, I spent dozens of hours conferring with lawyers, law professors, staff, other mayors, security professionals, and other experts to develop another option.

That option was to move the event to a more spacious location where there could have been substantial “green field” between the protesters and counter protesters. After reviewing all locations in the City with the City Manager, the best option was McIntire Park. In the weeks leading up to August 12, I advocated for McIntire Park, including extensive discussions with my colleagues and staff. I successfully led the drive to hire an outside law firm to advise the City Manager and Police Chief on how such a plan could be developed on the strongest legal grounds.

Despite these efforts, the state of First Amendment law regarding these events is badly antiquated. We saw what happened. After the City Manager and Police Chief announced their decision that the rally would be relocated to a safer location—relying principally on the advice from our attorneys that the size of the event was the most “content-neutral” grounds for moving it—Jason Kessler immediately stated he would not respect the decision: that he would still head with his people to Emancipation Park. We were then sued by the Virginia ACLU and the Rutherford Institute. And a federal judge ruled against our decision on Friday night, just as we had feared.

Maurice Jones was named the City Manager in 2010, and Al Thomas was named the Police Chief in 2016.

Signer declared in January that Charlottesville would become a “capital of resistance” to recently inaugurated President Donald Trump.

On the morning of August 12, the groups from both factions clashed early as the white supremacists/white nationalists pushed their way through a human barrier of progressive protesters — which assembled under a street barrier declaring “Diversity Makes Us Stronger”  — and then got themselves into the park.

The rally was legally permitted to begin at noon on August 12, but Governor Terry McAuliffe ordered it shut down at 11:22 a.m. The City of Charlottesville Police Department tweeted out and posted on Facebook at 11:35 a.m. that “unlawful assembly had been declared at the rally.”

The Virginia State Police then pushed the “Unite the Right” rally out of Emancipation Park, and into the large crowd of counter protesters gathered in the street at the south entrance of the park. The violence between the two groups spread as a long line of white-power groups walked back through the gauntlet of progressives and away from the park.

At about 1:42 pm, a Dodge car drove into a crowd of counter protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer. “The driver of the Dodge, James A. Fields, Jr., 20, of Maumee, Ohio, was taken into custody and charged with one count of second-degree murder, three counts of malicious wounding and one count of hit-and-run,” the City of Charlottesville reported.

Before the riot, “during that week [from August 7 to August 12], City Council was under firm instructions not to speak about the rally at all, except to refer to its size,” Signer wrote:

For a public looking for condemnation of groups like the KKK and Nazis, this was very frustrating. It was frustrating for me, too. But if we had spoken out against the content of the speech that was coming to Charlottesville—against its bigotry and hatred—it would have made it even more likely that a judge would have found the removal decision to be “content-based.”

So we were muzzled. And it didn’t even make a difference, because in the tragic decision issued at 9:30 on Friday night, the federal judge still cited prior statements I had made about the bigotry and hate coming to our loving town. Our public statements of our feelings about this evil were held against us.

I hope this has explained some of what City Council can and cannot do. Where City Council does have a role, though, is in accountability. The City Manager works at our pleasure, and he is responsible for the staff under his command, in our form of government.

That is why we have called for an independent review of all decisions related not only to August 12, but the July 8 KKK rally and the prior torch-lit rally at Emancipation Park. This review will also include recommendations of reforms and new policies going forward. This process will require care and diligence, and will take skilled professionals 2-3 months. I expect the review to be announced shortly.

Signer explained that “this is why City Council deemed it necessary to hold an emergency closed session today with the City Manager to discuss personnel matters.”

“The events on August 12 have raised serious questions about the City’s handling of security, communications, and governance. These are questions Council can and should ask as the ultimate authority over the City Manager in our form of government, and we are starting that process today,” Signer concluded.

Last Wednesday, Breitbart News reported on the timeline of events leading up to the declaration of unlawful assembly at the Emancipation Park rally on August 12, and Signer’s statement confirms many of the details reported in that story.

Last Thursday, Breitbart News reported that Virginia Secretary of Public Safety Brian Moran told Richmond radio talk show host Jeff Katz that Governor McAuliffe “made the decision . . . to shut things down” at the Emancipation Park rally at 11:22 am on August 12. Signer’s statement also confirms many of the details reported in that story.

You can read Signer’s full statement on his Facebook page below: