We hear complaints when government is slow and inefficient, with Congress receiving the greatest volume of such complaints, but that’s a key point.  When an organization is empowered to confiscate people’s property, change the rules of the economy and society, put people in jail, and even kill them, we should want it to be structured such that it is difficult to abuse and that it doesn’t make sense to use it to undertake too many activities within our society.

This morning’s post on HealthSource fits into this category, as does Iain Murray’s observations of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB):

Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled in the case, PHH Corp. v. CFPB, that the Bureau’s structure was unconstitutional and ordered that Cordray should report to the President. Under the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, which created the CFPB, the President has no power to remove the CFPB Director except for malfeasance, and Congress has no power to restrict the Bureau’s operations through the appropriations process, as the Bureau draws its budget from the Federal Reserve, itself an independent agency. The Court deems the CFPB’s unaccountable structure unconstitutional, saying that it posed a “risk of arbitrary decisionmaking [sic] and abuse of power” and “a threat to individual liberty.”

Sounds momentous. But you will find no mention of the judgment on the CFPB’s website, and so far the Bureau’s only action has been to file a brief in an unrelated case saying that the ruling “has no basis in the text of the Constitution or in Supreme Court case law,” and that, “The panel decision was wrongly decided and is not likely to withstand further review.”

Read the rest if you haven’t been following the antics of the CFPB.  The lawless agency has been imposing fees retroactively in what can only be described as extortion.

Next, move such boards — including all quasi-publics, government-aligned non-profits, and corporation-like entities like HealthSource — up on your list of things about which to be concerned and by which to judge the people whom you elect.