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You can never be too careful

Trump to federal agencies: I think you can stop preparing for the Y2K bug now



Don't worry. I'm sure they're still getting ready for the possibility that your 8-track cassette will jump out of the player and eat you. Or what if everyone in your office suffers a sudden polio outbreak? The federal government has a plan for that! The best and the brightest, the people who could central-plan our lives into wonder and joy if only we would pay more taxes and let them, apparently haven't been using their time in the most optimal manner. Although, in fairness to them, they're only following official policy. Or what was official policy before the Trump Administration changed it: Deregulation is a major ambition of President Donald Trump’s agenda; as one example, he has signed more laws rolling back his predecessor’s regulations than the combined total of the three previous presidents since the process was established by the 1999 Congressional Review Act.
Seven of the more than 50 paperwork requirements the White House eliminated on Thursday dealt with the Y2K bug, according to a memo OMB released. Officials at the agency estimate the changes could save tens of thousands of man-hours across the federal government. The agency didn’t provide an estimate of how much time is currently spent on Y2K paperwork, but Linda Springer, an OMB senior adviser, acknowledged that it isn’t a lot since those requirements are already often ignored in practice. Mulvaney said he hopes that by publicly eliminating the rules, departments and agencies will be inspired to review their own policies and procedures to reduce inefficiencies. I bet you'll see some liberals actually try to downplay how bad this is by citing Springer's statement that the directives are regularly ignored, as if that's actually a defense of how the government operates. Hey, they have ridiculous rules to follow, and they ignore those rules! Sounds like a button-down operation for sure. Keep in mind, the deep-state types who are leaking to the press for the purpose of undermining Trump come from the same crew that just keeps checking ridiculous boxes because they've done it for years, and it's easier than bringing about the change that would result in their stopping this utter waste of time and resources.

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Keep in mind, the deep-state types who are leaking to the press for the purpose of undermining Trump come from the same crew that just keeps checking ridiculous boxes because they've done it for years

The Y2K thing was always an overblown fear, although in fairness we didn't know that for sure until the date came and went and nothing significant happened. In case you don't remember it, the fear stemmed from the fact that most 20th-century computers logged dates with only two digits to indicate the year. For example, my birthdate would have been shown as 11-17-66 rather than 11-17-1966. People were concerned that when 12-31-99 became 1-1-00, the computers would get confused and think we'd gone back in time 100 years, resulting in all kinds of mass system confusion. It's probably true that if we hadn't done some work to head it off in the years leading up to 2000's arrival, there could have been serious problems. But we did, and there weren't. The idea that federal bureaucrats are still concerned with Y2K compliance 17 years after the fact is the ultimate in bureaucratic inertia, and it's one of the reasons so many of us don't want to let politicians and the administrative state take control of our lives for our own good. And without a doubt, one of the reasons the bureaucracy is so beside itself about the arrival of the Trump Administration is the fact that it will, in fact, expose nonsense like this. That's going to make it a lot harder to convince the public that these people and the federal agencies they work for should be given more money, resources or responsibilities. Which is just right, because they shouldn't be given any more. They should be given less. A lot less. Or in many cases, none at all.


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Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain

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