Jack of Harts

This part of the commentary requires a really brief civics lesson. We have three equal    branches of government in our Constitution. Executive. Legislative. Judicial. But there’s an unofficial Fourth Branch of the American Federal Government that has grown up over time. Some call it the Administrative Branch, or State. Others the Bureaucracy. The Regulatory State. Conspiracy theorists often name it the Deep State. Whatever name you give it, it’s a non-elected body of Federal workers who clarify and Execute the laws written by Congress. It’s officially part of the Executive Branch of government. The issue is that Congress often writes laws that are not fully clear and leaves it to the Bureaucracy to figure out how to make them work. Or they just have the Bureaucracy write the laws for them and then vote on the text without reading it. The old “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,” syndrome. Which has made for some interesting laws and regulations. One reason many consider it a fourth branch is because various rules make it difficult for the Chief Executive to manage and control the Bureaucracy. The point of this commentary is to state that the whole thing is gone in Jack of Harts. It basically disappeared during the Second Great Depression when the Federal Government collapsed. The States did not like it and did not reform it with the rest of the Federal Government. And though it had made some form of comeback by Jack’s time, the Shang literally pulverized it into ash when they dropped a missile storm all over Washington DC. As I’ve often joked, the American people actually didn’t mind losing DC that much. They were only politicians and government workers after all. No one much missed them. It was the millions of other Americans who died that pissed America off. Or so the joke goes.