Now here’s an academic, University of Kansas Professor H. George Frederickson, who’s on to something: The nation is plowing more and more money into government and we citizens are getting less and less back for it.

About his essay, “Repairing Broken Government,” Cal Thomas notes:

It addresses the need to focus on competence more than ideology. Noting the familiar list most people make on the reasons for broken government — the pervasive influence of money in politics, the power of interest groups and lobbyists, legislative gridlock, and more — Mr. Frederickson touches on…”bureaucracy, ineffective management, or poor policy implementation….”

The way to get more competent people to run government, Frederickson advocates, is to amend the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, which

“added a thick layer of political appointees to the upper ranks of federal agencies” while the ranks of merit-based civil servants were reduced to about 1.8 million from almost 3 million. “From the standpoint of government effectiveness, this has been a deadly combination,” he says.