When Bill Clinton and Al Gore first proposed to reinvent government, they used a forklift and pile of paper on the White House lawn to make their point. The federal government, they declared, was waist-deep in needless documents and red tape.
Red tape can be annoying, but it isn t paper that blocks the reinvention of government.
That takes people in particular, people protecting their bureaucratic turf. Take postal rates, for example. Last year, when Postmaster General Bill Henderson met with magazine publishers, he promised them that the proposed rate hike for magazines and newspapers would be in single digits. To be sure, the financial challenges facing magazine and newspaper publishers would not strike most people as compelling. But there are two important issues here.