Avoiding euphemism is a fun idea.
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https://www.wsj.com/opinion/war-department-is-a-good-start-e8b7f360?st=gMuefN&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
‘War Department’ Is a Good Start
Let’s avoid euphemism and give every agency of government an honest name.
ET
President Trump signed an executive order on Friday to rebrand the Defense Department as the War Department, because, as he said earlier, “it just sounded better.” I’m OK with that. Like the lying Ministry of Truth of “1984,” our doublespeak naming conventions—Affordable Care Act, equity—often hide the real functions of government actions. But why stop with Defense? Tell the truth.
Some name changes are easy: the last administration’s Social Justice Department. The Federal Trade Constriction Commission. Let’s turn three-letter agencies into four-word agencies.
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Start with the Commerce Department, better labeled as the Department of Corporate Extortion. Intel is giving up nearly 10% of its equity to Uncle Sam. Rare-earth extractor MP Materials sold the Pentagon a 15% stake. Nvidia and AMD must now pay a 15% export tax to sell advanced chips in China. U.S. Steel handed over a golden share.
In February, Apple announced $500 billion in U.S. investments, and then in April miraculously escaped reciprocal tariffs on iPhones. Apple added another $100 billion in U.S. investment in August. This smells like support-and-extort capitalism (I should trademark that!), with shares plus tariff gains potentially destined for a Sovereign Wealth Slush Fund. Where does it end?
“We have given tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars to universities for them to do research,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick recently said about patents. “If we give them the money, don’t you think it’s fair that the United States of America, and the taxpayers who funded it, get a piece of that?” Well, there is the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 that explicitly allows universities and others to own their federally funded inventions. Also, stop giving them money! There are other ways to pay for basic research. Preorder drugs or chips. Remember the aptly named Operation Warp Speed?
Treasury should become the Dollar Printing Like Confetti Department. In 1971 an ounce of gold cost $35—now it’s more than $3,600. Penny-postcard stamps cost 61 cents. That’s a lot of confetti. Complicit is the Federal Reserve, better named the Federal Preserve for Economic Ph.D.s. Now Mr. Trump wants to use them as the interest rate-slashing Federal Punch Bowl Filler. Watch your wallet. And given how many revisions we see on jobs data, let’s call the Bureau of Labor Statistics the Wild A— Guessing Gang.
No one really knows what the Agriculture Department does. I suggest a new name: the High-Fructose Corn Syrup Subsidizer. These sugars are jammed into cheap, ultraprocessed foods and distributed via electronic benefit transfers—sorry, food stamps—with the subsequent girth growth treated with Ozempic and Wegovy. Farmers and pharma win at the expense of eaters.
Health and Human Services might become the Class Action Setup Faction. Former personal-injury practitioner Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the head of HHS. After canceling $500 million in funding for vaccines to prevent bird flu and the like, he recently declared that “mRNA technology poses more risks than benefits for these respiratory viruses.” Class-action lawyers are salivating.
The Education Department, which apparently is still around, is better as the Remedial Instructor Full Employment group. English teachers might suggest probity and veracity in naming conventions. Or not. More than half of Americans have literacy below a sixth-grade level. There are 30 schools in Illinois with zero students reading at grade level. Alternatively, we could call it the Raise College Tuition Annually Department, done effectively by the federal guarantee of student loans.
Can you guess these? The Union Perpetuation Society. The Vice Squad. Green Boondoggles “R” Us. The Conflicts Keep Us Employed Department. The Progress Inhibiting Agency. (Labor Department; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Energy Department; State Department; Environmental Protection Agency.)
The Federal Bureau of Investigation could be known as the Presidential Election Manipulation Organization. And the Central Intelligence Agency is clearly the Streaming TV Plot Development writers room. Netflix needs them. We need to compete against the British shows about MI5 and MI6. America first! And please, please, rename Congress the Backbiting and Stagnation Club.
What about the Postal Service? Easy. The Slow Expensive Obsolete Monopoly. For those under 35, people used to drop handwritten things called letters into steel boxes, to be delivered by snappily dressed government employees. In a baffling move, the post office sponsored a Tour de France cycling team. Maybe the only honest part was aligning themselves with people who take three weeks to cross a region the size of Texas.
President Trump promised to cut government. A congressional rescission cut $9 billion—no more taxpayer funding for National Biased Radio. With a “pocket rescission,” President Trump hopes to cut another $4.9 billion in foreign aid. More like pocket change. If we honestly name government departments, maybe the public will get behind real cuts. I’d shrink or close most of them. That sounds better.
Write to kessler@wsj.com.
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