@josh The revenge for breaking a social contract doesn't have to use the same bad techniques back. Taking Darth Pumpkin's graffiti off the Kennedy Centre could be done with an act of a future Congress instead of a unitarily executive fiat, for an example. (And I would really hope for the future Congress to flesh out a clear framework for agency independence for future reference.)

This is, of course, not a uniquely American problem. While European governments have, over time, grown the same way, the relatively frequent revolutions and other governmental reorgnisations have led to a number of originally quasi-independent agencies become parts of governmental cores, with a fairly common quasi-independency technique now being a separation between the political control personnel and the career civil servant personnel, typically headed by somebody with a title like a 'chancellor'. UK has had such a long time without revolutions that it now has a peculiar "quango" situation, however; it's rather messy, but really worth looking into if you care about different ways to approximate #GoodGovernance.

Oh, and throughout the Western world, the type of organisations with governmental recognition, some regulatory power, and the least direct governmental control are the descendants of old-time Zunfts or Guilds: professional self-governance bodies such as medical associations and bar associations. Also worth keeping in mind when you read about Florida's new effort to try and reduce the power of the state bar association, which is strongly protected against government take-over.

Curiously, while universities used to have self-governing powers rivalling those of the Great Zunfts in the mediæval times and well into 1800s, in some places even into 1900s, they have largely been stripped of them over the twentieth century, with the trend sharply accelerating after ca. 1960 or so.

@BernieDoesIt