The grand theme of the 2016 presidential election is that voters are flocking to candidates who oppose the "Establishment."  The champions of this crusadecome from everywhere: Rand Paul, Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, and Donald Trump, just to name a few.  But is anyone really running against the real Establishment in America?  Surely the Establishment means those protected elitists who run, without accountability, America.  So who are these folks?

Big Academia ought to top the list.  Hillary and Bernie are both falling over themselves to promise free college educations, but neither is willing to address why poor and middle-class families have to mortgage their futures for the dubious benefit of a college degree.  The professorial class lives like medieval nobility, condescending occasionally and conspicuously to do a bit of work and extracting a great price for these lame efforts.

Why not, instead of subsidizing Big Academia, create a way for anyone of any age to acquire by testing almost any college degree he might seek?  Why not also pay the huge pool of unemployed older Americans who have no money, lots of time, and a life of practical experience to educate, at a cost much less than a college credit hour, any willing students?  Give hope, in one reform, to those facing the gargantuan cost of a college education with a very cheap alternative, and give meaningful jobs to all those unemployed Americans who have worked in truly productive jobs.

Big Bureaucracy ought to be next on the list.  Consider the obscenity of Veterans Administration executives getting tens of millions in bonuses while they preside over the most criminally neglectful agency in government.  Consider the IRS executives who conveniently destroy every record of their misconduct.  Consider the State Department bureaucrats who cannot produce, even under court order, emails that are the property of the people.

Why not reform the Civil Service System so that any employee can be fired at any time, while replacements can be hired only through the merit system, which would keep the spoils systems dead and make every civil servant an at-will employee?  Why not – why in Heaven's name not – abolish every single independent regulatory agency as well, so that the law-making now done by these shadowy entities must be done, instead, by Congress and so that every action of these agencies, all of which are now effectively immune to sanction, would be owned politically by the president?

Big Law is at least as bad as the prior two elements of the Establishment.  When Chris Christie in the Republican debate said that the Kentucky court clerk must "obey the law," he revealed the grim reality that judges have unconstitutionally arrogated to themselves a power never given to them to make laws.  When prosecutors indict those who reveal the crimes of Planned Parenthood while ignoring those sellers of baby parts, then the rottenness of the legal system ought to be clear for all to see. 

Why not pass a federal statute removing from all federal courts the subject matter jurisdiction to legislate in any way and make all public prosecutors personally liable for any bias in indicting or prosecuting individuals or organizations for political reasons?  Why not create a process through which citizens by petition could convene a federal grand jury and also appoint a special federal prosecutor, independent of the Executive Branch, to prosecute any grand jury indictments?

Finally, why is no one running against Big Washington?  The wealthiest part of America, the part that luxuriates in prosperity while the rest of the land suffers, is the environs of Washington.  While part of the answer is to remove power from the federal government, another part is to physically move federal offices and agencies throughout the nation so that the jobs and influence of the federal government can be shared by the rest of America.  The next president might promise to have his federal residence in New Mexico, for example, and the next Congress might elect to meet in Wichita.  The physical diffusion of federal administration would not only spread the rich lard of federal costs back to those regions that pay the taxes, but also compel federal gnomes to think more like real Americans.

Everyone claims to be running on our behalf against the Establishment.  What if some candidate actually did that?  He could win a true mandate to really shake up the Establishment and produce the real and great reforms our nation needs.