The government and industry is awash with this sort of thing now.  My wife ran into a similiar situation in the construction industry.  You had people who were part of the “Quality Control” branch which generated no work product but required all the product generators to comply with their requirements.  The problem is that all the OSHA regs that they held you to were completely open to interpetation.  In the end when her company laid everyone off they were the first to go because they were really worthless. 

Where I am working I am seeing the same sort of thing.  They have hired whole branches of people for “Quality Assurance”.  They use OSHA rules and government regs as a billy club to get you to hop to for them.  They don’t generate a product, but they do eat up to 40% of everyone elses time dealing with their stuff.  It just a waste of money and time and I think is killing US productivity.

I have heard that the US military has had two particular situations in the past where the Drill and Ceremony outweighed the combat effectiveness.  The first time was at the beginning of the US Civil War and the Second Time was the beginning of WWII.  In both times the military was embarrassed (US Army getting overrun just miles from the Capital and US Navy getting blown up in Pearl Harbor), and the only solution was to fire all the generals responsible and get a bunch of field officers running the show.  So far, nothing as drastic has happened, but when it does (and I hope it does not happen) the change will be profound.