The internal revenue code is a monstrous nightmare of special-interest loopholes and class-warfare penalties, but at least is generates some interesting stories. Here’s a report from Bloomgberg about a court deciding that the costs of switching from a man to a woman are tax deductible. Since I’m not a leftist, I’m not going to make the […]

No left-winger to debate in this appearance.

The political crowd in Washington is looking to put together a so-called jobs bill, but even when politicians include tax cuts, they choose the wrong approach.

For the fourth day in a row, the federal government is shut down because of snow. This causes me mixed feelings. Because federal workers already are so vastly overpaid, part of me is irritated that they are getting what are, for all intents and purposes, extra vacation days. On the other hand, isn’t it better […]

The bloodsuckers and leeches in the U.K. government are better than their counterparts in the United States. Unlike the American revenue-estimating system, which assumes higher tax rates raise revenue, the British bureaucracy admits that the new 50 percent tax rate will raise very little revenue. The UK-based Times reports: High earners will cost the public purse […]

Here’s another depressing column about how government workers are getting showered with high pay and lavish benefits while people in the productive sector of the economy are bearing the economic pain of financing a bloated welfare state: …government unionized workers often have gold-plated health benefits packages that are among the most expensive in America. Several years […]

 Paul Light of New York University has a column in the Washington Post that acknowledges an ongoing pattern of incompetence by the federal government. He admits that the bureaucracy is too big. He notes that bureaucratic success is unrelated to merit and that it is well nigh impossible to fire incompetent staff. And he also […]

I’m going to have to stop this series soon because it is getting too depressing. This Wall Street Journal column contains more surprising data, including the fact that pension costs for California bureaucrats jumped by 2000 percent in just one decade (revenues rose by 24 percent in the same period). The most shocking factoid, though, […]

Politicians in Washington have come up with something far more impressive than turning lead into gold or water into wine. Using self-serving budget rules, they can increase the burden of government spending and say they are cutting taxes instead. This bit of legerdemain is made possible, thanks to the convolutions of the personal income tax, […]

Proponents of sound science and economic growth certainly have many reasons to be happy. The global-warming crowd has been exposed as a bunch of fraudsters, the Copenhagen “climate change” summit collapsed in failure, and there now appears to be no chance that the US Senate will pass legislation to cripple the American economy. But while […]