I must not be very bright. Even after decades of experience in Washington, I still have this naive belief that bureaucrats and politicians will occasionally do the right thing – even if for no other reason other than to cover their rear ends after being caught doing something flagrantly wasteful and reprehensible. So when Senator […]

The federal government fires so few of it’s workers that bureaucrats at a number of agencies are more likely to die in office than get a pink slip: Death — rather than poor performance, misconduct or layoffs — is the primary threat to job security at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Small Business Administration, the […]

Walter Williams has pointed out on many occasions that many government programs and initiatives exist primarily for the benefit of the bureaucracy, and he coined the phrase “poverty pimps” to describe the folks who get comfortable government jobs to operate programs that don’t help – and often hurt – disadvantaged populations. We may need a […]

Or is it another example of the “wussification of America?” I don’t know how to classify this story, other than it is a sad commentary on what is happening to America. Bureaucrats in Maryland, who obviously have too much time on their hands, are issuing rules governing sunscreen on summer camps. Have we really reached […]

Regular readers know that I don’t have high regard for government. I’m willing to believe just about anything bad about politicians and bureaucrats, and I am not the least bit surprised when I hear horror stories about counterproductive government programs riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse. So you can imagine that it takes something truly […]

I’ve largely stopped beating up on the TSA because it seems like a dog-bites-man or sun-rises-in-the-east issue. Do we really learn anything by repetitively discussing the stupidity on one bureaucracy? But sometimes the idiocy reaches such an extreme level that it can’t be ignored. Here are the nauseating details of how TSA bureaucrats confiscated a […]

I used to have lots of posts about TSA inefficiency and stupidity, but then I got discouraged and stopped. It seemed pointless to discuss the issue when there was no hope for improvement. I still think that’s the case, at least so long as Obama is in the White House and acting as a toady […]

What’s the difference between a real job and working for the government? I used the think the answer was that bureaucrats are overpaid, usually for being in positions that shouldn’t even exist. Then I thought the difference was that bureaucrats got lavish benefits, about four times as much as people in the productive sector of […]

I’ve had dozens of posts about overpaid bureaucrats. Indeed, I’ve largely stopped blogging about the topic because it is so depressing to constantly be reminded about how a privileged class of people is manipulating the system to coercively obtain undeserved compensation from their less-fortunate neighbors. But every so often I see a story which cries […]

Let’s start in Washington, where USA Today reports that there are “at least 17,828 federal employees whose annualized salaries totaled $180,000 or more in September 2010.” That’s rather distressing news for taxpayers, but these excerpts from the story provide additional reason for us to be upset. …their ranks soared from the 805 with annualized salaries […]