Oakland politicans have created a fiscal crisis by spending too much money. This has caused strife with the police union according to a San Francisco paper. The details of the fight are not very remarkable, but I was stunned to read that the average compensation for a cop is $188,000 per year. I have plenty of […]

Once upon a time the government had a vast scrap yard in the middle of a desert. Congress said, “Someone may steal from it at night.” So they created a night watchman position and hired a person for the job. Then Congress said, “How does the watchman do his job without instruction?” So they created […]

I certainly don’t think public policy should be based on polling data, but I always am happy when the American people are on the right side of an issue since it increases the possibility of good outcomes in Washington. Here are some very encouraging results from a Rasmussen poll on taxes. The latest Rasmussen Reports […]

The New York Times has a story about the budget debacle in Illinois, which is a classic case of a state with too much government and too many overpaid bureaucrats. Other than being an example of what not to do, the most interesting aspect of what’s happening in Illinois is trying to guess whether it […]

If misery loves company, then American and English taxpayers can enjoy a bonding experience after reading this story about excessive pay for bureaucrats in Brussels. According to the Daily Telegraph, at least 1,000 (and probably more than 2,000) of these euro-crats earn more than the U.K. Prime Minster.  More than one thousand EU officials earn more […]

John Derbyshire of National Review has an interesting article on bureaucratic harassment of private business. He begins with a personal story of something that happened when he first came to the United States and was working at a food-preparation company: The first federal regulator I ever knew was a fellow named Ernie. …Ernie was a power […]

TARP was awful and the GM-Chrysler bailout was terrible, but those wretched pieces of legislation would be surpassed by something even more reprehensible if politicians sign on to this terrible idea to bail out the bloated pension plans of state and local government bureaucrats. If this happens, I hope taxpayers respond with massive civil disobedience […]

Here’s some grim news I saw linked to on NRO. Obama wants to lower the bar and reduce the competency of people working in the federal bureaucracy. To be sure, I doubt the “knowledge skills and ability essays” actually produced quality bureaucrats, but I nonetheless suspect this new step will make the bureaucracy an even bigger burden […]