It’s not too surprising to learn that spending money on “high-speed” rail is foolish. And it’s hardly a revelation to learn that politicians over-promise and under-deliver when they push through these boondoggles. My Cato colleague, Randall O’Toole, has written extensively about these money-losing white-elephant projects. But it’s not exactly shocking news that libertarians would resist […]

There are very serious ways to save huge amounts of money from the defense budget, largely by making smarter choices about defining America’s national security. This obviously involves high-profile decisions about whether it is smart to engage in nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan. But it also involves what seem to be “gimme” choices about whether […]

I’ve been writing too much about the Ryan budget, the government shutdown, and other fiscal policy issues. Time for some wholesome politician bashing. But I’m not going to pick on the U.S. Congress, which is one of my favorite targets. Instead, we’re going to cross the ocean and mock the political elite of the European […]

This is the type of story that makes me sick to my stomach. I’ve already commented on how I don’t like redistribution from rich to poor, but I really, really hate redistribution from poor to rich. And that’s exactly what happens when taxpayers subsidize the presidential nominating conventions of the two big political parties. Republicans […]

Dana Milbank is a snarky leftist who writes for the Washington Post, but I have to give him credit for an amusing column today about the new big-brother diet guidelines from our incompetent federal government. Here are a few excerpts. In the late 1970s, before the government began telling us what to eat, 15 percent […]

The contest between the United States and Europe for dumb public policy is always hard to judge. The Europeans tend to make more policy mistakes, though Obama certainly is giving them some stiff competition. America, by contrast, is prone to really inane bouts of political correctness. But perhaps the Europeans are catching up in that […]

I’ve already posted two other cartoons on this issue (here and here), but can’t resist posting another. As with much humor, this cartoon cleverly captures the underlying reality. In this case, the politicians want a value-added tax so we pay more to finance their excesses.

When politicians and bureaucrats spend our money, they rarely demonstrate any concern about waste and fraud. Why be conscientious, after all, if you’re spending other people’s money – especially if your real goal is to buy votes and get campaign contributions by providing unearned wealth to well-connected insiders? I’ve always been more concerned about the […]

I saw a story linked on Instapundit, but it really belonged on The Onion. Apparently, our tax dollars are being used to fund grief counseling for congressional staffers who will lose their jobs in January because of the elections. Can you think of a better example than this of how Washington is screwed up? This […]

In a new video released today by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation (CF&P), Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute explains that the $100 million spent each year to subsidize the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is a terrible deal for American taxpayers.