Since I’m involuntarily forced to finance National Public Radio, I guess I should be happy that free-market views occasionally are allowed on air. Click here to listen to a segment where I talk about earmarks, “phonemarks,” and special interest corruption in Washington. The risky part of a pre-recorded interview is that you never know what […]

The South Los Angelos City Council is not satisfied with the culinary choices of the people of South Los Angelos. While consumers have been voting one way with their wallets, the City Council has voted to use government force to override their preferences. How many fast food eateries does one area really need? The Los […]

Management of roads used to be the business of local governments – that is, until the federal government dangled its grant money over the states as leverage.  Now, thanks to this usurpation of authority, we have stories like this: …[T]he Federal Highway Administration is ordering all local governments — from the tiniest towns to the […]

In the grand scheme, I realize red-light cameras are not very important, but I was absolutely delighted to see that Houston voters approved a referendum to stop the city from using these devices. Red-light cameras should be called revenue cameras because local governments almost always use them to collect more money rather than to promote […]

I’ve avoided this topic in recent weeks because it’s too depressing, but this story is too outrageous to ignore. The County of Los Angeles has 199 bureaucrats who “earned” more than $250,000 last year. According to Census Bureau data for 2008, the median household income in the county was 55,000, Here’s a blurb from the […]

This news report demonstrates the lengths to which bureaucrats will go to pick your pocket.  It doesn’t matter if your taxes have already ostensibly paid for government services, many local governments are now double taxing for the use of emergency services, even if they never get out of their vehicle to actually help you. Cary […]

Advocates of big government think it is appropriate for the state to redistribute wealth out of a sense of fairness.  They usually claim to want some form of taking from the wealthy to give to the poor.  But the practice of redistribution is actually quite different.  In reality, redistributive states take from those without political […]

Here’s a very disturbing story I saw on Instapundit. A cop arrested a woman for the supposed crime of not getting off her own front porch. Apparently, the cop didn’t like the fact that she was observing – and perhaps even filming on her cell phone camera – a traffic stop. If there is any […]

Here’s another remarkable story illustrating the incompetence of government. A bureaucrat in Norfolk, VA, got paid for 12 years (including benefits) without ever showing up for work. Depending on the agency, this may actually have been a good thing (I wish IRS bureaucrats did this), but it certainly shows how taxpayer money gets wasted when […]