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 […]
read more...Not to be outdone by bureaucrats on the west coast who thwarted a dangerous lemonade trafficking operation, New Castle Councilman Michael Wolfensohn alertly called police to nab a dangerous duo peddling pernicious pies to passersby, and for profit no less. But fear not, authorities were quickly able to identify and disband the two baking bandits. […]
read more...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 […]
read more...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 […]
read more...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 […]
read more...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 […]
read more...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 […]
read more...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 […]
read more...I take second place to nobody in my view that government is horribly incompetent, but even I’m shocked by this story linked on Drudge. According to a news report out of Indiana, students who take the government’s driver’s ed class are four times more likely to crash than those who don’t take the classes. There […]
read more...I ran across two interesting lists showing how politicians at the state and local level are often just as bad as the ones in Washington, DC. First, Forbes has an article identifying the 10 states with the highest income tax rates. The top rate is a big deterrent to entrepreneurs and investors, but it’s also […]
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