When I wrote recently that the IRS was corrupt, venal, and despicable, I didn’t realize that I was bending over backwards to be overly nice. Every new revelation in the scandal shows that the agency is beyond salvage. Writing for Real Clear Markets, Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the Manhattan Institute is appropriately skeptical of the IRS. Coincidentally, Lerner’s computer crashed […]

Some statements are so lame that they now serve only as punch lines. Nobody, after all, would ever claim to a teacher that “the dog ate my homework.” Moreover, surely few if any people ever actually assert to bill collectors that “the check is in the mail.” And I have to imagine that no guy […]

No matter how much I pontificate about Washington corruption, there’s no way I can get across the true extent of the DC establishment’s self-serving behavior. Washington is rich because government is big and the beneficiaries of this system are enjoying their status as America’s new gilded class. It’s even gotten to the point where children and other family members also put […]

Last year, while writing about the sleazy and self-serving behavior at the IRS, I came up with a Theorem that explains day-to-day behavior in Washington. It might not be as pithy as Mitchell’s Law, and it doesn’t contain an important policy prescription like Mitchell’s Golden Rule, but it could be the motto of the federal […]

Remember Sandra Fluke, the 30-year old student who got her 15 minutes of fame last year by becoming the poster child for subsidized birth control? She’s fortunately faded away, but the issue is still with us because the courts are being asked to decide whether government has the right to coerce people into decisions that […]

At the risk of oversimplifying, there are two major challenges to overcome when you’re a pro-freedom policy wonk in Washington. The first challenge is getting people to connect the dots. They may understand that the job market is weak and they may understand that redistribution programs are overly generous, but can you help them understand […]

Want to know why – as shown by this map – most of America’s richest counties are part of the metropolitan DC region? Part of the answer is that federal bureaucrats are overpaid. Another part of the answer is that the Washington area is filled with consultants and contractors, and this shadow government workforce also […]

What do you do if you’re part of a government bureaucracy that has been caught red-handed engaged in sleazy, corrupt, and (almost surely) illegal targeting of Americans for their political beliefs? But before you answer, keep in mind that your bureaucracy also has been exposed for wasting huge amounts of money at lavish conferences. What’s […]

I did a video several years ago on the link between big government and big corruption, and I periodically revisit the issue by citing disgusting examples of sleaze and cronyism ranging from the Export-Import Bank to the racial spoils scam in Alaska. The folks at Learn Liberty also have a great video on this topic, […]

One of my very first blog posts was about the link between big government and big corruption. For the rest of my life, I can now cite the Obamacare travesty as an example. Here’s some of what Tim Carney wrote for the Washington Examiner. Chief Justice John Roberts’ judicial sleight of hand, transforming Obamacare’s mandate […]