When President Joe Biden was sworn into office on January 20, 2021, the U.S. government’s total public debt outstanding stood at $20,751.9 billion. The chart below shows who Uncle Sam borrowed all that money from on that date:

If you ask most people, the way the government is supposed to work is simple. The people identify a problem they want the government to fix. The government hires and deploys people to fix it, using tax dollars to pay them to get the job done. Problem solved! Except that’s not what happens. More...
Read More »

Government bureaucrats enjoy many benefits at taxpayer expense. One of those benefits is qualified immunity (or executive immunity), which exempts them from civil lawsuits for misdeeds on the job. Think of qualified immunity as serving as a protective veil for bureaucrats. It empowers government officials to engage in unethical behavior they otherwise would not....
Read More »

One year ago, Americans began getting far more first-hand experience with a viral epidemic than any wanted. One year later, the U.S. government has spent $6 trillion to provide relief from the coronavirus pandemic. Of that total, $37 billion was spent on Operation Warp Speed’s development of several vaccines. The vaccines are the main...
Read More »

The Congressional Budget Office has issued its 2021 Long-Term Budget Outlook months ahead of its usual schedule. The CBO forecasts that the publicly held portion of the national debt will grow to more than double the size of the U.S. economy during the next 30 years.

What happens when you put the foxes in charge of the henhouse? The answer to that riddle is nothing good, unless you’re one of the foxes. In economics, that question is built into a concept called regulatory capture, which is a bad thing. Here’s a good definition: Regulatory capture is an economic theory that...
Read More »

Californians have had to endure one of the strictest COVID-19 lockdown regimes in the United States. The state has imposed stay-at-home orders and curfews on its residents. It has also imposed draconian restrictions on how many businesses and other organizations in the state may operate. Only recently have some of those restrictions begun to...
Read More »

Nearly 100 years ago, one of the greatest addresses given by any President of the United States was delivered to an audience in Philadelphia, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the meeting in that city of the First Continental Congress. It was delivered on September 25, 1924. And though the address is...
Read More »

When it comes to picking people to serve in his administration, President Biden sets a very low bar for their capability and competence. Julie Su is the latest beneficiary of the president’s very low standards for public service. Politico‘s Eleanor Mueller and Katy Murphy report: President Joe Biden has offered Julie Su, who heads...
Read More »

California State Auditor Elaine M. Howle has slammed California’s Employment Development Department (EDD) for incompetence and mismanagement in a “scathing report” evaluating its performance during the coronavirus pandemic. The troubled agency was already in the hot seat for processing billions of fraudulent unemployment claims in what some call the “biggest fraud on taxpayers in...
Read More »