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...
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California Governor Gavin Newsom’s diminished dream of connecting the city of Merced (population 83,964) to Bakersfield (population 390,233) has hit a snag. Several steel cables in a 636-foot-long bridge built to support construction of the project have corroded and snapped, forcing a new work stoppage on the years-long delayed project.
Proving once again that federal bureaucrats who do little other than spend trillions of dollars are really bad at it, the Government Accountability Office has found that the IRS sent $1.4 billion in coronavirus emergency relief payments to 1.1 million dead Americans. That’s an average of $1,272 for every deceased American who was posthumously...
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Why have so many politicians and bureaucrats responded to the coronavirus pandemic by shutting down so much commerce that millions of Americans have been thrown out of work? Economist John Cochrane answers that question and doesn’t mince words in describing the government failure that is creating the coronavirus recession.
Before the coronavirus pandemic and the response to it triggered an economic meltdown, the U.S. federal government was planning to spend nearly $4.8 trillion in its 2020 fiscal year. Last week, President Trump signed a $2.3 trillion relief package aimed at mitigating an economic disaster. How the government will be spending such a gargantuan...
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California’s State Controller, Betty Yee, is responsible for paying each of the state’s bills. Unfortunately for Californians, she may have just bought the state a costly lawsuit because she has refused to account for any of the 49 million checks her office writes each year, covering $320 billion in payments.
If the president ever gets around to slimming down the bloated federal government, FEMA would be a good place to start.
A recent Washington Post article on the latest scandal at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs sheds light on how health care would work under a government-run single-payer system.
Executive immunity shields, not just the bureaucrats, but can also their entire departments from being held truly accountable.
California’s online community college program succeeds in bulking up the bureaucracy and rewarding political cronies.
