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Archive for April, 2015

The Unchanging Incentives of Bureaucrats


Tuesday April 28th, 2015   •   Posted by Craig Eyermann at 7:59am PDT   •   0 Comments

It has been nearly a year since we first weighed in on the Veterans Affairs (VA) scandal. In that post, we discussed how incentives for bonuses led federal employees and managers to implement a bizarre rationing scheme that effectively denied timely medical treatment to former American military personnel by shunting them onto secret waiting lists…
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Government Raisin Ransacking


Friday April 24th, 2015   •   Posted by K. Lloyd Billingsley at 8:50am PDT   •   2 Comments

“Central planning was thought to work very well in 1937,” observes U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, “and Russia tried it for a long time.” So did the United States, through schemes such as the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937. Authorized by Congress during the New Deal, the Act set up cooperative boards…
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The Tax Hikes of Obamacare


Friday April 24th, 2015   •   Posted by Craig Eyermann at 7:12am PDT   •   0 Comments

Because we mentioned the new taxes imposed by the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. “Obamacare”) in a recent article, we thought we ought to share the Heritage Foundation’s visualization of how its $800 billion worth of new taxes are being phased in over the 10 years from 2013 through 2022: The chart above is part…
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The Deficit Stops Shrinking


Tuesday April 21st, 2015   •   Posted by Craig Eyermann at 8:12am PDT   •   2 Comments

While the U.S. government’s 2015 fiscal year is now half over, the days of a shrinking budget deficit now also appear to be over as well. The Washington Examiner‘s Joseph Lawler reports: The federal budget deficit through the first half of fiscal year 2015 totaled $430 billion, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday, $17…
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Not Getting the Job Done


Friday April 17th, 2015   •   Posted by Craig Eyermann at 6:29am PDT   •   0 Comments

CBS MarketWatch’s Brett Arends recently featured a number of “brain-busters,” in a Question & Answer format, related to findings that the U.S. Government Accountability Office has made regarding waste, duplication, and inefficiencies in the federal government’s operations. We reviewed each of the items and selected those that fit into a special category, which we’ll…
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Tax Freedom Day Delayed in 2015


Tuesday April 14th, 2015   •   Posted by Craig Eyermann at 6:41am PDT   •   0 Comments

In the United States, Tax Day, April 15, marks the deadline for Americans to file their income tax returns for what they earned in the previous calendar year. Tax Freedom Day, however, marks the day after which the average American begins earning money that he or she can spend on things other than taxes,…
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State Employee Scam Burns Taxpayers


Monday April 13th, 2015   •   Posted by K. Lloyd Billingsley at 8:53am PDT   •   0 Comments

In California, prodigious waste of taxpayer dollars is inherent in the system but politicians look the other way and few in the old-line establishment media are watching. One notable exception is Jon Ortiz of the Sacramento Bee, co-author with Jim Miller of “The Public Eye” watchdog report headlined “Audit: California departments break law, game…
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The Tax Code Grows Bigger


Friday April 10th, 2015   •   Posted by Craig Eyermann at 10:43am PDT   •   2 Comments

Over the past decade, Wolters Kluwer, the publishers of the CCH Standard Federal Tax Reporter, a leading publication for tax professionals that summarizes the administrative guidance and judicial decisions issued under each section of the U.S. tax code, has created an infographic to convey just how many pages it takes to explain the nation’s…
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Bureaucrats Cheating Uncle Sam


Tuesday April 7th, 2015   •   Posted by Craig Eyermann at 3:53pm PDT   •   2 Comments

Now that we’re well into tax season, we thought this would be a good time for a tax cheat edition of our ongoing “Bureaucrats Behaving Badly” series! Today’s episode features the unfortunate situation where both current and retired employees of the U.S. federal government aren’t paying the taxes they owe to the U.S. government….
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Financial Repression


Friday April 3rd, 2015   •   Posted by Craig Eyermann at 10:00am PDT   •   0 Comments

After a nation’s government has racked up far more debt than it can ever hope to pay back, what options does it have to climb out of the hole it dug for itself? After reviewing a new academic paper by Carmen Reinhart and M. Belen Sbrancia, The Liquidation of Debt, former Drexel University finance…
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