“Look, s— happens.” That was California governor Jerry Brown, a former candidate for President of the United States, responding to reports of faulty bolts and rods on the new span of the Bay Bridge linking Oakland and San Francisco. The governor didn’t get into why, exactly, all that happened, but it’s worth a look….
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On May 17 outgoing IRS boss Steven Miller – president Obama fired him but he was going to resign anyway – testified to the House Ways and Means Committee about his agency’s campaign to target conservative groups seeking non-profit status. Mr. Miller contended that he did not mislead Congress or the American people. He…
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On this Sunday, May 19, 2013, the U.S. federal government will metaphorically max out its credit card. Jeffrey Sparshott of the Wall Street Journal‘s Real Time Economics blog reports: The U.S. government will bump up against the federal debt limit this weekend, though a series of emergency steps will allow it to continue paying…
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The federal government is obfuscating about Benghazi and deploying the IRS against groups less than worshipful of government. As if that were not enough, the Justice Department is seizing the phone records of Associated Press reporters, which the AP calls a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” on press freedom. Ben Wizner of the ACLU called…
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Has the U.S. government become too vast for the President to be accountable for the misconduct of its bureaucrats? Believe it or not, that’s the argument being advanced by President Obama’s former campaign manager David Axelrod for the purpose of defending the President in the abuse of power scandals now engulfing his administration. http://youtu.be/mhd6XLbbtIY…
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The Internal Revenue Service has been targeting conservative groups but the powerful federal agency was not content with abuse of groups with “tea party” and “patriot” in their names. As the Wall Street Journal noted, the IRS was acting in a highly inclusive manner, giving extra scrutiny to groups seeking to “make America a…
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For ten years the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has been dropping off bags of money for Afghan president Hamid Karzai, who is grateful for the monthly cash deliveries. The revelation sparked a protest from Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, who told the New York Times “I thought we were trying to clean up waste,…
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There’s a long-standing joke among politicians, which kind of goes along the following line: “You had better not threaten my power, or else I’ll set the IRS on you!” Even President Obama has told a version of this joke: Unfortunately, the people and managers who staff the bureaucracy of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS),…
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In 1978, California voters passed Proposition 13, which set property taxes at 1 percent of purchase price and limited increases in assessed value to 2 percent. Only when the property was sold could the property be reassessed to market value. Proposition 13 allows businesses to avoid such reassessment if no single entity acquires majority…
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“It was always going to be difficult to implement Obamacare,” explains columnist David Brooks, “but even fervent supporters of the law admit that things are going worse than expected.” Now how could that be? Things got off to a bad start “because the Obama administration didn’t want to release unpopular rules before the election.”…
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