Trying to open a new business can be a massive and costly headache.

Apparently, a lot of us are forgetting to take back the coins we keep tossing in those little plastic bins at the airport: Airline passengers left more than $400,000 at airport security checkpoints operated by the Transportation Security Administration in 2011. TSA found $409,085.56 in spare change last year that was unclaimed by passengers, according [...]

From Europe, a case of regulation gone nuts.

You really can’t make things like this up: “At 1:00 PM, the Vice President will attend a meeting of the Government Accountability and Transparency Board in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. At 2:30 PM, the Vice President will meet with representatives of the National Sheriffs’ Association in the Roosevelt Room. These meetings are closed press.“ [...]

Rick Perry is out with a plan to reform Washington. Mostly, it’s just a bunch of gimmicks.

The real problems at Penn State aren’t just going away now that Joe Paterno is gone.

You may recall last month when the Justice Department’s Inspector General released a report claiming that DOJ officials had been wasting money on outside seminars, including the now famous $16 muffins and $32 box of Cracker Jacks. While outrageous at first glance, the report didn’t really seem to stand up to scrutiny, and even the [...]

The people at Hilton have weighed in on those $16 muffins that the Department of Justice supposedly paid for: Stung by an audit report this week that highlighted “$16 muffins” at a conference at the Capital Hilton in Washington, the hotel chain is fighting back, insisting the pricey pastries were not that expensive.. Hilton Worldwide [...]

It’s a small part of the Federal Budget, but this is likely to be an example of government waste that’s remembered for a long time: The federal government pays out millions of dollars to dead people each year — including deceased retired federal workers, according to a new report. In the past five years, the [...]

It turns out DOJ didn’t have $16 muffins after all–they were just charged $16 for each muffin.

The DOJ needs to go on a low-carb diet.

We are being warned once again that the Postal Service is on the verge of financial collapse. There really is only one solution.

Not surprisingly, people still order that big juicy cheeseburger even after being told it contains over 1,000 calories.

Arguments for the Ryan Plan that characterize it as being “against bureaucracy” are apparently oblivious to the fact that private health insurance is full of bureaucracy.

Yes, bureaucracies can be annoying, but they are also vital for modern society.

TSA screeners will now have the right to join a union. Or at least a union that can’t actually negotiate much of anything.

John Tierny notes that the Kennedy family has been blocking access to Robert Kennedy’s official papers from his time as a public servant. But so far, nobody has been able to see this trove of documentary resources about the foreign-policy intrigues and governmental activities of a half-century ago. Why not? Because Robert Kennedy’s family controls [...]

We’re probably just one big scare away from mandatory full-body scans.

Former car czar Steve Rattner sat down with Ezra Klein to whine about how the American people and its Congress wouldn’t just turn over the whole economy to unelected experts such as himself.

According to health inspectors in Portland, Oregon, this little girl is potentially a threat to your health and safety.

Paul Krugman’s Medicare projections don’t line up with what the actuaries are telling us.

President Obama was shocked –SHOCKED! — to learn that bureaucracy and contracting hassles delay construction projects.

Some cops apparently still haven’t figured out that it’s legal to take pictures in public places — even of cops.

Should Obama waive restrictions on international shipping, as Bush did during Katrina? It’s more complicated than you may think.

Fatherhood.gov, the website Obama launched to some criticism yesterday, actually has its roots in the Bush Administration and has a predecessor dating to 2000.

President Obama’s decision to suspend drilling in the Gulf of Mexico for six months in the interests of public safety may actually have the opposite effect, reports NPR’s John Ydstie. Ken Arnold, one of the engineers called on by the department to help strengthen safety standards after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded April 20, says [...]

So, we’re in Minnesota for a wedding. Since we live in the DC suburbs and the wife and I need to be back at work Monday, that means flying and enduring the depredations of airport security and being herded about a jetliner like cattle. While we’re not such frequent fliers that we’re awaiting our meeting [...]

Peter Suderman cites a “study” showing that 35 million Americans who are currently insured could lose their coverage and be forced into the government pool. A number of big employers are already considering dropping employee coverage, and a new study from former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Cameron Smith suggests that, depending on [...]

Reacting to news that Minerals Management Service Director Elizabeth Birnbaum — who was ostensibly charged with regulating drilling in the Gulf of Mexico — has been fired, Dave Schuler offers a sucker bet: Prediction: the MMS will be abolished and its responsibilities split among several other agencies. Most of the same people will remain in [...]

Private pays share of personal income has shrunk to its lowest historical level. Private wages. A record-low 41.9% of the nation’s personal income came from private wages and salaries in the first quarter, down from 44.6% when the recession began in December 2007. The article also points out that the trend is not sustainable. The [...]

If you’re still around in 2020, the Census Bureau hopes to be able to give you the option of responding electronically: Happy Tuesday! How will Americans use the Internet in 2020? Will we all use cell phones? Will we still have snail mail? A team of experts at the U.S. Census Bureau is asking those [...]

It is unsurprising given the melt down in the financial sector that politicians are looking at “reforming” financial regulations. To most people the general idea of regulatory reform should be to prevent conditions form coming about that lead to the meltdown and thereby prevent further bailouts. Problem is it is looking like the reform in [...]

Radley Balko “got a little more libertarian” yesterday after a frustrating experience with his income taxes.  Essentially, his e-file was rejected because of an invalid Social Security number which wasn’t invalid at all, the Social Security office wouldn’t help him by phone, and the office was closed by the time he got there.  And he [...]

It should come as a surprise to no one familiar with how our government works that the Department of Homeland Security employs more contractors than civil servants.  Excepting, of course, Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins. The Department of Homeland Security has more contractors working for it than full-time employees, a situation two members of Congress [...]

Like Ezra Klein, I was surprised to read that “one in eight Americans” are now getting food stamps. But, reading Jason Deparle and Robert Gebeldoff‘s feature, it’s not hard to see why:  We’re actively recruiting people to sign up! A decade ago, New York City officials were so reluctant to give out food stamps, they [...]

Former UN Ambassador John Bolton argues that we need to get the bureaucracy out of intelligence if we are to adequately assess the threats facing the country. Although the U.S. intelligence community (IC) has been stung by failures relating to the Christmas terrorist attack, these failures are symptomatic of far larger problems. In analyzing the [...]

In the thread discussing the idiotic new TSA guidelines issued in overreaction to the Detroit terror plot, longtime commenter DC Loser observes, As a lifelong civil servant, anytime you create a large bureaucracy to deal with a specific problem, it is not in the interest of said bureaucracy for the root problem to go away. [...]

And be done with it for God’s sake. UPDATE (James Joyner):  An excerpt from the story for those who can’t click through or in case the story goes away: Matthew Freeman is struggling to move on with his life, six years after being convicted of having sex with a high school girlfriend who was one [...]

Are you a terrorist who would like to blow up an airliner but confused about how best to elude screening?  Well, luckily for you, the Transportation Security Administration has published a How To manual to answer all your questions. In a massive security breach, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) inadvertently posted online its airport screening [...]

New York City’s ban on food cooked with transfats is forcing shelters to throw out food donated to homeless shelters. When a small church comes to the Bowery Mission bearing fried chicken with trans fat, unwittingly breaking the law, they’re told “thank you.” Then workers quietly chuck the food, mission director Tom Bastile said. “It’s [...]

Josh Marshall points me to a story by WaPo’s Dan Eggen that sheds light on a little-known aspect of how Washington works: Hundreds, if not thousands, of lobbyists are likely to be ejected from federal advisory panels as part of a little-noticed initiative by the Obama administration to curb K Street’s influence in Washington, according [...]

Amanda Carpenter broke the news Tuesday that “The government Web site that promised to show exactly where the $787 billion in stimulus spending was going to ‘create or save’ jobs is allocating billions of tax dollars to hundreds of congressional districts that don’t exist.” Researchers at the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity found [...]

Well looks like the entire town of New London, Conn. is going to get screwed by Pfizer. “Look what they did,” Mr. Cristofaro said on Thursday. “They stole our home for economic development. It was all for Pfizer, and now they get up and walk away.” That sentiment has been echoing around New London since [...]

The Urban Institute’s Eugene Stuerle is not very happy with the health care expansion legislation that is likely to be passed into law. Stuerle argues that the legislation violates the standards of equal justice. Of course, families in this income bracket pay far more than $14,700 for health care. They get hit by uninsured expenses [...]

Reason‘s Nick Gillespie has a bit of fun with the UPS-FedEx fight to make a larger argument about unions. What’s particularly amusing about this is that, rather than seeking to get the favorable regulatory treatment that FedEx enjoys, UPS is fighting to put FedEx under the same onerous rules. I’m reminded of the old joke [...]

Back when talks about bailing out General Motors started one potential issue was that GM would “encouraged” to make decisions based on political considerations vs. a sound business plan. Looks like there is evidence for such concerns with this story of how Montana’s Congressional Representative and two Senators are pushing to get a contract reinstated [...]

A USA Today report that “Nearly a year after he was elected on a pledge to change business-as-usual in Washington, Obama also has taken a cue from his predecessors and appointed fundraisers to coveted ambassadorships” and in fact has done so at “a rate higher than any president in more than four decades” combined with  [...]

Yes, that headline is not an exaggeration. The Chief of the Jericho Fire Department went to court and was shot by the police for disputing two tickets requiring two trips to the court house. JERICHO, Ark. — It was just too much, having to return to court twice on the same day to contest yet [...]

Over at his web site Dave has put up a post discussing how resources are allocated. I’ve touched on this very briefly in comments and a post or two, but nothing this extensive. As such, go read it, it’s good. Here is a snippet, Despite the author’s attempt to assuage concern by pooh-poohing the idea [...]

President Obama, seeing that he is taking a beating in the polls, and that health care is starting to founder took to the pages of the New York Times to lay out the case for health care reform. I think he did a rather bad job of it. He could have done it with far, [...]