Expansion of federal government – mission creep

Familiar with the term mission creep? In business, a project starts with specified business requirements and after the project gets rolling, new requirements – or change orders – are added after the fact increasing costs and sometimes destroying the project. Nick Gillespie over at Reason TV talks mission creep in government projects.

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In Connecticut, state employees retire – get rehired

It’s bad enough the public perception of state employees is that they have easy gigs with great benefits, but now – even after Gov. M. Jodi Rell (R-Conn.) said she would investigate and halt double-dipping – we find more than 500 employees who retired in June are back on the payroll.

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Expense accounts for House and Senate members add up

The salary for United States Senate and House of Representatives members is currently set at $174,000 which for just about anywhere in the country is very respectable, but are you familiar with the expense accounts available to Senate and House members? As is with government workers, it’s not always about the salary; you need to…

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Profiles in spending, John Murtha

Perhaps no single individual can exemplify the profligate spending and massive ego that is Congress better than John Murtha. And what better monument to his ego than the airport that has been named for this poltroon. “The John Murtha airport sits on a windy mountain two hours east of Pittsburgh, a 650-acre expanse of smooth…

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Compassionate conservatism equaled big government

We all knew it. Bush 43 tried to define his presidency by bringing new tone to Washington D.C., and called his politics compassionate conservatism. By reaching across the aisle and letting Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) write the No Child Left Behind in 2001, propping up the U.S. steel industry with tariffs in 2002, and dishing out…

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Commuters to get state sponsored traffic information

Unbelievable waste of cash. I just turned on WVIT – the local NBC affiliate – and they reported Connecticut was planning to introduce the state-wide 511 system that I mentioned back in February. It appears that the state government – at a cost of $3 million – thinks that they can provide better traffic information…

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