In this essay on government construction projects, I discuss how promoters use “strategic misrepresentation” to subdue taxpayer opposition and get dubious spending schemes approved. The low-balling of projected costs is a tried and true deception used by infrastructure promoters the world over.

The FBI has not been starved; its budget has grown rapidly. The chart,from DownsizingGovernment.org, shows that FBI spending in constant 2016 dollars has more than tripled since 1990, from $2.7 billion to $9.1 billion.

WIC makes no sense. American pediatricians universally recommend breastfeeding, as do government health officials. Yet the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) runs a $6 billion subsidy program that induces mothers to use manufactured baby formula.

American businesses have become leaner in recent decades, with fewer layers of management. By contrast, New York University’s Paul Light has found that the number of management layers in federal government agencies has increased substantially.

The federal government has funded job training programs for decades, but they have never worked very well.

The government takes obesity so seriously that it funds a $78 billion program for people to buy any type of food they want at 250,000 retail stores nationwide. The program subsidizes 46 million people to buy items such as “soft drinks, candy, cookies, snack crackers, and ice cream

The Glenn Defense Marine scandal has exposed “a staggering degree of corruption within the Navy,” concludes a Washington Post investigation.

Rep. Darrell Issa proposes Cato-style aviation reforms in a CNN op-ed today.

The Washington Post discusses an effort by a Maine philanthropist to donate 88,000 acres of land to the National Park Service (NPS). Showing good sense, Mainers are pushing back against the idea: