This week, I decided to research the Farm Bill to write a little bit about some of the “reforms” House Republicans who support the bill are so proud of. The CBO estimates savings of $35 billion over the next ten years (vs. the current baseline). The CBO is also notorious for underestimating costs, and it looks like this time won’t be any different. 

As part of the complex montrosity known as Obamacare, people signing up for health insurance can have the help of Navigators - people with little training or experience wading through the most complex law ever passed. The manual for the program describes a system that will lead to privacy violations, personal embarrassment, and identity theft.

The IRS, in its zeal to block the legal political activity of conservative groups, has still not come clean. The agency is out of control, and needs serious reform, and ought to be shuttered, its services provided in some other way.

The recent spate of scandals involving the federal government should not surprise anyone.  While it's important that bad actors in government be held to account, the system corrupts even the best people. If all that comes of this exposed corruption is the firing of a few public employees, nothing will change, and those seeking power over their fellow man will be emboldened.

Paying taxes isn’t fun. For the average American, it often requires special software or an accountant to find all the obscure deductions and exemptions. Unfortunately for Apple, they got in trouble for doing essentially the same thing. They chose to wisely look at the law and arrange their money in such a way that legally lowered their tax burden.

A weak narrative pushed by administration allies that the IRS was merely doing its job in investigating Tea Party groups in 2010 through 2012 has been all but abandoned, now. Facts having intervened, and it looks like the Obama administration will throw some IRS staff under the bus and hope the scandal ends. It won't, because the problem is not that people were weak, but that government is too strong.

IRS Target This week Americans have woken up to revelations of IRS targeting of conservative organizations, and a lawsuit alleging an illegal IRS seizure of 60 million private medical records.

The IRS has for several years been targeting fiscally conservative and freedom-oriented grassroots organizations with highly detailed and burdensome demands. The effect has been to delay approval of tax exempt status, causing some organizations to abandon the effort, harming their ability to participate in the public debate.FreedomWorks has obtained the IRS letter listing questions to TheTeaparty.Net.