Government is crazy: I have evidence….

Florida's second-most populous county, Broward, announced it was removing the agricultural tax break for 127 properties because it appeared their "farming" work was a sham. Broward's property appraiser estimated the county had lost "hundreds of millions of dollars" over the years granting the bogus reductions -- as landowners were blatantly housing just a few cows (in some cases, just renting them) to graze and calling that "agricultural." The appraiser's office found, for example, that land occupied by a government-contract prison was "agricultural" (with a rent-a-cow arrangement). 

The Ontario College of Trades ministry, finally implementing a long-ago reclassification of about 300,000 professionals, that barbers would immediately face fines if they had not acquired new licenses demonstrating proficiency with perms and highlighting and other aspects of women's hairstyling. Even barbers who had cut men's hair for decades and with no desire to accept female customers would probably need a costly study program for the upgrade, which one barber estimated at 2,000 hours and $5,000 or more. Said one exasperated old-timer, "We're barbers, not neurosurgeons." 

A report from the National Bureau of Economic Research revealed that almost 9 percent of all federal government spending occurred during the last week of the government's fiscal year, as agencies scrambled to buy things they previously had not needed but suddenly did -- because the money would otherwise disappear. Further, the report found that contracts made during that perhaps-frenzied final week were from double to more than five times as likely to be poorly executed as contracts made earlier in the fiscal year. 

There are more stories demonstrating the craziness of government agencies, but I think it’s best we take them in small doses. Don’t you? 

Today’s Reflection: 

I never go to bed angry. I stay awake and plot my revenge… 

Live Long and Prosper…