The details are out of Treasury now, and it looks like it isn't going to work for a large number of small business owners after all. //

If you don’t make the Senate’s requirements, you have to pay that loan back, and thanks to Mnuchin, you’re not going to be able to do that either. In the bill, Congress set a window of a maximum interest of 4 percent and loan repayment within 10 years. This was just a window, so it was up to Treasury to set the final costs and they put them at 1 percent interest and two years to pay the bank.

In real life, that means you’re looking at beginning your third quarter in debt, limping on into the winter, losing an entire year’s profits getting your business running again, and owing nearly half of next year’s profits to the bank, all before any other loans you had to take out to keep from bankruptcy. You might have been able to spread that pain out, but two years is too little time

The global response to Sars-CoV-2 is the greatest science policy failure in a generation. The signals were clear. Hendra in 1994, Nipah in 1998, Sars in 2003, Mers in 2012 and Ebola in 2014; these major human epidemics were all caused by viruses that originated in animal hosts and crossed over into humans. Covid-19 is caused by a new variant of the same coronavirus that caused Sars.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/09/deadly-virus-britain-failed-prepare-mers-sars-ebola-coronavirus

Vice President Mike Pence is the “diamond” to President Trump’s “rough.” //

For such a position, it would seem that such a self effacing guy like Mike Pence would be perfect for the job. He is. He understands that he is there to advance the President’s agenda and make sure that the glory for successes accrue to him, while he, the VP, stays in the background. The role of the Vice Presidency has rarely if ever deviated from that, despite the occasional vows of a “co-Presidency” during the first Clinton-Gore campaign. //

More recently, President Trump has appointed Vice President Pence to quarterback the United States “whole of government” response to Wuhan virus threat. Of course there were some who decried the appointment of a politician to the post instead of a medical “expert.” As I explained in a previous article, that line of reasoning is foolish. Most of this effort will entail a huge logistics exercise, a government-private sector supply chains endeavor. for that, you need somebody close to the apex of the Executive Branch who can access all the appropriate levers of National Power. Absent the President, who has other things going on alongside this crisis, the Vice President is the next best thing. //

This is where Vice President Pence shines. When we don’t see him, he’s busily honchoing the Task Force and making things happen. However, when we do see him at the various and sundry public briefings, he is always invoking, “The President,” or “The President’s.” He knows it’s not about him. He stays on message and provides a steady and consistent presence. Above all, he lets Americans know that their President has a plan and he (Pence) and a host of others, are diligently working on the President’s plan. In over 34 years of commissioned service, I’ve had a number of Deputies, Seconds in Command, Executive Officers and the like, some better than others. I can say based on experience, President Trump has chosen wisely in Vice President Mike Pence, a humble, yet effective man.

Prepare for another attack on encryption in the U.S. The EARN-IT Act purports to be about protecting children from predation, but it's really about forcing the tech companies to break their encryption schemes:

The Graham-Blumenthal bill would finally give Barr the power to demand that tech companies obey him or face serious repercussions, including both civil and criminal liability. Such a demand would put encryption providers like WhatsApp and Signal in an awful conundrum: either face the possibility of losing everything in a single lawsuit or knowingly undermine their users' security, making all of us more vulnerable to online criminals. //

Matthew Green has a long explanation of the bill and its effects:

The new bill, out of Lindsey Graham's Judiciary committee, is designed to force providers to either solve the encryption-while-scanning problem, or stop using encryption entirely. And given that we don't yet know how to solve the problem -- and the techniques to do it are basically at the research stage of R&D -- it's likely that "stop using encryption" is really the preferred goal. //

So in short: this bill is a backdoor way to allow the government to ban encryption on commercial services. And even more beautifully: it doesn't come out and actually ban the use of encryption, it just makes encryption commercially infeasible for major providers to deploy, ensuring that they'll go bankrupt if they try to disobey this committee's recommendations.

It's the kind of bill you'd come up with if you knew the thing you wanted to do was unconstitutional and highly unpopular, and you basically didn't care. //

Undermining trust is a dangerous thing. Remember that.

Privacy experts warn that the EARN IT Act is yet another a thinly-veiled attempt by government officials to kill encryption. Why is this so bad? As Senator Ron Wyden explains, "You can't only build a backdoor for the good guys ... Once you weaken encryption with a backdoor, you make it far easier for criminals and hackers and predators to get into your digital life."

And that's exactly what's happened when our government has inserted backdoors into encrypted services before: malicious hackers have gained access to communication systems, power grids, and even nuclear facilities. Even worse, when criminals and authoritarian governments know that platforms like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are not safe for them to use, they simply turn to less regulated alternatives. For all these reasons and more, many current and former security officials support making encryption stronger, not weaker.

But DOJ officials have shrugged off these legitimate concerns, defending their dangerous intentions with a pattern of lies and untruths that ignore the risks of breaking encryption and overstate the impact that breaking encryption would actually have on criminal investigations.

Our law enforcement and intelligence agencies routinely abuse their overly-broad, unconstitutional surveillance powers to spy on journalists and racial justice advocates. Giving our government even more powers will only result in more abuses against vulnerable individuals and political dissenters.

Most provisions of the American Energy Innovation Act wouldn't spur American energy innovation. Nor is the bill innovative in promoting sound public policy. //

if you’re in Washington, “innovation” is trotting out the same, stale approaches to policy that have done less to empower innovators and families and more to empower special interests.

The latest case in point is a 555-page energy bill introduced in the Senate. The majority of provisions in the so-called American Energy Innovation Act are not something that would spur American energy innovation, nor is it innovative thinking when it comes to promoting sound public policy. //

These interventionist policies put Congress and Department of Energy bureaucrats—rather than investors and customers—in the position of narrowing the field of competition between the many energy technologies being perfected in the U.S. right now to win customers. That cannot help but narrow the scope of innovation. //

The market for energy, whether it’s to light and heat our homes or to get to work every day, is a massive one. In the U.S. alone, consumers spent over $1 trillion on energy, and global investment reached $1.8 trillion.

Any of these technologies that can capture a sliver of that market won’t need the taxpayers’ help. Rather than propping up a few projects, if Congress wants American energy companies to innovate more, it should break down government-imposed barriers that prevent them from doing so //

Congress needs to put forth an energy bill, but one that does exactly the opposite of the American Energy Innovation Act.

Congress should undo the policies that have entangled the federal government in the business of energy and the decisions of families to make choices for themselves about what services and technologies best meet their needs.

The American Energy Innovation Act declares that taxpayers are responsible for developing an “integrated investment strategy” for nuclear technologies. //

rather than improving private-sector access to federal assets, reducing regulatory barriers, and addressing the political risks that nuclear energy faces, it quite literally proposes that the government do the work of private companies for them—to improve their product, acquire financing, and find potential customers.

Such a program is far outside the responsibility of the federal government—and of the federal taxpayer. But it could also erect new barriers for companies that don’t go through the Energy Department program.

In the end, it makes the nuclear industry politically dependent, and consequently politically vulnerable. But what’s worse is, we’ve tried this all before, and the track record isn’t good. //

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 set out on the same grand mission. In that not-so-distant past, Congress authorized, among many other favors for the nuclear industry, $1.25 billion for a public-private partnership, the Next Generation Nuclear Power Plant. Congress spent $528 million through 2010, only to abandon it in 2011 during the pre-licensing process. //

This is industrial policy, plain and simple.

On the whole, Congress did good work with the Nuclear Energy Innovation Capabilities Act in 2018 and the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act in 2019.

What the American Energy Innovation Act proposes is a bridge too far. //

If Congress were really interested in helping the nuclear industry—both existing nuclear power plants and the advanced reactors of tomorrow—it should address the regulatory burdens and uncertainties created by government itself

By the time Milton Friedman wrote “The Role of Government in Education,” state governments essentially had developed monopolies on education.

Another politicians makes a claim about video games with no evidence. //

numerous studies have shown that there is no connection between violence and video games, and even some shows that video games tend to reduce violent urges in people who play them. These studies include:

A study by sociologist Whitney DeCamp and psychologist Christopher Ferguson of Western Michigan University.
A study by Dr. Andy Przybylski, from Oxford University’s Oxford Internet Institute.
A study by Dr David Zendle at the University of York.
A study by Dr. Gregor Szycik of the Hannover Medical School
DeCamp’s study found that when it comes to gamers who do show violent tendencies, these tendencies were present before the person ever picked up a controller. According to DeCamp, the predisposition toward violence is usually a result of the condition of the home life. For instance, if the child witnesses violence within the home itself, then the child will resort to violence themselves more often.

“The parenting measures in my study were some of the bigger predictors,” DeCamp said. “The parental attachment between the youth and the parent, the monitoring activities of the parents—that is, whether the parents are aware of what the kids are doing—and parental enforcement of the rules were all strong predictors. Seeing or hearing violence in the home and experiencing violence in the home were also powerful predictors. So home life seems to matter more than just playing violent video games.”

Once again, we see that the real factor in a child’s behavior rests with the actions of the parents and not a third party. Once again, we see governmental figures dismissing that fact and seeking to elect themselves as the parent of, not just your child, but you.

Avatar
riderdan
14 hours ago
Go the other way...

The Holy Family were the victims of government overreach that forced them to leave their home and travel to a far-off place (unreimbursed) for bureaucratic purposes. Due to government incompetence and poor planning, they were forced to sleep in a barn because no provision had been made for the influx of citizens created by the decree of unelected, unaccountable Caesar. Subsequent to Jesus' birth, armed agents of the government invaded private homes mercilessly killing children in hopes of preventing an eventual threat to the established order.

Inefficiencies within the auditing process raise questions about whether we are misusing taxpayer dollars in the name of accountability and transparency. //

Hugh Howard
4 days ago
This is the first time I've seen a reference to zero-based budgeting in any discussion of federal agencies. Zero-based budgeting is the norm everywhere BUT the federal government. Ask yourself why this is true. It is past time for a change.

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Avatar
RTUT Hugh Howard
4 days ago
Good comment... Your comment got me hunting up an old article, Hugh:

Baseline budgeting is the product of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974. That’s when this process commenced that has now, in our opinion, gone so terribly wrong. The Act, innocently enough, directed the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to project Federal spending for the, then, upcoming fiscal year, assuming that the, then, current level of government services would continue. It is that assumption that has now morphed into the annual practice of casting in concrete whatever the government is spending in any given year adjusted by whatever else the government decides it will do, along with the added cost of inflation. We are, thus, each year compounding the cost of operating the government. What the government tells us are spending cuts are really no more than reductions in the rate of increase. For the first few years there really was no formal definition of what baseline budgeting was other than a continuation of services as provided in the prior year. But then, in 1987 Congress added annual inflationary adjustments to the definition of baseline budgeting and we’ve been stuck with compounding budgets ever since.

There have been serious efforts to reform the process such as the Gramm, Rudman Hollings Act, and the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990, which provided rational multi-year targets, but the Senate and House members who wield budget-writing influence invariably protect their respective turfs by weakening all reform proposals. The budget process itself is not fatally flawed. Unfortunately, it seems that many of the men and women we elect and send to Washington are. The US Senate has refused to pass or even consider a budget, even the President’s own proposed budget, for the entirety of his Administration. Budget rhetoric is often so misleading as to be all but meaningless.

Let’s say a government agency is spending$250 billion and, using baseline budgeting, is slated to have its budget increased to $275 billion. The Administration (or Congress) may, instead, call for an overall increase to $262 billion, or, an increase of $12 billion for the next fiscal year, and then promote the new budget as a $13 billion dollar cut in spending ($275bln – $262bln = -$13bln). This is like an obese individual who is expected to gain 100 pounds gaining only 75 pounds and then claiming he or she lost 25 pounds. Sounds absurd, doesn’t it? Yet, that’s precisely how our government justifies its profligacy.

Given that repeated attempts to reform baseline budgeting, including budget caps and pay-as-you-go rules that would require that all new spending be compensated for by either increased revenue or reductions elsewhere invariably fail for the reasons cited above, we think its time to reconsider a modified type of zero-based budgeting, which is commonly used in business.

Realistically, pure zero-based budgeting would not be practical for the operation of the federal government. The very process of requiring every agency to re-justify every item of expense each year would become costly and wasteful. Building each agency’s budget from the ground up each and every year would take an entire green-eye-shade bureaucracy in and by itself.

We think a workable compromise between baseline budgeting and pure zero-based budgeting could involve a combination of so-called sunset budgeting for all new programs coupled with an alternate budgeting requirement for all continuing programs every year. It might work like this: All new spending programs would have a mandated sunset provision, meaning the program would expire on a date certain, unless reauthorized by a super majority in Congress for an additional life, not greater than its original mandate. Budgeting for all continuing or permanent programs (both discretionary and non-discretionary) would require the annual submission of alternate budgets at, say, 90%, 95% and 98% of the prior year’s expenditure for that budgeted activity. This would require that every agency or department head go through the process of determining whether there is a more efficient or less expensive way to provide the particular government service for which he or she is responsible.

We believe the cycle of compounding expense must be broken before the government itself goes broke. Anyone who believes the country can’t go broke because it can always raise taxes or print the money it needs is simply wrong. At some point squeezing taxpayers, regardless of from whom we squeeze, or running the presses to fund our profligacy will enfeeble the entire nation. Growth will diminish, and our currency will no longer be the prized coin in the realm of a free market. Time is growing short. The clock is ticking.

Capitalism, sometimes called “Corporatism”, is not the same thing as free enterprise.

Both are certainly preferable to socialism or communism, but free enterprise is considerably more conducive to freedom and widespread prosperity than capitalism.

History has proven the following: 1) Under capitalism, the divide between rich and poor naturally increases; 2) In a free enterprise system, the prosperity, freedom and dignity of nearly everyone in the society inevitably rises.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn pointed out that while modern American capitalism was clearly better than Russia’s twentieth-century communism or Europe’s contemporary attempts at socialism, the U.S. implementation of capitalism left much to be desired.

For example, he noted, under American capitalism the question of, “is it right?” became less important to many people and companies than, “is it legal?”

Likewise, the culture of capitalism frequently asks, “is it profitable?” before (or instead of) asking, “is it good?”

American capitalism, Solzhenitsyn said, created a nation more materialistic than spiritual, more interested in superficial success than genuine human progress.

Note that Solzhenitsyn was adamantly anti-communist and anti-socialist.

But he also found capitalism lacking. //

Isn’t it time for an end to the outdated debate about socialism versus capitalism and a national return to the free enterprise system which made America great?

During its first century-and-a-half of application, free enterprise brought us major wealth, a standard of living for most citizens that rivals or surpasses the lifestyles of history’s royals, world power, major technological and medical advancements, and the end of slavery.

It also brought the repudiation of racism, male dominance, religious persecution and a host of other ills that have existed for millennia.

With all these areas of progress, imagine what we could do if we re-adopted the free enterprise values and culture in our time.

Laws that give special benefits to wealth and capital while withholding such opportunities from the rest can never bring the progress, advances, freedom and prosperity that free enterprise will.

It’s time for a change, and the first step is for all of us to start using the phrase “free enterprise” a lot more.

Iowa’s junior senator says she is working to spread the word on legislation to reduce wasteful government spending and rein in agencies’ last-minute spending practices.

“We saw this in our own county departments where at the end of the year, that last couple months of the year, they will spend everything they’ve got remaining in their budget whether they need things or not,” Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, told reporters gathered in her office Wednesday, speaking of her time as Montgomery County auditor. “They just are afraid if we don’t use it [we’ll] lose it.” //

One bill would curb how much an agency could spend in the last two months of the fiscal year to no more than what the agency usually spends each month on average during the rest of the year.

Agencies tend to go on spending sprees at the close of the fiscal year, spending any remaining money in what is known as “use it or lose it.”

Six deaths are claimed to be caused by vaping. Approximately 1250 people A DAY die of smoking related illnesses. The loss of tax money is killing large municipalities that subsist on sin taxes and the federal government's largesse. Check the donor lists of the House and Senate members screeching loudest about taking away another right from us, and you will find Big Tobacco at the top of the list. Mr. Mills' statistics are right on, as they demonstrate the governments attachment to tobacco's teat. If the Feds are concerned with young people dying due to illnesses caused by nicotine delivery systems, why aren't they going for the throat and banning cigarettes outright?

The media is trumping up a fake national health crisis, but the only thing vaping poses an existential threat to the tobacco industry’s business model. //

The Trump administration last week announced plans to ban most flavored e-cigarettes. New York just announced an emergency order to ban flavored vaping. A sixth person has died from vaping-related lung disease, according to the alarmists in news media. //

A few weeks ago, my son shared with me that his public school anti-drug program focused almost entirely on discouraging vaping. That’s right, our leaders have prioritized the “threat” of vaping over heroin, cocaine, alcohol, and smoking. //

In contrast to the six deaths now linked to vaping, cigarette-related illnesses account for 480,000 deaths every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Tobacco kills almost half a million Americans per year. In a typical month in America, smoking kills approximately as many Americans as died in the entire length of the Vietnam War.

Vaping, we are told, is not an overall benefit to public health because it draws its customers from non-smokers. This is a lie. The real outcry is a result of the fact that vaping poses an existential threat to the tobacco industry’s business model. Sales of cigarettes declined 11.2 percent in May 2019. This follows 18 consecutive months of decline in tobacco sales.

In the future, these declines in cigarette purchases will translate directly to a decline in deaths. An 11.2 percent decline in smoking sales means that nearly 500,000 deaths-per-year figure could, in the years to come, also decline as fewer smokers introduce tobacco into their lungs. //

On average, local governments collect $1.73 per pack of cigarettes on top of the approximately $1.00 per pack the federal government collects. This translates to billions of dollars in tax revenue that federal, state, and local governments have come to depend upon. In theory, taxes accomplish the public good of discouraging people from smoking. But in practice, the hysteria over vaping shows our leaders care more about collecting taxes than they do about the health and well-being of their fellow Americans laboring under the self-destructive addiction of cigarettes. //

Is vaping safe? Compared to breathing fresh oxygen and eating kale round-the-clock, probably not. But it doesn’t need to be safer than kale. It needs to be safer than smoking. Since vaping is causing a rapid, voluntary decline and perhaps eradication of the dangerous habit of smoking tobacco, panic is being stoked to protect big tobacco.

Nearly every current case that’s being looked in this rash of new vaping illnesses involves the use of THC. This actually has nothing to do with vaping itself. There is no actual link between lung disease and inhaling water vapor mixed with nicotine.

There’s also not even much evidence that kids vaping is somehow more prevalent than tobacco use was before vaping was an option. Yes, we’ve seen a drop in smoking among teenagers. It’s not a coincidence though that it has tracked with a rise in vaping. In other words, kids are trading a deadly habit for one that’s largely harmless unless you mix it with illicit substances.//

The biggest issue here is what the alternatives are. Banning flavored vaping (leaving only tobacco flavored) means a lot of people are going to end up back on cigarettes. 480,000 people die every year from illnesses related to smoking. That’s not even counting chewing tobacco. Banning the majority of vaping products because six people died doing it wrong will ultimately end up in hundreds of thousands of more deaths over the next decade. //

There’s also the aspect of freedom of choice here as well. We are supposed to be conservatives. Banning things over illogical moral panic is not conservative. Trump needs to reverse course on this. It’s a mistake and will only make things far worse.

Twenty-one Conservative Party MPs defected to the Liberals-Democrats to damage the new Boris Johnson government and oppose a No-Deal Brexit on October 31. //

The British Parliament stood firmly opposed to the British people, as 21 Conservative Party members of Parliament (MPs) defected and joined the Liberals-Democrats to damage the new Boris Johnson government and oppose a No-Deal Brexit on October 31. In a win for the European Union, keenly being watched from the Americas and the European continent, the British government is now paralyzed, with no majority for any Brexit, even a diluted one; no mandate for another election; no unified opposition to win in an election; and no government strong enough to push through. //

the monarchy, which is basically a symbolic figurehead, and which, despite what leftists might say, earns Britain a lot more than the cost to upkeep it (an estimate found it is around 69 pence per resident per year, far less than the security of any politicians in the West, and less than what it earns from tourism in its name and estates). For example, it is almost compulsory for the monarchy and the aristocracy to serve in active combat and line of duty, a better day’s work than the majority of the elected politicians in the entire West. //

Brexit was revolutionary, and it was a very British democratic revolution in the ballot boxes. The majority of the people of the United Kingdom, on the whole, in the largest direct democratic mandate in the history of humanity, voted to “take back control” from the ever-growing European Union. Except the elites of the country never wanted it, never expected it, and didn’t prepare for it. //

One, the EU and the United States are increasingly, due to structural reasons, bound to stand opposed to each other, forcing Britain to choose a side. The second thing that changed has been direct democracy and giving a say to the people. While there are arguments against direct democracy, nothing is more egregious a betrayal of people than giving them a voice and ignoring it. That is where we are now. //

The current Parliament reflects that political realignment. A significant chunk of the current Conservative Party bench were social liberals and historic Europhiles, who joined the right under David Cameron’s bid for a big tent party in 2005. Those are the same conservatives who are now defecting and supporting the Liberals, opposing Brexit, which they claim to be reactionary.

Our religious liberty never proceeded from attempts at neutrality. It came precisely from the privileged position that Christianity has held in the West.

After invitations to an opening ceremony with Chancellor Angela Merkel in attendance had been sent out, the local official responsible for certifying the building's fire safety called a halt. He had discovered that a supposedly sophisticated system of detectors and automated alarmed fire doors was not functioning.

Those running the building had instead been working with makeshift systems, which included temporary employees sitting by doors to raise the alarm with mobile phones.

Mayor Wowereit and colleagues from local, regional and federal government had to announce, in a humiliating press conference, the grand opening could not take place.

Suddenly, the astonishing scale of the new airport's problems emerged.

New construction boss Hartmut Mehdorn made a list of all the faults and failures, Mr Delius tells me.

"Small ones like the wrong light bulbs to big ones like all the cables are wrong," he says.

The final total was 550,000 - more than a half a million problems to fix.

What you might call chaotic cabling has been the curse of this project - and it's still dangling over the whole enterprise.

They have had to put in "many hundreds of kilometres of new cables", Mr Dorn says, to replace what was originally installed.
And costs have gone up all the time, with millions spent each month maintaining the building.

So, the airport of no arrivals has, in financial terms, passed the point of no return.

The final sum will be paid mostly by German taxpayers, who have come to view the whole saga with emotions ranging from rage to boredom to very black humour

And some have even tuned this black humour into a business opportunity. Philipp Messinger and Bastian Ignaszewski have invented a board game based on the Berlin airport disaster. The main object of the game is to waste as much public money as possible.

I pick up a card saying some of the escalators from the train station were built too short, needing very expensive additions. "Everything on these cards," Mr Messinger says, "has really happened."

Intense attempts are now being made, Mr Dorn says, to ensure all the official permissions are obtained before the planned opening, in October 2020.

The mid-1990s inception of the private sector Internet – has led to the greatest economic and lifestyle leap forward in the history of humanity.

More than $1 trillion in private investment has taken us from 14K dial-up – to 1GB+ of speed. And hurtling ever upward.

The free speech-free market Xanadu that is the Internet – is entirely the creation of the free market. NOT of government.

Government has in fact been an ongoing, rolling impediment to this mind-boggling progress – not a contributor.

While all of this amazing private sector Internet success has been going on – Leftists have bizarrely insisted these local governments actually try to get into the Internet provider business.

The Case For Municipal Broadband

This paper should be MUCH shorter than it is. Seven words: “There isn’t a case for municipal broadband.”

We Need a Public Option for Broadband

Because the Obamacare public option was so outstanding.

We Need Affordable and Reliable Publicly-Accountable Broadband

Government – affordable and reliable? That’s like saying “We need short and slow NBA basketball players.” Reality is an impediment to the asserted demand.

Government can’t even get it going – because of my Wallet Rule:

If you go out on a Friday night with your wallet, and you go out the following Friday night with my wallet – on which Friday night are you going to have more fun?

Obviously, you’re going to have a whole lot more fun with my wallet – because you don’t care what my wallet looks like at the end of the evening.

Well, government is always on other peoples’ wallets – ours. In gambling parlance – they’re playing with house money.

Government will never spend money as wisely or well as the people who earned it – from whom government takes it.

“The only place in San Francisco still pricing real estate like it’s the 1980s is the city assessor’s office. Its property tax system dates back to the dawn of the floppy disk.

“City employees appraising the market work with software that runs on a dead programming language and can’t be used with a mouse. Assessors are prone to make mistakes when using the vintage software because it can’t display all the basic information for a given property on one screen.

“The staffers have to open and exit several menus to input stuff as simple as addresses. To put it mildly, the setup ‘doesn’t reflect business needs now,’ says the city’s assessor, Carmen Chu.”

This is San Fran-freaking-cisco. The Tech Capital of Planet Earth. The government is awash in hundreds of millions of Silicon Valley tax dollars.

And they are running software, government-wide – from when Ronald Reagan was president. Back when there was still a Soviet Union.

If The Tech Capital of Planet Earth is three-plus decades behind – how do you think the federal government is doing?

Here’s a hint: Frigging terribly. In fact – even worse.

US Government Is Spending Billions on Old Tech that Barely Works, Says Watchdog:

“Three-quarters of the government’s IT budget goes to supporting legacy systems, some of which date back to the 1970s.”
Oh good – four-plus decades behind. Ahh…1970s tech. When Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter were President.