DAN

At least 25 top United States companies paid more to their chief executives in 2010 than they did to the federal government in taxes, according to a study released on Wednesday.

I never thought I'd see the day where people in the U.S. - the same country that was founded upon the principles of the Boston Tea Party - would get indignant over this.

What's wrong with the owner/founder/CEO of a business making more money from that business than the federal government makes from that business?

I'm actually shocked that 475 of the 500 companies in the S&P 500 are more lucrative for the federal government than they are for the folks who run the company.

As it stands today, the public is forced to pay more than $1 billion per year for the NWS.  With the federal deficit exceeding a trillion dollars, the NWS is easily overlooked, but it shouldn’t be. It may actually be dangerous.

Relying on inaccurate government reports can endanger lives. Last year the Service failed to predict major flooding in Nashville because it miscalculated the rate at which water was releasing from dams there. The NWS continued to rely on bad information, even after forecasters knew the data were inaccurate. The flooding resulted in 22 deaths. 

Private weather services do exist, and unsurprisingly, they are better than the NWS. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, the National Weather Service was twelve hours behind AccuWeather in predicting that New Orleans would be affected. Unlike the NWS, AccuWeather provides precise hour-by-hour storm predictions, one of the reasons private industry supports them.

This interesting piece on Foxnews.com argues that the National Weather Service ought to be abolished. Though I'm not sure I completely agree, I did find it unreal that the NWS spends $1billion a year. And I'm also a fan of anything that smartly reduces the size of the federal government. At the very least, the NWS' budget ought to get a strong haircut.

Skip ahead to the five minute mark and you'll hear a brilliantly hilarious plan that I fully support.

Geithner could sidestep the debt ceiling this afternoon by ordering the West Point Mint to coin a 1 oz. $ 1 trillion coin. Tsy can then present the jumbo coins at the NY Fed to buy back $1 trillion in Fed-held debt (the Fed has to accept it, a creditor can’t refuse legal tender paid in to settle a debt)

Though this seems completely nuts, it also appears to be completely legitimate. Or, more appropriately, I should say "legitimate".