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President Nixon’s secretary of agriculture, Earl Butz, once said in 1973, “get big or get out.” He enthusiastically urged farmers to buy up their neighbors’ land. Since then, American agriculture policy has enabled big industrialized farm businesses to triumph over smaller family farms. Big businesses usually receive larger subsidies, so the most powerful farming operations are rewarded.

Much like robocalls to cell phones, text messaging scams are on the increase. This was one of the reasons the Fresno County Department of Social Services issued a warning on December 5, 2018, that anyone receiving a text message prompting its clients to call a number and provide information that could allow another individual access to their CalWORKs account, could be the subject of a scam.

On November 14, 2018, the United States Postal Service (USPS) announced that, for the 12th year running, it lost money.  While this annual revelation has become something of a dog bites man story, the new, and more alarming news was that the $3.9 billion loss will outstrip its FY 2017 losses, which were $2.7 billion, and its net “controllable” income went from a $610 million profit to a $8

Broadband overbuild using taxpayer dollars has been an ongoing problem across this country.  Some providers will obtain a grant or loan from a federal agency to build out broadband in rural communities and then use the funding to either deploy or upgrade equipment where broadband already exists rather than spend taxpayer resources on unserved communities where the cost to build networks is much higher.