The largest urban mass-transit systems across the US are entering an all too familiar point in their long history: another looming financial disaster caused by financial mismanagement and the consequences of covid. No urban transit system exemplifies this problem more than the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) in New York.
Ridership in New York has not rebounded to precovid levels, and the MTA is projected to have a funding gap of $1.6 billion in 2026 despite proposing a 5.5 percent increase in fares and tolls. At the same time, New York governor Kathy Hochul and MTA announced in January 2022 the second phase of the Second Avenue subway. The extension of the subway line in New York by 1.6 miles will cost an estimated $6.3 billion ($3.9 billion per mile), the highest cost of any

The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) put in place under Donald Trump and extended by Joe Biden is a prime example of government wastefulness. A recent working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), "The $800 Billion Paycheck Protection Program: Where Did the Money Go and Why Did It Go There?" investigated the effectiveness of the PPP. 

The latest two states to legalize recreational cannabis are New York and New Jersey. However, if one believes governors and legislators in those states have finally adopted a more libertarian view of the topic, one will be severely disappointed.

On October 6, 2020, the auditor general of Pennsylvania, Eugene DePasquale, released a status update on his ongoing audit of the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED) waiver process for businesses that appealed Governor Wolf’s covid-19 closure order. To everyone’s surprise, the auditor general concluded that his office discovered inconsistencies and puzzling decisions in the business waiver process.