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Adam Maida; Shutterstock; The Atlantic Kristi Noem’s National Guard Deployment Is America’s Future
The private sector has long been absorbing duties that belong to the government—and that pattern is intensifying.
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Shutterstock / The Atlantic Congress Is Going to Have to Repeal Qualified Immunity
Advocates had hoped that the Supreme Court would step in, but that’s not going to happen.
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Bettmann / Getty 'It's the Grandparents Stealing From the Grandchildren'
There’s a fiction at the heart of the debate over entitlements: The carefully cultivated impression that beneficiaries are simply receiving back their “own” money.
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Mark Engelbrecht/Flickr The State-Level Future of Healthcare Reform
While the national debate over the Affordable Care Act remains deadlocked in dispute, local-level reform trends towards bipartisan convergence.
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Lucy Nicholson/Reuters When Government Competes Against the Private Sector, Everybody Wins
If civil servants are pitted against businesses they become more innovative, and secure most of the contracts put out for bid.
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Darhil Crooks/TheAtlantic Steal This Article
Critics who claimed to be shocked—shocked—when a Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate adopted issue positions from someone else all do the same themselves.
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A National Acrobat/Flickr Shrinking Prisons: Good Crime-Fighting and Good Government
Corrections is the ultimate human service—and it can be done more cheaply and more effectively without locking so many people up.
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Kyle Terada/USA TODAY Sports/Reuters The San Francisco Giants and the Selflessness of Fandom
It's not identity that makes the World Series team so special to me. It's love for others.
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Charles Platiau/Reuters Don't Worry About the Size of the Government
Setting out to shrink the size of agencies at all costs can actually raise them—as Louisiana's child-welfare system found.
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Jan-Erik Finnberg/Flickr There Is No 'Party of Ideas'
Anyone looking for fresh public-policy approaches from Democrats, Republicans, or reform conservatives is bound to be disappointed.
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Reuters Can the Defense Budget Shrink Without Risking National Security?
Hawks and military leaders say it can't be done—but from the back office to the battlefield, there's plenty of excess spending.
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Universal Pictures How to Cut the Deficit in Half Without Starting a Partisan Foodfight
Getting it to zero will require some painful choices, but not every federal dollar deserves to be fought over.
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Just How Wrong Is Conventional Wisdom About Government Fraud?
Entitlement programs, from food stamps to Medicare, don't see unusually high cheating rates -- and the culprits are usually managers and executives, not "welfare queens."
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The Secret to Cutting Government Waste: Savings by a Thousand Cuts
Turn out the light in the soda machine. Fix the salt-spreader on the snow plow. The best way to save is to ask public employees for their ideas.
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What Small-Government Fans Should Learn From Walmart
Even the staunchest left-wingers should admit there's waste in the system, but cheaper often isn't the same as better government.
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Forget What Government Should Do—What Can It Do?
The trick isn't to figure out how to do everything Washington does better. It's to figure what Washington role should be in the first place.
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Who Even Needs the Nation-State in the 21st Century?
From Facebook to private schools to security guards, citizens are replacing traditional government functions with a "virtual state."
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What Would It Mean for Governments to Compete Like Businesses?
Officials can deliver both high-quality public services and low tax rates to citizens by providing services for which outsiders are willing to pay a premium.
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Government Should Run Like a Business—but Not in the Way You Think
Regimes around the world are under pressure to deliver more and cost less. Here's a plan for how to actually make that work.
