Rewarding failure

In his book The Revolution: A Manifesto Rep. Ron Paul makes the point that in the private sector failure is punished -- sometimes even by a company going out of business -- while government agencies are rewarded with higher budgets. Think this is paranoid nonsense? Check this out:

The federal government will soon send more than $300 million in stimulus funds to 61 housing agencies that have been repeatedly faulted by auditors for mishandling government aid, a USA TODAY review has found.

Eminently predictable. (via Club for Growth)

Update: More here:

For example, reporters like Brody Mullins and Louise Radnofsky of The Wall Street Journal, who uncovered last week that U.S. House members had doled out $9.1 million in bonuses to their staff members – on top of the $2.5 million in automatic pay raises that lawmakers gave themselves.

According to their report, the average House aide got a 17% bonus.

And while the combined $11.6 million (and counting) spent on legislative bonuses is small potatoes compared to the AIG bonuses, consider the story published last Saturday by James Hagerty, also of The Wall Street Journal, and a few other print outlets.

According to Hagerty’s report, executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – the twin government-owned mortgage behemoths whose risky lending helped spawn the recession – will be receiving $210 million in bonuses over an eighteen-month period.

For those of you tracking the bailout trillions, that’s $45 million more than the AIG bonuses.

In fact, Fannie and Freddie executives have already been awarded $51 million – not a bad take for two agencies whose Enron-style accounting has cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars over the past year.

Why isn't this more widely reported?