Over at Downsizing Government, we focused on the following issues this week:

• Would it take seven years for a senior manager at a private company to be fired if he goofed off and didn’t go to work?
• Only a government monopoly would try to raise prices when the demand for its services is plummeting.
• Are we spending $18 billion a year of taxpayer money on NASA simply to generate warm and fuzzy feelings?
• Fraud in the Low‐​Income Home Energy Assistance program illustrates the problem with governments being charitable with other people’s money.
• Paul Krugman is dismissing concerns that the Obama administration’s fiscal and regulatory policies are fostering uncertainty in the business community, and thus inhibiting job growth and an economic recovery. We beg to differ.