As Italy’s new conservative governing coalition begins sifting through the wreckage left by decades of left-leaning government, among its biggest challenges is restructuring a bureaucracy stuffed to the gills with patronage appointments, i.e., incompetents. The new government, writes José Papparelli in the European Conservative, must begin restaffing using people of merit or Italy will continue wallowing in the failed practices of the past.
Toppling a Communist Empire for $2.7 Million
Though widely thought of as focused on waterboarding terrorists or poisoning foreign potentates, it was by smuggling paper that the CIA achieved its most monumental triumph. R.M. Gerecht in a book review for The Washington Free Beacon charts how the late Cold War-era operation to flood Poland with Western books, magazines, printing supplies and audio recordings fatally weakened the country’s Communist dictatorship, setting the stage for the downfall of the entire Soviet empire. Total cost: US$2.7 million.
