California’s health insurance exchange has awarded $184 million in contracts without the competitive bidding and oversight that is standard practice across state government, including deals that sent millions of dollars to a firm whose employees have long-standing ties to the agency’s executive director.

Several of those contracts worth a total of $4.2 million went to a consulting firm, The Tori Group, whose founder has strong professional ties to agency Executive Director Peter Lee, while others were awarded to a subsidiary of a health care company he once headed.

It isn’t just state government, though, nor is this problem limited to government-run medical “care.” Think, also, Solyndra and A123, Tesla in Nevada, “green” energy subsidies, Dodd-Frank and too big to fail, farm subsidies, loan guarantees for big corporations like Boeing and GE (roughly $6 billion between them, via the Ex-Im Bank), even the Senate barbershop (!).

If our government weren’t so big, so taxing, so spending; if we turned the rascals out more often in our biennial elections, our government wouldn’t have the wherewithal with which to engage in crony capitalism, and we citizens could get back to capitalist capitalism and general prosperity.