Eleven years ago, Bill Clinton came out with the extraordinarily deceptive statement that "the era of big government is over".

It was complete garbage then and his Republican successor went on to make government even bigger.

Take the findings from law firm Fulbright & Jaworski that corporate lawyers are spending more of their time answering inquiries from regulators. More details in this CFO.com report.

According to the survey cited in the report, 44 percent of attorneys say they have spent more time on regulatory matters in the past three years than they had before, while 44 percent reported spending the same amount of time. Most of the inquiries came from Securities and Exchange Commission (33 percent) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (33 percent). The state attorneys general were not far behind.

The era of big government not only never went away. It looks like it's permanently locked in. Big brother is getting bigger.