As we have noted, the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge cost $6.4 billion, a full $5 billion more than the original estimate, and the project came in ten years late. The delay of a decade, however, was not sufficient to resolve serious safety problems with the bridge. Those were the subject of…
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Most taxpayers will be unfamiliar with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), but they might want to get up to speed for several reasons. The NTIA is “the Executive Branch agency that is principally responsible by law for advising the President on telecommunications and information policy issues.” The NTIA’s programs and policymaking focus…
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How much does the average American household spend to cover the cost of government regulations? Answering that question can be difficult, because Americans pay that cost every time they make any kind of transaction. Because it’s a cost of doing business, it gets directly passed along to every consumer and is incorporated into the…
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Insider trading is normally conducted by individuals with access to public companies’ information. But as this report notes, governments also conduct “insider trading in jobs” as shown by the case of Gerardo Lopez, a sergeant-at-arms in the California Senate. In 2012 Lopez was involved in a gunfight at his house that left one person…
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George Will writes of a new state-based initiative to amend the U.S. Constitution to regain control over the federal government’s spending: From the Goldwater Institute, the fertile frontal lobe of the conservative movement’s brain, comes an innovative idea that is gaining traction in Alaska, Arizona and Georgia, and its advocates may bring it to…
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Taxpayers prone to wonder why government is so wasteful should take a hard look at government-employee pensions in general and the practice of double-dipping in particular. As this report notes, Bill Carnahan, head of the Southern California Public Power Authority, took both his full-time salary and his pension at the same time, and he…
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A cartoon, like a picture, is worth a thousand words. Nonetheless, I’ll risk adding a few more to this one. In case you haven’t heard, French economist Thomas Piketty’s book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” is a runaway best seller. In Professor Piketty’s view, under capitalism, the rich get richer (because they own the…
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In 2004, California’s $3 billion Stem Cell Research and Cures Act, Proposition 71, promised life-saving cures and therapies for a host of afflictions. Voters approved the measure, which created the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). Ten years later CIRM has spent nearly $2 billion, but as this report notes, “No cures have yet…
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Back in 2012 analysts were predicting that the federal bailout of mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be the most expensive government rescue of the financial crisis. At the time the cost was $153 billion and rising, and those costs would continue to climb regardless of federal plans for the agencies….
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Via Political Calculations, the biggest lenders to the U.S. federal government as of Tax Day 2014: The biggest surprise in this edition of our chart (compared to the previous edition) is the appearance of Belgium on the list, which jumped ahead of several other nations by more than doubling the amount that is being…
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