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Imagine if you were a senior administrator at the troubled U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. You’re well aware that your institution has developed an extremely large backlog of patients seeking medical treatment, where many former military service members wait for weeks and months before receiving any care, if they’re lucky enough to get any…
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In a Detroit studio, way back in the day, Barrett Strong sang, “Money, that’s what I want.” Many artists have since covered the tune and government bureaucrats croon it every day. As David Siders shows in the Sacramento Bee, they jack up the volume around budget time. The California Department of Conservation, for example,…
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The ongoing saga of Puerto Rico’s debt problems blew up a lot bigger last week, as the U.S. territory defaulted on an additional $174 million of debt payments to its creditors on January 4, 2016, exactly five months after Puerto Rico’s government defaulted on its debt for the first time ever since the territory…
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California governor Jerry Brown is in a mood for spending. As Jon Ortiz and Dale Kasler note in the Sacramento Bee, his 2016-17 budget includes “a $1.5 billion infrastructure plan that would also remodel a portion of the Capitol.” The governor has “proposed transferring $1.5 billion from the state’s general fund to a new…
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“We never took up our lives again. We’re like at a railroad station waiting for a train that never comes in.” Those words are spoken by the character Chris Keller in Act 1 of Arthur Miller‘s 1947 play All My Sons, where he is suggesting to his mother that rather than once again revisiting…
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Politicians talk about spreading the wealth but ruling-class redistribution works best in one direction. Government takes money from the workers and gives gobs of it to government bosses, often on their way out the door. As we noted, when Jim Estep parted company with the northern California city of Lincoln he bagged a separation…
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One of the recurring themes we explore here at MyGovCost is that of government bureaucrats who behave badly. Today, we’re featuring the story of Internal Revenue Service employee Gina Colombo, who works at the IRS’ Taxpayer Assistance Center in Phoenix, Arizona and who is also the sole owner of Uncle Joe’s Auto Sales in…
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We have been following the story of the new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, which came in ten years late, a full $5 billion over budget, and with serious safety concerns. During hearings in Sacramento whistleblowers called for a “criminal investigation,” but California Attorney General Kamala Harris failed to follow up….
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Throughout 2015, we’ve paid close attention to news stories highlighting the degree to which corruption has become institutionalized at the federal agency charged with providing lifetime medical care to the former members of the nation’s military services. The following links will get you up to speed with what can only be described as the…
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