California’s roads are an obstacle course of potholes and as Foon Rhee of the Sacramento Bee notes “the repair backlog is estimated at $78 billion for local roads and another $59 billion for state highways.” The rough roads are also highly congested but the massive California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) is not eager to…
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As we noted, California’s government monopoly K-12 education system pays big bucks to local bosses, heaping on huge raises and boosting benefits without any connection to performance or student achievement. For local bureaucrats, as Diana Lambert explains in the Sacramento Bee, even serious misconduct can pay off big-time. As the reporter notes, “El Dorado…
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The police are much in the news of late and some activists contend the cops are too severe when dealing with minorities. On the other hand, as Brad Brannan writes in the Sacramento Bee, the California Highway Patrol might be too lenient when they deal with privileged members of the ruling class. On November…
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As we recently noted, on July 1 the Twin Rivers Unified School District in the Sacramento area boosted the pay of superintendent Steven Martinez by $20,000, an 8.3 percent increase that raised his pay to $260,000. The district also double his retirement payment and allowed Martinez to convert a $10,000 car allowance into salary….
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As Loretta Kalb of the Sacramento Bee reports, Deborah Bettencourt, superintendent of the Folsom Cordova Unified School District, will receive a pay increase of $24,269 as of July 2. The increase of 7.5 percent boosts the superintendent’s pay from $221,500 to $245,769. Bettencourt’s salary is far beyond that of California’s governor ($173,000), the attorney…
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California state senators draw six-figure salaries plus gold-plated pensions, plus an impressive array of benefits that includes a car allowance. Some of those senators like to get drunk, and when they do, California taxpayers will now be footing the bill to drive them home. As Alexei Koseff and Jim Miller observe in the Sacramento…
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As this column observes, government costs are high because of new federal entitlements such as Obamacare, the federal stimulus program, excessive military spending, the war on drugs, bloated bureaucracy, and new federal agencies such as the Consumer Finance Protection bureau, to name just a few of the big-ticket items. Government costs also run high…
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Already at stratospheric levels, your federal government costs have gone up $3.7 billion, the amount U.S. President Barack Obama wants to address the massive influx of more than 50,000 unaccompanied minors. This new imposition on embattled American taxpayers flows from the ruling-class notion that the United States must be wet-nurse to the world. If…
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Abuse of Americans by the Internal Revenue Service is nothing new. As Gary Klott wrote in the New York Times in 1987, the federal agency was basing promotions on how much money its agents had seized. An IRS office in Los Angeles bore a sign reading “Seizure Fever – Catch it!” and those who…
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We have noted that California’s Parks Department protected its budget by hiding more than $50 million in a secret fund, at a time when it was shutting down parks and giving government employees lucrative vacation payouts. Now, in “California State Departments Play Shell Game,” Jon Ortiz and Jim Miller of the Sacramento Bee have…
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