Its academic reputation may fall short of Berkeley, UCLA and Stanford, but the University of California at Davis boasts a fine department of viticulture and enology. UC Davis also teaches how abuse can generate waste. The UC system, now headed by former Homeland Security boss Janet Napolitano, a politician and bureaucrat with no academic…
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University of California San Diego economist James Hamilton recently published a paper in which he added up all the off-balance sheet liabilities, or rather, the hidden debt obligations that the U.S. federal government isn’t acknowledging that it has on its books. In totaling up the numbers, Hamilton finds that the actual size of the…
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In the quarter that ended June 30, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) lost $740 million, down from $5.2 billion in losses during the same period last year. The USPS managed to reduce those losses by eliminating delivery routes, raising prices on stamps, consolidating facilities, cutting hours and other measures. Revenue from shipping packages was…
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Back in February, President Obama and many of his appointed officials tried to make a federal case out of looming budget cuts required by the budget control deal he cut back in the summer of 2011 during the debt ceiling crisis. Spending cuts that he proposed, which were called the “sequester”. We’ve been saying…
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Last year, the UC San Diego engineering student Daniel Chong was mistakenly swept up in a DEA raid near the UC campus. Chong, 25, had committed no crime and was not charged with anything. But DEA agents stuck the student in a small windowless interrogation room with no food, water, or toilet facilities, and…
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According to a poll commissioned by Fox News, 74% of Americans think Americans rely too much on government programs for assistance, such as food stamps, and not enough on themselves. And speaking of food stamps, the poll also indicates 57% of Americans believe that most of the people on food stamps, or rather, the…
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As the New York Times reports, the National Security Agency (NSA) is “not just intercepting the communications of Americans who are in direct contact with foreigners targeted overseas.” The agency is “also casting a far wider net for people who cite information linked to those foreigners.” Further, in its extensive computer searches of data,…
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Freakonomics co-author Stephen Dubner recently conducted a very entertaining interview with the authors of another publication that readers of the MyGovCost blog might find interesting. We’ll let him describe it: Our latest podcast is called “Government Employees Gone Wild.”… It’s about a book that I’ve come to love — a most unusual book. What…
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Few would challenge the need for meaningful immigration reform in American, but taxpayers have good cause to wonder why the current immigration bill pending in Congress includes earmarks and pork barrel spending for special interest advocacy groups. In the style of Obamacare, many Senators and members of Congress may not have read the entire…
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From January to June, General Motors sold 4.85 million cars and trucks worldwide, an increase of almost 4 percent, and the new Chevrolet Impala is getting rave reviews. GM bosses may be popping the bubbly, but the huge automaker remains a guaranteed loser for American taxpayers. Recall that taxpayers bailed out a bankrupt General…
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