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Archive for 2014

Covered California Privatizes Email Stonewalling


Wednesday July 9th, 2014   •   Posted by K. Lloyd Billingsley at 7:16am PDT   •   2 Comments

IRS bosses claim to have lost two years of emails with direct bearing on the targeting scandal. Federal and state government agencies could respond to these mysterious losses by expanding efforts to preserve all public records. But as Christopher Cadelago explains in the Sacramento Bee, Covered California is taking a different approach. California’s health…
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The Mispriorities of Bureaucrats


Tuesday July 8th, 2014   •   Posted by Craig Eyermann at 9:15pm PDT   •   0 Comments

We’ve been following the VA waitlist/rationed health care scandal since it provides such a clear window into the priorities of so many the federal government’s bureaucrats, who we’ve argued chronically put their own interests above those they are intended to serve. But the scale of those mispriorities is only just now becoming known. That…
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FATCA: A Surge of Seizure Fever


Monday July 7th, 2014   •   Posted by K. Lloyd Billingsley at 7:08am PDT   •   1 Comment

As we recently noted, Americans are still paying a heavy price for mistakes by the Internal Revenue Service. These include a “Seizure Fever” campaign that rewarded IRS employees based on how much money they had confiscated. The IRS also handed out billions in improper payments and fraudulent tax returns, paid millions in bonuses to…
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Obamacare’s Secret Taxpayer Bailout of Health Insurers


Sunday July 6th, 2014   •   Posted by Craig Eyermann at 7:35am PDT   •   0 Comments

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which is often abbreviated as either PPACA or ACA, but which is most popularly known as “Obamacare,” is a very complicated law that stands as an prime example of how politicians will put the interests of their crony corporate contributors ahead of those of the American people….
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Grievances Against the King


Friday July 4th, 2014   •   Posted by Craig Eyermann at 4:11am PDT   •   0 Comments

In celebration of the 237th anniversary of the signing of the United States’ Declaration of Independence from Great Britain, we thought it might be a good time to reflect on the portion of the Declaration that indicts King George III, whose policies ultimately led to the successful War of Independence for Britain’s 13 colonies…
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Withhold Applause for Unhappy Anniversary


Wednesday July 2nd, 2014   •   Posted by K. Lloyd Billingsley at 8:28am PDT   •   1 Comment

Seventy-one years ago, on July 1, 1943, the federal government first started withholding income tax from workers’ paychecks. For the first time, the government would get workers’ money even before the workers did. As a freerepublic blogger noted on the 60th anniversary, that’s not exactly an occasion for celebration. “Why is withholding so bad?…
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Berkeley Professor Warns of Bay Bridge Crack-up


Wednesday July 2nd, 2014   •   Posted by K. Lloyd Billingsley at 7:02am PDT   •   2 Comments

On July 4 many motorists will be heading over the new span of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge for destinations across the state and beyond. One who won’t be joining them is Abolhassan Astaneh-Asi, professor of structural engineering, mechanics and materials at the University of California at Berkeley. The professor does not believe the…
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Clarity on the Missing Emails


Monday June 30th, 2014   •   Posted by K. Lloyd Billingsley at 7:00am PDT   •   2 Comments

As a showcase for speechmaking and stonewalling, the ongoing hearings on the IRS targeting campaign have generated more heat than light. Fortunately, a few moments of clarity emerged in a June 23 hearing by the House Oversight Committee. Rep. Thomas Massie, an MIT grad, explained the probability of Lois Lerner’s hard drive failing in…
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Privatize and Specialize the VA


Sunday June 29th, 2014   •   Posted by Craig Eyermann at 11:46am PDT   •   1 Comment

The way the Department of Veterans Affairs goes about providing health care to the veterans of the U.S. military, as it exists today, is an abject failure. In the words White House Deputy Chief of Staff Rob Nabors, the federal government agency is possessed by a “corrosive culture,” one that is characterized by “significant…
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Tracking Wasteful Government Spending


Thursday June 26th, 2014   •   Posted by Craig Eyermann at 4:24pm PDT   •   0 Comments

Believe it or not, there actually are people in the federal government whose job is to identify wasteful spending by the bureaucrats who operate federal government agencies. They work for an entity known as the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which publishes an annual report list the various types of wasteful activities that they’ve identified….
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