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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, $5 billion over budget, and with lingering safety concerns. As we noted, UC Berkeley structural engineering professor Abolhassan Astaneh-Asi believes the bridge is unsafe and declines to use it. Governor Jerry…
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In the U.S. government’s just-completed fiscal year for 2014, there is a very large discrepancy between the “official” size of the budget deficit, $483 billion, and the amount by which the U.S. national debt increased, $1,086 billion (or $1.086 trillion, if you prefer). We’ve been digging through the Monthly Treasury Statements issued by the…
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David Rising, Randy Herchaft, and Richard Lardner of the Associated Press have discovered that a small group of ex-Nazis, including death-camp guards and SS soldiers, are drawing America Social Security payments to the tune of more than $1.5 million. According to the AP, the U.S. government allowed the suspected war criminals to continue collecting…
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It’s back! Senator Tom Coburn’s annual compendium of some of the zaniest ways that the U.S. federal government burns through all the money it taxes and borrows in the name of spending: the 2014 Wastebook! This year’s edition features over $25 billion worth of examples of bad decisions made by U.S. politicians and bureaucrats….
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Opponents of California’s so-called “bullet train” went to court contending that the funding plan for $68 billion high-speed rail project violated the ballot measure voters approved in 2008. A Sacramento court agreed, but the Third District Court of Appeal overturned the ruling. Now, as the Sacramento Bee recently reported, the California Supreme Court let…
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Who were the major holders of debt issued by the U.S. federal government as of the end of its 2014 fiscal year? The preliminary answer of who owns the $17.860 trillion in debt as of 30 September 2014 is presented graphically below: The data for foreign holdings will be revised over the next six…
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As we have noted, Covered California, the Golden State’s wholly owned subsidiary of Obamacare, is massively dysfunctional and wasted $1.3 million on an absurd promotional video featuring flabby exercise guru Richard Simmons. The California health exchange also stonewalls consumers and serves as a lucrative landing spot for washed-up government officials such as former state…
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We couldn’t let the ultimate metaphor of our time pass without notice…. Although having his personal credit card rejected in an attempted transaction is just a single embarrassing event for the President, it is not unexpected. Barack Obama has never been a smart man when it comes to money, which is something that has…
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What waits at the end of the line for a nation that has borrowed and spent its way into a hole that it can no longer climb out? Not even after imposing extremely high income taxes on its most successful people? France is about to find out. Bloomberg‘s Helene Fouquet and Mark Deen report:…
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TAX BILL: OPEN IMMEDIATELY. Thus reads the envelope of the property tax bills now showing up in mailboxes. Note the imperative mood, the tone of “let’s hand over the wallet, Jack.” While embattled taxpayers deal with this bill, Robert Gutierrez of the California Taxpayers Association offers a few points to ponder. “Californians are paying…
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