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Archive for January, 2015

Bullet Train Boondoggle Breaks Ground


Wednesday January 14th, 2015   •   Posted by K. Lloyd Billingsley at 5:37am PST   •   4 Comments

“The California High-Speed Rail Authority expects that millions among the traveling public will want to ride its sleek, 220-mph bullet trains between the Bay Area and the Los Angeles Basin when the system starts running in the early 2020s,” explains Tim Sheehan in the Fresno Bee. But when the project, launched with a 2008…
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No-Brainers for Cutting Federal Spending


Tuesday January 13th, 2015   •   Posted by Craig Eyermann at 5:13am PST   •   0 Comments

Now that the U.S. Senate is under new management, Congress is in a position to begin reining in the federal government’s spending to a greater degree than was possible in its previous session. Writing at RealClearMarkets, Jeffrey Dorfman offers three easy and painless ways that the new Congress might first exercise greater fiscal discipline:…
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Government Tunnel Vision Shafts Taxpayers


Monday January 12th, 2015   •   Posted by K. Lloyd Billingsley at 5:27am PST   •   1 Comment

As part of his $25 billion plan for California’s water system, governor Jerry Brown wants to build two tunnels under the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Each tunnel would be 40 feet high, 35 miles long, and together they would cost nearly $17 billion. Backers of the plan would do well to consider the pitfalls…
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The Future for the Deficit and Debt


Saturday January 10th, 2015   •   Posted by Craig Eyermann at 12:16pm PST   •   0 Comments

At the end of 2014, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) put together 14 charts to describe the budget of the U.S. government. We’re just going to look at the first two, in reverse order, since they tell the big story about the consequences of federal overspending the way it needs to…
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Bridge Still Full of Troubled Water


Wednesday January 7th, 2015   •   Posted by K. Lloyd Billingsley at 5:29am PST   •   1 Comment

Water is supposed to flow under a bridge, not into it, but as we noted last year, that is not the case for the stylish new eastern span of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, which cost $6.4 billion, $5 billion more than the original estimate, and came in ten years late. All that time…
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How Serious Is $18 Trillion in Debt?


Tuesday January 6th, 2015   •   Posted by Craig Eyermann at 5:59am PST   •   0 Comments

We took a stab at answering the following question at Quora: How serious of a problem is the US debt of over 18 trillion dollars and what do economists say about this? Here’s how we responded: Having the U.S. national debt be so large is a serious problem for three main reasons: 1. With…
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Stimulus Ad Copy Surge


Monday January 5th, 2015   •   Posted by K. Lloyd Billingsley at 5:22am PST   •   0 Comments

“Program That Backed Solyndra Now Showing Successes,” proclaims a December 29 article by Henry C. Jackson of the Associated Press. He finds an example of success in Hugoton, Kansas, site of a new cellulosic ethanol refinery funded in part by a loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy. The same program, Mr. Jackson…
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The Next Detroit


Friday January 2nd, 2015   •   Posted by Craig Eyermann at 12:10pm PST   •   0 Comments

What’s wrong with giving government employees every single dollar they ask for in pensions and benefits? After having seen the role of out-of-control public employee pensions in helping drive the city of Detroit into bankruptcy, which the city was only just able to exit in November 2014 after the city’s public pensioners finally agreed…
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