What if the U.S. federal government were to build a brand-new business from scratch? Would it, with the full backing of the resources of the U.S. government, be an unparalleled success? Or would it — because none of the people who work for the government are really smart enough, capable enough, or competent enough…
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Assemblywoman Kristin Olsen has noticed that the California Department of Transportation, also known as Caltrans, is paying “3,500 people to just be sitting around at a desk.” As Andrew Holzman notes in the Sacramento Bee, Olsen wants to cut those 3,500 full-time positions, for a saving of $500 million, half a billion dollars. As…
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Earlier this month, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Naranya Kocherlakota, said a pretty amazing thing. Michael Derby of the Wall Street Journal reports: “I want to be clear at the outset that I am not saying that it is appropriate for fiscal policy makers to increase the long-run level of…
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California is not exactly a hot spot for jobs, but as Dan Walter explains in the Sacramento Bee, it’s not for lack of government spending. California has, count ‘em, at least 30 “workforce development” programs in, count ‘em, nine state agencies. And these programs spend “an estimated $5.6 billion each year, $3.1 billion from…
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Earlier this week, we featured a story about the misconduct of an employee of the Department of Veterans Affairs who is expected to plead guilty for stealing gravestones from a national cemetery in Rhode Island, which he used as flooring in a shed and garages on his own property. But a more serious matter…
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It’s been a while since we featured a new episode of our occasional series Bureaucrats Behaving Badly, and to tell the truth, we debated waiting until Halloween to tell this particular tale, but because it’s just been in the news, we really can’t resist. Today’s story comes to us by way of the Washington…
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California taxpayers, the most embattled in the nation, have good reason to wonder how much their government is spending. According to Dan Walters of the Sacramento Bee, a veteran observer, government is spending a lot more than people think. The 2015 state budget has been reported as $115.4 billion, for the general fund, and…
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That’s the question Nick Timiraos of the Wall Street Journal raised in a recent article on the findings of a study by the U.S. General Accountability Office (GAO), in which the agency investigated the impact that hitting the nation’s debt ceiling has had in the past. The question is, of course, relevant today because…
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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 this column regular notes, government is good at wasting money on everything from obsolete tanks, improper tax refunds, and Social Security payments to dead people and old Nazis. Now it emerges that, during a severe drought, when Californians face mandatory water restrictions, the federal government excels at wasting water. CBS reporter David Goldstein…
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