It’s not often that we’re surprised by a government spending statistic, but what Breitbart News‘ Mike Flynn reported over the past weekend about one particular line item within the U.S. Treasury Department’s annual financial report for the U.S. government floored us. Tucked away in the report, however, was a surprising fact. Student loans now…
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California Senate boss Kevin De Leon was recently asked to approve a new chief for the state’s Bureau of Electronic and Appliance Repair, Home Furnishings and Thermal Insulation. The startled senator replied that he “never heard of this department in my entire life until Rules Committee.” He may since have learned that this bureau,…
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We have been keeping track of California’s so-called high-speed rail project, backed by governor Jerry Brown and facing huge problems. As in Blazing Saddles, one thing stands in the way of the land they need: the rightful owners. The farmers, in particular, are not eager to sell. The project will supposedly cost $68 billion,…
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Do you remember Fannie Mae? Or rather, the Federal National Mortgage Association, the government-supported enterprise which was bailed out and taken over by the U.S. Treasury Department back on September 7, 2008? If not, ProPublica summarizes what happened to the government-backed corporation at that time: On Sep. 7, 2008, the government took over Fannie…
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According to estimates by the Congressional Research Service, the U.S. government spent over $892 million for public relations advertising through private firms in 2014. And that doesn’t include the spending that various federal departments and agencies do to advance their own reputations in the public through their own PR resources! Government spending watchdog Open…
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Covered California has not been much in the news of late, but that does not mean that all goes well with the Golden State’s wholly owned subsidiary of Obamacare. As we noted last year, Emily Bazar of the Center for Health Reporting wrote that Covered California’s computer system is “responsible for countless glitches and…
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On February 10 in Morro Bay, the California Coastal Commission (CCC) fired its executive director Charles Lester. For any government body to fire the boss is exceedingly rare, and this case should prove educational for all Californians. For one thing, what Lester had done wrong remained unclear. On his watch, no major environmental disaster…
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President Barack Obama released his final budget proposal for the U.S. government yesterday. We thought it might be fun to visualize the proposed spending in all his previous budget proposals, from his first to this last one, adjusting each for inflation so that they’re expressed in terms of constant 2009 U.S. dollars — the…
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Contrary to what many politicians seem to believe, government makes mistakes. For example, as the intrepid Jon Ortiz of the Sacramento Bee notes, the state of California recently overpaid some 20,000 employees. The overpayments amount to $37 to $101 per employee and, overall, about 5 percent of all state paychecks in a single month….
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The Denver Broncos took the game 24-10 but the real winners of Super Bowl 50 were California’s pillage people. This is due to the state’s “jock tax” on players and coaches for their “duty days” in the state. As Matthew Artz notes in the San Jose Mercury News, California’s jock tax is highest in…
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