A brand new scandal has broken out at the Department of Veterans Affairs, where the fingerprints of the department’s bureaucrats are all over the latest evidence of misconduct. USA Today’s Donavan Slack broke the story: Neurosurgeon John Henry Schneider racked up more than a dozen malpractice claims and settlements in two states, including cases…
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With the news being dominated by stories of an ethically-troubled Senator and an ethically-troubled Representative resigning from their positions of power in Washington D.C. today, many Americans might have missed that a scheduled showing of federal government shutdown theater has been postponed for at least another two weeks. Mike DeBonis of the Washington Post…
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Besides Hollywood (Harvey Weinstein), Congress (Al Franken), and the media (Matt Lauer), to name only a few, it turns out that sexual abuse has been thriving in the California legislature. Capitol staffer Elise Flynn Gyore charged that assemblyman Raul Bocanegra groped her at a public event in 2009. Faced with this and other accusations,…
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In housing, California has been in the throes of what Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf, calls an “affordability crisis.” This year governor Jerry Brown signed a batch of bills designed to end the crisis and, as Assemblyman Richard Bloom put it, “make housing affordable again.” Those currently priced out of the market might recall past…
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Over the years, MyGovCost has highlighted some of the more bizarre ways that U.S. taxpayer funds have been used to accomplish really questionable things, but we may have a new contender for what is perhaps the strangest way that the U.S. government’s bureaucrats have ever wasted money. It may not surprise you to learn…
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Perhaps for the first time in living memory, if not ever, the outgoing Chair of the Federal Reserve Janet Yellen expressed concern about the size of the U.S. national debt. CNBC‘s Jeff Cox has the story: With Congress wrestling over a tax reform plan that critics say would explode the government budget deficit, Federal…
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Amazon made its reputation as the world’s largest online retailer by making it possible for anyone anywhere to buy consumer products. But has anybody considered what the company itself is capable of buying when it becomes the consumer? In September 2017, Amazon announced that it was seeking to establish a second headquarters in the…
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The California Supreme Court has ruled that the state can impose a contract on employers, in the style of Don Corleone, a deal they can’t refuse. News stories hailed the unanimous ruling as a victory for “farmworkers” but it isn’t. The case deals with Gerawan Farming, a fruit grower in Fresno and Madera counties….
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President Trump has tapped Mick Mulvaney head of the Office of Management and Budget, to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a bad sign for a number of reasons. As we noted back in 2012 in Financial Crisis and Leviathan, the CFPB was created during the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, not…
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Gene Steuerle, a fellow at the Urban Institute who specializes in national debt and tax policy matters, was among 40 notable individuals asked to respond to the question “Has the world been fitted with a debt straightjacket?” by the publishers of The International Economy last spring. His response provided the following gem that summarizes…
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