Since 1996, U.S. presidents have deployed the 1906 Antiquities Act to create 27 national monuments, including the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and Bear Ears, both in Utah, and the 1.6 million-acre Mojave Trails National Monument in California, created in early 2016. President Donald Trump calls this a “massive federal land grab” that unilaterally puts…
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For a very long time, the employees of the U.S. government have had it really good. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the combination of regular wages with extremely generous benefits puts the total compensation of the federal government employees well ahead of their peers in the private sector. But that’s not all. Downsizing…
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When it comes to the amount of money that’s wasted by governments, it’s hard to beat corporate welfare for both its size and its endurance. All too often, once a company is gifted with taxpayer money to “stimulate the economy” or to “stabilize the market” or to “keep jobs here”, it opens the door…
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In California’s capital of Sacramento, rapid transit has been in terrible shape, but not for lack of spending on management. As we noted, after hiring Mike Wiley as manager, the RT district plunged into financial distress, tapping reserve accounts to balance its budget and raising fares 10 percent. Though a major bust as transit…
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In what is almost an annual tradition now, the U.S. Congress will soon come up on the deadline where it must either approve a new increase in the statutory debt ceiling, the total amount of public debt outstanding that the U.S. government is officially allowed to have on its books, or risk defaulting on…
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Earlier this week, MyGovCost celebrated the termination of a wasteful spending program that would save $10 million a year. That success however must be measured against Washington D.C.’s projected $4,100,000 million ($4.1 trillion) spending, where a $10 million reduction is not any more than the barest amount of nibbling around the edges. Part of…
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National Water Quality Month is turning out rather dry in California, but trouble will soon be washing up in court. Farmers and business owners have filed more than 90 claims against the state government for causing a total of $1.7 billion in losses from the spillway failure at Oroville Dam back in February. Might…
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There is fantastic news coming out from Washington D.C. this week. The U.S. Treasury Department is shutting down a money-losing retirement account program that was aimed at getting low income-earning Americans to invest their retirement savings in its very low interest rate-paying U.S. Treasury bond fund for U.S. government employees (the Thrift Savings Plan…
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Imagine if land that had been held in your family for decades were suddenly subject to new environmental regulations that would severely limit what you could do on that land, where you would not be able to do things like build a new house on it, cut down trees on it, or even to…
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As we noted, the University of California at Davis garnered national attention in 2011 when campus cops pepper-sprayed students peacefully demonstrating against tuition hikes. The ensuing lawsuits cost taxpayers more than $1 million, most of it going to crony consultants. No UCD administrators got fired, least of all chancellor Linda Katehi, who also came…
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