From 2002 to 2008 Fred Buenrostro, a former deputy director of the state Department of Personnel Administration, was the chief executive of the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), the nation’s largest pension fund. In 2008 CalPERS paid Buenrostro an annual salary of $238,992, but that wasn’t enough for the government pension boss. As…
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When taxpayers count the cost of government, they would do well to include the tab for waste, fraud and abuse by the government monopoly K-12 educational system—particularly abuse. As Richard Winton and Howard Blume of the Los Angeles Times report, the Los Angeles Unified School District, second-largest in the nation, missed a series of…
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As we noted in 2013, it is possible for an EPA “policy advisor” such as John Beale to falsify his employment record, claim that he actually works for the CIA, and maintain this ruse for 20 years while bagging fat bonuses but performing no actual work of any value. The EPA’s secret agent man…
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As we noted in 2013, an immigration bill pending in Congress included a hidden multimillion-dollar slush fund for left-wing nonprofits that would provide almost $300 million over three years and grow over time. A primary beneficiary of the slush fund was the National Council of La Raza, whose former senior policy analyst Cecilia Munoz…
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As John Tozzi and Michelle Cortez of Bloomberg report on the stem cell front, “press releases, popular media, and even some journal articles routinely inflate expectations for future therapies based on early findings that probably will never turn into cures.” Now the International Society for Stem Cell Research, representing more than 4,100 researchers, wants…
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When counting the cost of government, taxpayers should pay close attention to OPEB, the “Other Post-Employment Benefits” of government employees aside from their pensions but including their health care costs. Now taxpayers have a calculating tool, State Retiree Health Plan Spending: An examination of funding trends and plan provisions, a new report from the…
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As the story goes, somebody opened a restaurant with politicians and bureaucrats as waiters but it failed because they kept serving the food under the table. In the real world, likewise, politicians and bureaucrats strive to keep things out of sight from taxpayers. As Taryn Luna writes in the Sacramento Bee, one way they…
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As we observed in “Financial Crisis and Leviathan,” a deep recession, widespread unemployment, and fathomless debt were the prevailing conditions when the Obama administration created the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2011. The CFPB was based on the premise that consumers were unable to look out for themselves without help from the federal…
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California is a high-tech state and that leads Zócalo Public Square columnist Joe Mathews to wonder: “Why, in this Internet age, doesn’t my state offer a one-stop shop where I can renew my driver’s license, register to vote, pay my taxes and buy passes to a state park?” This one-stop shop, says Mr. Mathews,…
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As we noted in March, the Sacramento headquarters of the California State Board of Equalization, known among reporters as a “24-story money pit,” sprung two leaks during heavy rains. Floors 10 and 22 both had a history of leaks and other troubles, but these were apparently unaddressed, despite more than 20 reports calling for…
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