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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As Loretta Kalb of the Sacramento Bee reports, Deborah Bettencourt, superintendent of the Folsom Cordova Unified School District, will receive a pay increase of $24,269 as of July 2. The increase of 7.5 percent boosts the superintendent’s pay from $221,500 to $245,769. Bettencourt’s salary is far beyond that of California’s governor ($173,000), the attorney…
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Summer travelers know that the Transportation Security Administrative troops, drill sergeants decked out in Jiffy Lube blue shirts, do a bang-up job of making air travel more miserable than it should be. As they take off their shoes and belts, travelers may also know that the TSA is a miserable failure at its appointed…
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As we noted, Big Government has been colonizing economic activity through schemes such as the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937. This New Deal act, based on the notion that central planning works, set up cooperative boards and conscripted growers into reserve set-asides. This meant that Fresno raisin growers Marvin and Laura Horne, like…
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We have been keeping track, so to speak, of California’s vaunted “Bullet Train,” officially the state’s High-Speed Rail project. But as it turns out, “high speed” is something of a misnomer, as William Bigelow notes on Breitbart. The first actual construction on the project is a viaduct over the Fresno River, nowhere near the…
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As we have repeatedly noted, the stylish new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was 10 years in the making, a whopping $5 billion over budget, and yet riddled with safety issues. We have done our best to keep up with the problems, but they keep on coming. As Jaxon Van Derbeken…
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California state senators draw six-figure salaries plus gold-plated pensions, plus an impressive array of benefits that includes a car allowance. Some of those senators like to get drunk, and when they do, California taxpayers will now be footing the bill to drive them home. As Alexei Koseff and Jim Miller observe in the Sacramento…
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As this column has noted, Emily Bazar of the California Health Care Foundation’s Center for Health Reporting has been working three shifts documenting the abuses of Covered California, a wholly owned subsidiary of Obamacare. These abuses include a dysfunctional computer system that cost nearly $500 million, cancellation of health insurance without notice when people…
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As we have noted many times, the new eastern span of the San Francisco Bay Bridge was 10 years in the making and a whopping $5 billion over budget, but all that time and money could not guarantee safety for the public. Before he moved to Congress in recent elections, state senator Mark DeSaulnier…
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When it comes to intrusive government, California is plunging to new depths, as Daniel Weintraub notes in the Sacramento Bee. “For Californians who fear big government, this might sound like the ultimate nightmare: An unelected board and its vast scientific bureaucracy is going to force us to pay more to wipe our butts.” The…
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