Any effort to track government waste, fraud and abuse is bound to take ample notice of the federal Internal Revenue Service. As we have noted, the IRS targeted non-profit groups favoring smaller government and lower taxes. Then IRS bosses tried to pass this off as “horrible customer service,” even as they doled out huge…
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“They can’t complete a project, like building a bridge or updating a computer system, without it being late, over budget, or even obsolete by the time of completion.” That’s venture capitalist Tim Draper on California government, and he’s right. As we have observed, the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge was 10 years…
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Back in December of 2012 we noted federal government efforts, headed by then Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, to eliminate a longstanding oyster farm on the California coast, even though the small operation caused no environmental damage and kept 30 people employed. The Sierra Club and California Senator Barbara Boxer applauded Salazar’s move, but Senator…
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“Central planning was thought to work very well in 1937,” observes U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, “and Russia tried it for a long time.” So did the United States, through schemes such as the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937. Authorized by Congress during the New Deal, the Act set up cooperative boards…
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In California, prodigious waste of taxpayer dollars is inherent in the system but politicians look the other way and few in the old-line establishment media are watching. One notable exception is Jon Ortiz of the Sacramento Bee, co-author with Jim Miller of “The Public Eye” watchdog report headlined “Audit: California departments break law, game…
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Politicians promoted the California high-speed rail project as a rapid route between Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. But as we noted, the “bullet train” broke ground near Fresno. Now Dan Walters of the Sacramento Bee finds a gap between other bullet-train claims and reality. The California High-Speed Rail Authority claims that…
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As we recently noted, California’s Department of Consumer Affairs was implementing a computer system pegged at $27 million. Problems with the system boosted the cost to $77 million, but that still didn’t get it done. Consumer Affairs bosses want another $17.5 million, bring the cost to $96 million, more than three times the original…
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California’s Franchise Tax Board (FTB) says inventor Gilbert Hyatt owes $55 million in taxes. Hyatt says he’s the target of a vendetta, and as Dale Kasler shows in the Sacramento Bee, Hyatt has a strong case. In 1990 Hyatt was awarded the patent for the first single-chip microprocessor and earned $350 million in royalties….
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As we have noted several times, the new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was $5 billion over budget and ten years late. Despite all that time and money, safety issues with the bridge seem to be getting worse, as Jaxon Van Derbeken of the San Francisco Chronicle explains. For example, the…
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As consumers know, modern computers are incredibly reliable machines that work right out of the box, simplify many tasks, and save consumers money. In the hands of government employees, however, computers often fail to work, make life more complicated, and cost taxpayers much more money than advertised. As Jon Ortiz notes in the Sacramento…
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