As this report notes, new Internal Revenue Service boss John Koskinen has announced that the IRS will pay out a total of $62.5 million in bonuses to IRS employees. Koskinen says the “performance award payouts are recognition of that great work done in very trying circumstances” and are needed to boost morale. Embattled taxpayers…
Read More »
Contrary to Barack Obama’s promise, Obamacare deprived millions of Americans of the health plans they liked and wanted to keep. To get the health plan the federal government wants them to have, Obamacare steered these people to HealthCare.gov, a dysfunctional, insecure website also inscrutable to Spanish speakers because it was written in Spanglish. The…
Read More »
As we noted last week, the California Senate conducted a hearing on the problems with the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge, which cost some $5 billion more than the original estimate. Bridge construction was delayed 10 years but doubts remain about its safety. Taxpayers should wonder why politicians took so long to…
Read More »
To all but the willfully blind Obamacare is a bust on health care, but it works much better as a way to expand government. Obamacare and its state subsidiaries also function as a cushy landing spot for former government officials. As this report notes, Covered California has hired Ana Matosantos, California’s former director of…
Read More »
The new eastern span of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge cost $6.4 billion, with cost overruns of some $5 billion, and its opening was delayed 10 years. That amounts to waste on a colossal scale, but according to testimony in a State Transportation and Housing Committee hearing last Friday, other concerns remain for all…
Read More »
Californians imposes some of the highest taxes in the nation but its economic recovery remains sluggish. Politicians back boondoggles like the Grand Bunk Railroad and are fond of wasting taxpayers’ money on sinecures for their friends. Consider a recent case the Sacramento Bee called an “ethical crime.” Senate boss Darrell Steinberg has appointed John…
Read More »
Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, the new book by former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, is getting a lot of attention for what the author says about Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and vice president Joe Biden. Most of it has been apparent for some time but, fortunately, the memoir also reveals the…
Read More »
This week California is marking the 150th anniversary of the first train service between San Francisco and San Jose. The Southern Pacific Peninsula train began in 1863 as a private for-profit business to meet transportation needs. It cut the travel time between San Francisco and San Jose from eight or nine hours to 31/2…
Read More »
Millions of Americans who have lost their health plans, and millions of others who are going to lose their plans this year and next, are wondering if Obamacare can get any worse. A look at the Spanish version of the federal health website might answer that question. According to this Associated Press report, those…
Read More »
Fifty years ago U.S. President Lyndon Baines Johnson, also known as LBJ, famously declared a “War on Poverty.” According to Sasha Abramsky, author of The American Way of Poverty, LBJ’s war was a failure. The author wants current U.S. president Barack Obama to launch the “War on Poverty Mark II,” but will that new…
Read More »
 |
 |
 |