According to a poll commissioned by Fox News, 74% of Americans think Americans rely too much on government programs for assistance, such as food stamps, and not enough on themselves. And speaking of food stamps, the poll also indicates 57% of Americans believe that most of the people on food stamps, or rather, the…
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As the New York Times reports, the National Security Agency (NSA) is “not just intercepting the communications of Americans who are in direct contact with foreigners targeted overseas.” The agency is “also casting a far wider net for people who cite information linked to those foreigners.” Further, in its extensive computer searches of data,…
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Freakonomics co-author Stephen Dubner recently conducted a very entertaining interview with the authors of another publication that readers of the MyGovCost blog might find interesting. We’ll let him describe it: Our latest podcast is called “Government Employees Gone Wild.”… It’s about a book that I’ve come to love — a most unusual book. What…
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Few would challenge the need for meaningful immigration reform in American, but taxpayers have good cause to wonder why the current immigration bill pending in Congress includes earmarks and pork barrel spending for special interest advocacy groups. In the style of Obamacare, many Senators and members of Congress may not have read the entire…
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From January to June, General Motors sold 4.85 million cars and trucks worldwide, an increase of almost 4 percent, and the new Chevrolet Impala is getting rave reviews. GM bosses may be popping the bubbly, but the huge automaker remains a guaranteed loser for American taxpayers. Recall that taxpayers bailed out a bankrupt General…
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How does your income compare to that of an employee of the U.S. federal government? Recently, Political Calculations took a unique approach to answering that question. They obtained the federal government’s public payroll data for every one of its employees named Smith and used that as a statistical sample to model their distribution of…
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Imagine the following scenario. Unemployment remains stubbornly high as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve enters the Oval Office. The President urges the Chairman to pump more money into the economy to stimulate economic growth before his reelection bid. The Chairman responds: “In my view, the monetary authority has laid the foundation for recovery. What is holding back the economy now is…
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How much more work would you be willing to do if it means you will lose much more than you make in extra income? That’s a question that anyone who benefits from any government assistance program has to answer whenever they reach a key income threshold that is tied to the value of benefits…
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Government waste occurs in schemes such as the federal stimulus, the GM bailout, Obamacare, and so forth. Government waste also occurs as a result of nepotism and sinecures, as in the case of Gil Cedillo Jr. In 2011 California’s Central Basin Municipal Water District hired Cedillo as a “business development manager,” a position the…
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As recent congressional hearings confirmed, the Internal Revenue Service can be very efficient when it comes to voter suppression. But when it tries to fight tax fraud the IRS is something of a bust, as the story of Carol Cooke confirms. Cooke has lived at her Long Island home for 37 years. In…
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