As we noted, even with a single tunnel, Jerry Brown’s massive $16 billion “WaterFix” for the delta is a financial bust. According to Benefit-Cost Analysis of The California WaterFix, by Jeffrey Michael of the Center for Business and Policy Research at the University of the Pacific, construction costs, estimated at $16 billion, are still more than…
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With 59 dead and more than 500 injured, the Las Vegas massacre is beyond horrific. Even so, it could have been worse in several ways. Suppose gunman Stephen Paddock had been giving off clear warnings of his deadly intentions, which police ignored. Suppose police had intercepted communications of his mass-murder plan, then did nothing…
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Government bureaucrats like to set up special rules to benefit themselves, and nowhere has that been more evident in the past week than in the reaction to the reports of Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price’s use of taxpayer funding to charter private jets for highly questionable “business” travel. Dan Diamond…
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On Friday, September 29, 2017, after months of dysfunctional delay, the U.S. Senate finally got around to passing its own version of a budget blueprint for the U.S. government’s 2018 fiscal year, which officially got underway on Sunday, October 1, 2017. Politico‘s Sarah Ferris describes some of the politics that are built into the…
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The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine is about to give $7.9 million to UC Davis, already the recipient of $131 million from CIRM, which David Jensen of the California Stem Cell Report describes as an “Oakland-based stem cell agency.” Near the end of his report, he helpfully notes CIRM was created by the 2004…
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Back in 2001, terrorists flew U.S. airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing some 3,000 people and causing countless billions in damage. According to an investigation by Kelly Carr and Jaimi Dowdell of the Boston Globe, the Federal Aviation Administration listed two of those airliners still active four years later in…
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Several years ago, MyGovCost explored the concept of the national debt as kind of an emergency reservoir, which is an idea that we’re going to revisit today to apply to the unique situation in which the hurricane-devastated U.S. territory of Puerto Rico finds itself. What if, instead of being some seemingly intangible thing involving…
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Last year Senate Democrats launched a crusade against independent think tanks including the Cato Institute, Reason Foundation, Heartland Institute, the Hoover Institution, John Locke Foundation, Manhattan Institute and many others. This “web of climate denial,” charged Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island Democrat, casts “a grim shadow over democracy” and a “filthy grip on our…
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“I think this year’s higher tuition is just the beginning of bailouts by students and their parents. The students had nothing to do with creating this, but they are going to be the piggy bank to solve the problem in the long term.” That is Lawrence McQuillan, author of California Dreaming: Lessons on How…
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We’re coming up on the sixtieth anniversary of the old Soviet Union’s launch of its Sputnik satellite next month and the U.S.’ first successful launch of a satellite into Earth orbit in response one failed attempt and three months later. Since then, the U.S. has been to the Moon, launched dozens of probes across…
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