By definition, waste is an act or instance of using or expending something carelessly, extravagantly, or to no purpose. In practice, the existence of waste means that costs get run up while nothing of benefit is produced. As an example, the U.S. federal government is extraordinarily wasteful. In fact, Investors Business Daily reports that…
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From 2002 to 2008 Fred Buenrostro, a former deputy director of the state Department of Personnel Administration, was the chief executive of the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), the nation’s largest pension fund. In 2008 CalPERS paid Buenrostro an annual salary of $238,992, but that wasn’t enough for the government pension boss. As…
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In April 2016, we considered the use of national debt as a weapon through Saudi Arabia’s threat to sell off its large holdings of the U.S. national debt and other assets. The threat comes in response to the possibility of the U.S. Congress acting to declassify 28 pages of a report about the role…
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When taxpayers count the cost of government, they would do well to include the tab for waste, fraud and abuse by the government monopoly K-12 educational system—particularly abuse. As Richard Winton and Howard Blume of the Los Angeles Times report, the Los Angeles Unified School District, second-largest in the nation, missed a series of…
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In the United States, we celebrate Memorial Day to remember and honor the Americans who died while serving in the military services of the nation. As a holiday, it began informally in the late 1860s, where it was first called “Decoration Day“, which arose in the cities and towns whose families had provided so…
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A major step toward the bailout of the bankrupt government of the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico was taken on May 25, 2016, when a draft of the “Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act” (PROMESA) advanced from a Congressional committee with bipartisan approval. The Wall Street Journal describes the bill now pending…
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As we noted in 2013, it is possible for an EPA “policy advisor” such as John Beale to falsify his employment record, claim that he actually works for the CIA, and maintain this ruse for 20 years while bagging fat bonuses but performing no actual work of any value. The EPA’s secret agent man…
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As we noted in 2013, an immigration bill pending in Congress included a hidden multimillion-dollar slush fund for left-wing nonprofits that would provide almost $300 million over three years and grow over time. A primary beneficiary of the slush fund was the National Council of La Raza, whose former senior policy analyst Cecilia Munoz…
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According to Social Security’s Trustees, in 2034, all Americans who receive retirement benefits from Social Security will have their pension payments slashed by 21%. But before that happens 18 years from now, U.S. truckers will test drive even larger retirement benefit cuts from their pensions if the U.S. Treasury department has its way, as…
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What happens when a number of the world’s central banks begin selling off their holdings of U.S. Treasury securities—the money the U.S. federal government borrows to sustain its spending? That’s a real question today because according to CNN, that’s exactly what three of the U.S. government’s largest lenders did in the first quarter of…
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