On Tuesday, December 15, 2015, while the Republican Party’s presidential candidates were debating national security issues in Las Vegas, House Speaker Paul Ryan reached a budget appropriations deal with congressional Democrats and the White House for how the U.S. government will spend the $1.1 trillion that his predecessor, John Boehner, signed on to spend…
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Property tax bills, marked OPEN IMMEDIATELY and helpfully timed for the holiday season, may put taxpayers in a mood to calculate what government is costing them. In typical style, government does not make such calculation easy, but Brad Branan of the Sacramento Bee provides some guidance. When calculating the salaries of public officials, for…
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When Senator Tom Coburn retired last year, we wondered if his retirement would also mark the end of the Wastebook – the Oklahoma senator’s annual compendium of the most absurd items that the U.S. federal government spent money upon during the previous year. Fortunately not, as it appears that Senator Jeff Flake has picked…
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When confronted with seismic-safety issues on the new span of the Bay Bridge, which came in 10 years late and $5 billion over budget, California governor Jerry Brown famously quipped, “shit happens.” As David Siders of the Sacramento Bee observes, Brown the former seminarian does better with the orthodoxies of statist superstition. “Never underestimate…
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The California Coastal Commission (CCC) is an unelected body of regulatory zealots that overrides the elected governments of coastal counties and cities on issues of land use and property rights. As we recently noted, the powerful CCC is moving into animal management, trying to leverage SeaWorld into killing off its orca shows. Now the…
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How is it that the politicians and bureaucrats who run governments at all levels of society, from cities to counties to states and territories, keep putting the institutions they control into financial jeopardy? Jeremy Liss of The Atlantic identifies the unique “cash-basis” accounting rules that politicians and bureaucrats apply to themseleves, which allows them…
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On Tuesday, December 1, 2015, the government of the fiscally-troubled U.S. terrritory of Puerto Rico was set to reach the end of its long road to defaulting on its debt, having run out of both money and time. Here’s how ZeroHedge described Puerto Rico’s predicament: Puerto Rico has a problem. The commonwealth needs to…
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According to President Obama, the best way to keep the terrorists who conducted a coordinated attack killing 130 in Paris, France last week from winning is for the leaders of the world’s nations to agree to a climate pact as an “act of defiance” as they meet in Paris this week. The Associated Press’…
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California’s roads are an obstacle course of potholes and as Foon Rhee of the Sacramento Bee notes “the repair backlog is estimated at $78 billion for local roads and another $59 billion for state highways.” The rough roads are also highly congested but the massive California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) is not eager to…
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As we noted, California’s government monopoly K-12 education system pays big bucks to local bosses, heaping on huge raises and boosting benefits without any connection to performance or student achievement. For local bureaucrats, as Diana Lambert explains in the Sacramento Bee, even serious misconduct can pay off big-time. As the reporter notes, “El Dorado…
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