We have been keeping track, so to speak, of California’s vaunted “Bullet Train,” officially the state’s High-Speed Rail project. But as it turns out, “high speed” is something of a misnomer, as William Bigelow notes on Breitbart. The first actual construction on the project is a viaduct over the Fresno River, nowhere near the…
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According to the latest projections issued by the Congressional Budget Office, the publicly-held portion of the U.S. national debt will rise from 74% of GDP at present to surpass 107% of GDP in 25 years. Bloomberg‘s Kasia Klimasinska describes the CBO’s findings: U.S. government debt held by the public is expected to rise to…
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After a government gets into trouble for racking up unsustainable levels of debt, how fast should it go about restoring its fiscal credibility? Should it seek to lessen its fiscal “pain” by spreading out spending cuts over a long period of time, or should it, in effect, rip the bandages off as quickly as…
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The question came up of which is bigger — the U.S. national debt or all other debt owed by Americans? The answer, as best as we can determine with data through the end of 2014, is graphically presented below: At the end of 2014, the total public debt outstanding for the U.S. government stood…
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As we have repeatedly noted, the stylish new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was 10 years in the making, a whopping $5 billion over budget, and yet riddled with safety issues. We have done our best to keep up with the problems, but they keep on coming. As Jaxon Van Derbeken…
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When we surveyed the state of Social Security’s Disability Insurance program’s finances earlier this week, we didn’t realize that there would be breaking news regarding a high level of easily preventable waste in the program. Stephen Ohlemacher of the Associated Press reports: Social Security overpaid disability beneficiaries by nearly $17 billion over the past…
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Alan Greenspan, who served as the chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to early 2006, has an interesting perspective on Social Security’s Trust Funds: Nicholas Ballasy of PJMedia reports: Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, said a Social Security Trust Fund does not exist and that the U.S. is “way underestimating”…
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California state senators draw six-figure salaries plus gold-plated pensions, plus an impressive array of benefits that includes a car allowance. Some of those senators like to get drunk, and when they do, California taxpayers will now be footing the bill to drive them home. As Alexei Koseff and Jim Miller observe in the Sacramento…
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“Shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted” is an old American/English idiom that the Cambridge dictionary describes as meaning “to be so late in taking action to prevent something bad happening that the bad event has already happened.” Who knew that the American and English farmers of yesteryear had such insight into…
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As this column has noted, Emily Bazar of the California Health Care Foundation’s Center for Health Reporting has been working three shifts documenting the abuses of Covered California, a wholly owned subsidiary of Obamacare. These abuses include a dysfunctional computer system that cost nearly $500 million, cancellation of health insurance without notice when people…
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