Back in December of 2012 we noted federal government efforts, headed by then Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, to eliminate a longstanding oyster farm on the California coast, even though the small operation caused no environmental damage and kept 30 people employed. The Sierra Club and California Senator Barbara Boxer applauded Salazar’s move, but Senator…
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For the first time since 2009, the U.S. Congress has done something amazing with respect to the budget of the U.S. government. It reached a deal to even have one! WASHINGTON — Congressional Republicans announced Wednesday that negotiators have reached a deal to reconcile House and Senate budgets plans, which, if approved, would mark…
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It has been nearly a year since we first weighed in on the Veterans Affairs (VA) scandal. In that post, we discussed how incentives for bonuses led federal employees and managers to implement a bizarre rationing scheme that effectively denied timely medical treatment to former American military personnel by shunting them onto secret waiting lists…
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“Central planning was thought to work very well in 1937,” observes U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, “and Russia tried it for a long time.” So did the United States, through schemes such as the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937. Authorized by Congress during the New Deal, the Act set up cooperative boards…
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Because we mentioned the new taxes imposed by the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. “Obamacare”) in a recent article, we thought we ought to share the Heritage Foundation’s visualization of how its $800 billion worth of new taxes are being phased in over the 10 years from 2013 through 2022: The chart above is part…
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While the U.S. government’s 2015 fiscal year is now half over, the days of a shrinking budget deficit now also appear to be over as well. The Washington Examiner‘s Joseph Lawler reports: The federal budget deficit through the first half of fiscal year 2015 totaled $430 billion, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday, $17…
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CBS MarketWatch’s Brett Arends recently featured a number of “brain-busters,” in a Question & Answer format, related to findings that the U.S. Government Accountability Office has made regarding waste, duplication, and inefficiencies in the federal government’s operations. We reviewed each of the items and selected those that fit into a special category, which we’ll…
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In the United States, Tax Day, April 15, marks the deadline for Americans to file their income tax returns for what they earned in the previous calendar year. Tax Freedom Day, however, marks the day after which the average American begins earning money that he or she can spend on things other than taxes,…
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In California, prodigious waste of taxpayer dollars is inherent in the system but politicians look the other way and few in the old-line establishment media are watching. One notable exception is Jon Ortiz of the Sacramento Bee, co-author with Jim Miller of “The Public Eye” watchdog report headlined “Audit: California departments break law, game…
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Over the past decade, Wolters Kluwer, the publishers of the CCH Standard Federal Tax Reporter, a leading publication for tax professionals that summarizes the administrative guidance and judicial decisions issued under each section of the U.S. tax code, has created an infographic to convey just how many pages it takes to explain the nation’s…
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