Waste, Fraud, and Abuse

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Raise this!

Don’t you just love waking up in the morning, feeling pretty good about yourself, and then opening the paper and realizing suddenly, without any warning whatsoever, that you got into the wrong line of work? Well, that’s what happened to me

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Is a notorious loophole about to close?

Shameless plug time: There are few revelations in my bosses’ new book Plunder!: How public employee unions are raiding treasuries, controlling our lives and bankrupting the nation (which you can buy here) that are more infuriating than the one about

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Down with Bully Bureaucrats!

You gotta love a website that puts a Drudge Report-like flashing police strobe light on their homepage. Lieutenant Governor candidate/state Senator Sam Aanestad, R-Grass Valley, just stuck one on his senate homepage to advertise his new Bully Bureaucrat Hotline. And

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Is high speed rail unstoppable?

Mar. 12, 2010 Sometimes, being a legislator can be a very lonely job. Just ask Assembly member Diane Harkey, R-Dana Point. She’s taking on the proposed California High Speed Rail project, and she doesn’t have a lot of help or

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Who’s running the Delta Stewardship Council?

By KATY GRIMES With the five major component bills of the 2009 water package representing a massive undertaking for the State of California, it appears that the Delta Stewardship Council — which will oversee the whole deal — has become operational

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Californian Utopia turns into Dante’s Inferno

Mar. 10, 2010 Inferno, the first part of the famous 14th century epic poem Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy) by Dante Alighieri, tells of a man’s journey through Hell toward faith. Along the way, Dante sees the uncommitted souls of the people

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The Ballad of John Nunez

Once upon a time — okay, in 1996 — there was a Garvey school board member named John Nunez. He apparently didn’t really get along with another school board member named Robert Miranda, because one day Nunez told a couple

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Certainty Shmertainty

Just to recap a bit for those following at home: the state is currently running a $20 billion or so budget deficit. What to do about it has paralyzed Sacramento for, well, years, virtually guaranteeing that it will get worse. Notice

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AIDS rules raise privacy questions

March 4, 2010 By ELISE VIEBECK The state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office urged lawmakers last week to generate amore  stringent reporting protocol for HIV/AIDs cases,  according to a report issued by that office.  A new reporting system, the LAO said, would

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State's Unions Win Another Court Battle

The state worker furlough situation is getting curiouser and curiouser. Yesterday Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch ruled that furloughed workers are entitled to back pay due to the furloughs, and ordered the state to “cease and desist the furlough

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