PRESTOPUNDIT -- A Good Blog at a Great Price. Guaranteed.

CORRUPTION AT THE HIGHEST REACHERS OF

THE U.S. AIR FORCE -- the Darleen Druyun story.

ORANGE COUNTY IS BANKRUPT -- AGAIN.

"Retirement payments to Orange County government employees are estimated to cost $1 billion more than current reserves .. The amount of unfunded pensions has nearly doubled from a year ago .. supervisors joined governments across the state in adopting a generous pension hike for public safety workers that, beginning in July 2002, added $400 million to Orange County's future payments. .. Safety workers � among them sheriff's deputies, firefighters, probation officers [and DMV employees] � can retire at age 50 and earn 3% of their final year's pay for each year on the job, up to 30 years. An employee could receive a pension of 90% of his or her salary. Other county workers qualify for retirement at age 62 and earn 1.67% of their final year's pay for each year on the job. Their pensions top out at 50.1% of their salaries. The county spends nearly 40 cents of every payroll dollar on retirement costs for public safety employees and about 13 cents on pensions for other employees.

The LA Times -- "O.C.'s Reserve for Pension Payments Is $1 Billion Short".

July 7 -- Cost of Government Day 2004.

"Cost of Government Day. n. the date of the calendar year, counting from January 1, on which the average American has earned enough in cumulative gross income to pay for their share of government spending (total federal, state, and local) plus the cost of regulation."

Click here for the full Cost of Government Day report issued today by Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist's outfit.

10 million pap tests.

For women who lack a cervix. That's more than one out of ten women tested.

Damages in the trillions.

Don Boudreaux has a a class action lawsuit designed to solve the problem.

Bridges made of Gold.

"Even by the standards of Alaska, the land where schemes and dreams come for new life, two bridges approved under the national highway bill passed by the House last week are monuments to the imagination.

One, here in Ketchikan, would be among the biggest in the United States: a mile long, with a top clearance of 200 feet from the water � 80 feet higher than the Brooklyn Bridge and just 20 feet short of the Golden Gate Bridge. It would connect this economically depressed, rain-soaked town of 7,845 people to an island that has about 50 residents and the area's airport, which offers six flights a day (a few more in summer). It could cost about $200 million.

The other bridge would span an inlet for nearly two miles to tie Anchorage to a port that has a single regular tenant and almost no homes or businesses. It would cost up to $2 billion .. ". More "Bridges to Nowhere".

Morally Bankrupt Republicans Rule Washington.

The spend, borrow and steal Republicans pass a "highway" bill. Quotable: "The highway bill marks the absolute termination of the Gingrich Revolution ushered in by the 1994 Republican sweep .. Republicans are determined to pass a bill filled with earmarked spending for individual members of Congress. The 1982 highway bill contained only 10 earmarks. The 1991 bill, the last highway bill passed under Democratic leadership, contained 538 such projects. But the addiction for pork has grown so large that the current bill contains at least 3,193 earmarks."

Stealing other People's Money.

"Government flood insurance is so "compassionate" that the program didn�t even raise my premiums when, just four years after I built my house, a two-day northeaster swept away my first floor. I could still use the place, since the kitchen and bedrooms were on upper floors, though some guests were unnerved when a wave sloshed through the bottom of the house. After the water receded, the government bought me a new first floor. Federal flood insurance payments are like buying drunken drivers new cars after they wreck theirs. I never invited you taxpayers to my home. You shouldn�t have to pay for my ocean view. Actually, I don�t have such a great view anymore. On New Year�s Day, 1995, I got a call from a friend. "Happy New Year," he said. "Your house is gone." He�d seen it on the local news .. The ocean had knocked down my government-approved flood-resistant pilings and eaten my house. It was an upsetting loss for me, but financially I made out just fine. You paid for the house -- and its contents .. I could have rebuilt the beach house and possibly ripped you taxpayers off again, but I�d had enough. I sold the land. Now someone�s built an even bigger house on my old property. Bet we�ll soon have to pay for that one, too .. ". more JOHN STOSSEL

Money to Burn.

Half a trillion in borrowing every year and the government still has buckets of money to burn on such things as free copies of the 628 pages document "The President's Council on Bioethics: Being Human: The President's Reader on Bioethics". Click on the link, and the goverment will send you a free copy. Your taxes at work.

If you have no interest in reading excerpts from Peter Pan or Emily Dickinson you can always use the paper in the book to help start the fireplace.

Quotable Steyn: "Did you know a couple of weeks ago the president signed an $820-billion appropriations bill that, among other boondoggles, puts Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on the public dime? .. If rock 'n' roll requires federal funding, we might as well give up. A government with its fingers in every pie is unlikely to have enough left over for the handful of pies it should have its fingers in. It was summed up by Americans' only glimpse of the president on the morning of September 11, 2001: the commander in chief being informed of the first attack on the American mainland in nearly 200 years while speaking to grade-schoolers in Florida. That image encapsulates everything that is wrong with both parties' approach to government ..

The president should not be the national school superintendent, the pharmacist in chief, the curator of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, or the inspector-general of Janet Jackson's breasts. And, if neither politicians nor the electorate understands that at a time of war, then republican government is doomed .. ".

Bush wants bigger Social Security checks for non-Americans who didn't put a penny in the system. You work, they spend .. and spend .. and spend. Now, go work some more please.

NAS report -- don't believe the hydrogen car hype. Government hydro car programs promise only to waste taxpayer billions on a high pollution car which simply isn't economical. But you already knew that, didn't you?

ScrappleFace has news of a new Senate plan to bridge the unexpected $130B Medicare Drug Gap.

It's about time. Rumsfeld is going to bring some sanity to the National Guard and Reserve programs.

A state-by-state analysis of how state governments are handling taxing & spending during the current lean years.

Here is the report for California:

Fiscal management: Poor

Annual spending change: +9.1%

Annual tax rate change: -1.0%

2002 budget: $133.1 billion

The state borrowed $11 billion last week to cover its 2003 deficit. It will borrow another $2 billion to make a required contribution to the state employees' retirement system. Democrats, who control the Legislature and the governor's mansion, have been spending $1 billion a month more than the state takes in for two years.

State government spending continues to skyrocket with no ceiling in sight.

$2 a day in welfare -- for cows. In Europe.

The lies of Joe Klein and Time about taxes and the poor are contravened by CATO's Chris Edwards, who finally tells the truth about how the tax system is quickly becoming an arm of the welfare state.

Each recent major tax bill - 1986, 1990, 1993, 1997, 2001, 2003 - took taxpayers off the tax rolls as the EITC and other benefits were expanded. However, exempting more citizens from tax and mailing them bigger checks is bad policy. For one thing, if over one-third of Americans think that the government is "free," they'll vote for too much of it. For another, refundable credits cause an administrative nightmare: IRS studies routinely find that more than 20 percent of all refundable EITC payments are erroneous or fraudulent. Cash hand-outs attract crooks using ploys such as inventing children to boost tax credits.

Robert Novak has the scoop on how the political class has screwed the taxpayers once again:

The General Accounting Office (GAO) estimates $20 billion to $30 billion in government costs for leasing 100 Boeing 767 tankers for six years, costing $12.2 billion to $22.4 billion more than simply modernizing existing KC-135E tankers.

As long as the principle role of government is to aim a gun at working Americans in order to shovel dollars to folks like Boeing, the whole idea that "taxcuts" have anything to do with helping the taxpayer in the long-run is just another cruel
joke which plays the voter as a sucker.

The California madhouse.

Setup: "Lecturers and students from the University of Plymouth wanted to test the claim that an infinite number of monkeys given typewriters would create the works of The Bard. A single computer was placed in a monkey enclosure at Paignton Zoo to monitor the literary output of six primates."

Punchline1: "But after a month, the Sulawesi crested macaques had only succeeded in partially destroying the machine, using it as a lavatory, and mostly typing the letter "s".

Punchline2: "The project .. received �2,000 from the Arts Council." (The BBC via Hit & Run)