Government Waste

China usually doesn't like to air its dirty laundry. But when fighting a wily foe, in this case its own well-entrenched bureaucrats, the leadership isn't above a bit of guerrilla warfare. Recently, the China Youth Daily, a mainstream Communist Party newspaper affiliated with President Hu Jintao's power base, released an online survey that found more than 90% of Chinese were fed up with inefficiency and bureaucratic muddle.

The U.S. government wasted tens of millions of dollars in Iraq reconstruction aid, including scores of unaccounted-for weapons and an unused camp for housing police trainers that has an Olympic-size swimming pool, investigators say. The quarterly audit by Stuart Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, is the latest to paint a grim picture of waste, fraud and frustration in an Iraq war and reconstruction effort that has cost taxpayers more than $300 billion.

A human rights group said Wednesday that its study of one of Nigeria's oil-producing states found that officials squandered or stole public money, while some hospitals required patients to bring their own beds and many schools lacked basic supplies. New York-based Human Rights Watch made the allegations after studying government finances in the state of Rivers, one of six oil-producing states in Nigeria.

About $10 billion has been squandered by the U.S. government on Iraq reconstruction aid because of contractor overcharges and unsupported expenses, and federal investigators warned Thursday that significantly more taxpayer money was at risk.

Ventura County government's efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, cut down on waste and save energy are commendable but more needs to be done, the Board of Supervisors said Tuesday. Everything from installing solar panels on administrative buildings to changing how supervisors quench their thirst during meetings should be considered, county leaders said. "We have to do something about these bottles," Supervisor Steve Bennett said, lifting his plastic water bottle from the dais.

Los Angeles County's child welfare agency wasted more than $1 million on unnecessary or overpriced equipment and failed to adequately keep track of hundreds of thousands of dollars more in supplies, a county audit has found.

County supervisors Tuesday ordered the Department of Children and Family Services to fix problems highlighted by a recent audit that was sharply critical of the agency's purchasing practices. The Aug. 3 audit said the agency wasted more than $1 million on unnecessary or overpriced equipment and failed to adequately keep track of hundreds of thousands of dollars in supplies. Supervisors asked county auditors to determine which other departments should be similarly scrutinized.

SACRAMENTO -- Tipped off by whistle-blowers, state investigators have uncovered a raft of waste and misconduct in recent months, including employees who ran private businesses on the taxpayers' dime and a college official who viewed 1,400 pornography images on state-owned computers. Auditors uncovered the misdeeds thanks to a hotline on which state employees can report improper use of public resources without fear of retribution.

The Internal Revenue Service paid a contractor $188,000 to provide one worker to perform clerical tasks in an 11-month period. The contract was an example of financial waste cited in a government report Thursday on the tax agency's involvement in a new program ordered by President Bush in 2004 to develop more-secure identification cards for federal workers.

I just happened to be in the Glendale neighborhood where Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich lives and noticed a big black Cadillac with tinted windows out front of his house, parked near a flagpole flying the red, white and blue. The car had a CA Exempt license plate, which meant it was a county car, and the odd thing is that it was midafternoon on a weekday. Shouldn't the supervisor have been at work?