HAPPY NEW YEAR IN 2016? MAYBE NOT IF YOUR STATE IS DEEP IN DEBT: If California’s debts all come due this year, residents will have to cough up an additional $32,600 in taxes. Only 11 states have more assets than debts. Check out the spreadsheet to see how your state fares, courtesy of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group. But be forewarned: If you celebrated a bit too much last night, maybe you should wait to check until that throbbing in your head eases.

JUST ANOTHER DAY AT THE SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION OFFICE? Feds improperly gave away $64 million in Social Security Disability payments because they failed to check the recipients’ income. Oh, and they did so despite the fact the SSA Inspector General has issued at least two reports in the last decade warning that millions of tax dollars are being lost because of such sloppy work, according to Ethan Barton of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group.

COULD THIS BE WHY IRS ILLEGALLY HARASSED 292 RIGHT GROUPS IN 2010 AND 2012? Kathryn Watson says analysis of campaign contributions made by IRS workers between 1990 and 2014 found twice as many of them contributed to Democrats as did to GOP candidates and causes. The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s analysis was based on FEC data compiled by OpenSecrets.org.

THESE 6,604 FEDERAL EMPLOYEES MAY HAVE WASHINGTON’S TOUGHEST JOBS: They work for the federal government’s 72 inspectors general, the taxpayers’ first responders in the fight against waste and fraud. But the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Ethan Barton says the story here isn’t how many of them there are but how many tax dollars each is responsible for overseeing. The 6,604 work at the eight largest federal departments, which together spend more than $3 trillion every year.

“These watchdogs – full-time auditors, investigators and others with related skills – fight waste, fraud and abuse in federal spending and each one of them is responsible, on average, for $503 million … And that’s just top eight; there are 64 other inspectors general in the federal government. Call it a ‘target-rich environment’ for all of them,” Barton writes.

Like first-responders in the military, law enforcement, civil emergencies and fire-fighting, the IG staffers have a huge role in helping protect the quality of life in America.

PFFF! JUST LIKE THAT, PUERTO RICAN OFFICIALS DISAPPEAR A $10 MILLION FEDERAL GRANT: Awarded in 2007, the grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development was intended to pay for building a bus station, a four-story building and a cemetery. Comes now 2015 and nothing – as in nada, zero – has been built. Puerto Rican officials claim they have no paperwork on the project because the contractor is holding the documents as “ransom” for not being paid. Luke Rosiak of the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has a simple question – Who got the $10 million????

NOW IT’S NOAA CAUGHT IN ‘A NEW CLIMATE DATA SCANDAL:’ It revolves around the agency’s persistent refusal to provide to Congress documentation of its methodology for collecting and using data in climate models. The House Committee on Science, Space and Technology subpoena’d the documents earlier this year, and Judicial Watch, the non-profit transparency watchdog, filed a Freedom of Information Act request for them as well. Neither got the requested documents from NOAA. But then Judicial Watch filed an FOIA lawsuit against NOAA on Dec. 2 and shortly thereafter the agency coughed up the documents to the committee.

The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Ethan Barton quoted Judicial Watch chief Tom Fitton saying “Given the lawless refusal to comply with our FOIA request and a congressional subpoena, we have little doubt that the documents will show the Obama administration put politics before science in advance of global warming alarmism.” Stay tuned.

DOES THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION SCREW THIS STUFF UP ON PURPOSE? Vice-President Joe Biden was in the Ukraine recently touting that country’s anti-corruption prosecutor, Vitaliy Kasko. Also praising Kasko was U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt. Sounds good, right? But wait, there’s a catch (isn’t there always?) Key leaders in the Ukrainian parliament say Kasko can’t be trusted because he is beholden to Russian corporate interests via his law firm, which represents those interests.

And there’s another wrinkle (Ukrainian politics are never simple): Biden’s son, Hunter, sits on the four-member board of directors of a Ukrainian natural gas company, Burisma Holdings, Ltd. “Also on the board is Devon Archer, who is a close family friend of Secretary of State John Kerry. Biden and Archer are partners in the D.C.-based investment and policy advisory firm Rosemont Seneca Partners,” according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Richard Pollock. It’s complicated, but worth following as Pollock peels the onion and sorts it all out.

GUESS WHAT AMERICA IS GIVING WASHINGTON, D.C.’S FEDERAL BUREAUCRATS FOR CHRISTMAS? How about riding the national capital’s troubled Metro subway system to and from work every day for free! Well, free for the bureaucrats, not the taxpayers. And that’s just one of the gems found by Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Katie Watson when she dug into the Omnibus Spending Bill being voted on today by the House of Representatives.

WHAT’S VA’S “100-DAY PLAN” FIX FOR ITS TERRIBLE TOMAH HOSPITAL? That’s the one in Wisconsin where “Candy Man” doctors were turning vets into zombies by chronically over-medicating them. The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Luke Rosiak reports the plan emphasizes more “praising” of VA employees, greater “diversity” in hiring those employees and building a new “employee wellness center.” Luke is not making this up and neither am I.

VA HASN’T RUN OUT OF SOMEONE ELSE’S MONEY JUST YET: Maybe that’s why the federal government has paid out $871 million in medical malpractice settlements in suits against the Department of Veterans Affairs since 2006. That’s an average of “only” $87 million a year, but something happened because things got much worse in 2014 and 2015, with $230 million in settlements, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Luke Rosiak.

IT’S BEEN A DECADE SINCE EPA’S WATCHDOG AUDITED ONE OF EPA’S $542 MILLION IN COLLEGE GRANTS: The grants are for research on such vitally important topics as harvesting fog, measuring how much water we use in hotel bathroom showers and avoiding pollution caused by grilling steaks in the backyard. Sleep tight tonight, folks, your EPA has got it covered. Your wallet, that is.

23 AND COUNTING. THAT’S HOW MANY ACTIVE FOIA LAWSUITS JUDICIAL WATCH HAS NOW AGAINST THE STATE DEPARTMENT. The latest one was filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the government failed to comply with the FOIA regarding the non-profit transparency watchdog group’s Aug. 18, 2015, request for the employment documents for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, and deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin. Why do you suppose the State Department wouldn’t want the public to see what Mills and Abedin told the government about themselves?

HE’S A GREAT VA NURSE (OTHER THAN THAT MANSLAUGHTER CHARGE!): Department of Veterans Affairs officials returned a 240-pound nurse to work despite his being charged with manslaughter in the beating death of a 70-year-old veteran in a VA hospital. The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Team’s Luke Rosiak reports the case provides evidence that VA manipulates administrative leave data so Congress can’t see what’s really happening. Just – cough, cough – like secret waiting lists to see doctors – cough, cough.

YOU CAN KEEP YOUR DOCTOR, YOU CAN KEEP YOUR PLAN: Unless your Obamacare co-op goes bust, as have 14 of the 23 established at a cost of $2.4 billion in 2011. Many of the co-ops going under, reports the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Team’s Richard Pollock, lack insurance to pay patient and care-provider claims in the event of bankruptcy.

Among the uncovered is New York’s Health Republic, the largest of the Obamacare co-ops, which got $265 million from the government to launch. Sara Horowitz, Health Republic’s founder, worked with Obama years ago at a left-wing New York activist group.

Twenty percent of the doctors treating Health Republic customers are now owed $100,000 or more. Odds are they won’t even get pennies on the dollar. You can keep your doctor … if you happen to run into him or her in the Obamacare health insurance poor-house now under construction.

THERE WERE U.S. MILITARY FORCES AVAILABLE TO RESPOND TO BENGHAZI TERRORIST ATTACKS: Judicial Watch obtained an email from then-Department of Defense Chief of Staff to Hillary Clinton’s top aides during the attack telling them American forces were “spinning up” and available at that very moment. Brooklyn, you have a problem.

OBAMA’S HHS GAVE A SWEETHEART DEAL to a medical analytics firm owned by a company that had to settle a health data fraud case brought against it by the New York Attorney General for $400 million. Can you guess what the sole-source, five-year, open-ended “Blanket Purchase Agreement” is buying for the Obamacare program from the lucky firm? If you said health data –  including an undetermined amount from the database used in the New York fraud – you get the gold ribbon.

Oh, and did I mention that Andy Slavitt, Obama’s nominee as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (which runs Obamacare), is a former top executive with firm at the heart of the fraud? Maybe that’s why he got an unusual ethics waiver from the Obama administration that allows him to participate in decisions affecting his former employer? Just saying ….

And one more thing: Not only does the contract’s renewal not have to be made public, according to federal procurement regulations, nobody knows how much the deal is worth because there’s no dollar amount affixed to it. Okay, that was two things.

WILL CONGRESS IGNORE THE WORST BUREAUCRATIC OUTRAGE YOU’VE NEVER HEARD ABOUT UNTIL NOW? Well, yes, with 305 co-sponsors for the Email Privacy Act in the House of Representatives, odds are good the answer is yes. The bill protects ISPs from judge-less subpoenas but not private citizens. They are called “administrative subpoenas” and they are bad news for those who appreciate the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.

HUD IS A $50 BILLION FEDERAL DEPARTMENT AND IT’S BOOKS ARE WORTHLESS? The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Ethan Barton reports that’s essentially the conclusion of the department’s inspector general in an audit report that details nine “material weaknesses,” and “eight significant deficiencies in internal controls and six instances of noncompliance with applicable laws and regulations.” This is what happens when congressional oversight becomes an after-thought in the age of the imperial presidency. The IGs are essential points of the legislative branch’s oversight spears, but Congress has to do the shoving to make sure targets are hit and things get fixed.

EPA NEW-HIRE HITS BONUS JACKPOT: An unnamed EPA finance executive allegedly did such a fantastic job that she got two performance bonuses totaling $9,000 even though she’d been on the job for less than three months. The acting director of her office didn’t even know about the second bonus. The EPA’s inspector general said there are no rules that bar such quick bonuses but he could find no prior examples to match this one.

NO, WE AREN’T A “CHRISTIAN NATION,” BUT DEMOGRAPHICS SAY WE ARE A NATION OF (MOSTLY) CHRISTIANS: San Francisco is the country’s least faithful city but America’s most Baptist and Catholic cities aren’t where you may think they are.

NO, THE PILGRIMS WERE DEFINITELY NOT LIKE SYRIAN REFUGEES: The Daily Caller’s Scott Greer slices and dices the Left’s fallacious comparison like a succulent piece of Thanksgiving turkey. Here’s just a taste: “If it wasn’t for the Syrian refugee debate, sites like HuffPo, Salon and others would be running their usual ‘Happy Genocide Day’ coverage and dumping vitriol on the poor settlers who forged this nation.”

LIBERAL STUDENTS, FACULTY MOST LIKELY TO SILENCE SPEAKERS: A Daily Caller News Foundation analysis of Foundation for Individual Rights in Education of efforts to dis-invite speakers on U.S. college campuses between 2000 and 2014 comes up with a surprise. One hundred and sixty student and faculty groups from the Left sought to silence somebody. That’s not a surprise. What is unexpected is the fact 96 such groups from the Right did the same thing. Whoa!

“Conservative students and faculty were most likely to protest invited speakers with criminal histories and those with contrary views on abortion and Israeli-Palestinian confrontation, while liberals were most likely to protest speakers’ views on sexual orientation, immigration and Islam,” the DCNF’s Kathryn Watson reported.

Previously, Watson reported that among the Ivy League schools, only the University of Pennsylvania gets a green rating from FIRE. Yale and Dartmouth got yellow, while Harvard, Princeton, Brown, Columbia and Cornell just stomped all over the First Amendment.

THIS MAY EXPLAIN MORE THAN WE REALIZE: Huma Abedin told State Department colleague that Hillary Clinton was “often confused.”

HOW EPA TRIED TO HIDE ITS YELLOW RIVER: You won’t believe what the bureaucrats did to keep the Gold King Mine spill out of the public eye. Or maybe you will, actually.

BUREAUCRATS FIND A ‘SUPERHIGHWAY’ AROUND FOURTH, FIFTH AMENDMENTS: So much for concepts like probable cause and no self-incrimination. You’ve probably never heard of “administrative subpoenas” but you will, sooner or later. And it won’t be fun.