Tag Archives: culture

DOGE’s Mission

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And the mission of the Republican majorities in both houses of Congress has cutting spending at the top of their lists. Fraud, waste, and abuse has been the empty word chants of politicians from both parties for far too many years.

Now there’s a concrete example of waste, and of waste of a magnitude that it could easily obscure double potsful of outright fraud and abuse.

The federal government reported net costs of $7.4 trillion in fiscal year 2024, but it couldn’t fully account for its spending. The US Government Accountability Office, which is Congress’s research arm, said that the federal government must address “serious deficiencies” in federal financial management and correct course on its “unsustainable” long-term fiscal path.

Absolutely. One way to light a fire under the behinds of the bureaucrats who manage these departments and agencies—from the political appointees nominally in charge on down through middle management—along with those entities and personnel required to report to the former is to cut those department and agency budgets by the amount of unaccounted for spending by each department and agency. In parallel with that, identify by name the personnel responsible for the tracking, and identify by name and entity those responsible for reporting to these trackers, and deal with them, publicly shaming where useful, firing for cause where necessary, and terminating contracts of those responsible for reporting and not doing so or not doing so accurately.

Yes, that includes DoD, which hasn’t bothered to track its own spending well enough to pass an audit in the last too many years. We’re not plussing up our military, we’re not building a combat force, when DoD is losing track of its money and so isn’t spending its money on training, equipment, and logistics.

The incompetence, laziness, and criminality of those responsible for actually spending—and tracking their spending—the monies allocated to them are threats to our national security regardless of the specific spender. So are those not bothering to report accurately and completely up the chain to those trackers. That alone should make the laziness and incompetence involved as felonious as the fraud itself.

There’s Clemency, and There’s Clemency

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On his way, almost literally, out the door, now-ex-President Joe Biden (D) issued preemptive pardons to Congressional members of the J6 Committee and the committee’s staffers. Congressman Barry Loudermilk (R, GA), running the follow-on committee for the last two years, has the right of it:

You don’t forgive somebody of something unless they have potentially done something[.]
I mean, to me, this is basically, if not an actual admission, it’s truly the perception of admitting that there was wrongdoing done[.]

And, as Just the News put it at the link:

It was a stunning act…that begged a provocative question: what did an official panel of Congress do that was so bad it needed to be absolved by an act of presidential clemency?

It’s instructive that none of those preemptively pardoned—Congressmen and staffers alike—have rejected Biden’s pardon, not even on the grounds that they don’t need it and don’t want it, being innocent of wrong-doing in the first place. Not even Senator Adam Schiff (D, CA) who as Congressman was a member of that committee, declined the pardon, going no farther than to protest the lack of necessity for it.

Winning in court is a high financial price to pay for one’s innocence, to be sure, but those haled in have avenues for being made whole: malicious prosecution, for instance, and in civil cases, collecting costs from those who sued and lost. They’re not even settling in order to avoid costs; they’re ducking down behind their pardons.

How would they get their reputations back after going through trial? On the other hand, how will they get their reputations back after having been pardoned? At least with court outcomes, they’d have official declarations of no wrong-doing. Their acceptance of these pardons deny them even of that much, even as those acceptances do nothing to lend credibility to claims of having done nothing wrong.

I echo JtN’s question: what have they done that’s so bad they fear exposure in court?

Citizenship and Birth

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President Donald Trump (R) has issued his Executive Order (see below a few posts to see a related one) that seeks to apply an alternative interpretation to the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause that eliminates birthright citizenship. His EO can be read here, and the currently implementing law he references in his EO can be read here. His argument centers on the subject to the jurisdiction thereof phrase in the clause.

This is the first clause of the 14th Amendment:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

The order strongly implies, IAW “plain language” that folks are citizens of the nation first and citizens of the State in which they reside second. Further, that citizen of the State aspect follows them from State to State as they declare (and take some steps to demonstrate) their residency in the subsequent State(s). That, in turn, strongly suggests that a person’s State citizenship exists only as derivative of their national citizenship.

The law may give this EO some legs, even though the “subject to jurisdiction” part has been tried before.

Nothing to Fear but Fear Itself

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Somebody said that a while ago; it’s still true today.

The milieu this time, though, concerns drones and the People’s Republic of China, and the headline lays out the matter:

Drone Makers Looking to Steer Clear of China Fear Beijing’s Wrath

And this, to put the gooseflesh on the skin:

For US companies, dependence on China has become untenable, particularly as Beijing shows it is willing to cut off their access to essential supplies.
In Taiwan, that spells opportunity. ….
However, recent examples of Beijing punishing companies for their ties to Taiwan have made US businesses cautious in their efforts to avoid China in the production of drones, an industry where commercial ambitions and national security intersect.

“Cautious” is it? This is just one more shameful example of the cowardice of American business managers.

The way to avoid PRC wrath and repercussions over no longer sourcing essential supplies from the PRC and sourcing them from the Republic of China is to stop sourcing from the PRC and source them from the RoC. And from anywhere else.

When the goodies no longer come from the PRC, the PRC can no longer threaten their cutoff. When all the goodies, for everything else besides drones, no longer come from the PRC, the PRC can no longer use any cutoff for leverage or retaliation, or any other purpose. Don’t overthink things. Don’t artificially complexify things. Just do it.

Even managers of American companies can understand that.

Certainly, the transition will be short-term expensive, but in the mid- and long-term things get so much cheaper, so much more stable, and so much less threatening that the time to incur that expense is today.

Lose the fear.

Why Some Can’t Have Nice Things

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A canonical example of this is Progressive-Democrat Party-run Chicago and Illinois:

City taxpayers spent $262 million from August 2022 through last month to care for migrants, records show, in addition to $368 million in state and federal grants.

Assuming a naïve estimate of 50% of those grants being from Springfield, that’s nearly half a billion dollars that could have gone—should have gone—toward dealing with Chicago’s homeless—more than 76,000 as of a month ago—supporting voucher and charter schools to improve the abusively undereducated children’s opportunities, (re)creating a market economy so the unemployed and underemployed could get jobs and off the city’s and State’s welfare rolls. That last, too, would release yet more funds for dealing with those homeless, children, and jobs.

All of that is a set of failure conditions that Chicago’s Progressive-Democrat managers are determined to maintain.

An effort to water down Chicago’s sanctuary ordinance failed Wednesday [15 January 2025], 39-11, in a city council vote. Mayor Brandon Johnson [D], a progressive critical of Trump, opposed a proposal that would have allowed police to work with federal agencies on deportation cases for those accused or convicted of gang activity, drug crimes, sex trafficking, or sex crimes with minors.

These wonders would rather have gangs, drugs, and sex criminals roaming the city’s neighborhoods than take care of their own.

This sort of progressive abusiveness is why so many American citizens can’t have nice things.