Tag Archives: spending

Is Satire

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…a proper style for what’s claimed to be a serious, scholarly journal?  Here, via The Wall Street Journal, is the abstract of Teresa Lloro-Bidart’s When ‘Angelino’ squirrels don’t eat nuts: a feminist posthumanist politics of consumption across southern California [sic] in the journal Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography [also sic]:

Eastern fox squirrels (Sciurus niger), reddish-brown tree squirrels native to the eastern and southeastern United States, were introduced to and now thrive in suburban/urban California. As a result, many residents in the greater Los Angeles region are grappling with living amongst tree squirrels, particularly because the state’s native western gray squirrel (Sciurus griseus) is less tolerant of human beings and, as a result, has historically been absent from most sections of the greater Los Angeles area. ‘Easties,’ as they are colloquially referred to in the popular press, are willing to feed on trash and have an ‘appetite for everything.’ Given that the shift in tree squirrel demographics is a relatively recent phenomenon, this case presents a unique opportunity to question and re-theorize the ontological given of ‘otherness’ that manifests, in part, through a politics whereby animal food choices ‘[come] to stand in for both compliance and resistance to the dominant forces in [human] culture’. I, therefore, juxtapose feminist posthumanist theories and feminist food studies scholarship to demonstrate how eastern fox squirrels are subjected to gendered, racialized, and speciesist thinking in the popular news media as a result of their feeding/eating practices, their unique and unfixed spatial arrangements in the greater Los Angeles region, and the western, modernist human frame through which humans interpret these actions. I conclude by drawing out the implications of this research for the fields of animal geography and feminist geography.

Unfortunately, the full article is behind a paywall, but the abstract is sufficient unto the day.  And it raises a question: how much of the…research…behind this piece was done with the proceeds of a Federal grant to California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, where Lloro-Bidart is an Assistant Professor in the Liberal Studies Department?  Is our tax money funding satire, now?  If so, Congress does need, indeed, need to revisit funding for the NSF and similar entities.

It’s a Start

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The Secretary of State wants to cut 2,300 jobs at State.  That might seem like a lot, until you recall that State has 13,000 Foreign Service employees, 11,000 Civil Service employees, and 45,000 Foreign Service local employees.  That’s 69,000 folks on the payroll (some estimates put the number higher, to 75,000); Tillerson wants to cut all of 3% of the employees.

Contra The Wall Street Journal‘s subheadline (The plan underscores the Trump administration’s preference for military spending over diplomacy), this is a good start on the true priority—downsizing the Federal government physically as well as fiscally.  Here’s hoping Secretary of State Rex Tillerson can follow through, and Congress and the other Cabinets and Agencies join the party.

It’ll be even better if the ones cut by Tillerson (et al., I hope) aren’t merely reallocated elsewhere on the government’s payroll but are instead returned to the private sector.

Naturally, politicians are all in a tizzy at the thought of actual downsizing—including an embarrassing number of politicians who caucus with the Republican Party.

…43 Republican and Democratic senators signed onto a letter to congressional appropriators arguing for “robust funding” for foreign aid and diplomacy.

“At a time when we face multiple national-security challenges around the world, deep cuts in this area would be short-sighted, counter-productive and even dangerous,” the letter said.

It is, though, entirely possible to do the same amount of work with fewer folks and less money—just using them both more efficiently.  In fact, it’s entirely possible to do more work with fewer folks—the lesser number won’t get in each other’s way so much.

Another Reason

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…to stop sending Federal funds to any institution in the California University system.

The University of California hid a stash of $175 million in secret funds while its leaders requested more money from the state, an audit released on Tuesday said.

The University of California system is run by Janet Napolitano, the former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.  And the same Napolitano who decided returning American veterans could be terrorist material: her history of dishonesty is a long one.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the audit found that the secret fund ballooned due to UC Office of the President overestimating how much is needed to run the school system that includes 10 campuses in the state.

And

The audit found that over the course of four years, the UC’s central bureaucracy amassed more than $175 million in reserve funds by spending significantly less than it budgeted for and asking for increases in future funding based on its previous years’ over-estimated budgets rather than its actual expenditures.

There’s more.

[A] top staff member in Napolitano’s office improperly screened confidential surveys that were sent to each campus. [California State Auditor Elaine] Howle said answers that were critical of Napolitano’s office were deleted or changed before being sent to auditors.

Of course, Napolitano denies everything.

Never mind her denials.  Just stop sending Federal funds—the taxes paid by the good citizens of New York, of Illinois, of Texas, of…—to the California university system.  Let California deal with its own schools in its own way without the largesse of the rest of the nation.

Budget Cuts

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Because it isn’t possible to get the same bang for fewer bucks by using the smaller amount more efficiently.  No, just keep throwing money at the thing; if a single dollar sticks, it’s sufficient.

That’s the apparent position of folks on the left like Bill Nye, the guy with a Master’s degree in Engineering who represents himself as “The Science Guy.”

Nye, who served as an honorary co-chair for the March for Science, chided lawmakers who ignore scientific research in areas like climate change and railed against the Trump administration’s proposed budget cuts.

I’ll leave the irony of a climatista chiding others for ignoring scientific research to others.  The question here is the budget cut proposals that so confound the engineer.

It’s possible, and it’s necessary, to spend our tax dollars much more efficiently, but this is a fact as lost on pseudo-scientists as it is on most any Progressive-Democrat.

Refusal

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Then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) said he would never work with a President Mitt Romney.

Mitt Romney’s fantasy that Senate Democrats will work with him to pass his “severely conservative” agenda is laughable[.]

Then Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) stated his refusal to work with President Donald Trump:

He moved so far over to the right that it’s virtually impossible to work with him[.]

If that wasn’t clear, the Progressive-Democrats have made it so:

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) said congressional leaders can reach an agreement on spending, but only if the White House stays out of negotiations.

The Party of Obstruction is making another thing possible: maybe it’s time to eliminate procedural filibusters in the Senate on all matters related to spending and revenue.  Force the opposition to filibuster the old fashioned way, actually taking to the floor and speaking, instead of hiding in the comfort of the sidelines with a vote.