Author Archives: eehines

An Alternative Move

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Vice President JD Vance (R), in his new capacity as leader of President Donald Trump’s (R) newly formed anti-fraud facility, has paused transfer of some $260 million in Medicaid funding to Minnesota until that State begins to do a better job of accounting for how it spends those American taxpayer dollars. Minnesota’s Progressive-Democrat governor, Tim Walz, promptly claimed that Vance’s move was nothing more than a

campaign of retribution. Trump is weaponizing the entirety of the federal government to punish blue states like Minnesota. These cuts will be devastating for veterans, families with young kids, folks with disabilities, and working people across our state.

There is a valid concern buried under Walz’ manufactured hysteria—the loss of financial support for the groups of Americans he named. As Vance noted,

Vance…recalled his own experience growing up depending on government programs and said the money should be there for people and children who need it. “It’s disgraceful that fraudsters out there are taking advantage of programs like Medicaid[.]”

There is an alternative solution to a blanket cutoff, however temporary. Who the individuals are in those groups about whom Walz so piously pretends to care is known to the Federal government. Those $260 million should be sent directly to those individuals, entirely bypassing the State and the third parties Walz’ administration uses to distribute and funnel the money.

The shift would go a long way toward reducing the corruption in the State’s Medicaid facility by bypassing it entirely. Remaining fraud would be limited to the Federal government’s distribution facility, and that, as a one-time affair, would be minimal. The Trump I administration’s distribution of a one-time followed by a smaller one-time distribution of Wuhan Virus shutdown funds to American taxpayers shows the way.

At Whose Cost?

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The Federal courts, in the person of Judge Robert Conrad in his capacity as Director of the Administrative Office of the US Courts, wants that office to take control of and responsibility for the physical Federal courthouses around the nation.

This request is a long-standing Judicial Conference position, originally adopted in 1989, and reaffirmed again in 2006. This position is being sought now because the condition of many buildings housing the Judiciary has reached a crisis point after decades of inadequate management and oversight.
This has led to over $8 billion worth of delinquent infrastructure repairs that have created risks to safety, security, and court operations. The recent unilateral actions and reorganization of GSA have only exacerbated these conditions[.]

Whether that last is accurate is a separate question. It’s nevertheless a valid beef, but my questions here are these: who will produce those $8 billion, the AOUSC through some sort of fee structure (levied on whom), some sort of GSA-/Congressional-mandated fee structure (levied on whom)? A line item in one of Congress’ appropriation bills? Something else?

Next, is this a one-time fund, or is it ongoing? At what sustainment level?

Then, who will administer the fund, whether it’s one-time or ongoing? Will this be an AOUSC function, or will it be GSA, Congressional, …?

Finally, who will let, agree, and administer the upgrade/maintenance contracts? Again, would this fall to the AOUSC, to GSA, to someone else?

In Which the Judge is Wrong on Principle

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Even if he might be correct in a strictly legal sense (which does constrain him via his oath of office). Magistrate Judge William Porter has ruled that DoJ may not search the electronic devices seized from Washington Post news writer Hannah Natanson. Porter claimed, as paraphrased by Just the News

seizing Natanson’s devices the department took her work product, documentary material, and access to the confidential sources—”all the tools she needs as a working journalist.”

The underlying case centers on Aurelio Luis Perez-Lugones, an IT employee of a government contractor, supposedly removing classified information and passing that information to Natanson.

This is Porter claiming that received stolen property is legitimately a news writer’s “work product.”

For anyone outside the journalism guild, receiving stolen property is a serious felony. It’s long past time to end this criminal carveout for news writers and the news outlets that employ them. Stolen property is precisely that, not more and not less, no matter who gets it.

Of Course He Is

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Because he must. SecDef Pete Hegseth is appealing a district court’s ruling blocking him from proceeding with investigation of, and potential retirement-related sanctioning, Arizona Progressive-Democrat Senator Mark Kelly over Kelly’s participation in a video encouraging disorder in the military ranks by emphasizing what every service member already knows—they have an obligation to disobey illegal orders—and by which emphasis he encouraged especially the lower and bottom ranks to question every order they’re given.

It may be that Hegseth is wrong with his move vis-à-vis Kelly, but the magistrate’s ruling is, it seems to me, badly premature. The Federal courts should not be interfering with what is at bottom a strictly military matter. Furthermore, until a final ruling regarding Kelly’s retirement status and retired rank is issued, no material harm has come to Kelly. That makes the magistrate’s ruling rationale speculative at best.

What should happen is for the civilian courts to let DoD’s investigation take its course and any potential sanction be realized. Only then would a civilian Federal court have any jurisdiction over the matter.

An Overblown Concern

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Citrini Research wrote a report that’s associated with Monday’s stock market spike down. Its report centered on the risk of heavy white collar job losses from AI’s alleged ability to do white collar work and completely replace those white collars.

For the entirety of modern economic history, human intelligence has been the scarce input. We are now experiencing the unwind of that premium.

And so on.

Not so much, though. It took more mental acumen to run the steam drill than John Henry needed to run his hammer. It takes more mental acumen to work a modern auto production line, with all of that automated equipment, than it did—and does—to work an artisan, unautomated auto production line. The move extends into the white collar milieu, also. It begins with requiring more mental acumen to check AI’s work than it does to work the spreadsheets or do the research oneself. It takes a great deal of mental acumen to ask the right questions and then give AI the tasks of answering them—and then checking AI’s responses. Creativity is something AI cannot do.

AI is good at the artificial part; it’ll be quite some time before AI gets good at the intelligence part. Alan Turing once said that when a computer can answer certain kinds of questions, they’ll be impossible to distinguish from humans. That doesn’t prove computers’—AI’s—superiority, though. Answering questions isn’t the same as asking them.