And heads need to roll. There’s nothing preventing all this from happening again in the absence of real accountability. How’s it USAID head Samantha Power is worth over $30m on a government salary of $180k? It’s not enough to just uncover the fraud and end it. Examples need to be made.
I was an auditor at Purdue Research Foundation, quite a while ago. The overhead/burden rate was a pretty ridiculous subject. To their credit PRF actually looked into what was overhead being used for.
The shocker for me was that Purdue got a significantly less amount of overhead from NSF (we were specifically auditing NSF grants) than MIT or Stanford. I keep seeing 65% as the rate but seem to recall the Boilers getting something like 35% and MIT getting 45% or 50%.
We followed up with NSF who dutifully told us, 'it takes more to run an institution like MIT or Stanford, so we pay them higher overheads'. So MIT and Stanford paid higher salaries, had more expensive lab equipment and went to more conferences/junkets than Purdue, because they declared they like to spend more money than Purdue.
I like the across the board maximum of 15%. The Universities can allocate the overhead any way they like, but can compete on actual pricing rather than a rigged system like it was.
Not familiar at all with university grants. Figuring out competition is a great idea. Problem today is the competition is currying favor with whomever is doling out the grant. Pirrong in his piece talks about working hard to get a 100k grant and U Michigan sucking up every penny. An MIT researcher on X said he got a 170k grant, kept 50k, and MIT sucked up the rest for tuition and overhead.
Just met with U of I on this same subject. They are actually pretty trackable and responsible in the Life Sciences area.
More sunlight is a good thing. We had a real audit for the two years I was at Purdue. Very healthy. Crazed things like First Class flights to a conference in Paris etc were called out and restricted. I recall even asking a researcher to return some of his travel expenses.
I enjoyed working there, but it made me cynical. Some of the biggest abusers at Stanford did some of the best work. So you get to the point of, 'hey why don't we abuse the system at Purdue, and hire some of these go-getter professors'?
I posted something in the past week that Studies have shown that the Nationwide average for "incidental expenses" is 15% and that Harvard and Yale were getting 66 to 67%, ripping off the government for years.
Here are Purdue's latest rates. Not much different than Harvard/Yale Rates
Research rate: 57%
Instruction rate: 50%
Other sponsored program rate: 38%
Off-campus rate: 26%
I have come to the conclusion that this isn't going to matter much. They are just going to compete away the burden rates. The total cost of research doesn't change just because costs are put in one bucket or another.
I don't think Harvard/Yale?MIT should be getting a bonus rate, so that is good that it will be limited to 15%. Then everyone can compete on total actual costs, rather than total actual costs - arbitrary burden rates.
American research is the goose that lays the golden eggs. Even if done inefficiently.
"The best study I know estimates that each dollar of NIH spending generates $1.40-$2.80 in value counting *only the private return from drugs*, ignoring consumer surplus, med devices, public health, behavioral science, etc..."
"That's why it's my duty as President to draw its importance to your attention and that of Congress. America has long been the world's scientific leader. Over the years, we've secured far more patents than any other country in the world. And since World War II, we have won more Nobel prizes for science than the Europeans and Japanese combined. We also support more of what is called basic research; that is, research meant to teach us rather than to invent or develop new products. And for the past 40 years, the Government has been our leading sponsor of basic research." Ronald Reagan 4/2/1988
Doesn't excuse the Research Institutions from an audit and traceability.
Also, the number itself doesn't matter much, if everyone is subject to the same burden rate. So if ISU and MIT are competing for a USDA grant on say, Soybean hybrids, the will compete on the total cost of the research, including the burden, since it is now the same across the board. Before if ISU came in at $1 Million and MIT came in at $950,000, MIT would get the bid, even if its overhead was much higher than ISU.
They may have fixed this in the last 30 years, but I doubt it.
Yes, that's a part of the story. Basic research has positive externalities that private actors cannot capture, leading to socially optimal underinvestment.
You can't patent or license a lot of Basic Research. So it is hard to invest in it to capture the gains that come from it. Also very long timelines, make it hard to monetize.
Why? Many of these universities have HUGE endowments, shielded from taxes. Why are we the taxpayers obliged to further subsidize these universities?
Overhead can be calculated for private companies. Why are universities or other research entities exempt?
As an aside, my husband is a scientist with a number of patents, all developed in private employment. Relevant because I have a bedside understanding of research, its costs, and what it takes to support it. Also relevant as we have received no benefit from those patents (unlike "I am Science" Fauci, fwiw).
Indirects are negotiated between the government and universities every year. It's find to fix the issues in the process. But today even with all the BS the research pays for itself.
Exactly. The highest priority is for the administration to gain control over the system of government finance & accounting system. Indictments can wait.
"...which the agencies obliged like a drunken sailor who found a wad of $100s lying on the sidewalk." As a onetime drunken sailor I'm offended by the comparison; we spent our money on booze and hookers - we wasted nothing!
There is really no constitutional issue here. It is completely manufactured as a cynical delaying tactic.
We have 3 co-equal branches of government. All spending -- per specific direction in the Constitution -- must start in the House of Representatives and the Congress (Senate and House together) must approve all appropriations.
For years and years, the country has not followed the simple budget rules of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974; we have had a series of Continuing Resolutions rather than "regular order" meaning a Presidential budget, House hearings, House appropriations bills, and a Senate joinder.
That is hard work and the Congress on both sides of the aisle is allergic to hard work.
A CR simply says, "We're too bloody lazy to actually hold hearings and craft the necessary 12 appropriations bills, so just take last year's CR and add a bit of inflation and that'll be the budget."
Because of this sloppy budgeting, the Executive Branch is often left to decipher WTF the Congress intended.
Because of this sloppy budgeting, the Congress has not held appropriate oversight hearings on the budget implemenation v the plan. There is no bloody plan.
Only the Executive Branch -- led by the chief executive, the POTUS -- can follow through on spending. Personnel is part of the spending program.
This inherent weakness -- a lack of specific appropriations bills -- leaves the POTUS with either a lack of guidance or a gigantic amount of freedom (pick your interpretation).
This entire Dem lawfare attempt will die a natural death.
The other part of this is incredibly alarming -- the Executive Branch was allowing departments and agencies to spend funds with no Ex Branch oversight.
FEMA says it has no money for disaster relief in Western North Carolina whilst sending $59MM to NYC for the housing of illegals in luxury hotels. [Today Trump 2.0 fired 4 persons in DHS for this breach of an Ex Order.]
Turns out USAID was a Dem wet dream slush fund with funds being spent on a series of liberal causes with no authority to undertake those programs -- or oversight information -- by Congress.
That is corruption, graft, and fraud of the highest order and we are only 3 weeks into it. This will be a major league shit show.
The Dems find themselves championing and defending that corruption, graft, and fraud which seems perfectly natural for them.
What do they do? The attack the messenger -- Elon Musk.
This gets a lot worse before it gets better. There is so much waste and fraud, we may actually be able to balance the budget.
An aside, China is screwed. We know that eventually socialists/communists run out of other people's money. Cutting off their largest source of money, the American economy, will hurt them in the near term.
Dems and their media have been shouting about a “constitutional crisis” for two weeks now. If you believe Rep. Jared Huffman, it’s even the worst constitutional crisis since the Civil War. But the actual constitutional crisis is once again proving to be a judicial coup. Democrat federal judges have blocked lawful moves by the Trump administration under various technical pretexts with the aim of upending legal presidential authority. We’ve already seen this during Trump’s first term, so it comes as no real surprise, but it’s even more aggressive out of the gate with leftist activists and leftist federal judges moving rapidly to try and block nearly anything that the Trump administration does. . .
There is no way to make meaningful reforms without challenging judicial review or more properly judicial supremacism, but nonetheless it’s clear that the crisis is approaching sooner than anyone expected. The judicial coup returns us to the fundamental question of who runs the government: elected or unelected officials, by way of the question of what powers the judiciary has and what powers it does not have.
It's worth keeping in mind that these tactics were used throughout Trump's first term, when he was still learning he couldn't trust a single one of these swamp creatures. From his blitzkrieg success hitting the ground this time, running at a dead sprint the first three weeks and a day (and JD says this will be the pace for the full four years), I have complete conviction that he and his team are fully prepared with deeply-layered strategies that certainly involve resolving the issue of nonparty injunctions (so-called national injunctions) and their legality or lack thereof. Justice Thomas already signalled a while back that he is fed up.
Amazingly, the Dems are still quite cocky on the lawfare front. They and their judges were not prepared. They are not crafting careful challenges or meticulous legal logic to support their petitions or injunctions. We'll hit a critical mass of terrible, sloppy, unsupported judicial actions that will make it trivially easy for SCOTUS to snap the leash, hard. They will then strictly circumscribe conditions that MAY merit nonparty injunctions, do not pass go if your case fails any test. In short, it's a trap.
Actually I think it is worse. What Musk is saying, is that the financial controls in gov't don't exist to allow for reasonable oversight.
To me this is urgent and critical, given our unsustainable federal debt.
One other point is the ability of the executive branch to spend less than budgeted amounts--i.e., impoundment. Not a novel idea but an option that was stripped as a punishment of Richard Nixon. And, not clear, constitutionally, that an appropriation must be fully expended. I suspect this will end up at SCOTUS.
There are not even the most basic controls. At Treasury, DOGE's henchnerds found a cave man operation that is not even adequate as a manual system let alone being not up to current accounting and modern digital standards.
As to whether a President can "underspend" an appropriation, that is not really a problem as the Congress has really not created or approved the 12 appropriations bills required to run the country in about 35 years. We essentially run on continuing resolutions.
One of the biggest problems is each budget only contains the current year of multi-year spending programs. So, Congress can approve a multi-year program (think weapons or infrastructure), but each year only contains that year's allocation of funding. In industry, that would be in a capital budget not an operating budget.
What is really needed is for the Congress to do its work, to conduct budget deliberations in regular order (committee hearings, floor debate, floor vote), and to then pass the required 12 appropriations bills.
That doesn't happen because Congress is lazy AF. Both sides. It is hard work to do that and Congress is allergic to hard work.
What is also needed is the line item veto to allow the President to exercise his Constitutional veto power one line or program at a time.
I have some tepid hope that we will see a bit of spine from Congress with the addition of more veterans. The nice thing is that some of the wrongdoing is so egregious that it is impossible to defend.
This is a once in my lifetime oppurtunity and I am in my 74th year.
The FEMA stuff is Musk half-truth. The US Congress told CBP to spend the money on the housing. CBP had FEMA run the program. No $ were from disaster recovery funds. Anyone can question the wisdom of the program, but there was no fraud.
And, yes, you are correct. - the congress is the main culprit in all the chaos. They won't do their damned jobs.
Did Congress tell FEMA to pay 2X the market rate to house illegals in NYC hotels? Didn't see that in legislation.
Now I do believe that Biden and his minions supported those moves.
FEMA is a cesspool if you follow it. Last fall at least $7B in "unspent" COVID monies directed to FEMA were found--same time as FEMA refused to help the victims of Hurricane Helen who, until recently, were often sheltering in tents during winter temps.
Well, most of it at least. The fact finding helps to figure out what is worth keeping. We could start with the essential functions, right? Defense, safety (most of that at state and local level), some State Dept functions.
The problem is that most Ds and bureaucrats see we, the citizens, as obliged to support them; rather than that our gov't is of, by and for the people.
American homebuilders were buying Canadian lumber because it was cheaper. The whole Canadian timber/lumber industry is a racket since the gov't sets the cost after the fact.
American sawmill utilization is, as I said, in the 70% range. Therefore, the utilization rate will increase before any more Canadian lumber will be bought particularly if there are tariffs.
Tariffs influence from whom the customer buys. I am focusing on WNC and California.
Ditto Richard below re indictments. Very frustrating. At least some of the gangsters are having their real money stopped: security clearances and access to government buildings.
I hope the government just shuts down. We need to keep Trump and Elon alive.
If you haven't drank from @MikeBenzCyber info firehose on the history of all of this I recommend it even though you will be depressed. Most of this grift started in 1948 with the overthrow of the Italian government courtesy of the newly created CIA. There was finally some oversight with the Church Committee hearings until Ronaldus signed off the National Endowment for Democracy - this is the real seed of where we are today. This is a good primer you can find on Viva Frei's podcast:
Comes back to a competition problem. At one point, centralized aggregation of economic data made sense (ledgers and mainframes). It even made sense to coordinate at a federal government level.
Time to introduce data's version of FedEx. "When it absolutely positively had to be ACCURATE!"
In this era of cheap computing and data storage and data transmission, it makes little sense to centralize this.
I have been saying since my senior year in 1995 when I took a class called Math for Economists at Fordham, taught by a priest by the way, and was shown the 1990 inflation/CPI model along with my classmates and we quickly realized the entire thing was pure fantasy. When we got down to discussing as to why it was being done this way and the lie was what was being printed, we came to the conclusion it had to do with Social Security, and all pensions private and public and the fact that their annaul increases were tied to this number and that the boomers made it impossible for the truth to be told. These programs were always going to fail, but the government was more interested in dragging the dead cat along telling everyone it still was breathing for as long as possible. No one on either side of the isle for the last 75 has had any interest in calling out the naked emperors that are socialist based programs at the federal level. Same thing goes for the "war on poverty". Take a look at that program's original projected budget. The unconstitutional agencies that have been living off the fatted cow for 70 plus years now need to be shut down. If the states want to open up such agencies, so be it. It has never been something that should have been done at the federal level. Thank you F'ing FDR, LBJ and Nixon.
Both Donald Trump and Elon Musk seem to be infused with the spirit of Grover Cleveland who wrote, in vetoing the 1887 Texas Seed Bill passed by Congress:
“I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the government, the government should not support the people. "
It is the last sentence and in particular the last two subordinate clauses, that are the proper measure for the distribution of funds from one taxpayers pockets to another taxpayer, or worse yet, to a foreign recipient.
Remember when the employment data was revised by 828,000 (I believe the largest revision in history)and the Secretary of that Department the following day was asked about it and she didn't even know?
Yeah, that was fun and indicative of the ineptitude and competency of the entire Administration that preceded this one. 🙄😄
"...working-age, native-born population hasn't been growing for the past decade. If you use the working-age populations, you will see that native-born Americans have higher employment rates, which are also at record highs"
Not sure what a "Surrender republican" is. I'm a believer in math that wants future generations to be able to thrive and not be burdened by debts their fantasy believing ancestors built.
any data you cite is by definition fake news. it's all manufactured to tell a story. Yes, we need immigration but we don't need what we had the last four years. The only solution is to cut it off 100% and start over. Same with government spending. Burn it all down. I don't think you are a believer in true math, but normative math...meaning make the equation fit the answer
The trick is to set up a model (like the population bomb, like climate change) with parameters locked in to produce the desired results. Then any data input spits out the answer that confirms the assumptions locked into the model's weights and equations. In other words, the model says "other things being equal" and holds constant any critical factor whose change might disequilibrate the output. So, productivity and technology and declining birthrate and demoralized men and a few other things never changing, the model tells us that the US can't grow without more of the desired policy input. Voilà. It's not evidence; it's tautology camouflaged with numbers.
So you are going to manufacture your own news and call it real? Population trends are real. The whole world has birth rate issues. The USA addresses its issues via immigration.
I think Trump, Musk et. al. should totally burn it down and start over. Cut off the Social Security. Cut off the Medicare. Stop all Pentagon contracts (where the proportion of waste/fraud/abuse is even higher than whatever DOGE has found). Heck, maybe even stop paying the debt. Didn't Trump say the debt might be lower than thought due to fraud in the treasuries?
Of course none of that will happen. Even R pols don't want/can't afford the seniors to be homeless, starve, suffer, and/or prematurely die. And so we're back to deficits as far as the eye can see because Rs can't figure out how to pass any sort of a plan that substantively cuts deficits.
And heads need to roll. There’s nothing preventing all this from happening again in the absence of real accountability. How’s it USAID head Samantha Power is worth over $30m on a government salary of $180k? It’s not enough to just uncover the fraud and end it. Examples need to be made.
I was an auditor at Purdue Research Foundation, quite a while ago. The overhead/burden rate was a pretty ridiculous subject. To their credit PRF actually looked into what was overhead being used for.
The shocker for me was that Purdue got a significantly less amount of overhead from NSF (we were specifically auditing NSF grants) than MIT or Stanford. I keep seeing 65% as the rate but seem to recall the Boilers getting something like 35% and MIT getting 45% or 50%.
We followed up with NSF who dutifully told us, 'it takes more to run an institution like MIT or Stanford, so we pay them higher overheads'. So MIT and Stanford paid higher salaries, had more expensive lab equipment and went to more conferences/junkets than Purdue, because they declared they like to spend more money than Purdue.
I like the across the board maximum of 15%. The Universities can allocate the overhead any way they like, but can compete on actual pricing rather than a rigged system like it was.
Not familiar at all with university grants. Figuring out competition is a great idea. Problem today is the competition is currying favor with whomever is doling out the grant. Pirrong in his piece talks about working hard to get a 100k grant and U Michigan sucking up every penny. An MIT researcher on X said he got a 170k grant, kept 50k, and MIT sucked up the rest for tuition and overhead.
There was a lot of insanity in the system.
Just met with U of I on this same subject. They are actually pretty trackable and responsible in the Life Sciences area.
More sunlight is a good thing. We had a real audit for the two years I was at Purdue. Very healthy. Crazed things like First Class flights to a conference in Paris etc were called out and restricted. I recall even asking a researcher to return some of his travel expenses.
I enjoyed working there, but it made me cynical. Some of the biggest abusers at Stanford did some of the best work. So you get to the point of, 'hey why don't we abuse the system at Purdue, and hire some of these go-getter professors'?
I posted something in the past week that Studies have shown that the Nationwide average for "incidental expenses" is 15% and that Harvard and Yale were getting 66 to 67%, ripping off the government for years.
Here are Purdue's latest rates. Not much different than Harvard/Yale Rates
Research rate: 57%
Instruction rate: 50%
Other sponsored program rate: 38%
Off-campus rate: 26%
I have come to the conclusion that this isn't going to matter much. They are just going to compete away the burden rates. The total cost of research doesn't change just because costs are put in one bucket or another.
I don't think Harvard/Yale?MIT should be getting a bonus rate, so that is good that it will be limited to 15%. Then everyone can compete on total actual costs, rather than total actual costs - arbitrary burden rates.
American research is the goose that lays the golden eggs. Even if done inefficiently.
"The best study I know estimates that each dollar of NIH spending generates $1.40-$2.80 in value counting *only the private return from drugs*, ignoring consumer surplus, med devices, public health, behavioral science, etc..."
https://x.com/Jabaluck/status/1888264023625392223
"That's why it's my duty as President to draw its importance to your attention and that of Congress. America has long been the world's scientific leader. Over the years, we've secured far more patents than any other country in the world. And since World War II, we have won more Nobel prizes for science than the Europeans and Japanese combined. We also support more of what is called basic research; that is, research meant to teach us rather than to invent or develop new products. And for the past 40 years, the Government has been our leading sponsor of basic research." Ronald Reagan 4/2/1988
https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/radio-address-nation-federal-role-scientific-research
The current system has issues - too much incremental work, too much baloney. So fix it! 15% is not realistic. I've seen some consensus of about 50%.
Doesn't excuse the Research Institutions from an audit and traceability.
Also, the number itself doesn't matter much, if everyone is subject to the same burden rate. So if ISU and MIT are competing for a USDA grant on say, Soybean hybrids, the will compete on the total cost of the research, including the burden, since it is now the same across the board. Before if ISU came in at $1 Million and MIT came in at $950,000, MIT would get the bid, even if its overhead was much higher than ISU.
They may have fixed this in the last 30 years, but I doubt it.
One of the issues is who gets the rewards from the commercialization of gov't funded research?
I was peripherally involved w the Univ of Tx JJ Jake Pickle Research Center and I can tell you it isn't the people who funded it.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
Yes, that's a part of the story. Basic research has positive externalities that private actors cannot capture, leading to socially optimal underinvestment.
Could you translate that into English? Little 3rd grade words, please.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
You can't patent or license a lot of Basic Research. So it is hard to invest in it to capture the gains that come from it. Also very long timelines, make it hard to monetize.
Why? Many of these universities have HUGE endowments, shielded from taxes. Why are we the taxpayers obliged to further subsidize these universities?
Overhead can be calculated for private companies. Why are universities or other research entities exempt?
As an aside, my husband is a scientist with a number of patents, all developed in private employment. Relevant because I have a bedside understanding of research, its costs, and what it takes to support it. Also relevant as we have received no benefit from those patents (unlike "I am Science" Fauci, fwiw).
Because it's worth it.
https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/radio-address-nation-federal-role-scientific-research
Indirects are negotiated between the government and universities every year. It's find to fix the issues in the process. But today even with all the BS the research pays for itself.
Sorry not buying the huge overheads, much higher than other grant making enterprises pay.
I'm for research, not for enriching well endowed universities.
election wins are nice. but. when's the first indictment or even arrest? then, we'll look again.
I understand your sentiment. Is it worth the time?
Exactly. The highest priority is for the administration to gain control over the system of government finance & accounting system. Indictments can wait.
the FBI had 5k people on J6 stuff. they prosecuted 'successfully', however many, say 2000 people. there's headcount to use.
If no one got indicted over Hillary Clinton's server and the serial crimes revealed by Wikileaks, I don't think the checks and balances are working.
Maybe we work on the system, making it illegal to commit crime, while protecting politicians from malicious prosecution (like Trump suffered)
"...which the agencies obliged like a drunken sailor who found a wad of $100s lying on the sidewalk." As a onetime drunken sailor I'm offended by the comparison; we spent our money on booze and hookers - we wasted nothing!
There is really no constitutional issue here. It is completely manufactured as a cynical delaying tactic.
We have 3 co-equal branches of government. All spending -- per specific direction in the Constitution -- must start in the House of Representatives and the Congress (Senate and House together) must approve all appropriations.
For years and years, the country has not followed the simple budget rules of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974; we have had a series of Continuing Resolutions rather than "regular order" meaning a Presidential budget, House hearings, House appropriations bills, and a Senate joinder.
That is hard work and the Congress on both sides of the aisle is allergic to hard work.
A CR simply says, "We're too bloody lazy to actually hold hearings and craft the necessary 12 appropriations bills, so just take last year's CR and add a bit of inflation and that'll be the budget."
Because of this sloppy budgeting, the Executive Branch is often left to decipher WTF the Congress intended.
Because of this sloppy budgeting, the Congress has not held appropriate oversight hearings on the budget implemenation v the plan. There is no bloody plan.
Only the Executive Branch -- led by the chief executive, the POTUS -- can follow through on spending. Personnel is part of the spending program.
This inherent weakness -- a lack of specific appropriations bills -- leaves the POTUS with either a lack of guidance or a gigantic amount of freedom (pick your interpretation).
This entire Dem lawfare attempt will die a natural death.
The other part of this is incredibly alarming -- the Executive Branch was allowing departments and agencies to spend funds with no Ex Branch oversight.
FEMA says it has no money for disaster relief in Western North Carolina whilst sending $59MM to NYC for the housing of illegals in luxury hotels. [Today Trump 2.0 fired 4 persons in DHS for this breach of an Ex Order.]
Turns out USAID was a Dem wet dream slush fund with funds being spent on a series of liberal causes with no authority to undertake those programs -- or oversight information -- by Congress.
That is corruption, graft, and fraud of the highest order and we are only 3 weeks into it. This will be a major league shit show.
The Dems find themselves championing and defending that corruption, graft, and fraud which seems perfectly natural for them.
What do they do? The attack the messenger -- Elon Musk.
This gets a lot worse before it gets better. There is so much waste and fraud, we may actually be able to balance the budget.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
An aside, China is screwed. We know that eventually socialists/communists run out of other people's money. Cutting off their largest source of money, the American economy, will hurt them in the near term.
https://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=413618 yuppp echoing you
Dems and their media have been shouting about a “constitutional crisis” for two weeks now. If you believe Rep. Jared Huffman, it’s even the worst constitutional crisis since the Civil War. But the actual constitutional crisis is once again proving to be a judicial coup. Democrat federal judges have blocked lawful moves by the Trump administration under various technical pretexts with the aim of upending legal presidential authority. We’ve already seen this during Trump’s first term, so it comes as no real surprise, but it’s even more aggressive out of the gate with leftist activists and leftist federal judges moving rapidly to try and block nearly anything that the Trump administration does. . .
There is no way to make meaningful reforms without challenging judicial review or more properly judicial supremacism, but nonetheless it’s clear that the crisis is approaching sooner than anyone expected. The judicial coup returns us to the fundamental question of who runs the government: elected or unelected officials, by way of the question of what powers the judiciary has and what powers it does not have.
It's worth keeping in mind that these tactics were used throughout Trump's first term, when he was still learning he couldn't trust a single one of these swamp creatures. From his blitzkrieg success hitting the ground this time, running at a dead sprint the first three weeks and a day (and JD says this will be the pace for the full four years), I have complete conviction that he and his team are fully prepared with deeply-layered strategies that certainly involve resolving the issue of nonparty injunctions (so-called national injunctions) and their legality or lack thereof. Justice Thomas already signalled a while back that he is fed up.
Amazingly, the Dems are still quite cocky on the lawfare front. They and their judges were not prepared. They are not crafting careful challenges or meticulous legal logic to support their petitions or injunctions. We'll hit a critical mass of terrible, sloppy, unsupported judicial actions that will make it trivially easy for SCOTUS to snap the leash, hard. They will then strictly circumscribe conditions that MAY merit nonparty injunctions, do not pass go if your case fails any test. In short, it's a trap.
Actually I think it is worse. What Musk is saying, is that the financial controls in gov't don't exist to allow for reasonable oversight.
To me this is urgent and critical, given our unsustainable federal debt.
One other point is the ability of the executive branch to spend less than budgeted amounts--i.e., impoundment. Not a novel idea but an option that was stripped as a punishment of Richard Nixon. And, not clear, constitutionally, that an appropriation must be fully expended. I suspect this will end up at SCOTUS.
I agree more with you than you do with yourself.
There are not even the most basic controls. At Treasury, DOGE's henchnerds found a cave man operation that is not even adequate as a manual system let alone being not up to current accounting and modern digital standards.
It is appalling.
Read this: https://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/the-us-treasury-and-best-practices-exposed-by-doge/
As to whether a President can "underspend" an appropriation, that is not really a problem as the Congress has really not created or approved the 12 appropriations bills required to run the country in about 35 years. We essentially run on continuing resolutions.
One of the biggest problems is each budget only contains the current year of multi-year spending programs. So, Congress can approve a multi-year program (think weapons or infrastructure), but each year only contains that year's allocation of funding. In industry, that would be in a capital budget not an operating budget.
What is really needed is for the Congress to do its work, to conduct budget deliberations in regular order (committee hearings, floor debate, floor vote), and to then pass the required 12 appropriations bills.
That doesn't happen because Congress is lazy AF. Both sides. It is hard work to do that and Congress is allergic to hard work.
What is also needed is the line item veto to allow the President to exercise his Constitutional veto power one line or program at a time.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
it is a total CF, isn't it? But seems like Trump and his team are giving a spine transplant to Congress (or titanium "balz" LOL)
I have some tepid hope that we will see a bit of spine from Congress with the addition of more veterans. The nice thing is that some of the wrongdoing is so egregious that it is impossible to defend.
This is a once in my lifetime oppurtunity and I am in my 74th year.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
The FEMA stuff is Musk half-truth. The US Congress told CBP to spend the money on the housing. CBP had FEMA run the program. No $ were from disaster recovery funds. Anyone can question the wisdom of the program, but there was no fraud.
And, yes, you are correct. - the congress is the main culprit in all the chaos. They won't do their damned jobs.
Did Congress tell FEMA to pay 2X the market rate to house illegals in NYC hotels? Didn't see that in legislation.
Now I do believe that Biden and his minions supported those moves.
FEMA is a cesspool if you follow it. Last fall at least $7B in "unspent" COVID monies directed to FEMA were found--same time as FEMA refused to help the victims of Hurricane Helen who, until recently, were often sheltering in tents during winter temps.
Ya, the whole entire govt is corrupt. It has to be burned down.
Well, most of it at least. The fact finding helps to figure out what is worth keeping. We could start with the essential functions, right? Defense, safety (most of that at state and local level), some State Dept functions.
The problem is that most Ds and bureaucrats see we, the citizens, as obliged to support them; rather than that our gov't is of, by and for the people.
You would never believe the level of activity right now in WNC with the Army Corps of Engineers and all they have done. It is amazing.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
I think that's great. But just wait for the tariffs to affect building material prices.
That is Southern pine timber country, so the cost of framing lumber will not be hit there.
Sawmill utilization rate is 70-ish with a high of 85% being the marker. More and more sawmills are being automated.
I suspect that costs will rise just because they can.
Tariffs only impact imported lumber from Canada which is not likely to appear in WNC.
JLM
"I suspect that costs will rise just because they can." - yes, that's the point of tariffs. Domestic producers can raise their prices with impunity.
Not just lumber. I think I saw rebar has already significantly spiked.
Rebar is down about 20% over the TTM.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
American homebuilders were buying Canadian lumber because it was cheaper. The whole Canadian timber/lumber industry is a racket since the gov't sets the cost after the fact.
American sawmill utilization is, as I said, in the 70% range. Therefore, the utilization rate will increase before any more Canadian lumber will be bought particularly if there are tariffs.
Tariffs influence from whom the customer buys. I am focusing on WNC and California.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
Ditto Richard below re indictments. Very frustrating. At least some of the gangsters are having their real money stopped: security clearances and access to government buildings.
I hope the government just shuts down. We need to keep Trump and Elon alive.
If you haven't drank from @MikeBenzCyber info firehose on the history of all of this I recommend it even though you will be depressed. Most of this grift started in 1948 with the overthrow of the Italian government courtesy of the newly created CIA. There was finally some oversight with the Church Committee hearings until Ronaldus signed off the National Endowment for Democracy - this is the real seed of where we are today. This is a good primer you can find on Viva Frei's podcast:
https://rumble.com/v5ykwek-burisma-and-beyons-down-the-deep-state-rabbit-hole-with-mike-benz-viva-frei.html
Comes back to a competition problem. At one point, centralized aggregation of economic data made sense (ledgers and mainframes). It even made sense to coordinate at a federal government level.
Time to introduce data's version of FedEx. "When it absolutely positively had to be ACCURATE!"
In this era of cheap computing and data storage and data transmission, it makes little sense to centralize this.
I have been saying since my senior year in 1995 when I took a class called Math for Economists at Fordham, taught by a priest by the way, and was shown the 1990 inflation/CPI model along with my classmates and we quickly realized the entire thing was pure fantasy. When we got down to discussing as to why it was being done this way and the lie was what was being printed, we came to the conclusion it had to do with Social Security, and all pensions private and public and the fact that their annaul increases were tied to this number and that the boomers made it impossible for the truth to be told. These programs were always going to fail, but the government was more interested in dragging the dead cat along telling everyone it still was breathing for as long as possible. No one on either side of the isle for the last 75 has had any interest in calling out the naked emperors that are socialist based programs at the federal level. Same thing goes for the "war on poverty". Take a look at that program's original projected budget. The unconstitutional agencies that have been living off the fatted cow for 70 plus years now need to be shut down. If the states want to open up such agencies, so be it. It has never been something that should have been done at the federal level. Thank you F'ing FDR, LBJ and Nixon.
1000 thumbs up, Mike.
https://x.com/TheLastRefuge2/status/1889823571582787600m amazing
Both Donald Trump and Elon Musk seem to be infused with the spirit of Grover Cleveland who wrote, in vetoing the 1887 Texas Seed Bill passed by Congress:
“I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the government, the government should not support the people. "
It is the last sentence and in particular the last two subordinate clauses, that are the proper measure for the distribution of funds from one taxpayers pockets to another taxpayer, or worse yet, to a foreign recipient.
Remember when the employment data was revised by 828,000 (I believe the largest revision in history)and the Secretary of that Department the following day was asked about it and she didn't even know?
Yeah, that was fun and indicative of the ineptitude and competency of the entire Administration that preceded this one. 🙄😄
And the recent data on employment, which showed essentially zero growth in jobs for U.S. citizens during all of Biden's term.
"...working-age, native-born population hasn't been growing for the past decade. If you use the working-age populations, you will see that native-born Americans have higher employment rates, which are also at record highs"
https://x.com/jmhorp/status/1887906964434268202
Yes, most labor force growth is from foreign-born workers
https://x.com/jasonfurman/status/1888660390084587783
And there's no way for the US to grow GDP at anywhere close to 3% without them.
A reminder that 2018 steel tariffs killed jobs
https://x.com/johanknorberg/status/1889092764794785975
Good luck to the congressional Rs in even pretending to lower the deficit.
Glad you are a Surrender republican. We need that attitude here to actually see it operate
Not sure what a "Surrender republican" is. I'm a believer in math that wants future generations to be able to thrive and not be burdened by debts their fantasy believing ancestors built.
any data you cite is by definition fake news. it's all manufactured to tell a story. Yes, we need immigration but we don't need what we had the last four years. The only solution is to cut it off 100% and start over. Same with government spending. Burn it all down. I don't think you are a believer in true math, but normative math...meaning make the equation fit the answer
The trick is to set up a model (like the population bomb, like climate change) with parameters locked in to produce the desired results. Then any data input spits out the answer that confirms the assumptions locked into the model's weights and equations. In other words, the model says "other things being equal" and holds constant any critical factor whose change might disequilibrate the output. So, productivity and technology and declining birthrate and demoralized men and a few other things never changing, the model tells us that the US can't grow without more of the desired policy input. Voilà. It's not evidence; it's tautology camouflaged with numbers.
So you are going to manufacture your own news and call it real? Population trends are real. The whole world has birth rate issues. The USA addresses its issues via immigration.
I think Trump, Musk et. al. should totally burn it down and start over. Cut off the Social Security. Cut off the Medicare. Stop all Pentagon contracts (where the proportion of waste/fraud/abuse is even higher than whatever DOGE has found). Heck, maybe even stop paying the debt. Didn't Trump say the debt might be lower than thought due to fraud in the treasuries?
Of course none of that will happen. Even R pols don't want/can't afford the seniors to be homeless, starve, suffer, and/or prematurely die. And so we're back to deficits as far as the eye can see because Rs can't figure out how to pass any sort of a plan that substantively cuts deficits.
Republicans today: introduce a bill to rename Greenland "Red, White, and Blueland"