I bet if we totaled up Federal workers, non-Federal government employees, "educators", researchers, medical practitioners, the well heeled retirees who've left those professions, and the ecosystem that thrives off all of them, half the friggin' country is on the dole. Precisely the same half that vote Democrat.
Glad you added medical practitioners. Health systems boast that they are the largest employment sector in most communities. And between Medicare/Medicaid and ACA subsidies and tax-preferred status of employer plans, most of the money laundered in health is public money.
The NGOs and think tanks are how the Dems warehouse their top operatives when they are out of power.
What was Antony Blinken doing before he went to work for the Biden campaign and was rounding up intel hacks to sign a fictitious letter about Hunter's laptop?
Think tank.
If you look at the border spending, most of it is going to NGOs who are actually Dem operatives.
Follow the bloody money.
It costs the US gov't $0.26 to collect $1.00. This drag -- the IRS and the agency disbursing the largesse -- on collections means that a dollar "invested" has a negative multiplier when you go to the actual source.
Spent several hours this week on the phone with the IRS concerning a FICA deposit that was made 4 years ago, but the IRS lost the supporting documents (which I sent electronically, so I still have them stored). I have sent the documents 4 times now, via electronic submission, USPS, fax and Fed Ex. They were still saying they are not received.
So they aren't getting any more money, but have had maybe 25 interactions with them trying to confirm they got their documents. This was over maybe $60K in payments (which they already acknowledged they received).
The quickest and most efficient way to deal with the IRS is to go to the US taxpayer Advocate closest to where you're located. Otherwise you're spinning your wheels and wasting so much more time than needed. I've done this twice and both times I had the problem resolved in less than three business days, after spending 80 to 100 hours on the phone and multiple faxes, back when they wouldn't even accept emails, because it left a written trail of accountability to which they'd be held accountable, and they have to take calls from the Taxpayer Advocate and jump when the Taxpayer Advocate says jump.
Freeze. It. All. as far as I am concerned. "We need more money for the homeless!!!" Funny how homelessness never goes away... Not.
Stop all funding except entitlements for the time being. We need to focus on America and thankfully we have a 'government hardened' president and Cabinet that seems intent on doing exactly that.
Every.Single.SES officer of the government is working against you pocketing the 25% of all grift and it needs to stop.
You nailed it on the 'consultant' thing. It has been a money laundering tool for sometime. Some crook makes up a charity that serves refugees. About 5% of the government grants go to actually refugee relief. 50% or more goes to a 'consulting' company that informs the charity how serve refugees. Perhaps offshore even, to totally avoid taxes.
They do it for Green Energy, Refugees, Healthcare for Veterans, pretty much anything that involves government grants. Going one-off with 'consultant' has been an effective shield for the graft that has plagued government since the beginning of the Republic.
Why don't we simply tie permissible levels of government spending to the GDP and when GDP goes up, spending goes up; when GDP goes down, spending goes down?
Because they could change how they measure it. in addition, if you get an unexpected extraneous shock, it might be better to deficit spend (WW2 comes to mind)
NGO inefficiency is real and we have too many of them. But you don't really want the government to be running the refugee resettlement programs. The well-run programs are really good at getting the refugees up and running.
Other large scammers of the government are private sector consultants and contractors, especially the military ones. On the medicine side take a look at Medicare over-provision of services.
Government efficiency requires some mix of government and private sector employees. If an activity is worth doing it is worth doing well. One key is to develop better accountability processes - which is really hard when there are no customers.
Cutting useless spending is good, but it won't solve the issues of national debt, Social Security, and Medicare.
you got to start somewhere. No NGO should get money from the Feds. Let them sink or swim with donors. Nailed it with private sector consultants---thought the bureaucrats were experts. Ha
So here is a good anecdote on bureaucrat expertise. Some years ago I was helping a local non-profit that employed disabled folks and "manufactured" (essentially assembled) shipping materials under a set aside program supplying various gov't entities thru the GSA.
The organization had poor mgt and had gotten sideways during a big run up of raw material costs (the provisions of the contract to recoup such sudden increases were laughably complex).
I did manage to get the situation settled, and to deal with what was essentially a Ch 13 reorg...Meanwhile I started getting calls from gov't employees all over the country asking me to explain the details of the set aside program...these folks were employed to administer the program and sought counsel from me, a private citizen and consultant, to decipher there program.
Refugees are generally vetted outside of the US. It's a very good program. Think of Afghan allies that the US government, both Rs & Ds, sold down the river. There are specialist NGO organizations that resettle these people. You do not want the government to do the work, as your other comment illustrates.
I am skeptical of the refugee programs, Bill. And even more skeptical of NGOs, which have mushroomed and become the alternate employment for Leftists when out of gov't.
ANTITRUST: I think you are referring to startups et al getting an exit via a buyout? However, as much of a free market guy as I am, I want it to be a free market. Over concentration makes that a problem. Frankly I am thinking of AMZN.... and AWS in it's market control. Some of the vertical integration seems unnecessary. Also, in food distribution. Yes, very low margins (King Soopers of Kroger was an IBM customer of mine decades ago). But in Colorado with the Kroger/Safeway (Cerebrus) merger, would lave us with them, WalMart (Walton), Whole Foods (AMZN). Independents (previously represented by the buyers coop Associate Grocers) are almost gone. What corrective action, if any, should constrain oligopolies?
I’ve seen it from the inside, domestic & overseas, as a direct hire, academic, researcher, "not for profit" staff, at one for-profit, and yes as a filthy consultant. It is so much worse than the average red-pilled person, or even the cynical eye of DOGE, presumes.
I understand the urge to make exceptions for a few good orgs anyone might know, but this whole era simply must end. This is the one thing that worries me about RFK Jr. He thinks he can reform, fix, or purify the govt-funded health-scam industry. That approach means maybe small detox for a few years, *maybe*, but we'll be right back where we started 5 years after Trump is out. The earth must be scorched; the best of the worst need to be convinced emphatically that the path forward is not govt handouts now or in the foreseeable future. Ideally never will be again, but Trump 2.0 must first burn it to the ground, every single nook and cranny (and crony). Then nuke from orbit institutionally, just to be sure. That correction might last 50 years before the rot sets back in, human nature being what it is, but hopefully on less fertile soil.
Roughly in the ‘80s, a little before, USAID started outsourcing work through consultants ('personal service contractors' rather than direct hires), later toward what we now call NGOs (outsourcing even the burden of managing contractors; some of the biggest NGOs are simply body shops). In the mid-‘90s there were still a great many well-intentioned people and efforts, largely country, area, & topic specialists, and I personally knew USAID folks who bemoaned that they were “not doing the technical work anymore”. Now they are 100% staffed exactly by the kind of droids and deadwood that cushy unaccountable middle manager posts attract, top to bottom. They know nothing but eternal process & sycophantic schmooze.
I have personally been told how to do my job (complex analysis of real-world, very messy, volatile data, in 3rd-world settings, to understand intervention impacts be they good bad or ugly) by a person 2 years out of school who'd never been out of Washington DC, up to and including an ultimatum to have final say over editing my work product (my evaluation findings). US staff on an NGO consortium, IDIQ under USAID. I couldn't go through with it. In Iraq I was under the thumb of a USAID Mission third-country national whose training consisted of one workshop, which I know because I'd delivered it, about 8 years previously. He was very embarrassed by the situation but was between a rock and a hard place with an idiot manager. At those times I had roughly 18-20 years of experience across probably 25-30 countries, oh and a PhD in methods finely-tuned in all of that fieldwork. In that case I shrugged & tried to help continue building my former trainee's capacity.
That sort of thing started to drive me mad, just as my specialized skills were inciting incredible offers. I thank God for a crisis of faith among other circumstances to force a reckoning & better choices, along with a nearly-50% pay cut. So it goes. Now we sweep the field with the cold steel of our bayonets, boys.
I bet if we totaled up Federal workers, non-Federal government employees, "educators", researchers, medical practitioners, the well heeled retirees who've left those professions, and the ecosystem that thrives off all of them, half the friggin' country is on the dole. Precisely the same half that vote Democrat.
Glad you added medical practitioners. Health systems boast that they are the largest employment sector in most communities. And between Medicare/Medicaid and ACA subsidies and tax-preferred status of employer plans, most of the money laundered in health is public money.
The NGOs and think tanks are how the Dems warehouse their top operatives when they are out of power.
What was Antony Blinken doing before he went to work for the Biden campaign and was rounding up intel hacks to sign a fictitious letter about Hunter's laptop?
Think tank.
If you look at the border spending, most of it is going to NGOs who are actually Dem operatives.
Follow the bloody money.
It costs the US gov't $0.26 to collect $1.00. This drag -- the IRS and the agency disbursing the largesse -- on collections means that a dollar "invested" has a negative multiplier when you go to the actual source.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com
Spent several hours this week on the phone with the IRS concerning a FICA deposit that was made 4 years ago, but the IRS lost the supporting documents (which I sent electronically, so I still have them stored). I have sent the documents 4 times now, via electronic submission, USPS, fax and Fed Ex. They were still saying they are not received.
So they aren't getting any more money, but have had maybe 25 interactions with them trying to confirm they got their documents. This was over maybe $60K in payments (which they already acknowledged they received).
Ridiculous system.
The quickest and most efficient way to deal with the IRS is to go to the US taxpayer Advocate closest to where you're located. Otherwise you're spinning your wheels and wasting so much more time than needed. I've done this twice and both times I had the problem resolved in less than three business days, after spending 80 to 100 hours on the phone and multiple faxes, back when they wouldn't even accept emails, because it left a written trail of accountability to which they'd be held accountable, and they have to take calls from the Taxpayer Advocate and jump when the Taxpayer Advocate says jump.
Good luck
They love a good fax at the IRS.
Freeze. It. All. as far as I am concerned. "We need more money for the homeless!!!" Funny how homelessness never goes away... Not.
Stop all funding except entitlements for the time being. We need to focus on America and thankfully we have a 'government hardened' president and Cabinet that seems intent on doing exactly that.
Every.Single.SES officer of the government is working against you pocketing the 25% of all grift and it needs to stop.
You nailed it on the 'consultant' thing. It has been a money laundering tool for sometime. Some crook makes up a charity that serves refugees. About 5% of the government grants go to actually refugee relief. 50% or more goes to a 'consulting' company that informs the charity how serve refugees. Perhaps offshore even, to totally avoid taxes.
They do it for Green Energy, Refugees, Healthcare for Veterans, pretty much anything that involves government grants. Going one-off with 'consultant' has been an effective shield for the graft that has plagued government since the beginning of the Republic.
The ‘plus-one Keynesian multiplier’ is often the excuse central planners use to justify their ideas/grifts. It’s ‘magical’!
More like nauseating….
Why don't we simply tie permissible levels of government spending to the GDP and when GDP goes up, spending goes up; when GDP goes down, spending goes down?
Because they could change how they measure it. in addition, if you get an unexpected extraneous shock, it might be better to deficit spend (WW2 comes to mind)
NGO inefficiency is real and we have too many of them. But you don't really want the government to be running the refugee resettlement programs. The well-run programs are really good at getting the refugees up and running.
Other large scammers of the government are private sector consultants and contractors, especially the military ones. On the medicine side take a look at Medicare over-provision of services.
Government efficiency requires some mix of government and private sector employees. If an activity is worth doing it is worth doing well. One key is to develop better accountability processes - which is really hard when there are no customers.
Cutting useless spending is good, but it won't solve the issues of national debt, Social Security, and Medicare.
you got to start somewhere. No NGO should get money from the Feds. Let them sink or swim with donors. Nailed it with private sector consultants---thought the bureaucrats were experts. Ha
So here is a good anecdote on bureaucrat expertise. Some years ago I was helping a local non-profit that employed disabled folks and "manufactured" (essentially assembled) shipping materials under a set aside program supplying various gov't entities thru the GSA.
The organization had poor mgt and had gotten sideways during a big run up of raw material costs (the provisions of the contract to recoup such sudden increases were laughably complex).
I did manage to get the situation settled, and to deal with what was essentially a Ch 13 reorg...Meanwhile I started getting calls from gov't employees all over the country asking me to explain the details of the set aside program...these folks were employed to administer the program and sought counsel from me, a private citizen and consultant, to decipher there program.
Can't make it up.
Here's the thing, until we deal with what is considered discretionary spending, you'll never get the public to agree to cuts on entitlements.
And why exactly are we spending gov't $$ resettling refugees anyway. How many are real refugees and how many are just scams?
When American citizens are lacking for funds it is not plausible to argue that we should pay for foreigners to come here at all.
I don't disagree. But, you have to start somewhere so go after the low hanging fruit.
I'm for doing it ALL...Flood the zone.
The courts will prevent a lot of progress, sadly.
Refugees are generally vetted outside of the US. It's a very good program. Think of Afghan allies that the US government, both Rs & Ds, sold down the river. There are specialist NGO organizations that resettle these people. You do not want the government to do the work, as your other comment illustrates.
I am skeptical of the refugee programs, Bill. And even more skeptical of NGOs, which have mushroomed and become the alternate employment for Leftists when out of gov't.
ANTITRUST: I think you are referring to startups et al getting an exit via a buyout? However, as much of a free market guy as I am, I want it to be a free market. Over concentration makes that a problem. Frankly I am thinking of AMZN.... and AWS in it's market control. Some of the vertical integration seems unnecessary. Also, in food distribution. Yes, very low margins (King Soopers of Kroger was an IBM customer of mine decades ago). But in Colorado with the Kroger/Safeway (Cerebrus) merger, would lave us with them, WalMart (Walton), Whole Foods (AMZN). Independents (previously represented by the buyers coop Associate Grocers) are almost gone. What corrective action, if any, should constrain oligopolies?
Get rid of Sarbox and other impediments to the IPO market.
SARBOX is wildly misapplied and often is just a counting exercise in my experience.
I’ve seen it from the inside, domestic & overseas, as a direct hire, academic, researcher, "not for profit" staff, at one for-profit, and yes as a filthy consultant. It is so much worse than the average red-pilled person, or even the cynical eye of DOGE, presumes.
I understand the urge to make exceptions for a few good orgs anyone might know, but this whole era simply must end. This is the one thing that worries me about RFK Jr. He thinks he can reform, fix, or purify the govt-funded health-scam industry. That approach means maybe small detox for a few years, *maybe*, but we'll be right back where we started 5 years after Trump is out. The earth must be scorched; the best of the worst need to be convinced emphatically that the path forward is not govt handouts now or in the foreseeable future. Ideally never will be again, but Trump 2.0 must first burn it to the ground, every single nook and cranny (and crony). Then nuke from orbit institutionally, just to be sure. That correction might last 50 years before the rot sets back in, human nature being what it is, but hopefully on less fertile soil.
Roughly in the ‘80s, a little before, USAID started outsourcing work through consultants ('personal service contractors' rather than direct hires), later toward what we now call NGOs (outsourcing even the burden of managing contractors; some of the biggest NGOs are simply body shops). In the mid-‘90s there were still a great many well-intentioned people and efforts, largely country, area, & topic specialists, and I personally knew USAID folks who bemoaned that they were “not doing the technical work anymore”. Now they are 100% staffed exactly by the kind of droids and deadwood that cushy unaccountable middle manager posts attract, top to bottom. They know nothing but eternal process & sycophantic schmooze.
I have personally been told how to do my job (complex analysis of real-world, very messy, volatile data, in 3rd-world settings, to understand intervention impacts be they good bad or ugly) by a person 2 years out of school who'd never been out of Washington DC, up to and including an ultimatum to have final say over editing my work product (my evaluation findings). US staff on an NGO consortium, IDIQ under USAID. I couldn't go through with it. In Iraq I was under the thumb of a USAID Mission third-country national whose training consisted of one workshop, which I know because I'd delivered it, about 8 years previously. He was very embarrassed by the situation but was between a rock and a hard place with an idiot manager. At those times I had roughly 18-20 years of experience across probably 25-30 countries, oh and a PhD in methods finely-tuned in all of that fieldwork. In that case I shrugged & tried to help continue building my former trainee's capacity.
That sort of thing started to drive me mad, just as my specialized skills were inciting incredible offers. I thank God for a crisis of faith among other circumstances to force a reckoning & better choices, along with a nearly-50% pay cut. So it goes. Now we sweep the field with the cold steel of our bayonets, boys.