Sorry. See you tomorrow.
CommentsWaste And Fraud
This will be brief, since sitting still isn’t my strong point.
The idiots who believed–or pretended to believe–that DOGE was all about rooting out “waste and fraud” from the federal government will dismiss the truth, much as Trump has responded to economic data by firing the workers who reported it, but numerous outlets are reporting the all-too-predictable facts.
DOGE cost taxpayers a fortune. Far from finding waste and fraud, DOGE was waste and fraud.
Billionaire Elon Musk and President Donald Trump tried to take a chainsaw to federal government spending, but it turns out they actually wasted tens of billions of taxpayer dollars.
The Department of Government Efficiency generated some $21.7 billion in waste across the federal government in the first six months of the year, according to a new report from the minority staff of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI).
As Talking Points Memo reported,
Democrats on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations yesterday released a jaw-dropping report attempting to document the scope and scale of financial waste, personnel upheaval, and human suffering caused by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency and Elon Musk’s giddily uninformed strike force of Peter Thiel acolytes. In all, the Democrats, led by Richard Blumenthal (CT), estimated DOGE cost the government $21.7 billion.
“DOGE-generated waste could also have easily funded monthly food assistance for the 5.3 million families losing an average of $146 in monthly food security assistance ($9.3 billion per year) under the new budget; or it could have been used more broadly to support the 40 percent of taxpayers that will see a net increase to their taxes as a direct result of the Trump tax plan,” the report contends….
Neither the buyouts nor paying workers while on administrative leave (costing an additional $6.1 billion) increased government efficiency, as was always obvious and predictable. The report details many other costs, from the petty and pointless (millions of hours of wasted employee time writing the Musk-required email listing their weekly accomplishments) to the catastrophic (the elimination of the United States Agency for International Development, “projected to cause millions of additional deaths globally while simultaneously endangering domestic public health by reducing essential medical staff and programs.”)
There is much more, and you really need to click through and read the depressing details, but this is what happens when people who have absolutely no idea what they are doing–in this case, children in their early 20’s armed only with ideological platitudes–are given entry into sophisticated systems without any understanding of either the missions of the agencies involved, or the data relevant to that mission.
A perfect example of Trump/MAGA….
CommentsIndiana’s Despicable Senators
The Trumpian assault on the rule of law has been unremitting. With the assistance of Mitch McConnell, Trump turned the highest court in the land into his personal lapdog, and now he is aiming to pollute the lower courts that have valiantly opposed his unconstitutional efforts.
The most recent and most blatant effort to replace dispassionate jurists with biased and unqualified sycophants was the nomination of a slimy creature named Emil Bove to a federal judgeship–a lifetime appointment.
Charlie Sykes, among others, reports. He begins with a quote.
Tonight Senate Republicans cast away their Constitutional obligations to rubber stamp [Emil Bove] an outrageously unfit nominee to the Third Circuit. The Senate, the country, the judiciary will suffer for this. And the conservative legal movement will not recover.” — Gregg Nunziata, Exec Dir, Society for the Rule of Law.
Last night, the US Senate blithely ignored the pleas of the legal community, the evidence of multiple whistleblowers, and whatever tattered remnants of self-respect they had, to confirm Emil Bove to a lifetime position on the Court of Appeals. As I wrote a few days back: It’s not easy these days to single out the worst of the worst appointments, but certainly the elevation of the thuggish Bove to the federal appellate bench has to rank right up there. Other churls and chodes will come and go, but federal judges are forever.
The Senate’s surrender came the same day the Wapo reported: “Whistleblower evidence suggests Trump judicial nominee Emil Bove misled Senate.”
The vote was 50-49, indicating that J.D. Vance once again had to break the tie. Two Republicans defected. But not Indiana’s GOP Senators. If there was any lingering doubt about the lack of integrity–and the lapdog status–of these two “law and order” Republicans, this inexcusable vote certainly erases it. Their fuhrur told them to vote for a demonstrable liar who has made it clear he will support whatever his fuhrur wants, irrespective of the Constitution or legal precedent–and they obeyed.
Banks, of course, is a gung-ho member of the SS. Young, it appears, is just a feckless, integrity-free “Good German.” Neither of them deserves public office or respect.
CommentsThe War On Science
A couple of things before I’m unable to continue sitting:
First, thank you all for the “get well” messages. MUCH appreciated.
Second, the outlines of the MAGA/Trump war are becoming clearer every day. It isn’t just an assault on democracy and the constitution–it’s an assault on modernity: on human knowledge and especially science. All science, not just medical science.
As the New York Times (among others) reported yesterday,
In Game-Changing Climate Rollback, E.P.A. Aims to Kill a Bedrock Scientific Finding
The proposal is President Trump’s most consequential step yet to derail federal climate efforts and appears to represent a shift toward outright denial of the scientific consensus.
We’re fighting a war for civilization and a habitable planet.
CommentsApologies And An Explanation
I’ve been tardy in approving comments and posting these daily rants to Facebook and Bluesky. I am also likely to miss a couple of days, although I will try not to. I usually write ahead, but yesterday’s was the last full post I’d prepared.
On vacation in South Carolina, I was trying to help my son-in-law take my husband’s mobility scooter out of the rear of his van. I slipped (it’s heavy) and fell, and heard something crack (NOT a pleasant sound!) Turns out I fractured something called the T12 vertabra. I flew home rather than riding in a car for 15 hours, but the airplane trip didn’t help. Bottom line, I’m pretty much out of order for the next couple of weeks. Between the pain and the drugs to control the pain, it’s definitely interfering with my ability to read, think and analyze. So expect brief messages rather than extended conversations for the next few days, until sitting at my computer is easier.
ER folks tell me the fracture is the only problem, which is good, and that it should heal in 8-12 weeks–and the pain should subside well before that, so those of you who are kind enough to keep coming back to my cantankerous offerings won’t have a long time to wait for the “full experience.”
Meanwhile, if you have news that Trump’s hold on his cult is failing, the Epstein files are being leaked, Stephen Miller has disappeared–good news, in other words–please share it in the comments!
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