Here's what I don't get about releasing the Ethics Committee report on that pervert Gaetz. While he did resign from Congress, he was also re-elected to his seat in Congress on November 5.
So if he isn't confirmed as Attorney general & that's likely, he can still be sworn into the House as a representative on January 3, 2025, or even days later.
So for that reason alone, the report should be made public, because it would've been made public this week if he hadn't resigned.
The disgusting hypocrisy of that Christo-fascist Speaker Johnson is appalling!
I imagine several senators told him he would be DOA in confirmation hearings. He did win reelection, but I don't know if his resignation last week would mean DeSantis names a replacement for him or he just gets sworn in again in January.
DeSatan can't name a replacement for a vacant House seat, that would require a special election, but no special election is needed or possible for the remaining time of the office, but the seat really isn't vacant, as Gaetz can still be sworn in on Jan. 3.
But there are rumors DeSatan might name him to the Senate to replace Rubio, who the fat traitor wants as Secretary of State & goverors can name replacements for the Senate.
I think the consensus among GOP House and Senate is that they hate Gaetz. He made no friends in either chamber. I place my bet on him getting an appointment that does not require approval, or he joins the punditry.
I wonder if all the MAGA evangelicals who voted for Agent Orange are pleased with the nominations of the Three Horsemen of the Pornocalypse--Gaetz, Hegseth, and Kennedy. The sanctimonious pipsqueak Magic Mike Johnson certainly appears to be.
I'm waiting to see if the use of military to round up people here without status (aka "illegals") will include the not-insignificant number of eastern European people in the Chicago area who have overstayed visitor visas and work in the underground workforce (home cleaners, child carers, construction, yard work). Most have family here legally, they came for a visit then stayed. I have a feeling the focus will be on brown-skinned people.
Oh dear. My guess is that they’ll very publicly go after the most obvious lawbreakers first to test the waters, and if that gets positive feedback, they certainly will start demonizing and moving the more protected folks like the Dreamers. Trump has already said the Haitian refugees in Ohio aren’t really legal despite their special allowances to be there to work.
The more I think about the unqualified people Trump is nominating for cabinet positions, the less I’m worried about what they will do in those positions and the more I worry about what Elon Musk will be doing — his stated goal is to trim trillions of dollars of waste from the government, and to fire thousands of civil servants. It won’t matter who the Secretary of Education is when that department no longer exists.
I think that all of his appointments that lack any management experience in a large bureaucracy, let alone government, will find the same thing. Pulling the levers to make things happen takes a lot more than memos and edicts. Similarly, it is very difficult to fire civil service employees without first slashing the budget.
i wonder, why are people so concerned about the potential [if unlikely] elimination of the federal Dept of Ed? its funding steams - e.g., for children of low income families and for disabled children - are established in law by congress. it seems the only risk is that the jobs of thousands of bureaucrats would be eliminated, along with the costs of their wages and benefits.
this in a govt that, during peacetime, is spending almost $2 trillion [!] more than it takes in each year.
acknowledging that musk and ramaswamy won't come close to recommedning $2T in ann'l expense reductions, what's wrong with reducing the size of the federal workforce, as part of a plan to reduce deficits, reduce the nat'l debt, and reduce the cost of interst on that debt?
BTW, i would also favor significant cuts in - preferably elimination of - corp welfare. curious to see how/whether the DOGE brain trust addresses that.
There is nothing wrong with reducing the size of the federal workforce if done in the name of improving efficiency. However I read that a 25% reduction in the workforce would save perhaps 1% of the budget. If they really want to make serious cuts in spending they need to look at programs, not salaries. All this workforce reduction is focusing on small apples.
About $120 billion of the $228 billion Ed Dept budget goes to student grants/loans for higher ed. About $90 billion for K-12. about 8% of total K-12 spending. The Federal money is 15% of the CPS budget.
Maybe restricting grants and loans to public universities would save money. Really no reason to subsidize Ivy's with gigantic endowments.
This does not include the write-offs of forgiven student loans which is $175 billion under Biden. Just stopping the loan forgiveness would be a huge savings.
the DOGE plans to reduce the federal budget were explained by musk & ramaswamy in an op-ed in yesterday's [Thu] WSJ. too long to post here in the Picayune; and i'm sure the op-ed is behind a paywall.
i'm not trying to sell their model to you [or any other PS subscriber]. but their plan is about a lot more than reducing head count - tho reducing head count is a big component.
I have said this time and time again. The three biggest expenditures are the military, Social Security, and Medicare. Those have to be cut to make a difference. Not even MAGAs are smart enough to touch those since even MAGAs get old and sick.
Of course there is no such thing as a corporate welfare program. It is a term applied to a collection of actions where companies get direct financial benefit from the federal govt. It is debatable which of those are good and which are bad. But is the job of Congress to decide, and they do exactly that.
For example there are tax credits for doing scientific research? Is that welfare, or is a way to fund a public benefit?
Paying ADM for soybeans they won't be able to sell to China because of a trade war Trump is likely to restart would be a specific example of corporate welfare.
Well the govt has been deep into subsidizing agricultural products for a long time. Normally this is done via crop insurance which is supplied by the govt and the farm bill. Propping up dairy prices in the late 70's led to the govt buying up cheese, which was kind of embarrassing. I don't think they will make that mistake again. In any case all of this subsidy is what congress decides. If the GAO has not already stopped them from doing it, then a new DOGE, which seems like another version of the same thing, won't do it either.
Your original post stated "there is no such thing as a corporate welfare program." But the exact same argument can be made about, for lack of a better term, regular welfare. They are all specific programs funded by Congress designed to provide government assistance to those in need.
I am not sure what your point is. Traditional welfare is a small collection of programs that give money, food, or housing to people in need. There are a whole lot of other things that give money out to people which we do not label as welfare, such as the home mortgage tax deduction.
My point was that trying to define what is corporate welfare, meaning programs that server no purpose but to give money to businesses, from programs that serve some social need will not be at all straightforward. It would be nothing like Bill Clinton's "end welfare as we know it". It would be a chaotic process of re-deciding what to fund and what not to.
US agricultrual policy is very soviet - and, therefore, ripe for reform. for more info, and a good laugh, read PJ O'Rourke's book, Parliament of Whores'
much of corp welfare is in the form of tax breaks ['loopholes'] targeted to specific industries and specific companies. probably the second largest component is 'industrial policy' - i.e., subsidies and targeted regulation..
"loophole" is a loaded term. The insinuation is that it is an exploitation of ambiguous language in the tax code, but it is used much more broadly. Some tax breaks, such as tax credits for scientific research, or not taxing coupons from municipal bonds, are deliberate. I think people cry "corporate welfare" when they see profitable companies not paying taxes. But what they did to avoid taxes matters.
I used that specific department because it has been mentioned multiple times, both by Trump and his surrogates, as well as in Project 2025 that Trump claims he has nothing to do with. Who knows which other departments and agencies they're likely to target as unnecessary simply because they do things that don't benefit DOGEbros?
John, if the fed govt is spending ~$2 trillion [!] more than its ann'l revenues, in peacetime [it is]; and revenues for fy2024 incr'd by 11% [accd'g to chatgpt] over fy2023, then surely there must be reductions in expenses that would benefit all of us as taxpayers - and especially our children & grandchildren - that would not just be a sop to the DOGE bro's and their ilk.
Interesting and I’ll tell you why. I saw a story that questioned how much real authority Cabinet posts will have. Burger Boy appointments might not much matter. They are just going to do what Trump White House flunkies tell them to do anyway.
The Wired article about protecting privacy is excellent. This is a topic I have learned about over the past few years. An good source for more education on this is the Naomi Brockwell YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@NaomiBrockwellTV
The Wired article gives tips about how to avoid having your travel tracked. They focus on the phone, which is good, but many if not most newer cars also track you, and the car manufacturer is free to do whatever they want with your data. So if you are going to drive somewhere and not have the trip logged do it in an old car, preferably a model at the lowest trim level. Or use another form of transit, if possible.
Another point, there are phone OS options besides Apple and Google Android. Android Open-Source (AOS) does not have google play services. There are several OS's that are based on AOS. The one I use, GrapheneOS has google play services, but it runs in a sandboxed environment (on Google Android it runs with admin level access and can see everything). Google play services gets you access to the Google Play Store. Also, on Graphene you can set up multiple profiles on the phone, which completely separates the apps running on the different profiles.
I think Eric should survey his readers about how they expect Trump’s admin to perform (similar to his yearly predictions). For example, how many of the 13 million or so undocumented migrants will be deported, placed in a camp, etc., which Dems will Trump’s AG target for crimes committed prior to the election, stay in NATO, pull Ukrainian support, pass nationwide abortion ban, pass national bathroom bills, pass laws to provide public funding of Christian schools, pardon Jan. 6 offenders, tariff amounts, kill Affordable Care Act, etc etc. Not to check in later to see who’s right, but to get a read on what we’re thinking without falling back on “End of democracy!” or “More freedom from govt. overreach”. I’d especially like to see GOP voters’ responses to understand what they really are expecteing with their vote, but I know this forum skews hard left, so maybe EZ could promote the survey in his broader media space.
I like that idea. Expectations about what is going to happen vary widely. It is a good practice to write down what you think will happen and store it somewhere and then go back and look at it. We all have selective memories, and many of us will be surprised at what we said we believed a year ago. Jason Zweig, a financial columnist, urges his readers to write down predictions about what will happen in markets or the economy in the next 12 months every December. Readers can also send him an email to have it recorded that way.
True. I’ve seen a lot of “oh, that’ll never happen” as well as “everything horrible will happen to the extreme.” The goal is to look at voter expectations when they voted.
As a non-Trump voter, I’m hoping to see all material related to the JFK assassination finally released. But I’m expecting another Lucy with the football denial.
I've come to the conclusion that sexual misconduct is a requirement for serving in the Trump administration. Also, thanks for the "Rice Krispies" memory.
Thanks (not) for my next earworm. "No more Rice Crispiest" was the most persistent earworm I ever suffered--months!--before something else took over. And now, "It's BA-ACK!"
On Foxx- maybe she could have been reelected. But her views on judicial reform sickened me. There is an easy way to avoid prosecution. Don't commit crimes against other people. Yes, I have read the news about both bad prosecution and bad cops. But sometimes our brains and judgements are affected by Headlines. Just what percentage of arrests are racist or otherwise faulty? I am not for bad prosecution. Now explain that to crime victims or the families of those murdered. You know what else is in the news today? A story about retail theft in a certain neighborhood. A baby was shot in a car. A woman with a protective order was killed by a recently released husband. I'm sorry about prosecurorial mistakes. I am more concerned about people that can't sit in their homes or cars without getting shot. I'm more concerned about people getting robbed and shot just trying to drive their cars. I'm more concerned about shopowners getting robbed, some time and time again. I'm more concerned about innocents getting shot in gang feeds. Now cops are targets. Guess what- no one gets punished unless arrested and prosecuted. I'm willing to bet there are a lot more good arrests and prosecutions than bad ones. I can live with reforms that try to weed out bad cops and prosecutors and judges. But victims can't live with(pun intended) laws more worried with statistics than protecting the public.
Local news reports would have you believe people are getting mugged as soon as they leave their homes, when most of us go our whole lives without ever facing any serious threat. I'm not trying to minimize the problems of crime, but it doesn't help that so many people don't keep those news stories in perspective. (I also realize that we just had an election where one side heavily trafficked FUD to great effect, while the other side played down the dangers being faced. We saw which side won that argument.)
Fighting problematic arrests is important for many reasons, including the time wasted prosecuting someone who ends up winning on appeal, having to fight lawsuits raised when someone is wrongly convicted, the erosion of public trust, etc. And reducing the number of bad arrests will free up resources to fight other crimes, which is what we all want.
John - Whether you wish to believe it or not, violent crime is up in Chicago. Aggravated assaults hit a 5-year high last month, and violent crime overall was very close to an overall 5-year high. Democrats insisting that crime is down worked about as well with voters as insisting to them that the economy was wonderful.
I do actually appreciate that violent crime is rising, and that needs to be addressed. But it is also true that the amount of crime overall (along with violent crime, specifically) is much lower now than it was in previous decades.
As for this being a winning message for Democrats, I did actually note that in my comment. It wasn't, however true the message might be.
John - I'm going to respectfully disagree with your assertion that crime is much lower now. First, a small statistical decline in the previous year ignores the fact that there was a huge increase in crime in 2019-2020, and we are still at exceedingly higher levels than the years preceding this.
Second, the FBI crime statistics are not terribly reliable. Here is a link to a good article on this, and I will paste an excerpt from it showing that the FBI's own numbers have changed four times for 2020.
"The table linked to on the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR) website—its “Source Data”—indicates 1,272,812 such crimes committed nationally in 2020. But the bureau’s 2021 press release announcing the publication of 2020 crime data pegged the figure at 1,277,696. Then, in 2022, its press release highlighting the publication of 2021 crime statistics claimed the 2020 figure had actually been 1,326,600. Add in the FBI’s Data Discovery Tool, which currently lists the 2020 total as 1,304,574, and you have four different figures for one statistic."
Look at all the businesses that have abandoned Michigan Avenue because of crime. Most people do not feel as safe as they used to walking Chicago streets, and this perception is indeed rooted in realities.
The premise of Kim Foxx and other far leftist prosecutors elected with a lot of Soros money that social justice means keeping even violent criminals out of jail if they are black has only resulted in streets becoming unsafe and many more black victims of crime. You recall that the notorious San Francisco DA was recalled in an election two years ago, but you may not have noted that the generally very liberal voters threw out the leftist DAs in both Los Angeles and Oakland, replacing them with prosecutors who have promised to get tough on criminals.
Another piece of the puzzle is violent criminals and gangs flowing across our veritable open border during the Biden Harris term. The Department of Homeland security now estimates that a Venezuelan gang is operating in 17 American cities. That's not Fox News saying this, but Biden's own DHS. Bill Clinton who was very active in the securing our border and deporting people who came here illegally stated that Lankln Riley would be alive today if the career criminal who brutally raped and murdered her had been properly vetted before being allowed into the country. So deporting illegal immigrant criminals will make a difference also.
Sorry for going on so long, but crime is a real problem, but fortunately one in which there are a myriad means of improving public safety which I am hoping will take place.
Note that I said it's lower now than in previous decades. Crime in the US spiked in the early '90s but is now near a 50-year low. Even when you account for revisions to previous years, the pattern is definitely clear that crime now is not as bad as it was 30 years ago.
There is even a rather convincing correlation between the addition of tetraethyl lead to gasoline and the crime rate, as well as the subsequent decline in crime since leaded gasoline stopped being used. You can see an explanation of this in the following YouTube video:
I'm not debating you. Read again what I wrote. Fixing police and prosecutorial errors is not an issue for me. But the crimes are real. The victims are real. That's my perspective. Should we eliminate arresting and prosecuting bad people because there are some bad cops and prosecutions. Or because too many people of the wrong color end up in jail or prison? Explain that to victims. I still question what the comparison is between perfectly legitimate arrests and prosecutions versus the bad ones. Someone is pulling the triggers and robbing people and stores no matter what the numbers say. You talk about keeping these stories in perspective. That's exactly what I'm trying to do. There are plenty of stories about bad cops and those being released because they didn't do it. But even in those stories, there were victims. Who did it? What percentage of actual crimes doesn't get get reported in the media? That might shake people up. I used to live in an apartment building across the street from Michael Reese Hospital, which is at 31st and King Drive for those not familiar with the south side. It was often hard to sleep at night with the blare of sirens every few minutes. It meant somebody was doing something bad somewhere. Most of it doesn't make the news. Bad police work and bad prosecutions help nobody. But not arresting and punishing bad people doesn't help, either.
And I appreciate that. Again, I'm not trying to minimize the issue. What I am trying to say is that it doesn't help to have cops making bad arrests that can end up with innocent people going to jail, or bad guys not going to jail, and inevitably lawsuits against the city. There's even a mention in the PS about Johnson not increasing the budget for such lawsuits when current payouts are already surpassing the money allotted for them.
Every bad arrest that either ruins a case or leads to internal investigations over what happened steals resources that could be tackling the crime issues we all want to see them addressing. What percentage of arrests are bad? I don't know, but it seems high enough to still be a problem.
Bringing up Johnson changes the subject. He is an ass that is all politician, albeit a poor one. One doesn’t keep the minority vote in Chicago by selling more cops and more arrests.
Hi Laurence - I am going to partially disagree with you on one point. The black community is disproportionately the victims of crime, especially violent crime. They are painfully aware of this, and for that reason I believe they are not opposed to increased policing if it is done with fairness and they are treated with the respect all citizens deserve.
There was a failed charter amendment vote in my hometown of Minneapolis that amounted to defunding the police. Some people were surprised to see that some of the strongest opposition to this was in the majority black neighborhood areas. And witness here in Chicago how the majority of black alderman state unequivocally that their constituents very much want shot spotter technology to continue.
There are no shortage of race hustlers like Johnson who build a career upon divisiveness between the community and police. The overwhelming majority of the black community are law abiding citizens, and everything I see indicates they want more policing and safer streets for their families.
That song is mentioned/part of the plot (not important, though) in one of the Inspector Ganache books by Louise Penny, set in Three Pines, Canada. I'm glad to see the book was true to its Canadian roots.
That quote from The Economist is the finest encapsulation of how Trumpism became ascendant, and the Democratic party’s complicity in it ever written, succinctly summarizing everything that Andrew Yang and others have been saying for years.
The quote that follows it from Andrew Sullivan is the 2nd finest.
And as sure as the sun will set in the west tonight, we can be certain that the Democrats will learn nothing, since they never do.
Harris did not campaign on transgender. However, that gave the Right the ability to play off her statements from 2019 and make them appear to be her views. She was unable to convince people otherwise.
I heard a good explanation for why Trump is hitting so many people with TV experience. Biden had many accomplishments according to his supporters, but was unable to convince others. Trump believes that it does no good to have a policy if you don’t get credit for it. He wants people who can sell the policy to the public.
Here's what I don't get about releasing the Ethics Committee report on that pervert Gaetz. While he did resign from Congress, he was also re-elected to his seat in Congress on November 5.
So if he isn't confirmed as Attorney general & that's likely, he can still be sworn into the House as a representative on January 3, 2025, or even days later.
So for that reason alone, the report should be made public, because it would've been made public this week if he hadn't resigned.
The disgusting hypocrisy of that Christo-fascist Speaker Johnson is appalling!
Appalling, and yet entirely predictable. His vow to be the most transparent speaker in history is coming true in ways he probably didn’t intend…
Yikes. Thanks for that nightmare fuel GSC, but I totally agree.
Breaking News, Gaetz has with drawn his name for AG, so will he become a House member again on January 3?
I imagine several senators told him he would be DOA in confirmation hearings. He did win reelection, but I don't know if his resignation last week would mean DeSantis names a replacement for him or he just gets sworn in again in January.
DeSatan can't name a replacement for a vacant House seat, that would require a special election, but no special election is needed or possible for the remaining time of the office, but the seat really isn't vacant, as Gaetz can still be sworn in on Jan. 3.
But there are rumors DeSatan might name him to the Senate to replace Rubio, who the fat traitor wants as Secretary of State & goverors can name replacements for the Senate.
That makes sense.
I think the consensus among GOP House and Senate is that they hate Gaetz. He made no friends in either chamber. I place my bet on him getting an appointment that does not require approval, or he joins the punditry.
he named Florida AG Pam Bondi to replace Gaetz.
Female aides- BE VERY SCARED!
I wonder if all the MAGA evangelicals who voted for Agent Orange are pleased with the nominations of the Three Horsemen of the Pornocalypse--Gaetz, Hegseth, and Kennedy. The sanctimonious pipsqueak Magic Mike Johnson certainly appears to be.
My inner 12-year-old cackled with glee over the reports of Johnson being linked to Willie Boner…
"[N]either Davis Gates nor Johnson seems to have the first clue about effective public relations."
Amen!
I’m with you. But don’t forget that most Magas think all the charges are a liberal media plot.
I'm waiting to see if the use of military to round up people here without status (aka "illegals") will include the not-insignificant number of eastern European people in the Chicago area who have overstayed visitor visas and work in the underground workforce (home cleaners, child carers, construction, yard work). Most have family here legally, they came for a visit then stayed. I have a feeling the focus will be on brown-skinned people.
I'm wondering if the Dreamers will be next.
Oh dear. My guess is that they’ll very publicly go after the most obvious lawbreakers first to test the waters, and if that gets positive feedback, they certainly will start demonizing and moving the more protected folks like the Dreamers. Trump has already said the Haitian refugees in Ohio aren’t really legal despite their special allowances to be there to work.
scary
The more I think about the unqualified people Trump is nominating for cabinet positions, the less I’m worried about what they will do in those positions and the more I worry about what Elon Musk will be doing — his stated goal is to trim trillions of dollars of waste from the government, and to fire thousands of civil servants. It won’t matter who the Secretary of Education is when that department no longer exists.
Musk is about to discover the First Rule of the Bureaucracy: The Bureaucracy must keep expanding or it will die.
He will fail at his goal, the bureaucrats are far smarter & definitely far sneakier than he can be!
I can see the headlines now about Trump trying to clean up the bloated government and the Deep State fighting back like a cornered animal.
I think that all of his appointments that lack any management experience in a large bureaucracy, let alone government, will find the same thing. Pulling the levers to make things happen takes a lot more than memos and edicts. Similarly, it is very difficult to fire civil service employees without first slashing the budget.
i wonder, why are people so concerned about the potential [if unlikely] elimination of the federal Dept of Ed? its funding steams - e.g., for children of low income families and for disabled children - are established in law by congress. it seems the only risk is that the jobs of thousands of bureaucrats would be eliminated, along with the costs of their wages and benefits.
this in a govt that, during peacetime, is spending almost $2 trillion [!] more than it takes in each year.
acknowledging that musk and ramaswamy won't come close to recommedning $2T in ann'l expense reductions, what's wrong with reducing the size of the federal workforce, as part of a plan to reduce deficits, reduce the nat'l debt, and reduce the cost of interst on that debt?
BTW, i would also favor significant cuts in - preferably elimination of - corp welfare. curious to see how/whether the DOGE brain trust addresses that.
There is nothing wrong with reducing the size of the federal workforce if done in the name of improving efficiency. However I read that a 25% reduction in the workforce would save perhaps 1% of the budget. If they really want to make serious cuts in spending they need to look at programs, not salaries. All this workforce reduction is focusing on small apples.
About $120 billion of the $228 billion Ed Dept budget goes to student grants/loans for higher ed. About $90 billion for K-12. about 8% of total K-12 spending. The Federal money is 15% of the CPS budget.
Maybe restricting grants and loans to public universities would save money. Really no reason to subsidize Ivy's with gigantic endowments.
This does not include the write-offs of forgiven student loans which is $175 billion under Biden. Just stopping the loan forgiveness would be a huge savings.
the DOGE plans to reduce the federal budget were explained by musk & ramaswamy in an op-ed in yesterday's [Thu] WSJ. too long to post here in the Picayune; and i'm sure the op-ed is behind a paywall.
i'm not trying to sell their model to you [or any other PS subscriber]. but their plan is about a lot more than reducing head count - tho reducing head count is a big component.
Feel free to post interesting text here.
I have said this time and time again. The three biggest expenditures are the military, Social Security, and Medicare. Those have to be cut to make a difference. Not even MAGAs are smart enough to touch those since even MAGAs get old and sick.
Of course there is no such thing as a corporate welfare program. It is a term applied to a collection of actions where companies get direct financial benefit from the federal govt. It is debatable which of those are good and which are bad. But is the job of Congress to decide, and they do exactly that.
For example there are tax credits for doing scientific research? Is that welfare, or is a way to fund a public benefit?
Paying ADM for soybeans they won't be able to sell to China because of a trade war Trump is likely to restart would be a specific example of corporate welfare.
Well the govt has been deep into subsidizing agricultural products for a long time. Normally this is done via crop insurance which is supplied by the govt and the farm bill. Propping up dairy prices in the late 70's led to the govt buying up cheese, which was kind of embarrassing. I don't think they will make that mistake again. In any case all of this subsidy is what congress decides. If the GAO has not already stopped them from doing it, then a new DOGE, which seems like another version of the same thing, won't do it either.
Your original post stated "there is no such thing as a corporate welfare program." But the exact same argument can be made about, for lack of a better term, regular welfare. They are all specific programs funded by Congress designed to provide government assistance to those in need.
I am not sure what your point is. Traditional welfare is a small collection of programs that give money, food, or housing to people in need. There are a whole lot of other things that give money out to people which we do not label as welfare, such as the home mortgage tax deduction.
My point was that trying to define what is corporate welfare, meaning programs that server no purpose but to give money to businesses, from programs that serve some social need will not be at all straightforward. It would be nothing like Bill Clinton's "end welfare as we know it". It would be a chaotic process of re-deciding what to fund and what not to.
US agricultrual policy is very soviet - and, therefore, ripe for reform. for more info, and a good laugh, read PJ O'Rourke's book, Parliament of Whores'
much of corp welfare is in the form of tax breaks ['loopholes'] targeted to specific industries and specific companies. probably the second largest component is 'industrial policy' - i.e., subsidies and targeted regulation..
"loophole" is a loaded term. The insinuation is that it is an exploitation of ambiguous language in the tax code, but it is used much more broadly. Some tax breaks, such as tax credits for scientific research, or not taxing coupons from municipal bonds, are deliberate. I think people cry "corporate welfare" when they see profitable companies not paying taxes. But what they did to avoid taxes matters.
I used that specific department because it has been mentioned multiple times, both by Trump and his surrogates, as well as in Project 2025 that Trump claims he has nothing to do with. Who knows which other departments and agencies they're likely to target as unnecessary simply because they do things that don't benefit DOGEbros?
John, if the fed govt is spending ~$2 trillion [!] more than its ann'l revenues, in peacetime [it is]; and revenues for fy2024 incr'd by 11% [accd'g to chatgpt] over fy2023, then surely there must be reductions in expenses that would benefit all of us as taxpayers - and especially our children & grandchildren - that would not just be a sop to the DOGE bro's and their ilk.
Interesting and I’ll tell you why. I saw a story that questioned how much real authority Cabinet posts will have. Burger Boy appointments might not much matter. They are just going to do what Trump White House flunkies tell them to do anyway.
Yes.
I hope that the Trump voters get what they voted for.
I hope they get it good and hard.
Except so will the rest of us & we don't want it.
The Wired article about protecting privacy is excellent. This is a topic I have learned about over the past few years. An good source for more education on this is the Naomi Brockwell YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@NaomiBrockwellTV
The Wired article gives tips about how to avoid having your travel tracked. They focus on the phone, which is good, but many if not most newer cars also track you, and the car manufacturer is free to do whatever they want with your data. So if you are going to drive somewhere and not have the trip logged do it in an old car, preferably a model at the lowest trim level. Or use another form of transit, if possible.
Another point, there are phone OS options besides Apple and Google Android. Android Open-Source (AOS) does not have google play services. There are several OS's that are based on AOS. The one I use, GrapheneOS has google play services, but it runs in a sandboxed environment (on Google Android it runs with admin level access and can see everything). Google play services gets you access to the Google Play Store. Also, on Graphene you can set up multiple profiles on the phone, which completely separates the apps running on the different profiles.
Look in the owners manual for which fuse is for the GPS system & remove it!
I think Eric should survey his readers about how they expect Trump’s admin to perform (similar to his yearly predictions). For example, how many of the 13 million or so undocumented migrants will be deported, placed in a camp, etc., which Dems will Trump’s AG target for crimes committed prior to the election, stay in NATO, pull Ukrainian support, pass nationwide abortion ban, pass national bathroom bills, pass laws to provide public funding of Christian schools, pardon Jan. 6 offenders, tariff amounts, kill Affordable Care Act, etc etc. Not to check in later to see who’s right, but to get a read on what we’re thinking without falling back on “End of democracy!” or “More freedom from govt. overreach”. I’d especially like to see GOP voters’ responses to understand what they really are expecteing with their vote, but I know this forum skews hard left, so maybe EZ could promote the survey in his broader media space.
I like that idea. Expectations about what is going to happen vary widely. It is a good practice to write down what you think will happen and store it somewhere and then go back and look at it. We all have selective memories, and many of us will be surprised at what we said we believed a year ago. Jason Zweig, a financial columnist, urges his readers to write down predictions about what will happen in markets or the economy in the next 12 months every December. Readers can also send him an email to have it recorded that way.
True. I’ve seen a lot of “oh, that’ll never happen” as well as “everything horrible will happen to the extreme.” The goal is to look at voter expectations when they voted.
As a non-Trump voter, I’m hoping to see all material related to the JFK assassination finally released. But I’m expecting another Lucy with the football denial.
Pete - Did a candidate signal that they’d try this again? Did you expect your candidate to pursue it?
Trump said he would, I think. He said that the first time and backed out.
I would expect Oliver to support transparency but I never heard him say anything about it.
I've come to the conclusion that sexual misconduct is a requirement for serving in the Trump administration. Also, thanks for the "Rice Krispies" memory.
Thanks (not) for my next earworm. "No more Rice Crispiest" was the most persistent earworm I ever suffered--months!--before something else took over. And now, "It's BA-ACK!"
On Foxx- maybe she could have been reelected. But her views on judicial reform sickened me. There is an easy way to avoid prosecution. Don't commit crimes against other people. Yes, I have read the news about both bad prosecution and bad cops. But sometimes our brains and judgements are affected by Headlines. Just what percentage of arrests are racist or otherwise faulty? I am not for bad prosecution. Now explain that to crime victims or the families of those murdered. You know what else is in the news today? A story about retail theft in a certain neighborhood. A baby was shot in a car. A woman with a protective order was killed by a recently released husband. I'm sorry about prosecurorial mistakes. I am more concerned about people that can't sit in their homes or cars without getting shot. I'm more concerned about people getting robbed and shot just trying to drive their cars. I'm more concerned about shopowners getting robbed, some time and time again. I'm more concerned about innocents getting shot in gang feeds. Now cops are targets. Guess what- no one gets punished unless arrested and prosecuted. I'm willing to bet there are a lot more good arrests and prosecutions than bad ones. I can live with reforms that try to weed out bad cops and prosecutors and judges. But victims can't live with(pun intended) laws more worried with statistics than protecting the public.
Local news reports would have you believe people are getting mugged as soon as they leave their homes, when most of us go our whole lives without ever facing any serious threat. I'm not trying to minimize the problems of crime, but it doesn't help that so many people don't keep those news stories in perspective. (I also realize that we just had an election where one side heavily trafficked FUD to great effect, while the other side played down the dangers being faced. We saw which side won that argument.)
Fighting problematic arrests is important for many reasons, including the time wasted prosecuting someone who ends up winning on appeal, having to fight lawsuits raised when someone is wrongly convicted, the erosion of public trust, etc. And reducing the number of bad arrests will free up resources to fight other crimes, which is what we all want.
John - Whether you wish to believe it or not, violent crime is up in Chicago. Aggravated assaults hit a 5-year high last month, and violent crime overall was very close to an overall 5-year high. Democrats insisting that crime is down worked about as well with voters as insisting to them that the economy was wonderful.
https://www.illinoispolicy.org/aggravated-assaults-hit-5-year-high-in-chicago-during-october/
I do actually appreciate that violent crime is rising, and that needs to be addressed. But it is also true that the amount of crime overall (along with violent crime, specifically) is much lower now than it was in previous decades.
As for this being a winning message for Democrats, I did actually note that in my comment. It wasn't, however true the message might be.
John - I'm going to respectfully disagree with your assertion that crime is much lower now. First, a small statistical decline in the previous year ignores the fact that there was a huge increase in crime in 2019-2020, and we are still at exceedingly higher levels than the years preceding this.
Second, the FBI crime statistics are not terribly reliable. Here is a link to a good article on this, and I will paste an excerpt from it showing that the FBI's own numbers have changed four times for 2020.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/are-fbi-crime-statistics-reliable
"The table linked to on the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR) website—its “Source Data”—indicates 1,272,812 such crimes committed nationally in 2020. But the bureau’s 2021 press release announcing the publication of 2020 crime data pegged the figure at 1,277,696. Then, in 2022, its press release highlighting the publication of 2021 crime statistics claimed the 2020 figure had actually been 1,326,600. Add in the FBI’s Data Discovery Tool, which currently lists the 2020 total as 1,304,574, and you have four different figures for one statistic."
Look at all the businesses that have abandoned Michigan Avenue because of crime. Most people do not feel as safe as they used to walking Chicago streets, and this perception is indeed rooted in realities.
The premise of Kim Foxx and other far leftist prosecutors elected with a lot of Soros money that social justice means keeping even violent criminals out of jail if they are black has only resulted in streets becoming unsafe and many more black victims of crime. You recall that the notorious San Francisco DA was recalled in an election two years ago, but you may not have noted that the generally very liberal voters threw out the leftist DAs in both Los Angeles and Oakland, replacing them with prosecutors who have promised to get tough on criminals.
Another piece of the puzzle is violent criminals and gangs flowing across our veritable open border during the Biden Harris term. The Department of Homeland security now estimates that a Venezuelan gang is operating in 17 American cities. That's not Fox News saying this, but Biden's own DHS. Bill Clinton who was very active in the securing our border and deporting people who came here illegally stated that Lankln Riley would be alive today if the career criminal who brutally raped and murdered her had been properly vetted before being allowed into the country. So deporting illegal immigrant criminals will make a difference also.
Sorry for going on so long, but crime is a real problem, but fortunately one in which there are a myriad means of improving public safety which I am hoping will take place.
Note that I said it's lower now than in previous decades. Crime in the US spiked in the early '90s but is now near a 50-year low. Even when you account for revisions to previous years, the pattern is definitely clear that crime now is not as bad as it was 30 years ago.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/24/what-the-data-says-about-crime-in-the-us/
There is even a rather convincing correlation between the addition of tetraethyl lead to gasoline and the crime rate, as well as the subsequent decline in crime since leaded gasoline stopped being used. You can see an explanation of this in the following YouTube video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV3dnLzthDA
None of that is to say that crime isn't higher relative to a few years ago, just that overall crime is much lower now than it was in the '90s.
You are correct using that time frame John. And thanks for the very interesting commentary at the links you provided.
I'm not debating you. Read again what I wrote. Fixing police and prosecutorial errors is not an issue for me. But the crimes are real. The victims are real. That's my perspective. Should we eliminate arresting and prosecuting bad people because there are some bad cops and prosecutions. Or because too many people of the wrong color end up in jail or prison? Explain that to victims. I still question what the comparison is between perfectly legitimate arrests and prosecutions versus the bad ones. Someone is pulling the triggers and robbing people and stores no matter what the numbers say. You talk about keeping these stories in perspective. That's exactly what I'm trying to do. There are plenty of stories about bad cops and those being released because they didn't do it. But even in those stories, there were victims. Who did it? What percentage of actual crimes doesn't get get reported in the media? That might shake people up. I used to live in an apartment building across the street from Michael Reese Hospital, which is at 31st and King Drive for those not familiar with the south side. It was often hard to sleep at night with the blare of sirens every few minutes. It meant somebody was doing something bad somewhere. Most of it doesn't make the news. Bad police work and bad prosecutions help nobody. But not arresting and punishing bad people doesn't help, either.
And I appreciate that. Again, I'm not trying to minimize the issue. What I am trying to say is that it doesn't help to have cops making bad arrests that can end up with innocent people going to jail, or bad guys not going to jail, and inevitably lawsuits against the city. There's even a mention in the PS about Johnson not increasing the budget for such lawsuits when current payouts are already surpassing the money allotted for them.
Every bad arrest that either ruins a case or leads to internal investigations over what happened steals resources that could be tackling the crime issues we all want to see them addressing. What percentage of arrests are bad? I don't know, but it seems high enough to still be a problem.
Bringing up Johnson changes the subject. He is an ass that is all politician, albeit a poor one. One doesn’t keep the minority vote in Chicago by selling more cops and more arrests.
Hi Laurence - I am going to partially disagree with you on one point. The black community is disproportionately the victims of crime, especially violent crime. They are painfully aware of this, and for that reason I believe they are not opposed to increased policing if it is done with fairness and they are treated with the respect all citizens deserve.
There was a failed charter amendment vote in my hometown of Minneapolis that amounted to defunding the police. Some people were surprised to see that some of the strongest opposition to this was in the majority black neighborhood areas. And witness here in Chicago how the majority of black alderman state unequivocally that their constituents very much want shot spotter technology to continue.
There are no shortage of race hustlers like Johnson who build a career upon divisiveness between the community and police. The overwhelming majority of the black community are law abiding citizens, and everything I see indicates they want more policing and safer streets for their families.
Tell that to Brandon Johnson and the people that ran his campaign.
OK, I give up. If someone can explain the "one toothbrush" quip I will gladly accept being the day's clueless nominee.
Don - This was a humorous shot at the tendency of many people to forget to change out their toothbrush for many months at a time.
But also, brushing so infrequently . . . .
What a great rendition of "Twas the Moon of Wintertime"!
I had to look up the song's origins, feeling that your rendition had medieval English roots,
and was surprised to have found its roots in Native American Canada.
That song is mentioned/part of the plot (not important, though) in one of the Inspector Ganache books by Louise Penny, set in Three Pines, Canada. I'm glad to see the book was true to its Canadian roots.
That quote from The Economist is the finest encapsulation of how Trumpism became ascendant, and the Democratic party’s complicity in it ever written, succinctly summarizing everything that Andrew Yang and others have been saying for years.
The quote that follows it from Andrew Sullivan is the 2nd finest.
And as sure as the sun will set in the west tonight, we can be certain that the Democrats will learn nothing, since they never do.
Harris did not campaign on transgender. However, that gave the Right the ability to play off her statements from 2019 and make them appear to be her views. She was unable to convince people otherwise.
I heard a good explanation for why Trump is hitting so many people with TV experience. Biden had many accomplishments according to his supporters, but was unable to convince others. Trump believes that it does no good to have a policy if you don’t get credit for it. He wants people who can sell the policy to the public.
“I’ll DVR the spectacle on Sunday, March 2. “
I have never DVR’d anything in my life. I don’t know if that puts me ahead of or behind the curve.
Oh my!