I had some amusing bloody meat-axe graphics all ready to go for this post, but it is really about flat learning curves: the Democratic Party’s, the Axis news media’s, and maybe, frighteningly, the public’s.
Yes, once again we have a looming test of just how stupid the public really is. Democrats are betting their very existence on the public being as dumb as a box of Joe Bidens, and the biased, anti-Trump news media, having already been completely exposed as the enemies of the people Donald Trump said they are, have predominantly fallen back to the same tactics that served them so well in Trump 1.0. The unethical “advocacy journalists” are gambling that propaganda will prevail, and that the 2024 election was just a blip because the Democrats ran a babbling fool—but a historic one!—for President.
Trump’s tsunami of executive orders along with the relentless DOGE assault has the Axis searching for a magic bullet or two. They settled on two old unethical stand-bys: ad hominem attacks, aka. “kill the messenger,” and “It’s a constitutional crisis!” Trump being elected at all was a constitutional crisis for the Angry Left, and the phony “He’s breaching traditional democratic norms!” trope was core to both impeachments and the “Trump is Hitler” campaign refrain.
Elon Musk is being vilified by using classic Democrat class warfare tactics: he’s been successful and is rich, so obviously he’s only helping Trump cut spending because he greedy and he’ll make money from it somehow. How dumb does someone have to be to buy that logic? If there is anyone in the world who can be trusted not to be serving his country for the money, it’s Musk. I heard some mouth-foaming contributor on CNN screaming this morning that “Trump is a liar and criminal” and “Musk wasn’t even born here!,” an odd argument from a defender of illegal immigrants.
But the EA “Flat Learning Curve” graphic is up there because I heard Chuck Schumer—is he really an idiot or does he just play one on TV?—say that sure, everyone agrees that there is too much waste in government spending, but “this is a meat-axe!” Yup, it sure is, Chuck, and if you don’t know by now that the only way to seriously address systemic corruption, waste, incompetence, dishonesty and obstruction is with a meat-axe (or blow-torch, or metaphorical nuclear bomb), you’ve never successfully managed anything.
Experienced managers know this, and both Musk and Trump are experienced managers as well as successful ones. Good leaders know it too. Heck, I know it.
What Schumer is really saying is, “We don’t want to solve this problem, we want to look like we want to solve this problem, and we are confident that you out there listening are so uneducated, inexperienced, naive and gullible that you’ll fall for it…again.”
When a system is broken, corrupt and incorrigible, and because of its dysfunction causing constant harm, the technique of carefully trying to extract the jewels buried in the shit pile never works. It takes too long. Every inch of the shit will have advocates claiming that it isn’t really shit. Paring down the bureaucracy gets delegated to the bureaucracy, and improvement is minimal if you are lucky. Most of the time, the inefficiency, waste and corruption just gets worse. Nobody can deny that this is the futile path the United States government has been treading.
The conclusion, as Miss Vito tells the judge in “My Cousin Vinnie,” isn’t opinion, it’s fact. There are so many case studies to support the basic management principle that listing them shouldn’t be necessary. Andrew Jackson didn’t try to reform the Bank of the United States, he killed it. We didn’t try to make Prohibition, or slavery, or, maybe at last, illegal immigration work better, we ended them. “Throwing out the baby with the bathwater” is the complicit fallacy that supports the “meat-axe” talking point, but reality is that these aren’t babies. The minority of important, justifiable, defensible and cost effective USAID programs, for example, are swamped in ideological, wasteful, even bananas programs, and the culture that supports the latter is embedded and impossible to remove—-unless you clean out the agency like Hercules cleaned the Augean stables.
Ethics Alarms has made this point often when a culture of an organization is rotten. I have said regarding schools, for example, that firing a single teacher or administrator at a school that has abused students with far Left restrictions and indoctrination needs to have the entire teaching staff and administrative staff kicked out, and perhaps even the school itself shuttered, leveled, and replaced by a parking lot.
If you have a staff in an organization that is stealing from it, covering up for incompetence or undermining its mission in small, insidious ways, the only way to fix the problem (“fix the problem” is an ethics commandment) is to get rid of everybody. Baseball teams that decide the current roster can’t win no matter what marginal improvements management makes go to “rebuilding” mode, meaning that they tear the team down and start from scratch.
As a stage director, I learned early on that wishing and hoping that a musical number, concept, a cast, a production design or some other aspect of a show that wasn’t working and was resistant to improvements would somehow come through was cowardly and incompetent. I’ve cancelled shows. I’ve cleaned out casts that weren’t able to deliver. I once shut down a national organization that was unsustainable so the employees could go to work for more efficient local entities—and I fired myself, too. One of my favorite examples was when Hal Prince, directing the first production of Sondheim’s “Merrily We Role Along,” decided while the production was on the way to Broadway that his concept stunk, and ordered the entire production shut down while he took a meat-axe to everything. (The new version didn’t succeed either, by the way, and that can happen too.)
When something has proven that it no longer works, or never has, then tear it down, burn it out, cut it back, and start again. The National Debt, which Ross Perot sounded the emergency alarm about in the 1992 Presidential campaign, trillions of dollars ago (and Perot was right even back then) is nearing existential threat levels. A meat-axe is the only solution (if there indeed is a solution), and Schumer and his party are literally—literally—telling us that they don’t care: what they care about is jobs for the federal workers’ unions and grants for their favored constituencies for as long as possible, assuming they will all be dead, retired or cashed-in when the bill comes due.
It is time for the meat-axe— to the budget, to the agencies, to foreign aid, to the “deep state.” It may not be our last chance, but it can be safely said that if this bloodless revolution, in Jeffersonian terms, fails now, the nation will be far worse off if and when an opportunity comes around again.
Ethics Alarms 
Someone should remind Schumer, et al of Obama’s statement that “elections have consequences”
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why is local law enforcement any different? Fire them all and start over?
If a department is thoroughly corrupted? Sure. Or make everyone quit.
All I’d add or change to the above is that the media aren’t doing anything separate and apart from or merely complementary to the Democratic Party. They are one and the same. Everyone spouting “Constitutional crisis” is simply spouting the talking point of the month. Both the media and the Dems are truly enemies of the people.
My favorite for most hypocritical talking point is that DOGE employees will have access to federal systems and information. Hah! What about the IRS contractor who stole and released to the AUC copies of Trump’s personal tax returns. Were any of the AUC outraged about that?
But the USDS isn’t IRS contractors. They are actual government employees. The very people banned from accessing the Treasury data were Treasury employees. Anyone associated with USDS is automatically considered NOT part of the government. A judge just ruled that USDS can’t access student aid financial data because they are ‘third parties’, not part of the government. I would be willing to bet the NCAA has access to student financial and grade information.
The “Constitutional Crisis” is entirely of the Democrats making. Article II section I states “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. “ The Democrats want to keep the real power to reside in an unelected bureaucracy, with the help of unelected activist lower federal court judges trying to grind down the Trump administration by injunction. This administrative state is a product of the Wilson administration who adhered to the philosophy of the living constitution. However the people gave Trump a mandate to take a sledgehammer to the bureaucracy, but the real powers that be put everything in work to retain power and resist the will of the people. The result is that when the people vote to reduce government the opposite happens, resulting in a loss of liberty and an increase of slavery. That is the real constitutional crisis.
Trump can of course appeal these injunction but by doing so he will lose valuable time and momentum. He may also pursue an Andrew Jackson approach, ignore the courts and go full steam ahead. I am not a constitutional scholar, and cannot judge about the viability of the latter option. But if he is able to be bold and get away with defying the courts, and implement the policies on which he was elected, then I think he ought to pursue that.
Where are the Democrats and media when democracy really is at stake? By ruling that only the unelected, appointed bureaucrats can have access to Treasury Department data, he is really stating that the elected President and his appointments can NOT be in charge of the Executive Branch. In his ruling, he made it clear that the employees (aka the Deep State) is the real government and elections and elected officials are meaninless or at least subservient to the Deep State.
As for his rationale, it was insane. ‘Biden’ gave full access to the Treasury computers to a ‘Kenyan migrant’ who installed backdoors that gave the Chinese government full access to every computer in the Treasury Department. That has stopped, but the ruling suggests that Trump not only can’t have access to Treasury data, he cannot be allowed to block Chinese access to Treasury data. So, the Chinese government ranks aboue the US President in the Executive Branch.
Trump should make an announcement pointing all of this out. He should point out that no Consistutional basis was cited for these ruling and that they are, in fact, unconstitutional. He should give the Supreme Court a week (or less) to give explain why this ruling is just and Constitutional. If they can’t (and they can’t), he should announce that he will ignore all further judicial rulings on his executive orders until the courts get their act together and clean house.
What is needed is to burn it all down, salt the earth, and urinate on the salt.
That’s where we are. A meat-axe won’t do it, it takes Napalm.
The problem is, you really can’t do anything but empty the building. Congress has authorized much of the infrastructure by law, and as soon as a Democrat administration comes in, it will be brimming with more bureaucrats itching to spend millions in taxpayer money on transsexual comic books for Patagonia or bringing back Captain Kangaroo for Easter Island. Passing laws to eliminate these wasteful bureaucracies is impossible in the current environment.
Elon Musk would do well to take this as seriously as possible. Let the pundits and partisans mock the Democrats. If he makes it look like a joke, the American people may decide that’s what it is. Certainly, Schumer thinks he can convince America all this wasteful spending is actually a good thing.
Many still feel that the bureaucracy within Article II has legal independence from the President.
Kleos-Nostos is an example of a person with such a belief.
ii) since his inauguration, Trump has done exactly what one who would attempt a coup would do: eliminate an independent bureaucracy by installing ideologues at its helm, put an end to an apolitical military, destroy America’s alliance with other democracies, etc.
Hilariously wrong and intellectually dishonest. Independent! There is no provision for government power “independent” of the three branches. Why are they called “agencies”?
I did make a reply.
Which powers do they exercise?
What is the nature of these powers?
And are they a constitutionally-authorized exception to the separation of powers doctrine?
Generally, because executive power is vested in the President of the United States, in general people can not exercise executive power independent of the Presidency.
there are two classes of exceptions I am aware of.
One class of exceptions are executive officials and employees of territorial governments, who exercise limited executive power with respect to territorial laws.
The other class of exceptions are executive officials and employees of the District of Columbia, who exercise limited executive power with respect to DC municipal laws.
these arise from two exceptional powers granted to Congress.
Congress has the power to make “make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting” territories. See Ortiz v. United States, 585 U.S._ (2018) slip op. at 12-13, quoting Art. IV, Sec. 3, Clause 2. it has the power to legislate for the District of Columbia “in all cases whatsoever, id. at 13, quoting Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 and that it has the entire control over the [D]istrict for every purpose of government, id, quoting Kendall v. United States ex rel. Stokes, 12 Pet. 524, 619 (1838)
It does appear that Congress granting these bodies limited executive power outside of Article II is coterminous with Congress giving territorial courts and D.C. Courts authority to exercise limited judicial power outside of Article III. See also Ortiz, concurring op. of Thomas, J., op. at 3.
One musk ask, though. What would give Congress authority to grant the SEC and FEC authority to exercise executive power independently of the presidency. Unlike the case for D.C. and territorial executive offices, there does not seem to be a textually-based or historically-based carve-out to the exception to Article II that would allow Congress to restrain presidential authority over the exercise of any executive discretion by these agencies.
I realized that our economy and perhaps our country was going down the drain when I looked at the looting going on. What Elon Musk and the USDS has uncovered is nothing short of the employees looting the US. This, of course, has been going on since the beginning of the country. Now, however, it seemed to be especially urgent. It was so urgent that the people in power didn’t care if we saw them doing it anymore. That indicates that the ship is going down and people are trying to take what they can while they still can.
I look at the vast amount of money going to Ukraine and the screams of ‘treason’ toward anyone who suggested that the money should be accounted for, that the accounts should be audited, or that we should know where the money went. That reeks of embezzlement.
I look at the outrageous sums being spent to import illegal immigrants, give them ‘legal status’, give them SSN’s, etc. The media celebrates when 1200 American workers are fired to make place for ‘migrants’ who are paid sub-minimum wage, but get vast government subsidies. The staffing firms that ‘manage’ these ‘migrants’ then are paid large amounts of money by the government. Why? People are getting filthy rich on our tax dollars. We could have subsidized the US workers at those plants at a fraction of the cost to give them a better standard of living, but there wouldn’t have been as much money to skim.
Sam Bankman-Freid ran a scam where he took his client’s crypto money and gave it to the Democratic Party. He was the #2 contributor to the Democrats for the 2020 campaign. Number 1 was George Soros, who we now know, got the money from USAID.
The Clinton Foundation was given billions to rebuild Haiti. Almost none of it got there. It is being reported that $3 million went to pay for Chelsea Clinton’s wedding and $10 million for her house, but look at Haiti now!
We had lavish funding of ill-planned, poorly described ‘green initiatives’ which failed at high rates, but resulted in lots of money for the people behind them. Again, looting of the treasury.
But most of all, we saw Hunter Biden directing money from Ukraine, China, and other countries through a slew of bank accounts. There was never any indication of any work or value being transferred from the Bidens at all, just cash coming in and being laundered. Millions from Chinese government sources, criminals, and Ukrainian businesses flowed in over again and we were told not to worry, it is all above board.
OK, enough of the fraud. Let’s look at the ‘good’ works these agencies are doing. My neighbor just came back from doing disaster relief from the Hurricane in the SE. He was cutting broken tree limbs, an essential task that should have been done months ago. Let’s look at the process. He was assigned a full-time FEMA employee to follow him around.
(1) He cuts a limb off a tree.
(2) The FEMA employee photographs the limb, measures the diameter, and the length of the limb.
(3) The FEMA employee enters the tree cutter’s name, ID number, date, time, the diameter and length of the tree limb, the location, and uploads the picture.
(4) The FEMA employee would then fill out a slip of paper with the cutter’s name, id number, and a reference number to the limb in the system and give it to the cutter. The slip is worth $100.
This is repeated for each limb. My neighbor said he was cutting 80 limbs/day. Look at the vast waste here. Why not just pay them by weight of the limbs at the end of the day? Why pay an entire FEMA employee to basically ‘observe’ the actual worker? That was $8000/day for the tree cutting ($2000 for my neighbor, the rest for his boss) and at least $2000/day for the FEMA photographer. My neighbor said he was only doing a couple hours of work each day, the rest was waiting around for data entry. Now you understand why Trump just wants to eliminate FEMA and give block grants to the states to deal with disasters. But this is as good as it gets with government services.
We can’t afford to spend $50 for every dollar that gets to a person in need. The greed and graft of the professional government class is too much for the country to bear.
If you have a VIP account to TownHall.com, here is a link to an article about the merits and drawbacks of trolling the left:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2025/02/12/fun-trolling-vs-bad-trolling-n2652071
Wrong thread, sorry.
Apparently there’s a term of art going around the Internet for these: “Hostage Puppies”. As in “if you cut our funding, this cute little puppy will suffer,” notwithstanding that 95% of the funding given to them under the pretense of caring for puppies goes to other purposes (read: waste and graft).