It's almost cute to see these comments saying "maybe the unqualified 20-years-old appointed by the billonnaire who tanked Twitter and the president who mused about injecting bleach into our veins will FINALLY fix our budget problems."
Banks that loaned to Musk to buy Twitter are selling those loans at a profit. The only thing tanked about Twitter is the liberal woke screeching on it.
I’m pretty sure if you were politically saavy at all you would recognize this isn’t entirely about $$. It’s about weakening the network of NGOs that taxpayer $$ is funneled to. DUH.
God I hope you're right because that would really play to Democrats' advantage. If Elon de-fangs the ACLU and GLAAD and the Sierra Club it will be the best thing that happened to the Democratic Party since Barack Obama.
And for that exact reason, that's surely not what's happening. (also we know where their money comes from: donors, which is the whole problem)
Defanging the NGOs to help the Democrats is probably not the goal, but triggering an over the top reaction from the Democrats and the Groups may be at least one of the goals. Highlight the most objectionable spending, then show Democrats defending US AID in the most overwrought, emotional language.
It’s the same with rescinding WFH for the federal workforce. If the response had been “Okay. It’s completely reasonable and as employees of the executive branch, he’s the boss,” it would have been a non issue. Instead there have been NPR stories, TikTok videos, and complaints about childcare. Many private employers require WFH employees to arrange child care, because you are supposed to be working.
Also, if someone comes at any of this stuff without understanding that most of modern politics is theatre - a show being put on for the public - I feel like they’re missing the point lol
There's a hell of a lot of that going around these days in an awful lot of places, Mike. And it obviously doesn't give her any pause judging from her comments below. But it should, since shooting one's mouth off from the hip and missing the point is a large part of how this country ended up in the mess it's in now in the first place.
But thought takes time, and time is money, and with the cost of eggs being what it is, some people just don't have the dough to spend on thinking that they probably should.
Nah, this was a swing and a miss by our esteemed host. Dismantling USAID is a distinct ideological project from the DOGE mission, which is why Seal Team Sexless has been embedded in offices like SSA and CMS rather than USAID.
DOGE is happy to take potshots at USAID when justifying its own existence (it is, after all, a target-rich environment for the "fraud, waste, and abuse" crowd) but what Trump is doing to the agency is much more akin to his purge of every DOJ employee to have ever touched a January 6 case--it's about rooting out perceived hives of dissent from within the civil service.
Oops, I don’t read this blog regularly, I follow so many things that I end up reading whatever article alerts pop up on my phone that sound interesting. I’m not a devoted follower to particular blogs like some people are
It certainly would make more sense than the public explanations if fundamentally the new administration disliked "the network of NGOs" and/or their politics or attitudes.
Why lie about it then? Trump didn’t bring Musk on board for that. Did he also lie to Trump about what he was doing? Even Trump doesn’t have the power to cut that spending anyway, so it’s all illegal.
Musk rants publicly about NGOs all the time & his belief that they are problematic. It’s not surprising at all the first place he looks for cost cutting would be where $$ is funneled to NGOs (technically still doing exactly what the brief is) - killing 2 birds with one stone. While also creating the opportunity to reveal snippets (that may be picked up by various people on social media/YouTube/etc) how much $$ is being to funneled towards what the public will likely see as ridiculous (eg transgender opera).
Obviously not all the $$ that USAID is distributing is going towards what can be perceived as wasteful and silly causes (by certain segments - not all - of the public). But it certainly puts a spotlight on USAID spending that wasn’t there before. Who among the public really ever scrutinized closely let alone paid attention to USAID? And once you bring attention to it, remove significant portions of spending - I would think it would be harder later to reinstate/start funding the various NGOs again. That part I’m not sure about - idk how easy it is to simply reallocate millions/billions of dollars to aid.
I don’t mean to imply I believe USAID would be this corrupt obviously. I simply think political types are quite saavy about foundation and non-profit activity in a way that the public is naive about or can’t even imagine. They are most certainly a potential avenue for corruption. And I think the Clintons in particular are quite saavy about this - and I do wonder about the underlying motivations for basically cementing USAID as an agency the way they did (protecting it from being dismantled). Coming from them…. You never know
Tbh I personally know of a scandal just in my state where a former governor’s wife was essentially using a foundation/non-profit sort of thing to essentially funnel a salary to herself and the other board member - basically hall the funds collected were going towards their salary. Someone investigated, it got in the local news, the non-profit was shuttered. I think these sorts of things are capable of being misused by political types. Obviously not all the time, but they are an avenue for corruption for sure.
If I had to guess, they’re betting on finding corruption. USAID was turned into a independent agency during Clinton’s tenure. You can find news articles from 1998 showing Hillary Clinton attending events for this.
Do some googling about the Clintons and some of the questionable dealings they do around their foundation.
It’s funny how things are setup in govt for specific reasons but then but then morph into zombie forever orgs that go on forever and spend more and more $$ lol
The Secretary of State established USAID as directed by Executive Order 10973, signed on November 3, 1961. The agency was meant to implement components of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (FAA, P.L. 87-195), enacted on September 4, 1961.
Section 1413 of the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, Division G of P.L. 105-277, established USAID as an “independent establishment” outside of the State Department (22 U.S.C. 6563). In that act, Congress provided the President with temporary authority to reorganize the agency (22 U.S.C. 6601). President Clinton retained the status of USAID as an independent entity, and the authority to reorganize expired in 1999. Congress has not granted the President further authority to abolish, move, or consolidate USAID since.
In 1961, USAID was created by an E.O. issued by President John F. Kennedy (E.O. 10973), based in part on authority provided in the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. But a later act of Congress (The Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, 22 U.S.C. 6501 et seq.) established USAID as its own agency. In a section titled “Status of AID” (22 U.S.C. 6563) it states:
(a) In general
Unless abolished pursuant to the reorganization plan submitted under section 6601 of this title, and except as provided in section 6562 of this title, there is within the Executive branch of Government the United States Agency for International Development as an entity described in section 104 of title 5. (emphasis added)
The key language here is “there is within the Executive branch of Government [USAID]” (see sections 6562/6563). Those are the words Congress uses to establish an agency within the executive branch. It would take an act of Congress to reverse that – simply put, the president may not unilaterally override a statute by executive order.
The other thing I’ve realized is I believe Musk understands propaganda, politics and the theatre of politics - I think he understands the public as a mob consumer of political drama is somewhat shallow knowledge wise/understanding wise - and what they have the appetite for (dramatic stories). Just my theory. I think each side of the political spectrum has their own version of propaganda you would craft that speaks to them.
As to Trump's "power" and the law... if a law is broken in the woods and there is no one there either able or willing to prosecute the break, does it make any difference that the law was broken? Trump's power will be less and less restrained by the law with every day that passes.
Perhaps the USAID is just the start. To adjust for inflation Senator Dirksen’s comments from the 1960s: a billion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money.
I propose that we agree to focus on results, then. If Elon balances the budget through a nip here and a tuck there -- or gets anywhere remotely close to doing so -- then I will concede that the belief held by me, Riedl, and basically every budget analyst alive that this approach cannot possibly work was wrong. And if they don't, then you will concede that balancing the budget requires some combination of tax hikes and/or cuts to popular programs.
Remember, though, that the current deficit is $1.8 trillion, the entire non-defense discretionary budget is $785 billion, and extending the Trump tax cuts that are currently law costs another $400 billion. And Trump has promised more tax cuts on top of that.
Fair points, of course. I don’t pretend to know where cuts can be made. However, there are areas that have been pointed to such as programs said to be on automatic funding (with automatic increases) that should’ve been allowed to die long ago. Suspected fraud and waste in Medicare, Medicaid, and, yes, the defense budget as well as others, I’m sure, haven’t even been broached and those are parts of non-discretionary spending.
No matter how successful Elon can ultimately be with DOGE, continuing on the path the U.S. is on shouldn’t be an option. That likely will require cuts that will make Americans squeal. And yes, increases, particularly in the income cap on Social Security withholding taxes, will have to be part of the solution, imho.
> Bob Elliott, chief investment officer at Unlimited Funds investment group, said the idea of cutting $2 trillion from the budget in any immediate time frame was “totally implausible,” pointing out that it would equate to almost all discretionary funding — currently at $1.7 trillion — which includes transportation, education, housing and environmental programs.
Musk has since (pre-inauguration) lowered his goal and said there was a good shot at getting $1 Trillion off.
I think Musk's actions are *illegal*, so you don't need to work hard to get me to criticize him. But if fixing the budget is the metric of success, getting it halfway closed is pretty good.
"Non-defense" is the difference. And he's not going to get to $1 trillion or anywhere close without cutting defense, Social Security, or Medicare. Again: Let's just wait for the results and if he finds $1 trillion in that $785 billion, then I'll issue a big "mea culpa".
He ain't gonna find it. Musk is some form of distraction, the specifics of which I don't know. There's a few smart people in this mess whose names we probably don't even know (yet).
What's the actual target that Musk is distracting us from? Or, is it all really just loony tunes on parade?
Yes, what they are doing is changing the culture. By the way, the private sector has been through multiple rounds of this over the last thirty years. Having to justify your existence to your shareholders isn't new to most of us so maybe doing this with our tax dollars isn't such a bad idea. Elon's a little dramatic about it but maybe that's necessary.
I’ve known Elon Musk is full of shit ever since he called that British caver “pedo guy” for calling his plan to save those trapped kids in Thailand a “PR stunt.”
Josie, below, in a sort of way beat me to it. They may or may not cut the( trillions) needed to balnace the books. But they sure have (will) stir the nest. And keep in mind that every journey stars with a first step. Mistakes will be made. Mistakes will be identified with the power of 20 20 vision. But if they persist others will see they are serious and fall in line, maybe even help identify areas that help. But i guarantee if nothing is done no change will occur. I celebrate the fact that there is now a lot of political noise. Thats good.
So, the goalposts have been moved from "balance the budget so that we don't go through a period of prolonged high interest rates and maybe even a debt crisis" to "stir the nest for the sake of stirring the nest."
That's my concern. 'Move fast and break stuff' is a great policy for Netflix, not so much got the government. A lot of the value of the US govt is that it's stable, it's predictable. It's frustrating that change is slow, but that's a feature, not a bug. Suddenly saying "we're withdrawing from all soft power" is bad for our record of stability (among other things).
I can hear John Oliver narrating this combination of quips and serious-sounding approach to cutting government spending. And that's a problem.
Because it's the glibness masquerading as argument that makes Oliver and his forebears such an obnoxious blight on culture and civic discourse.
It's all "playing to the crowd" and signaling in-group fealty.
- Recite the litany of unrelated exaggerations -- "fish cannery mixed with Satan's ball sweat," "Seal Team Sexless," "Virgin Voltron," "Elon's brainiacs"
- Make denigrating analogies to suggest absurdity (the movie "Dave" and running an Apple IIe)
- Include emotionally-charged exasperations to show seriousness: "frosty fuck's bit of difference"
- Negative fan-fictioning of the object of derision: "too young to question what's happening"
- Simplify the issue under a pretense of false humility: "I'm not a preternatural math genius" but "That's just basic math."
- Frame the issue on a favorable premise (it won't really solve the budget deficit)
- Use the rhetoric of empathy to set up the takedown "And I'll admit: I kind of get it"
- Pretend the critique is being done in good faith: "hey, I like nerds!"
Then mix it all with serious-appearing gestures toward the numbers and appeals to authority (Riedl of the Manhattan Institute) and you get this typical bad-faith monologue that is more about its own smug attitude toward the topic than the topic itself.
Most of these are moves of style, not arguments.
But they work to convince the reader/viewer that they're observing a smart take, and are, by virtue of having done so, so much smarter than the rank-and-file of humanity.
There's no world where the Brooklyn hipster/superior Progressive doesn't read this as the pinnacle of a devastating own. And then shares it like a token of cool on Bluesky.
You end up creating an object of rank stupidity for an eager audience that is in love with its own self-image of sitting at the apex of culture and intellect -- and wants you to know it.
Yes, this won't bring the deficit down to zero, so....do nothing? Don't push back against the culture of technocratic, Progessively-enlightened managerialism at all? "Hey, my guy, you're not solving world hunger by donating some extra cans from the pantry, so why bother?"
Is that the answer? Concede to "Don't question us at all, ever"? Because when you do that, Jeff, you pretend that values aren't part of the system. And they are.
I'm guessing people view the tax cuts issue through their value system: Yes, it WOULD reduce the budget, but SHOULD we eliminate them? Is the harm it avoids better than the harm it causes (taking more of one's income)?
Similarly, the spending that USAID indulges in is about values: Do we want to spend our money here, and on this?
But values get swept under in these top-down lectures, as if everything normative and correct is already known and accepted.
The "kid spinning a sub sandwich shop sign" was a nice touch. Just the kind of thing that would appear over Oliver's shoulder to generate the requisite applause.
I'm responding to the claim that Elon has made: That he's going to cut trillions out of the budget. And the literal promises that Trump made about not cutting defense, Social Security, and Medicare (see Trump's self-identified "promises" #12 and 14: https://tinyurl.com/vnba68tx). If Elon actually identifies wasteful spending and eliminates it, then great, I'm all for that as anyone who knows my work knows, though I will be a bit of a stickler and insist that he do it legally. But they should acknowledge that what they're doing is a spit in the ocean in terms of the budget picture. They're not doing that.
Also, much of what you interpret as underhanded debating tactics is something called "comedy". I would argue that comedians are allowed to make funny comparisons and use hyperbole in clear context.
Elon's fans are the biggest snowflakes in America right now.
My issue with the comedy is that it's used to carry the weight of the argument. It's designed to elicit clapter from right-thinking people and sell back to them their feelings of being right on whatever issue is up for non-debate.
Jon Stewart used this "I'm just a comedian" pose, even as his own viewers we're treating him and his show as a trusted source of news.
People don't tune in to Oliver for yuks -- they're doing it to be reminded that their brand of Progressive politics is the only one that is correct. All others deserve derision.
And the format of the comedy does that. When every issue is prefaced by some derogatory pronoucement on the physical appearance of the "enemy" before getting to the issue itself, it reveals an effort to stack the deck in one's favor. "It's Ron DeSantis looking like a feral cat. Let's do five minutes into why he's a fascist."
Look, I want Musk to do this legally and wisely and above board, too. I wish this were being handled differently. But when I saw a news blurb -- might have been in CNN -- where they suggested he could use more precision, I understood and empathized.
And if it's all above-board, absolutely put it in context. That's also the job of a robust press that shows no fear or favor toward those in power. And I expect millions will respond and say, "it's a drop in a bucket, but this, that, and the other are a waste of taxpayer spending."
But to get back to the comedy: I think this genre encourages people to see their own politics as entirely normative and inarguable, and view those who disagree as benighted scum who are always willfully doing the wrong thing.
And we know this because this is how politics plays out in Progressive spaces -- I'm mostly connected wtih the far left because of my schooling and employment, and the shit they share in their posts is frightening for its lack of intellectual rigor. It's all: "You're a racist for not endorsing DEI; you're not a real man if you voted for Trump; Musk is guilty of treason."
It sounds like your issue is with the way people sometimes do political comedy, not with the genre of political comedy itself. And I'll stand by the way that I do it; I try to be above-board and intellectually honest in my arguments, and I don't think many people familiar with my work would argue that I'm pandering to one point on the political spectrum.
I'm not sure I understand your point. There is nothing about comedy specifically that makes people believe their opinons are the only correct ones. To take an example from the right, Fox News obviously works to convince conservatives that they are right and that the Democrats are worse than wrong, and Fox News doesn't use comedy.
Nor is lack of intellectual rigor and mean-spirited snark something comedy-specific. It is not support for John Oliver's heavy-handed progressivism to say that his team obviously did more research than many news segments.
In other words, your complaint seems to be that comedians are partisans (and I agree). I don't think there is something inherently bad with comedy.
First, I appreciate your response, because it helps me clarify my thoughts on this topic.
Agree with your point about this not being the exclusive domain of comedians. I can critique Fox News and MSNBC as well for bad-faith framing and unhelpful approaches to complex issues.
And I don't think comedians in general are partisans for one side (though, as individuals, that can be the case, in either direction), And there's nothing wrong with comedy -- generally speaking -- as a vehicle for commenting on politics.
But I do think the Daily Show/Last Week Tonight/late-night talk show style of comedy is one that combines cruelty, bad-faith framing, and appeals to tribalism. And no, none of these traits are exclusive to comedy, as you noted. But they do them, nonetheless. They've perfected the template.
They are heavy-handed, and they are delivered in a way that drives wedges between people and encourages the ideal viewer of their shows to be even more insufferably smug and sure of themselves.
It's the comedy aspect that I find pernicious, because it basically says -- to me, at least -- "this issue is so easy, so obvious," and it does it in a way that doesn't earn that viewpoint.
That's what I saw in this article: the same deployment of that tactic that says, "I made fun of these people. so that proves I'm right on this issue."
And you can argue that Jeff doesn't really mean that, and no sensible person would have that as a takeaway. But that's not my experience of the Left in my life or that I encounter on social media. So that's where I was coming from in my critique.
I see, something like "I am so obviously right that the other guy is not just wrong but ridiculous". There is laughter that comes from something funny, and the laughter that comes with a mockery.
I don't think ridiculous/mockery is Jeff Maurer's angle, but I think I understand the thinking now.
That's a great word you used — "mockery." Thank you. Did you ever read Freddie DeBoer's post "Everyone Online Sounds Like an Absolute Fucking Poseur Lately"? I recommend it, because he captures what I feel is the value system of a culture for whom issues are subordinate to the status one gets from referencing them.
In one early passage he describes Millennial Snot as: "...a form of engagement, quintessentially Millennial, that’s defined by a combination of self-righteous liberal politics, out-of-date internet lingo, terms from university humanities departments that have become mimetic in the past decade, and a performative, shit-eating quality of being perpetually amused with oneself."
Anthony’s bit is on point tbh. A very good breakdown of these late-night political comedians and how they operate.
I can’t see them as comedy anymore as a millennial. My generation was almost entirely captured by them and treat them as authoritative sources of information. To the point where they just go with this perspective; their enemies are ridiculous and they are the super smart ones.
It was like watching the new politics download every morning after one of those shows aired with my friends in high school and college.
And the defense of it is gross. “It is just comedy”. I had to get to the point where I could only respond with the adage “If your beliefs come from comedians, your beliefs are jokes”.
I’ve dealt with this “it is just comedy” defense from these clowns my whole life. It isn’t. It is a rhetorical strategy that uses comedy as a way to shield itself from criticism. For to be seriously challenging a comedian is a ridiculous thing to do.
As you have demonstrated by falling on that defense and insisting someone being critical of it is a “snowflake” that can’t take a joke.
I think people are gradually wising up to this tactic after two decades of it.
An absolute takedown! One of the best comments I have ever read, applicable to quite a bit modern political discourse.
>>>But they work to convince the reader/viewer that they're observing a smart take, and are, by virtue of having done so, so much smarter than the rank-and-file of humanity.
There's no world where the Brooklyn hipster/superior Progressive doesn't read this as the pinnacle of a devastating own. And then shares it like a token of cool on Bluesky.
You end up creating an object of rank stupidity for an eager audience that is in love with its own self-image of sitting at the apex of culture and intellect -- and wants you to know it.<<<
It is infuriating how the NYT crowd, despite being no more informed on any of the issues than an average Fox news watcher, maintains such a high opinion of themselves. It is exactly because they align themselves with "the experts" who call everyone who disagrees with them dumb.
Sometime last year, I think, Matt Taibbi wrote an article where he described walking into his building in New Jersey and hearing MSNBC -- he might have been as specific as to say "Rachel Maddow" -- from many of his neighbors' apartments. For right-thinking liberals, she is essential news.
Work out from that what we get: People being propagandized on a daily basis by a network that sells to them a black/white, good/evil version of the world where every transgression against liberal pieties is duly noted, every solution is obvious, and maximalist rhetoric keeps this base in a state of resistance.
Bolster this communication ecosystem with experts curated for their reliability to confirm with authority (sourced from academia or government) everything the audience is inclined to believe is true, and that caters to their pathologies. They’ve created a crowd that is ill-informed but thinks they are supremely knowledgeable and inarguably right on every issue.
Most everything they read in the NYT or WaPo or hear on NPR will confirm this for them. The elite liberal consensus is the gold standard of status, and they signal membership by being snarky and dismissive. These are people for whom having a high opinion of themselves – which you noted -- counts for a lot in their social and professional circles.
Bravo. Nailed it completely. Mocking a directionally accurate action/goal bc it doesn’t satisfy everything right now is not a useful take. And I agree it’s actually worse. It’s poisoning the well.
I don’t like any argument of “it doesn’t solve the problem completely, so we shouldn’t do this thing that makes progress”. The problem here is that the progress seems to come at the cost of saving less lives and reducing stability.
Mike Kidwell's reply is on-track: I'm responding to this project's stated goals. If Elon manages to identify some wasteful spending, that's great -- I'm all for cutting wasteful spending (though I'm kind of a fuddy duddy about needing to do it through legal means). But people should have a clear sense of what can and can't be achieved through cuts to "wasteful" spending alone. Elon's the one going around shooting his mouth off about trillions of dollars in savings, not me.
Yes, but that's not the argument that Elon is making. He has said over and over again that it's very simple to cut all this money out. Jeff is responding to that part. No one said that the journey of a thousand miles doesn't begin with a single step, but Elon is acting like all it's going to take is one step.
Yeah. And if these geniuses take one wrong step while their fingers are doing the walking across those Treasury Department keyboards, the whole damn thing could fall flat on its ass. And considering that Elon Musk could not today pass a *real*, bonafide background check for a high-level government security clearance if his life depended on it, his grasping mitts should be nowhere near the levers (or keyboards and mice) of government power any more than those of the biggest security risk of them all now embedded in the White House.
While my knowledge is not what one might call encyclopedic, I do know a few things, Marie. And I'm sure he has a security clearance. And of course it's not an issue. Certainly not in this administration with its so-called standards, if that word actually has any real meaning and credibility vis a vie Trump 2.0 high level security clearances.
Please take note that I said, "...could not *today* pass a *real*... etc, etc", implying a reference to standards that would have been applied to Musk in the pre-Trump past and before his (Musk's) now well-known and documented public behaviors since becoming a social media mogul / celebrity / influencer emerged, up to and including him personally shutting down a de facto U.S. ally's (Ukraine's) internet access through his Star Link satellite company as that country was embarking on combat operations in its own defense against Russia in 2022.
And then lying about it - “SpaceX commercial terminals, like other commercial products, are meant for private use, not military, but we have not exercised our right to turn them off,” he wrote in February (2023) - before telling the actual truth about the matter some 7 months later:
Not exactly someone I believe any former non-Trump administration - with what were once considered "normal" and by necessity "strict" standards - would have considered reliable enough for high levels of security clearance.
There was a time when a known dope smoking, antisemitic, neo-Nazi-courting proto-fascist couldn't have gotten a security clearance to empty the waste baskets in the White House bathrooms. But now we have Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon, with Tulsi Gabbard waiting in the wings to become DNI, RFK Jr. poised to infect HHS, and of course Donald Trump himself, who can declassify the most secret and sensitive government documents with no more than a passing Vulcan Mind Meld with the National Archives, the CIA, the FBI or any other Fed repository of highly classified information, making their future storage in a bathroom at the Southern White House all bona fide with no reason to hide it.
So really, silly me, I suppose. Now that I think about it, at this point what the hell difference does an Elon in the mix actually make.
I’m sure you were even handed and objective about the Biden regime and whatever goons were running the show with the braindead diaper soiler running things and his cabinet of misfit toys.
Well, Scott, I was in fact every bit as even handed and objective about Biden and his administration as I am about Trump and his. There were certainly numerous things there not to like, no doubt.
The difference being that my critical rhetoric about Biden's "regime" (as absolutely opposed to Trump as I freely admit that I am, I've never once called his *administration* anything other than an "administration", your pejorative use of the word "regime" as applied to Biden being quite revealing of your own, shall we say, evenhandedness)... my rhetoric didn't include terms such as "braindead diaper soiler" and "goons", which are all simply emotion and nothing more than low brow troll bait on a good day, Biden's physical and apparently mental decline notwithstanding, as opposed to "antisemitic, neo-Nazi-courting proto-fascist" for which there is more than plenty of cold, unemotional evidence about each one of those descriptors of Elon Musk IRL, as opposed to just someone's online fantasies.
This is to say that snark in and of itself never won an argument, or impressed me in any way, and if you're resorting to low-brow emotional name calling with no real connection to reality - if you come up with some actually *credible* evidence of Biden soiling a diaper, feel free to post it somewhere - you're already losing whatever argument it is you might be trying to start.
BTW, the syntax of your single sentence post is a bit fucked up. I got your drift, obviously, but really, "the braindead diaper soiler running things" clashes with the idea that "goons were running the show" if, in fact, Biden was too mentally incapacitated to do so himself, which seems to be the gist of your comment beyond simply expressing your displeasure with mine. So, maybe get your criticism straight before tossing the bait next time. Which there won't be with me, unless you can do a lot better than that.
Seriously, sarcastic name calling is serious business. Well, no, it's not. But get serious anyway. And you might want to take a moment to reflect on what "respect your elders" really means. In my lexicon it doesn't mean you necessarily have to respect their politics. Or even them, other than at the most basic level of being a fellow human being. Which means that one day you may find yourself truly old and actually shitting your own diapers in some lonely bed somewhere. At which time, if it comes, I hope you remember cracking wise about the subject while you still had control of your own shit, both bowel-wise and otherwise.
Enjoy the rest of your evening. Really. 'Cause that's exactly what I'm gonna' do.
I have a hard time believing that. Explain the psychology of that? “Cruelty is the point?”
This sounds like a version of one of bastiats great quotes on socialism.
“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”
– Frédéric Bastiat
I just have a hard time believing cruelty is the point. Cruelty is hardly ever the point.
Banning charity. That would be cruelty. This? At best ignorance and stupidity. It’s usually ignorance and stupidity. But cruelty? I don’t see how psychology works that way. Very few people are outwardly cruel. Selfish. Stupid. Ignorant. Uncareful. A lot of things. But rarely cruel. At least as a motivation. Cruelty might be the outcome. But it’s hardly ever the intention. Even psychopaths have a justification that usually goes beyond “I just like being cruel”.
Well, I'll start with pointing out that it's a bad place to be in when the best case scenario is that our nominal president and shadow president are only ignorant and/or stupid.
You want to talk psychology? Trump is a deeply damaged human. He feels small; he feels insignificant. For him, best way to make himself feel powerful is to be able to inflict suffering on others at will (and since you brought up psychopaths, that's literally what they talk about often - the sense of power that comes with inflicting suffering on others when and how they choose). There are compassionate, thoughtful ways to approach problems, but that's never the route Trump takes; it's always about the way to inflict maximum suffering on the "other", whomever that happens to be. That's cruelty, and it's inherent to his approach.
There really is a large segment of the US public that distinguishes our moral obligations to Americans from our moral obligations to non-Americans. And they have long complained that the money being spent on non-Americans should be spent on Americans. Indeed, I once read of a large survey that asked a lot of people about a couple of dozen federal budget items. Only one item had more people saying it should get less money than people saying it should get more money: foreign aid. So we're suddenly getting democracy on that point: the suffering of non-Americans is unimportant, at least, not important enough that we should spend tax money on it.
Sounds like still one more fine whine by Democrats. I'm not losing any sleep over it. It's not a coup (sorry Dems, not biting on that latest bit of dipshit hysteria) because the assholes were elected in what looks like a completely fair process. It's not like they didn't tell us exactly what they were going to do. The lies and idiocies about the rest of it are par for any Trump interaction. Is anyone surprised?
It's a completely screwed situation, but I'm more pissed at the Dems for being such blithering assholes in forcing the weakest possible candidates upon us, insisting we get on board with The Joy™, shitting out a platform that was pretty much the opposite of what all polling told us Americans were concerned with, and by all recent news the morons are doubling down on what didn't work. So, judging by all past action, I'm sure Nancy and Barack will circle the wagons and mouth a bunch of aphoristic platitudes which all Good Democrats will hold close to their heart as they rend their garments.
Saddle up, we get to open wide and take what Elon and the Twinks (that's not a bad name for a band) shove down our throats, while we wait and see what the real sucker punch is.
Of course they should. Theoretically, we have representatives holding power that can step in and stop this shit. It’s only this evening that I’ve read a single judge has put brakes on this thing by insisting “read only” access. Oh…that makes me feel better…. Meanwhile, we have the Dem twinks Resisting™ by flooding into the streets in a process having all the impact of a small potato popping in the microwave.
Where are the Dems? Is their idea of action another dipshit “resistance”?
In re "doubling down on what didn't work", the news is *slightly* better, as far as I can tell: The progressives are definitely doubling down (ask Barry Goldwater and George McGovern how that works out), but the bulk of the Democrats aren't progressives and they're wandering around stymied right now, trying to figure out how to make a cohesive platform that might win and how to organize voters to support them. Trouble is that the Democrats have been delegating recruiting support to a network of "the groups", progressive NGOs (funded by rich white liberals).
I'm one of those Elite Math Twinks except I'm 81-going-on-82, and live in France. Raising taxes doesn't work either (cf 2025 budget just passed by decree because the National Assembly could not bring itself to actually vote a budget) but its the only thing that brainless dumb-fucks like French politicians can think of doing, and I guess Jeff Maurer agrees.
Quite so, because the French have been trying to fix their finances by raising taxes for much longer (by several centuries) than the Americans...like many political ideas, seemingly plausible in theory but somehow they never work in practice. That doesn't stop anyone from trying over and over again.
When was the last time the budget was balanced? My understanding is during the Clinton years, corporate and top bracket income taxes increased while defense spending was reduced. Unpopular as it would be, the general point seems right that to truly balance the budget you would have to take a look at the biggest components of our budget instead of going after these cheap political “wins”
Extracted from the Wikipedia page on the U.S. Federal Budget: "During FY2022, the federal government spent $6.3 trillion. Spending as % of GDP is 25.1%, almost 2 percentage points greater than the average over the past 50 years. Major categories of FY 2022 spending included: Medicare and Medicaid ($1.339T or 5.4% of GDP), Social Security ($1.2T or 4.8% of GDP), non-defense discretionary spending used to run federal Departments and Agencies ($910B or 3.6% of GDP), Defense Department ($751B or 3.0% of GDP), and net interest ($475B or 1.9% of GDP)." Defense spending in fiscal 2022 was a little more than half of that for Medicare and Medicaid. The U.S. fiscal year runs from 1 October to 30 September.
The balanced budget in the late 90s was due to the stock market bubble, driven by high capital gains taxes. Once the tech bubble burst in 2000, the capital gains disappeared and so did the surplus.
Ross Perot put the fear of budget deficits in everybody and the voters said they cared a lot about it. So Clinton and the Congressional Republicans, much as they hated each other, worked together and slowly but surely chiseled away at the problem for years. That are the luck of a 90's boom help close the budget (depending on how you count the SSTF).
Then we got rid of PAYGO and it all went to hell, and no one cared about deficits again until a few months ago.
Of course, USAID got torpedoed because Trump, Musk, and/or MAGA particularly dislike it, not because it's a big piece of the budget.
You should also mention the reason why "Dave" is ridiculous: If you ask any one individual, they can probably identify $1.6T of things the federal government spends money on that they don't care about. The problem is identifying $1.6T of things that few enough voters care about that politics lets you care about.
In that regard, USAID is in a poor position: I once read of a large survey that asked a lot of people about a couple of dozen federal budget items. Only one item had more people saying it should get less money than people saying it should get more money: foreign aid.
The deficit is ~6.4% of GDP. Nominal GDP growth (real GDP + inflation) was ~5% in 2024. This means we only need to cut the deficit to 5% of GDP to make it infinitely sustainable. If we get the deficit down to less than 5%, then over time the debt will shrink relative to GDP, which is the only metric that actually matters.
This means we only need to cut (6.4-5)/6.4 = 0.28 of the deficit. A 2.4% cut of the deficit is not at all insignificant if the minimum cut to achieve a "sustainable" national debt is 28%. It's nearly a tenth of the way there with a single action in the first couple of weeks.
A huge part of the recent deficit balloon was caused by interest rate on new/reissued debt rising. This is now trending down, which will also help cut the deficit further.
I'm not arguing for their specific actions of course, just arguing that depending on how you look at it (either 0.64% of the Federal Budget or 8.5% of the cuts necessary for a sustainable debt) the value of the cut looks very different.
That’s true, but I think it’s fair to say it’s about as likely to change at a rate higher than lower as its current growth rate. Maybe aim for 0.5% lower than nominal growth for a margin of error.
Snark all you want (and I am here for it) but there is probably at least 100-200billy in the defense budget that needs to get exposed and shamed out of existence. The USAID stuff has a lot of gross NGO funding and is an embarrassment which stains the legacy of good that things like PEPFAR have done.
The federal budget and tax code are such a morass that a bit of destabilization is probably the only way things can really ever reform. Hell I would even allow the idea that the government could have more employees in the long run if we got rid of all the Booze Allen Hamilton contractors that have to be there to run the system because it is impossible to fire dead weight and really damn hard to get great technical talent in needed roles.
It would be great if they went after waste in the defense budget (or anywhere -- I am anti-waste!), but that's one of the areas they've said they're not going to touch.
Knowing the sterling reputation of Big Balls, I would be surprised if they don’t go after defense procurement at a minimum… even if the defense spend level stays the same, if we find a way to get more out of the budget that is quite a win.
I completely agree that the Trump “policy” to never even talk about entitlements is the main long term driver of our fiscal problems!
Eh. I don't remember anyone saying this would be the only things that would be needed. Trump also talks a lot about growing the economy as a way to get out of this as well. After stripping out everything that a "Dave" style intervention can do and the fat stripped out as deeply as it can, turning to the public and then talking about Defense/Entitlements gets easier and more honest.
But I think we will all be shocked at how poorly SS/Medi stuff is run and accounted for. The whole government is a poorly run mess. Trump was elected to do exactly this and if he gets halfway to his goal, at least his reach and aioms were worthy.
Did you even read the article you linked to? It literally calls out his hypocrisy - the headline is him saying he can't cut $2 trillion and the subheading refers to how he said he could cut "at least $2 trillion". So either he's ignorant or he lied to American public just to help Trump get elected.
Also, I never said "balance the budget". I said he acted like it's going to be so easy to cut waste, which is 100% not the case. Anyone with a sense of history or who has been following politics for more than 5 minutes could have told him that (and many did).
Depending on how you want to define the topicality of the word "waste" he isnt wrong. USAID? Waste, largely. Military supremacy and the benefits that go with it? Not really wasteful at all, just expensive.
The recent news and accounting shows that very little of what USAID did was actually spent buying anything except influence for Democrats in Washington circles. Its a lovely thought that financing transgender art in foreign countries somehow gives the US "soft power" but Yes. I am fine with the Chinese taxpayer being soaked to pay for whatever the hell it is USAID was actually doing with their money. their actual track record, not just their PR releases.
But we both know the Chinese will never pay for some of this garbage without getting a lot more for their money.
Yes, you got it. I am a mouth breathing chud right out of Stephen Colbert's monologue and have absolutely no data about what the accounting of USAID has revealed. When I say something like "they gave 3.2 million to the BBC" or "Were proping up the NYT and Politico and drag queens in Ecuador" you can rest assured I have no links and am just treating tweets as the gospel.
If that's the best you have against what is being revealed about USAID then you'll never fully understand what happens from here on out.
You have to be able to think strategically to understand how improving the lives of others has value to the US. Or you have to have some compassion for a person who doesn't look like you. But perhaps you lack both of these things.
I haven’t read the article but I did press the Heart button. The phrase “Elon’s elite math twinks” means I heart this article implicitly. No reading necessary.
It's almost cute to see these comments saying "maybe the unqualified 20-years-old appointed by the billonnaire who tanked Twitter and the president who mused about injecting bleach into our veins will FINALLY fix our budget problems."
Tanked twitter? Yeah. Twitter was gumdrops and rainbows before. lol.
Banks that loaned to Musk to buy Twitter are selling those loans at a profit. The only thing tanked about Twitter is the liberal woke screeching on it.
https://www.wsj.com/finance/banks-sell-5-5-billion-of-x-loans-after-investor-interest-surges-4b84f89c
The loans were sold at 97 cents on the dollar. And the remaining $6 billion on the banks’ books carries more risk than the 5.5 they sold.
At a loss
ACK-tually, he mused about injecting disinfectant, not bleach per se. 🤓
This comment was removed because it was an ad-homenim attack.
That just makes me want to see it even more!!! 😜
I’m pretty sure if you were politically saavy at all you would recognize this isn’t entirely about $$. It’s about weakening the network of NGOs that taxpayer $$ is funneled to. DUH.
God I hope you're right because that would really play to Democrats' advantage. If Elon de-fangs the ACLU and GLAAD and the Sierra Club it will be the best thing that happened to the Democratic Party since Barack Obama.
And for that exact reason, that's surely not what's happening. (also we know where their money comes from: donors, which is the whole problem)
Why? They were already highly polarizing to begin with, and now we find out the government was paying them surreptitiously?
If anything it should turn more people off to them.
Defanging the NGOs to help the Democrats is probably not the goal, but triggering an over the top reaction from the Democrats and the Groups may be at least one of the goals. Highlight the most objectionable spending, then show Democrats defending US AID in the most overwrought, emotional language.
It’s the same with rescinding WFH for the federal workforce. If the response had been “Okay. It’s completely reasonable and as employees of the executive branch, he’s the boss,” it would have been a non issue. Instead there have been NPR stories, TikTok videos, and complaints about childcare. Many private employers require WFH employees to arrange child care, because you are supposed to be working.
If anyone ever wanted to know what missing the point looks like, take a look at ol' Josie here.
Also, if someone comes at any of this stuff without understanding that most of modern politics is theatre - a show being put on for the public - I feel like they’re missing the point lol
I read through what appeared to be very surface level analysis of the USAID drama. If I missed the point so be it
There's a hell of a lot of that going around these days in an awful lot of places, Mike. And it obviously doesn't give her any pause judging from her comments below. But it should, since shooting one's mouth off from the hip and missing the point is a large part of how this country ended up in the mess it's in now in the first place.
But thought takes time, and time is money, and with the cost of eggs being what it is, some people just don't have the dough to spend on thinking that they probably should.
I raise my own chickens and have eggs fresh everyday so I don’t have those concerns 😘
Nah, this was a swing and a miss by our esteemed host. Dismantling USAID is a distinct ideological project from the DOGE mission, which is why Seal Team Sexless has been embedded in offices like SSA and CMS rather than USAID.
DOGE is happy to take potshots at USAID when justifying its own existence (it is, after all, a target-rich environment for the "fraud, waste, and abuse" crowd) but what Trump is doing to the agency is much more akin to his purge of every DOJ employee to have ever touched a January 6 case--it's about rooting out perceived hives of dissent from within the civil service.
You sound like you're defending fraud, waste and abuse.
Like reading a inch or 2 deeper into things to uncover strategy is not your thing, that’s clear lol.
Josie, Jeff writes comedy.
So too does Musk. And Trump's cabinet picks and staff.
Oops, I don’t read this blog regularly, I follow so many things that I end up reading whatever article alerts pop up on my phone that sound interesting. I’m not a devoted follower to particular blogs like some people are
It certainly would make more sense than the public explanations if fundamentally the new administration disliked "the network of NGOs" and/or their politics or attitudes.
Why lie about it then? Trump didn’t bring Musk on board for that. Did he also lie to Trump about what he was doing? Even Trump doesn’t have the power to cut that spending anyway, so it’s all illegal.
Musk rants publicly about NGOs all the time & his belief that they are problematic. It’s not surprising at all the first place he looks for cost cutting would be where $$ is funneled to NGOs (technically still doing exactly what the brief is) - killing 2 birds with one stone. While also creating the opportunity to reveal snippets (that may be picked up by various people on social media/YouTube/etc) how much $$ is being to funneled towards what the public will likely see as ridiculous (eg transgender opera).
Obviously not all the $$ that USAID is distributing is going towards what can be perceived as wasteful and silly causes (by certain segments - not all - of the public). But it certainly puts a spotlight on USAID spending that wasn’t there before. Who among the public really ever scrutinized closely let alone paid attention to USAID? And once you bring attention to it, remove significant portions of spending - I would think it would be harder later to reinstate/start funding the various NGOs again. That part I’m not sure about - idk how easy it is to simply reallocate millions/billions of dollars to aid.
In your 3 replies you didn’t answer my question at all so I’ll repeat it: why lie?
I don’t mean to imply I believe USAID would be this corrupt obviously. I simply think political types are quite saavy about foundation and non-profit activity in a way that the public is naive about or can’t even imagine. They are most certainly a potential avenue for corruption. And I think the Clintons in particular are quite saavy about this - and I do wonder about the underlying motivations for basically cementing USAID as an agency the way they did (protecting it from being dismantled). Coming from them…. You never know
Tbh I personally know of a scandal just in my state where a former governor’s wife was essentially using a foundation/non-profit sort of thing to essentially funnel a salary to herself and the other board member - basically hall the funds collected were going towards their salary. Someone investigated, it got in the local news, the non-profit was shuttered. I think these sorts of things are capable of being misused by political types. Obviously not all the time, but they are an avenue for corruption for sure.
If I had to guess, they’re betting on finding corruption. USAID was turned into a independent agency during Clinton’s tenure. You can find news articles from 1998 showing Hillary Clinton attending events for this.
Do some googling about the Clintons and some of the questionable dealings they do around their foundation.
https://www.democracynow.org/2016/8/25/weapons_pipelines_wall_st_did_clinton
USAID has been an independent agency since its founding. Your methods of acquiring information are fundamentally broken
It’s funny how things are setup in govt for specific reasons but then but then morph into zombie forever orgs that go on forever and spend more and more $$ lol
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN12500
The Secretary of State established USAID as directed by Executive Order 10973, signed on November 3, 1961. The agency was meant to implement components of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (FAA, P.L. 87-195), enacted on September 4, 1961.
Section 1413 of the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, Division G of P.L. 105-277, established USAID as an “independent establishment” outside of the State Department (22 U.S.C. 6563). In that act, Congress provided the President with temporary authority to reorganize the agency (22 U.S.C. 6601). President Clinton retained the status of USAID as an independent entity, and the authority to reorganize expired in 1999. Congress has not granted the President further authority to abolish, move, or consolidate USAID since.
https://www.justsecurity.org/107267/can-president-dissolve-usaid-by-executive-order/
In 1961, USAID was created by an E.O. issued by President John F. Kennedy (E.O. 10973), based in part on authority provided in the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. But a later act of Congress (The Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, 22 U.S.C. 6501 et seq.) established USAID as its own agency. In a section titled “Status of AID” (22 U.S.C. 6563) it states:
(a) In general
Unless abolished pursuant to the reorganization plan submitted under section 6601 of this title, and except as provided in section 6562 of this title, there is within the Executive branch of Government the United States Agency for International Development as an entity described in section 104 of title 5. (emphasis added)
The key language here is “there is within the Executive branch of Government [USAID]” (see sections 6562/6563). Those are the words Congress uses to establish an agency within the executive branch. It would take an act of Congress to reverse that – simply put, the president may not unilaterally override a statute by executive order.
The other thing I’ve realized is I believe Musk understands propaganda, politics and the theatre of politics - I think he understands the public as a mob consumer of political drama is somewhat shallow knowledge wise/understanding wise - and what they have the appetite for (dramatic stories). Just my theory. I think each side of the political spectrum has their own version of propaganda you would craft that speaks to them.
As to Trump's "power" and the law... if a law is broken in the woods and there is no one there either able or willing to prosecute the break, does it make any difference that the law was broken? Trump's power will be less and less restrained by the law with every day that passes.
Perhaps the USAID is just the start. To adjust for inflation Senator Dirksen’s comments from the 1960s: a billion here, a trillion there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money.
I propose that we agree to focus on results, then. If Elon balances the budget through a nip here and a tuck there -- or gets anywhere remotely close to doing so -- then I will concede that the belief held by me, Riedl, and basically every budget analyst alive that this approach cannot possibly work was wrong. And if they don't, then you will concede that balancing the budget requires some combination of tax hikes and/or cuts to popular programs.
Remember, though, that the current deficit is $1.8 trillion, the entire non-defense discretionary budget is $785 billion, and extending the Trump tax cuts that are currently law costs another $400 billion. And Trump has promised more tax cuts on top of that.
Fair points, of course. I don’t pretend to know where cuts can be made. However, there are areas that have been pointed to such as programs said to be on automatic funding (with automatic increases) that should’ve been allowed to die long ago. Suspected fraud and waste in Medicare, Medicaid, and, yes, the defense budget as well as others, I’m sure, haven’t even been broached and those are parts of non-discretionary spending.
No matter how successful Elon can ultimately be with DOGE, continuing on the path the U.S. is on shouldn’t be an option. That likely will require cuts that will make Americans squeal. And yes, increases, particularly in the income cap on Social Security withholding taxes, will have to be part of the solution, imho.
Do you have any evidence that those items “aren’t on the list?”
Consider: the low hanging fruit is first plucked. That doesn’t mean the remainder is forgotten.
> the entire non-defense discretionary budget is $785 billion,
According to NBC News, criticizing Musk's plan, discretionary budget is $1.7 Trillion.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/economy-if-trump-wins-second-term-could-mean-hardship-for-americans-rcna177807
> Bob Elliott, chief investment officer at Unlimited Funds investment group, said the idea of cutting $2 trillion from the budget in any immediate time frame was “totally implausible,” pointing out that it would equate to almost all discretionary funding — currently at $1.7 trillion — which includes transportation, education, housing and environmental programs.
Musk has since (pre-inauguration) lowered his goal and said there was a good shot at getting $1 Trillion off.
I think Musk's actions are *illegal*, so you don't need to work hard to get me to criticize him. But if fixing the budget is the metric of success, getting it halfway closed is pretty good.
"Non-defense" is the difference. And he's not going to get to $1 trillion or anywhere close without cutting defense, Social Security, or Medicare. Again: Let's just wait for the results and if he finds $1 trillion in that $785 billion, then I'll issue a big "mea culpa".
He ain't gonna find it. Musk is some form of distraction, the specifics of which I don't know. There's a few smart people in this mess whose names we probably don't even know (yet).
What's the actual target that Musk is distracting us from? Or, is it all really just loony tunes on parade?
It doesn't cost to not extract more money from consumers.
Yes, what they are doing is changing the culture. By the way, the private sector has been through multiple rounds of this over the last thirty years. Having to justify your existence to your shareholders isn't new to most of us so maybe doing this with our tax dollars isn't such a bad idea. Elon's a little dramatic about it but maybe that's necessary.
Congress could pass a law ending all these departments. It would be completely legal. But they're not doing it that way.
It is about a few things
It is about cutting useless spending / grift.
It is about reversing the left's Gramscian March Through The Institutions, one institution at a time.
And making the left burn whatever political capital it has left defending the indefensible.
USAID covers all 3.
"Seal Team Sexless" is comedy gold!
I’ll be wondering how the Virgin Voltron’s connect all weekend.
I’ve known Elon Musk is full of shit ever since he called that British caver “pedo guy” for calling his plan to save those trapped kids in Thailand a “PR stunt.”
If the tiny tots mucking around with government computers have the sort of access that Ketamine McSociopath says they have, very bad things could happen. From https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/02/some-computer-explanations :
-The system crashes
-The system doesn’t crash, but doesn’t do things correctly
-If the computer is connected to other computers, it messes them up
-Holes are opened up that allow security breaches
Yep.
And it doesn't take a computer genius to understand that.
😂
Josie, below, in a sort of way beat me to it. They may or may not cut the( trillions) needed to balnace the books. But they sure have (will) stir the nest. And keep in mind that every journey stars with a first step. Mistakes will be made. Mistakes will be identified with the power of 20 20 vision. But if they persist others will see they are serious and fall in line, maybe even help identify areas that help. But i guarantee if nothing is done no change will occur. I celebrate the fact that there is now a lot of political noise. Thats good.
So, the goalposts have been moved from "balance the budget so that we don't go through a period of prolonged high interest rates and maybe even a debt crisis" to "stir the nest for the sake of stirring the nest."
"mistakes will be made"
That's my concern. 'Move fast and break stuff' is a great policy for Netflix, not so much got the government. A lot of the value of the US govt is that it's stable, it's predictable. It's frustrating that change is slow, but that's a feature, not a bug. Suddenly saying "we're withdrawing from all soft power" is bad for our record of stability (among other things).
I can hear John Oliver narrating this combination of quips and serious-sounding approach to cutting government spending. And that's a problem.
Because it's the glibness masquerading as argument that makes Oliver and his forebears such an obnoxious blight on culture and civic discourse.
It's all "playing to the crowd" and signaling in-group fealty.
- Recite the litany of unrelated exaggerations -- "fish cannery mixed with Satan's ball sweat," "Seal Team Sexless," "Virgin Voltron," "Elon's brainiacs"
- Make denigrating analogies to suggest absurdity (the movie "Dave" and running an Apple IIe)
- Include emotionally-charged exasperations to show seriousness: "frosty fuck's bit of difference"
- Negative fan-fictioning of the object of derision: "too young to question what's happening"
- Simplify the issue under a pretense of false humility: "I'm not a preternatural math genius" but "That's just basic math."
- Frame the issue on a favorable premise (it won't really solve the budget deficit)
- Use the rhetoric of empathy to set up the takedown "And I'll admit: I kind of get it"
- Pretend the critique is being done in good faith: "hey, I like nerds!"
Then mix it all with serious-appearing gestures toward the numbers and appeals to authority (Riedl of the Manhattan Institute) and you get this typical bad-faith monologue that is more about its own smug attitude toward the topic than the topic itself.
Most of these are moves of style, not arguments.
But they work to convince the reader/viewer that they're observing a smart take, and are, by virtue of having done so, so much smarter than the rank-and-file of humanity.
There's no world where the Brooklyn hipster/superior Progressive doesn't read this as the pinnacle of a devastating own. And then shares it like a token of cool on Bluesky.
You end up creating an object of rank stupidity for an eager audience that is in love with its own self-image of sitting at the apex of culture and intellect -- and wants you to know it.
Yes, this won't bring the deficit down to zero, so....do nothing? Don't push back against the culture of technocratic, Progessively-enlightened managerialism at all? "Hey, my guy, you're not solving world hunger by donating some extra cans from the pantry, so why bother?"
Is that the answer? Concede to "Don't question us at all, ever"? Because when you do that, Jeff, you pretend that values aren't part of the system. And they are.
I'm guessing people view the tax cuts issue through their value system: Yes, it WOULD reduce the budget, but SHOULD we eliminate them? Is the harm it avoids better than the harm it causes (taking more of one's income)?
Similarly, the spending that USAID indulges in is about values: Do we want to spend our money here, and on this?
But values get swept under in these top-down lectures, as if everything normative and correct is already known and accepted.
The "kid spinning a sub sandwich shop sign" was a nice touch. Just the kind of thing that would appear over Oliver's shoulder to generate the requisite applause.
I'm responding to the claim that Elon has made: That he's going to cut trillions out of the budget. And the literal promises that Trump made about not cutting defense, Social Security, and Medicare (see Trump's self-identified "promises" #12 and 14: https://tinyurl.com/vnba68tx). If Elon actually identifies wasteful spending and eliminates it, then great, I'm all for that as anyone who knows my work knows, though I will be a bit of a stickler and insist that he do it legally. But they should acknowledge that what they're doing is a spit in the ocean in terms of the budget picture. They're not doing that.
Also, much of what you interpret as underhanded debating tactics is something called "comedy". I would argue that comedians are allowed to make funny comparisons and use hyperbole in clear context.
Elon's fans are the biggest snowflakes in America right now.
My issue with the comedy is that it's used to carry the weight of the argument. It's designed to elicit clapter from right-thinking people and sell back to them their feelings of being right on whatever issue is up for non-debate.
Jon Stewart used this "I'm just a comedian" pose, even as his own viewers we're treating him and his show as a trusted source of news.
People don't tune in to Oliver for yuks -- they're doing it to be reminded that their brand of Progressive politics is the only one that is correct. All others deserve derision.
And the format of the comedy does that. When every issue is prefaced by some derogatory pronoucement on the physical appearance of the "enemy" before getting to the issue itself, it reveals an effort to stack the deck in one's favor. "It's Ron DeSantis looking like a feral cat. Let's do five minutes into why he's a fascist."
Look, I want Musk to do this legally and wisely and above board, too. I wish this were being handled differently. But when I saw a news blurb -- might have been in CNN -- where they suggested he could use more precision, I understood and empathized.
And if it's all above-board, absolutely put it in context. That's also the job of a robust press that shows no fear or favor toward those in power. And I expect millions will respond and say, "it's a drop in a bucket, but this, that, and the other are a waste of taxpayer spending."
But to get back to the comedy: I think this genre encourages people to see their own politics as entirely normative and inarguable, and view those who disagree as benighted scum who are always willfully doing the wrong thing.
And we know this because this is how politics plays out in Progressive spaces -- I'm mostly connected wtih the far left because of my schooling and employment, and the shit they share in their posts is frightening for its lack of intellectual rigor. It's all: "You're a racist for not endorsing DEI; you're not a real man if you voted for Trump; Musk is guilty of treason."
It sounds like your issue is with the way people sometimes do political comedy, not with the genre of political comedy itself. And I'll stand by the way that I do it; I try to be above-board and intellectually honest in my arguments, and I don't think many people familiar with my work would argue that I'm pandering to one point on the political spectrum.
I'm not sure I understand your point. There is nothing about comedy specifically that makes people believe their opinons are the only correct ones. To take an example from the right, Fox News obviously works to convince conservatives that they are right and that the Democrats are worse than wrong, and Fox News doesn't use comedy.
Nor is lack of intellectual rigor and mean-spirited snark something comedy-specific. It is not support for John Oliver's heavy-handed progressivism to say that his team obviously did more research than many news segments.
In other words, your complaint seems to be that comedians are partisans (and I agree). I don't think there is something inherently bad with comedy.
First, I appreciate your response, because it helps me clarify my thoughts on this topic.
Agree with your point about this not being the exclusive domain of comedians. I can critique Fox News and MSNBC as well for bad-faith framing and unhelpful approaches to complex issues.
And I don't think comedians in general are partisans for one side (though, as individuals, that can be the case, in either direction), And there's nothing wrong with comedy -- generally speaking -- as a vehicle for commenting on politics.
But I do think the Daily Show/Last Week Tonight/late-night talk show style of comedy is one that combines cruelty, bad-faith framing, and appeals to tribalism. And no, none of these traits are exclusive to comedy, as you noted. But they do them, nonetheless. They've perfected the template.
They are heavy-handed, and they are delivered in a way that drives wedges between people and encourages the ideal viewer of their shows to be even more insufferably smug and sure of themselves.
It's the comedy aspect that I find pernicious, because it basically says -- to me, at least -- "this issue is so easy, so obvious," and it does it in a way that doesn't earn that viewpoint.
That's what I saw in this article: the same deployment of that tactic that says, "I made fun of these people. so that proves I'm right on this issue."
And you can argue that Jeff doesn't really mean that, and no sensible person would have that as a takeaway. But that's not my experience of the Left in my life or that I encounter on social media. So that's where I was coming from in my critique.
I see, something like "I am so obviously right that the other guy is not just wrong but ridiculous". There is laughter that comes from something funny, and the laughter that comes with a mockery.
I don't think ridiculous/mockery is Jeff Maurer's angle, but I think I understand the thinking now.
That's a great word you used — "mockery." Thank you. Did you ever read Freddie DeBoer's post "Everyone Online Sounds Like an Absolute Fucking Poseur Lately"? I recommend it, because he captures what I feel is the value system of a culture for whom issues are subordinate to the status one gets from referencing them.
In one early passage he describes Millennial Snot as: "...a form of engagement, quintessentially Millennial, that’s defined by a combination of self-righteous liberal politics, out-of-date internet lingo, terms from university humanities departments that have become mimetic in the past decade, and a performative, shit-eating quality of being perpetually amused with oneself."
Here it is if you haven't read it and would like to: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/everyone-online-sounds-like-an-absolute
Anthony’s bit is on point tbh. A very good breakdown of these late-night political comedians and how they operate.
I can’t see them as comedy anymore as a millennial. My generation was almost entirely captured by them and treat them as authoritative sources of information. To the point where they just go with this perspective; their enemies are ridiculous and they are the super smart ones.
It was like watching the new politics download every morning after one of those shows aired with my friends in high school and college.
And the defense of it is gross. “It is just comedy”. I had to get to the point where I could only respond with the adage “If your beliefs come from comedians, your beliefs are jokes”.
I’ve dealt with this “it is just comedy” defense from these clowns my whole life. It isn’t. It is a rhetorical strategy that uses comedy as a way to shield itself from criticism. For to be seriously challenging a comedian is a ridiculous thing to do.
As you have demonstrated by falling on that defense and insisting someone being critical of it is a “snowflake” that can’t take a joke.
I think people are gradually wising up to this tactic after two decades of it.
An absolute takedown! One of the best comments I have ever read, applicable to quite a bit modern political discourse.
>>>But they work to convince the reader/viewer that they're observing a smart take, and are, by virtue of having done so, so much smarter than the rank-and-file of humanity.
There's no world where the Brooklyn hipster/superior Progressive doesn't read this as the pinnacle of a devastating own. And then shares it like a token of cool on Bluesky.
You end up creating an object of rank stupidity for an eager audience that is in love with its own self-image of sitting at the apex of culture and intellect -- and wants you to know it.<<<
It is infuriating how the NYT crowd, despite being no more informed on any of the issues than an average Fox news watcher, maintains such a high opinion of themselves. It is exactly because they align themselves with "the experts" who call everyone who disagrees with them dumb.
Sometime last year, I think, Matt Taibbi wrote an article where he described walking into his building in New Jersey and hearing MSNBC -- he might have been as specific as to say "Rachel Maddow" -- from many of his neighbors' apartments. For right-thinking liberals, she is essential news.
Work out from that what we get: People being propagandized on a daily basis by a network that sells to them a black/white, good/evil version of the world where every transgression against liberal pieties is duly noted, every solution is obvious, and maximalist rhetoric keeps this base in a state of resistance.
Bolster this communication ecosystem with experts curated for their reliability to confirm with authority (sourced from academia or government) everything the audience is inclined to believe is true, and that caters to their pathologies. They’ve created a crowd that is ill-informed but thinks they are supremely knowledgeable and inarguably right on every issue.
Most everything they read in the NYT or WaPo or hear on NPR will confirm this for them. The elite liberal consensus is the gold standard of status, and they signal membership by being snarky and dismissive. These are people for whom having a high opinion of themselves – which you noted -- counts for a lot in their social and professional circles.
Bravo. Nailed it completely. Mocking a directionally accurate action/goal bc it doesn’t satisfy everything right now is not a useful take. And I agree it’s actually worse. It’s poisoning the well.
I don’t like any argument of “it doesn’t solve the problem completely, so we shouldn’t do this thing that makes progress”. The problem here is that the progress seems to come at the cost of saving less lives and reducing stability.
Mike Kidwell's reply is on-track: I'm responding to this project's stated goals. If Elon manages to identify some wasteful spending, that's great -- I'm all for cutting wasteful spending (though I'm kind of a fuddy duddy about needing to do it through legal means). But people should have a clear sense of what can and can't be achieved through cuts to "wasteful" spending alone. Elon's the one going around shooting his mouth off about trillions of dollars in savings, not me.
Yes, but that's not the argument that Elon is making. He has said over and over again that it's very simple to cut all this money out. Jeff is responding to that part. No one said that the journey of a thousand miles doesn't begin with a single step, but Elon is acting like all it's going to take is one step.
Yeah. And if these geniuses take one wrong step while their fingers are doing the walking across those Treasury Department keyboards, the whole damn thing could fall flat on its ass. And considering that Elon Musk could not today pass a *real*, bonafide background check for a high-level government security clearance if his life depended on it, his grasping mitts should be nowhere near the levers (or keyboards and mice) of government power any more than those of the biggest security risk of them all now embedded in the White House.
And you know that Musk can’t get a security clearance how?
You are aware that NASA and the DOD depend on Musk’s cooperation so you not?
I’m quite sure his clearance is not an issue.
While my knowledge is not what one might call encyclopedic, I do know a few things, Marie. And I'm sure he has a security clearance. And of course it's not an issue. Certainly not in this administration with its so-called standards, if that word actually has any real meaning and credibility vis a vie Trump 2.0 high level security clearances.
Please take note that I said, "...could not *today* pass a *real*... etc, etc", implying a reference to standards that would have been applied to Musk in the pre-Trump past and before his (Musk's) now well-known and documented public behaviors since becoming a social media mogul / celebrity / influencer emerged, up to and including him personally shutting down a de facto U.S. ally's (Ukraine's) internet access through his Star Link satellite company as that country was embarking on combat operations in its own defense against Russia in 2022.
And then lying about it - “SpaceX commercial terminals, like other commercial products, are meant for private use, not military, but we have not exercised our right to turn them off,” he wrote in February (2023) - before telling the actual truth about the matter some 7 months later:
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4193788-musk-acknowledges-he-turned-off-starlink-internet-access-last-year-during-ukraine-attack-on-russia-military/
Not exactly someone I believe any former non-Trump administration - with what were once considered "normal" and by necessity "strict" standards - would have considered reliable enough for high levels of security clearance.
There was a time when a known dope smoking, antisemitic, neo-Nazi-courting proto-fascist couldn't have gotten a security clearance to empty the waste baskets in the White House bathrooms. But now we have Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon, with Tulsi Gabbard waiting in the wings to become DNI, RFK Jr. poised to infect HHS, and of course Donald Trump himself, who can declassify the most secret and sensitive government documents with no more than a passing Vulcan Mind Meld with the National Archives, the CIA, the FBI or any other Fed repository of highly classified information, making their future storage in a bathroom at the Southern White House all bona fide with no reason to hide it.
So really, silly me, I suppose. Now that I think about it, at this point what the hell difference does an Elon in the mix actually make.
I’m sure you were even handed and objective about the Biden regime and whatever goons were running the show with the braindead diaper soiler running things and his cabinet of misfit toys.
Well, Scott, I was in fact every bit as even handed and objective about Biden and his administration as I am about Trump and his. There were certainly numerous things there not to like, no doubt.
The difference being that my critical rhetoric about Biden's "regime" (as absolutely opposed to Trump as I freely admit that I am, I've never once called his *administration* anything other than an "administration", your pejorative use of the word "regime" as applied to Biden being quite revealing of your own, shall we say, evenhandedness)... my rhetoric didn't include terms such as "braindead diaper soiler" and "goons", which are all simply emotion and nothing more than low brow troll bait on a good day, Biden's physical and apparently mental decline notwithstanding, as opposed to "antisemitic, neo-Nazi-courting proto-fascist" for which there is more than plenty of cold, unemotional evidence about each one of those descriptors of Elon Musk IRL, as opposed to just someone's online fantasies.
This is to say that snark in and of itself never won an argument, or impressed me in any way, and if you're resorting to low-brow emotional name calling with no real connection to reality - if you come up with some actually *credible* evidence of Biden soiling a diaper, feel free to post it somewhere - you're already losing whatever argument it is you might be trying to start.
BTW, the syntax of your single sentence post is a bit fucked up. I got your drift, obviously, but really, "the braindead diaper soiler running things" clashes with the idea that "goons were running the show" if, in fact, Biden was too mentally incapacitated to do so himself, which seems to be the gist of your comment beyond simply expressing your displeasure with mine. So, maybe get your criticism straight before tossing the bait next time. Which there won't be with me, unless you can do a lot better than that.
Seriously, sarcastic name calling is serious business. Well, no, it's not. But get serious anyway. And you might want to take a moment to reflect on what "respect your elders" really means. In my lexicon it doesn't mean you necessarily have to respect their politics. Or even them, other than at the most basic level of being a fellow human being. Which means that one day you may find yourself truly old and actually shitting your own diapers in some lonely bed somewhere. At which time, if it comes, I hope you remember cracking wise about the subject while you still had control of your own shit, both bowel-wise and otherwise.
Enjoy the rest of your evening. Really. 'Cause that's exactly what I'm gonna' do.
Starting with usaid is symbolic. It represents as much as anything altruism.
The cruelty is the point. Every time.
I have a hard time believing that. Explain the psychology of that? “Cruelty is the point?”
This sounds like a version of one of bastiats great quotes on socialism.
“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”
– Frédéric Bastiat
I just have a hard time believing cruelty is the point. Cruelty is hardly ever the point.
Banning charity. That would be cruelty. This? At best ignorance and stupidity. It’s usually ignorance and stupidity. But cruelty? I don’t see how psychology works that way. Very few people are outwardly cruel. Selfish. Stupid. Ignorant. Uncareful. A lot of things. But rarely cruel. At least as a motivation. Cruelty might be the outcome. But it’s hardly ever the intention. Even psychopaths have a justification that usually goes beyond “I just like being cruel”.
Well, I'll start with pointing out that it's a bad place to be in when the best case scenario is that our nominal president and shadow president are only ignorant and/or stupid.
You want to talk psychology? Trump is a deeply damaged human. He feels small; he feels insignificant. For him, best way to make himself feel powerful is to be able to inflict suffering on others at will (and since you brought up psychopaths, that's literally what they talk about often - the sense of power that comes with inflicting suffering on others when and how they choose). There are compassionate, thoughtful ways to approach problems, but that's never the route Trump takes; it's always about the way to inflict maximum suffering on the "other", whomever that happens to be. That's cruelty, and it's inherent to his approach.
There really is a large segment of the US public that distinguishes our moral obligations to Americans from our moral obligations to non-Americans. And they have long complained that the money being spent on non-Americans should be spent on Americans. Indeed, I once read of a large survey that asked a lot of people about a couple of dozen federal budget items. Only one item had more people saying it should get less money than people saying it should get more money: foreign aid. So we're suddenly getting democracy on that point: the suffering of non-Americans is unimportant, at least, not important enough that we should spend tax money on it.
That and gutting US influence because Musk and Trump want to make America weaker.
Sounds like still one more fine whine by Democrats. I'm not losing any sleep over it. It's not a coup (sorry Dems, not biting on that latest bit of dipshit hysteria) because the assholes were elected in what looks like a completely fair process. It's not like they didn't tell us exactly what they were going to do. The lies and idiocies about the rest of it are par for any Trump interaction. Is anyone surprised?
It's a completely screwed situation, but I'm more pissed at the Dems for being such blithering assholes in forcing the weakest possible candidates upon us, insisting we get on board with The Joy™, shitting out a platform that was pretty much the opposite of what all polling told us Americans were concerned with, and by all recent news the morons are doubling down on what didn't work. So, judging by all past action, I'm sure Nancy and Barack will circle the wagons and mouth a bunch of aphoristic platitudes which all Good Democrats will hold close to their heart as they rend their garments.
Saddle up, we get to open wide and take what Elon and the Twinks (that's not a bad name for a band) shove down our throats, while we wait and see what the real sucker punch is.
They got elected but they should still have to follow the law. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution and the Control Act of 1974, specifically.
Of course they should. Theoretically, we have representatives holding power that can step in and stop this shit. It’s only this evening that I’ve read a single judge has put brakes on this thing by insisting “read only” access. Oh…that makes me feel better…. Meanwhile, we have the Dem twinks Resisting™ by flooding into the streets in a process having all the impact of a small potato popping in the microwave.
Where are the Dems? Is their idea of action another dipshit “resistance”?
I mean, it's democracy, so we're about to get what we wanted. Good and hard.
In re "doubling down on what didn't work", the news is *slightly* better, as far as I can tell: The progressives are definitely doubling down (ask Barry Goldwater and George McGovern how that works out), but the bulk of the Democrats aren't progressives and they're wandering around stymied right now, trying to figure out how to make a cohesive platform that might win and how to organize voters to support them. Trouble is that the Democrats have been delegating recruiting support to a network of "the groups", progressive NGOs (funded by rich white liberals).
Right. “Having lost sight of our objectives, we redoubled our efforts”….seems to be the Dem’s strategy…apologies to Walt Kelly.
I'm one of those Elite Math Twinks except I'm 81-going-on-82, and live in France. Raising taxes doesn't work either (cf 2025 budget just passed by decree because the National Assembly could not bring itself to actually vote a budget) but its the only thing that brainless dumb-fucks like French politicians can think of doing, and I guess Jeff Maurer agrees.
French taxes and American taxes are in very different places.
Quite so, because the French have been trying to fix their finances by raising taxes for much longer (by several centuries) than the Americans...like many political ideas, seemingly plausible in theory but somehow they never work in practice. That doesn't stop anyone from trying over and over again.
When was the last time the budget was balanced? My understanding is during the Clinton years, corporate and top bracket income taxes increased while defense spending was reduced. Unpopular as it would be, the general point seems right that to truly balance the budget you would have to take a look at the biggest components of our budget instead of going after these cheap political “wins”
Extracted from the Wikipedia page on the U.S. Federal Budget: "During FY2022, the federal government spent $6.3 trillion. Spending as % of GDP is 25.1%, almost 2 percentage points greater than the average over the past 50 years. Major categories of FY 2022 spending included: Medicare and Medicaid ($1.339T or 5.4% of GDP), Social Security ($1.2T or 4.8% of GDP), non-defense discretionary spending used to run federal Departments and Agencies ($910B or 3.6% of GDP), Defense Department ($751B or 3.0% of GDP), and net interest ($475B or 1.9% of GDP)." Defense spending in fiscal 2022 was a little more than half of that for Medicare and Medicaid. The U.S. fiscal year runs from 1 October to 30 September.
The balanced budget in the late 90s was due to the stock market bubble, driven by high capital gains taxes. Once the tech bubble burst in 2000, the capital gains disappeared and so did the surplus.
That's extremely ahistorical.
9/11 happened and we spent trillions in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the new DHS agency springing up nearly overnight.
Ross Perot put the fear of budget deficits in everybody and the voters said they cared a lot about it. So Clinton and the Congressional Republicans, much as they hated each other, worked together and slowly but surely chiseled away at the problem for years. That are the luck of a 90's boom help close the budget (depending on how you count the SSTF).
Then we got rid of PAYGO and it all went to hell, and no one cared about deficits again until a few months ago.
Of course, USAID got torpedoed because Trump, Musk, and/or MAGA particularly dislike it, not because it's a big piece of the budget.
You should also mention the reason why "Dave" is ridiculous: If you ask any one individual, they can probably identify $1.6T of things the federal government spends money on that they don't care about. The problem is identifying $1.6T of things that few enough voters care about that politics lets you care about.
In that regard, USAID is in a poor position: I once read of a large survey that asked a lot of people about a couple of dozen federal budget items. Only one item had more people saying it should get less money than people saying it should get more money: foreign aid.
The deficit is ~6.4% of GDP. Nominal GDP growth (real GDP + inflation) was ~5% in 2024. This means we only need to cut the deficit to 5% of GDP to make it infinitely sustainable. If we get the deficit down to less than 5%, then over time the debt will shrink relative to GDP, which is the only metric that actually matters.
This means we only need to cut (6.4-5)/6.4 = 0.28 of the deficit. A 2.4% cut of the deficit is not at all insignificant if the minimum cut to achieve a "sustainable" national debt is 28%. It's nearly a tenth of the way there with a single action in the first couple of weeks.
A huge part of the recent deficit balloon was caused by interest rate on new/reissued debt rising. This is now trending down, which will also help cut the deficit further.
I'm not arguing for their specific actions of course, just arguing that depending on how you look at it (either 0.64% of the Federal Budget or 8.5% of the cuts necessary for a sustainable debt) the value of the cut looks very different.
That’s true, but I think it’s fair to say it’s about as likely to change at a rate higher than lower as its current growth rate. Maybe aim for 0.5% lower than nominal growth for a margin of error.
Snark all you want (and I am here for it) but there is probably at least 100-200billy in the defense budget that needs to get exposed and shamed out of existence. The USAID stuff has a lot of gross NGO funding and is an embarrassment which stains the legacy of good that things like PEPFAR have done.
The federal budget and tax code are such a morass that a bit of destabilization is probably the only way things can really ever reform. Hell I would even allow the idea that the government could have more employees in the long run if we got rid of all the Booze Allen Hamilton contractors that have to be there to run the system because it is impossible to fire dead weight and really damn hard to get great technical talent in needed roles.
Oh and kudos for the Brian Riedl reference!
It would be great if they went after waste in the defense budget (or anywhere -- I am anti-waste!), but that's one of the areas they've said they're not going to touch.
Knowing the sterling reputation of Big Balls, I would be surprised if they don’t go after defense procurement at a minimum… even if the defense spend level stays the same, if we find a way to get more out of the budget that is quite a win.
I completely agree that the Trump “policy” to never even talk about entitlements is the main long term driver of our fiscal problems!
Eh. I don't remember anyone saying this would be the only things that would be needed. Trump also talks a lot about growing the economy as a way to get out of this as well. After stripping out everything that a "Dave" style intervention can do and the fat stripped out as deeply as it can, turning to the public and then talking about Defense/Entitlements gets easier and more honest.
But I think we will all be shocked at how poorly SS/Medi stuff is run and accounted for. The whole government is a poorly run mess. Trump was elected to do exactly this and if he gets halfway to his goal, at least his reach and aioms were worthy.
I specifically remember someone saying that: It was Donald Trump while campaigning for president in 2024. It was #12 and #14 of Trump's 20 "promises": https://rncplatform.donaldjtrump.com/?_gl=1*1s0b4k3*_gcl_au*MTc0NTM0OTM1My4xNzI1ODk4Mzkw&_ga=2.97967898.405284921.1725898391-738701138.1725898390
Elon constantly talks about how it's going to be super easy to cut all this "waste" out of the government.
I'm trying to find a primary source. Did Musk say he could balance the budget through cuts, without touching SS, Medicare, or military spending?
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/elon-musk-says-doge-probably-wont-find-2-trillion-federal-budget-cuts-rcna186924
So before the inauguration he lowered targets and said he'd only have a "good chance" of cutting $1 trillion.
Did you even read the article you linked to? It literally calls out his hypocrisy - the headline is him saying he can't cut $2 trillion and the subheading refers to how he said he could cut "at least $2 trillion". So either he's ignorant or he lied to American public just to help Trump get elected.
Also, I never said "balance the budget". I said he acted like it's going to be so easy to cut waste, which is 100% not the case. Anyone with a sense of history or who has been following politics for more than 5 minutes could have told him that (and many did).
Depending on how you want to define the topicality of the word "waste" he isnt wrong. USAID? Waste, largely. Military supremacy and the benefits that go with it? Not really wasteful at all, just expensive.
USAID is only waste if you're ok with ceding soft power to China.
The recent news and accounting shows that very little of what USAID did was actually spent buying anything except influence for Democrats in Washington circles. Its a lovely thought that financing transgender art in foreign countries somehow gives the US "soft power" but Yes. I am fine with the Chinese taxpayer being soaked to pay for whatever the hell it is USAID was actually doing with their money. their actual track record, not just their PR releases.
But we both know the Chinese will never pay for some of this garbage without getting a lot more for their money.
Soft Power comes from Hard Power.
Yes, you got it. I am a mouth breathing chud right out of Stephen Colbert's monologue and have absolutely no data about what the accounting of USAID has revealed. When I say something like "they gave 3.2 million to the BBC" or "Were proping up the NYT and Politico and drag queens in Ecuador" you can rest assured I have no links and am just treating tweets as the gospel.
If that's the best you have against what is being revealed about USAID then you'll never fully understand what happens from here on out.
You have to be able to think strategically to understand how improving the lives of others has value to the US. Or you have to have some compassion for a person who doesn't look like you. But perhaps you lack both of these things.
I haven’t read the article but I did press the Heart button. The phrase “Elon’s elite math twinks” means I heart this article implicitly. No reading necessary.