Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 40 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Will the Beast Win?
NGO leader has concerns about DOGE
In a now-distant era, Newt Gingrich and some think tank types hyped expenditures for hundreds of dollars for a toilet seat or a hammer. Some congressmen got soundbites at hearings, but not much came of it. When Gingrich became Speaker, he was necessarily immersed in the process of deal-making and interest protection that ultimately made any substantial reform unlikely, if not impossible.
The federal beast has had no natural enemies and has grown ever larger pursuant to the controlling elements of its environment:
- Federal spending causes a lot of pleasure but deficits do not cause corresponding, corrective levels of pain.
- Overspending, waste and overt fraud can persist with impunity, so long as some legitimate and/or popular expenditures can be held hostage.
- For a long time, the scope and size of federal spending made detailed, comprehensive examination (much less targeted reduction) logistically impossible with available technology.
- The rapid growth of federally supported NGOs fostered the illusion of public/private grassroots participation in policymaking while actually serving as unaccountable extensions or allies of the agencies that fund them and as second career options for agency leadership.
- Congress no longer has the internal resources nor collective will to control the beast
- The beast will alternatively claim it represents the will of Congress, the mantle of Executive powers, or the authority of statute of administrative law, depending on who dares to challenge its expenditures.
Trump, Elon Musk, advanced technology and DOGE may have saved us from a painful reckoning with number one on that list, all while drastically altering 2, 3 and 4 against the interests of the beast.
With respect to number 5, barring some significant shift in voting patterns, Congress will continue to be almost helpless when it comes to substantive spending reforms or the formal implementation of DOGE findings and recommendations.
Judge from US District Court of Hogwarts stopping the orange monster with imaginary powers
The shape-shifting beast now relies most heavily on number six to get cover from judges. Entities and individuals who never really had the authority to pass out money to political friends and allies will claim that no one has the legal right or authority to stop them. Invariably, they will find judges who will agree. Congress could fix that problem as well if it were a healthy institution functioning as it should.
Ultimately, the American people need to support efforts to defeat the beast, but that is still lacking. When St. George went at that dragon, he did not have the additional hassle of 49% of the locals rooting for the dragon and keying the barding armor on his mount.
Published in General
I thought the DOGE guys were supposed to be all grungy 20-somethings who mostly design gaming software. This is a very impressive array of grownups.
Elon Musk and DOGE team give behind the scenes look at their mission
As long as
the assembled nitwitsCongress keeps passing 1500-page “continuing resolutions” that sprinkle billions upon NGOs that pop up like toadstools and that are run out of the backs of vans parked down by the river, I don’t see how.At least since the Progressive Era and the Progressive Amendments to the Constitution.
First thing, repeal the Progressive Amendments. Give control of the Senate back to the state legislatures so that the states have representation.
Take away the sugar by getting rid of the income tax/direct taxation amendment. If we have to fund the Federal government through tariffs and fees, it will have a lot less money to pass around.
Limit House districts to no more than fifty thousand people, and expand the House of Representatives accordingly. That will give Congress plenty of manpower to get their work done. It will also make each rep that much less important individually.
Make government unions illegal. As FDR said, they are negotiating against the people.
Drop any governmental salaries to get them in line with the private sector.
Eliminate departments. George Washington got by with four.
I like all these, but also add that Congress cannot pass laws for us that they exempt themselves from. Their health care and bennies packages are scandalous.
Government service should be fairly compensated, but never out of line with similar private sector arrangements. If it’s too cushy a job, you will attract the wrong people with the wrong motivations.
I love the illustrations.
I have written elsewhere that DOGE has embarked on a necessary mission and that the same mission is required for the Congress and the Courts because money is not the only problem as the second illustration shows.
Basically, foundational America is faced with the equivalent of a wartime takeover effort by anti-Americans in the guise of the Democrat Party. The Democrat elected members of Congress make false statements to affirm their commitments to uphold and defend the Constitution. They demonstrate this every passing day.
Under our Constitution, when the Congress and the States exercise their powers legitimately, there is almost zero chance that any POTUS could become dictatorial. That is one thing that makes America great. So that statement uttered by Democrats constantly about President Trump is a gross misstatement. The Progressive Democrat Party is where the dangers reside.
You want a 7,000-seat House? How long would voting take? And where do you put the new building?
How many cameras would C-SPAN need?
This was one I hesitated about as well. Look at how Utah redistricted the last time to reduce some of the impacts created by the urban/rural divide. And get the EC electors chosen by and certified by the state legislators. to reduce all this contention about elections to federal offices.
Exceptionally well-thought-out and well-written essay!
Generated those using DALL-E on ChatGPT.
The captions are important.
Yeah, but they never hire me.
Yes, I do. We have technology that can handle the voting quickly, unless it’s a roll call voice vote, but even then, is a slow Congress a bad thing? Where? First, they do not have to be all in one place with modern tech, but if we do have them together, I suggest Nome, Alaska. Plenty of space there for building a new Congressional building. Or, we could do the center of the lower Forty-Eight. Washington was meant to be central when the country was mostly on the East Coast. We can move the new Congress to fly-over country.
As for cameras for C-Span? I’ll let @ejhill figure that out.
The thing is, the fifty-thousand limit was originally envisioned by our Founding Fathers. The problem was that someone reversed the wording to make it a minimum district size rather than a maximum. Thus, it never passed, since it was useless.
Or, I could say that three is enough for every other sitcom.
7,000 would be tough. The Star Wars Galactic Senate (naturally becoming the Imperial Senate) only had 2,000 and that proved to be unworkable.
George Lucas was unworkable.
Harsh.
I recomend that your budget some time to watch this interview.
That’s because you are not the wrong person with the wrong motivations.
The benefits are concentrated (on a relatively few, generally identifiable people) while the costs are so widely distributed (on every currently and future paying member of society) that it is easy to gin up support for the beneficiaries but difficult to gin up concern among the cost-payers.
I try to be.
Half the country pays no net income taxes. So from a “benefits” perspective, the benefits are much more widely dispersed and enjoyed that you indicate. Which makes this problem much worse, in that you can essentially vote yourself free crap and there’s no downside.
If *everyone* paid some sort of income tax, there would be more howls on the spending.
But most of the country still doesn’t benefit all that much from government spending. Not nearly as much as military contractors, etc.
are all important questions for an economist (and a voter) to answer.
The first has the nice quality of being trivial to answer by simple accounting : the institutions which incur a monetary Debit, such as military contractors, are the ones benefiting economically in the short term. Conversely, the cost is born by the government.
But I think we pay far too much attention to it.*
* * *
*Details
Why do we do that?
One reason is that according to the (absurd and superstitious post-WWII economic theory of the intellectual elite,
The bulk of the budget is not defense, it’s entitlements.
So yes, they do.
This was about how much the concentrated few who get millions/billions from the government, while those who receive “entitlements” receive a relatively tiny amount each. As with those who pay the taxes. The few who get millions/billions have far more incentive – and have the ability to hire a lot of lawyers and lobbyists – than those who are paying the taxes, or those who are getting far smaller amounts of “entitlements.”
And those on the lower end of that spectrum generally have nothing against someone earning millions or billions as Elon Musk has but when a vibrant middle class of workers is shattered by an economic approach that sends the bulk of their jobs to foreign nations they get an attitude as we are seeing.
They want those jobs back. Something is going in the right direction as shown by the stock market today. There is a focus on manufacturing jobs. Since most of the impetus that shifted economics to where they are today has come from the real estate and finance investors and banking going international, I wonder how long it will take for America to understand how destructive the current banking approach is. We need more local and community financial services. Obama tried to push everything to the 15-minute city, we need the opposite.