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“Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel.” John Quinn
One reason that we are generally unsuccessful at trying to fix our political problems is that no one is trying to fix our political problems. Politicians are not motivated to fix problems because, if they ever did, we wouldn’t need them, and wouldn’t vote for them. Bureaucrats are even less motivated to fix problems – they don’t care who you vote for. Journalists and activists are even less motivated than that - they make a living off those problems.
The Civil Rights Act was passed 60 years ago, and "fighting racism" is still an effective campaign tactic. Climate Change is even better. When will the climate ever stop changing? My point is that we can’t get rid of these people by fixing the problems they promote. If we don’t like being lectured to by small-minded narcissists, then the only way to accomplish that is to decrease the power and influence of government. I suspect that Elon and Vivek have figured this out.
Many conservatives think that it's extremely important to cut taxes. And I suppose that’s true, to a point.
But I think it’s much more important to reduce spending. Because whenever government spends money, it is exerting power. Removing money from the economy is unhelpful. Allowing government to spend money is dangerous.
I hope Trump cuts taxes. That would be nice. But cutting spending is so much more important. So, SO much more important.
You can’t "starve the beast" by cutting taxes. The government will just print more money, or borrow more money. It’s hard for a normal person to understand, but government is a type of budgeting in which inflow has nothing to do with outflow.
So if you want to cut government spending, all you can do is cut government. And the only way to do that, in my view, is by cutting entire departments.
If Trump cuts the budget of every federal agency in half, that would be swell, but the next Democrat president will reverse that, plus some, on his first day in office.
We must reduce the influence of government, or else government will get worse and worse, because it will need to create more and more problems to convince people to surrender their liberty and money to politicians. To reduce the influence of government, we must cut government spending. To do that, we must close down entire departments, firing thousands of government workers at a time.
I don’t view this as difficult. I view it as impossible. As usual, I really hope I’m wrong about this.
I think that Trump, Musk, and Ramaswamy understand the importance of this effort. And I suspect they understand what they’re up against. When Elon accepted the position in DOGE, he immediately hired a huge security team, for 24-hour armed protection. He understands what he’s up against.
Good luck, guys. I’m rooting for you.
But gosh, I don’t know…
Discussion (234)
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Public goods only.
Zero actual inflation which we aren't even close to.
It's a good idea to point a gun at everybody's head and forced them into Medicare and Social Security if we run them right. We don't.
Don't import deflation from the Chinese mafia. Import deflation from anybody else.
Politicians never talk like that.
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Both cutting spending and cutting taxes happen to be very important.
Working class people now fully understand that the Fed income taxes taken out of their paychecks don't often help Americans. Instead our Fed largesse is about enabling destructive forces like the FDA, CDC, and NIH, all of which are most often simply pass though mechanisms by which Big Pharma gets to push out drugs that are rushed through clinical trials with the trials being meaningless.
Meanwhile worthwhile drugs are routinely banned due to being cheap, easily manufactured and available. These banned drugs are not the boon to Big Medicine because, as is the case with ivermectin, they do not result in the users of these real remedies becoming perpetually sick.
Then we also note that foreign aid has a lot more to do with promoting the proxy war in Ukraine and the on- going military might of Israel. Both endeavors help the MIC/Surveillance companies in this nation, plus also allow for money laundering that enriches Congress critters.
As far as taxes being cut: we need to re-examine the entire notion of the uber-wealthy people having charity foundations whenever they decide to set one up.
These entities shelter the wealth that the top richest people hold to such a spectacular degree that Bill Gates not only avoided paying a slew of taxes but he then used foundation monies to bribe "non-profit" enterprises like the 50 top media outlets in the USA as well as the Imperial College in the UK to do his bidding. His sheltered wealth allowed him to "adjust" the British domestic farm animals down to minimal levels during the 1990's hoof and mouth "pandemic" that his underling Ferguson scared the Brit government into declaring. At that time, Ferguson was employed by Imperial College, a college that is funded by Gate's foundation(s).
So since no one stopped Gates or Ferguson that time around, the same tactic was used in March 2020 to drive home the message that "COVID will kill 3.2% of all who are infected." End result of that was the COVID era, which brought about 8.4 TRILLION dollars of Cares Acts in the USA, much of which was given only to the top 5% or so of all American companies and individuals.
This type of activity needs to be stopped.
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Some think that starving the beast is a strategy to tame excessive government. It does not work, since politicians are not constrained by debt. I think the true beast is corruption in government, so my top priority is removing corruption. This would be removing self-enrichment (stock trading, Joe Manchin's wife getting a billion dollar slush fund, paying family with campaign cash, revolving door with business,....). We need a law that pays Congress well, has term limits, and strict rules to prevent any self-enrichment. I am OK if that means only people that are financial successful will for Congress. I'd rather have a 100 dentists than 100 poor commie educrats. The next thing is a law that prevents self-enrichment of all government employees and contractors.
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Depends on what you mean by "department."
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Crushing the POWER of the government is the need. That includes spending, but also regulation - everything connected with the power to destroy people and companies.
I have no problem with rich people spending their money as they see fit. This, too, is freedom. Freedom with money is a form of freedom of speech.
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