Now do state and county … in my country the expected cost to replace a state bridge just went from $520 million to $1.2 billion…for a modest 2 lane bridge connecting a town of 7,500 people, in a county of 25,000 people. The beurocratic goal is to spend as much money as possible, tax payers and vehicle drivers be damned.
Want to build a house? State and local governments will require you to comply with the International Building Code. This is a compendium of standards with the force of law in most jurisdictions. You can’t obtain a building permit without compliance. But the code is published by a private organization and to read these laws will cost $167 for the pdf. Hard copy costs extra. But there’s more: the Electrical Code, Plumbing Code, Energy Code are also legal requirements and cost additional cash. Installing lawn sprinklers or rainwater barrels? These are two more volumes available for a fee. Imagine if you had to pay a fee to see the speed limit or stop signs. Same concept.
Yet the street people in their fire & health hazard shanties must abide by no codes, pay no taxes, in fact buy their drugs of preference on the taxpayer dime, living the high-life, pun intended, with no consequences and nothing impeding their lifestyles of choice. Don't tell me it has anything to do with lack of housing. Even I of average intelligence know better and so do the grifters at work serving the street vermin.
An illustration of this is someone getting pulled over by a cop and given a ticket for a moving violation, while across the street guys grilling hot dogs on propane grills are given a free pass.
Not sure about that analogy Jimmy… maybe I misunderstood your post? is there something illegal about grilling dogs with propane on a public street with a permit?
In Florida, Food vendors are required to have a business license, food handling certification, health inspection, liability insurance and permission from the property owner…
And then there's those LEEDS certification standards. Either touted as improving property value or full-on mandated. Thing is, the more energy efficient a property is deemed, with less airflow "leakage" the more likely the air inside a structure is going to be polluted and filled with dangerous microbiology toxins. Indoor air is some of the dirtiest air we ever encounter. Mold, mildew, mushroom spores. Our own dead human skin makes up most of the dust in a home. With all the microbiology that feeds off dead organic matter. Air pressure differences lead to structural problems when a building is sealed up tight. I'm not an expert with this subject, but I've encountered this type of information from those professionals before.
Energy efficiency shouldn't be the only goal, to the exclusion of all others. Much like the pandemic, myopic focus on one concern is detrimental to the totality of a situation, there's always tradeoffs. As with the pandemic protocols, the solution can't be worse than the problem it's trying to solve for it to be a desirable solution. Sames with energy efficiency. Government planners are notoriously myopic, unable to contemplate multiple concerns at the same time.
I just very briefly dipped my toe into our latest $2 million housing grant and what I found was crazy -- they wanted racial breakdown of potential tenants and warned that if the project had a risk assessment of "low or very low", it would likely not be considered.
4 billion in federal funds to Seattle - to solve homeless crisis. Somehow, the only people getting new housing were among those commitees assigned to the task .
Well they plan to solve it now. Washington is set to make homelessness a protected class by law this year. Therefore no more moving them around or trying to solve the problem. There. They fixed it🙄
Money laundering. Not to mention intentional unchecked trafficking of illicit chemicals , fentanyl etc. Plus all the usual other suspects . Land grab. Push out small private business, sell to foreign corporates, jack up real estate and etc. Little by little . Unhoused people is the symptom
Living the same dream, er scream! In Grants Pass. Thank Heaven for the Supreme Court allowing our city and parks to be again inhabitable and a modicum of safety. We kicked the bum Mayor and Council back to the sewer they crawled out of. Vini vidi vici
Im suddenly not allowed/able to post a comment anywhere on substack or even make a post of my own. I get not being able to post where Im not a pd subscriber, but i can't even restack with a note... what am i missing?
When it has to be done fast for the elites, look no further than the example of the 1994 Northridge Earthquake. They repaired a massive freeway and connecting bridges through the most expensive parts of Los Angeles (Bel-air, Brentwood, West LA) Done in less than 100 days vs the projected 12 to 18 months.
"Immediately after the Northridge earthquake, Caltrans officials predicted that it would take 12 to 18 months to rebuild bridges on the Santa Monica Freeway and the region’s five other damaged freeways."
"Myers said he expected from the beginning of the project that he would be able to beat the Caltrans deadline by a wide margin.
“Nobody could build this any faster,” Myers said. “I wouldn’t say it was piece of cake, but we knew we could do it within 100 days.”
"Santa Monica Freeway to Reopen on Tuesday : Recovery: The contractor will get a $14.5-million bonus for finishing earthquake repairs 74 days early."
"Spurred by the promise of an extra $200,000 a day for every day work was completed ahead of schedule, the contractor, C. C. Myers Inc., will finish the project 74 days before a June 24 deadline and rack up a $14.5-million bonus for the company."
The high-speed construction was made possible by crews working around the clock, seven days a week, and by state officials cutting through red tape.
“This freeway, with its broken bridges, broken connectors, became one of the most visible signs of the devastation brought upon Los Angeles by the Northridge earthquake,” Wilson said during a news conference at the freeway. “Now its rebuilding and its reopening . . . will serve as one of the . . . symbols of the energy of this great community.”
"In Sacramento, Caltrans Director James van Loben Sels estimated that without the accelerated effort the project would probably have taken two years to complete."
“This Santa Monica project demonstrates what can happen when private sector innovation and market incentives replace business as usual,” said Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, who joined Wilson and Caltrans officials at the news conference. “This is the way government should be carried out all the time, not just in emergencies.”
It is outrageous. Watch this clip from "The Jimmy Dore Show" here's the description from the show:
"The Pentagon recently failed its SEVENTH consecutive audit, but we’re supposed to be reassured that there’s no waste involved in the Defense Department’s $800+ billion budget. Jon Stewart confronted Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks about the issue and she laughed in his face.
"Jimmy and Americans’ Comedian Kurt Metzger discuss how immune the Pentagon must feel to public oversight for this woman to laugh at Jon Stewart when he has the temerity to question her BS about what an “audit” is."
Yes they're going to play "DOGE ball". Fine, then let them know up front its really The Department of Elimination.
IMO Its not enough to drain the swamp. We must break the State in order to restore the Republic. This is about much more than just cost cutting, regulatory slashing and bloat elimination.
This started over 100 years ago with Wilson. Tgese are his exact words:
“We are not bound to adhere to the doctrines of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence. We are as free as they were to make or unmake governments.”
Trump should do a mental rotation, turning their logic on its head, and say:
"We are not bound to adhere to the doctrines of the founders of the Administrative State".
We The People should be free to undo "government" and break the bureaucratic statism that has beat down our spirit for over a hundred years. It should be made clear the foundation of the Swamp is the STATE....therefore it must be broken. Only then can we restore the Republic and balance out the 3 branches of government out Founders intended.
The unaccountable 4th branch must be DESTROYED, precisely because it's not even mentioned in the constitution. In fact, they represent the very top-down, authoritarian ruling elite our forefathers rejected in 1776 and replaced in the triumph of the American Revolution
Undoubtedly SCOTUS will have to make a ruling(s). So be it, during that time anyone caught resisting should be put (Literally) in a detention room so they don't have the ability to resist as they wait for SCOTUS ruling. This is about reminding the career bureaucrats they answer to the people through their elected representatives.
Or as my friends and I used to say, "Who died and left you God?" I swear that's exactly what they all think they are, little tin gods that we all must obey or be sent to Hell, however Hell is what they've made our country into.
Its tough, taking the red pill, and seeing all the ways life is fkd up.. it is SO messed up, and the programming literally begins with cartoons/tv/tablets at birth. NOTHING you believed before is reality. Most people don't have it in them to relearn their whole way of thinking, hence the mess we have now. Govt has done quite a good job programming society to be passive drones, making us believe all they do is "for our own good".... which is BS. BUT they scream it often and loudly, so it MUST BE TRUE!
Love this community of red pilled folks who embrace, learn and grow.
Exactly! Let's bust out the rubber rooms for the soon-to-be-fired employees. Make them show up somewhere and work on their resumes or something if they want the severance pay. If we don't miss them at the end of the year -- bye bye!
When I grew up in rural NOVA in the 60's, Loudon County had two high schools. Now there are 17. My county has managed to stay rural but the rest of northern VA has exploded in population due mainly to the growth of government workers and lobbyists in need of homes. If all this government cutting indeed happens, that whole area will dramatically change. I'm thinking that these folks, if they're wise, will sell their homes before prices collapse. As we used to say, maybe they should "git out while the gittin's good."
Loudon county schools are churning out masses of indoctrinated kids who are and will be bent on the destruction of the USA. looks alot like indoctrination camps in communist countries...
Here in lies the distinction between gratitude and entitlement. These self righteous employees of the state believe they are a gift to the people and their employer - true civil servants. Where most privately employed people work with humility knowing that they are replaceable, a hard days work proves their worth. Government employees take to twitter and scream about unfairness and how the world will stop without them. Good luck to finding work in the private industry world of competition and proving your value.
"Yes they're going to play "DOGE ball". Fine, then let them know up front it's really The Department of Elimination" You are on FIRE 🔥, Ryan. And quite rightly so!
That about sums it up. A system of leeches - why the best way to drain the swamp is by staying out of it, and creating a waterfall of decentralized independence that will rinse it out.
Going to drop this interesting AP article from 1958 here. Where the aristocracy laments "inefficient freedom." Citing how wonderfully "efficient" central-planned totalitarianism is. This was at the height of the Cold War. From the side of freedom? With "friends" like these...we've been in trouble and asleep at the wheel for a long, long time.
‘Damned Efficient Slavery’ vs. ‘Inefficient Freedom’
SAN FRANCISCO (AP)
Communism is mounting an attack upon the western world with economic weapons, Sir David Eccles, president of the Board of Trade of the United Kingdom, declared yesterday.
He said that while the western nations are pooling their military resources against any war arising from the Soviet Union, “not enough attention has been given to pooling our economic resources, either for the expansion of trade between ourselves, or for meeting the economic offensive that is coming from the Sino-Soviet bloc.”
Sir David, member of the British cabinet, addressed members of the British-American Chamber of Commerce and Trade Centre, the San Francisco World Trade Association and the World Affairs Council of Northern California.
Because the Soviets mobilize and direct all their economic resources from one centre, he said, they have a great advantage.
“Vice-President Nixon called the Russian system slavery. All right, slavery it is. But damned efficient slavery.
“The west, on the other hand, is fragmented into sovereign states, as often as not pursuing rival economic policies.
“We lack imaginative plans for expansion of the free world’s wealth. Indeed, we go our own sweet ways protecting our domestic industries to the detriment of those of our closest allies, trying to block each other’s trade when we should be collaborating for raising standards of life.
“We cherish our freedom. All right, freedom it is, but sadly inefficient freedom.”
FF - Note: The Soviet Union was defeated by the economic might of a free market, innovation that outproduced the central-planned economy of the USSR. So much for the advantage that experts placed in charge of an economy are able to gain with "efficient slavery."
all the pseudointellectuals who claim that central planning is effective have never really looked at the issue deeply. It's terribly inefficient because entire bureaucracies must be built up to decipher supply/demand and replace simple signals like price.
I'm coming to the understanding that the pseudointellectual's claim central planning is effective have looked at the issue deeply. And know how inefficient it really is. And only use claims of "efficiency" to buttress the argument for their true agenda, which is the "slavery" part of the story headline. They don't care as much about efficiency as they do their status as "masters." If you've ever spent much time with them their egotism is insufferable. "I'm a doctor! Hmmrff!"
Status is all they really care about. Little distractions like economic prosperity discussions just occupy their time to make it like they're actually working, earning their status. While spouting off pseudointellectual musings that awe the other intellectually deficient pseudointellectuals who think multisyllabic redundant vacuous circular ramblings with citations and references to historical philosophers and figures are dreamy.
But it's not clear that the central planners ever cared about supply/demand. In the USSR there was arguably demand for decent attractive shoes of different colors. But all that was produced and sold were black shoes. Rows of black shoes on a wall of shelves. Take your pick!
decreased choice and inferior quality production only get you so far. There are also issues with everyone fighting over whose production is more important and therefore deserves access to scarce supplies, timeline questions, critical technologies that are in development...etc. As the profit motive disappears and is replaced with planners, everything that could be taken for granted before now becomes a problem that needs to be dealt with by bureaucrats and politicians.
The Vampire Economy, Doing Business Under Fascism is an excellent book that dives deep into these issues in Germany during 1930's. I'm sure there are many similar books about the USSR.
Exactly right. Any attemp to make shoes of different colors would be perceived as frivolous when all industrial sectors are fighting for more resources. The decisions are not even "basics vs. luxuries" decisions, but political decisions. The bureaucrats with the most political influence get the most resources.
right and so it evolves into a wasteful system of competitive bribery, with a ton of time wasted on communications with state officials that would have been completely unnecessary previously. It seems academics and governments are completely immune to learning from priors...or as Upton Sinclair reportedly said “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
This is a fascinating read. Pre-WWII, about science and innovation in a totalitarian state, with Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin front and center. It starts off slow, but gets better, more in synch with Bad Kitty's piece, this thread than it begins:
Science in the Totalitarian State
Foreign Affairs, January, 1941 (the magazine of the Council on Foreign Relations - one of the few times the CFR pushed something good for humanity)
"Why was it that invention lagged before the liberal movement of the eighteenth century? Because it involved experimentation, work with the hands, dirty work. Also it was useful -- and anything that was useful or commercial was held in contempt by the nobility. When the business man and the inventor were freed from this aristocratic fetishism, machine after machine appeared, and with the machines came mass production and mass consumption of identical goods. Without standardization mass production is impossible. To have cheap, good clothes we must all dress more or less alike. To bring automobiles within the reach of millions we must have the assembly line. To live inexpensively in cities we must eat packaged foods, dwell in more or less standardized homes, bathe in standardized bath tubs, and draw water and gas from common reservoirs. Mass production has brought it about that the average life in New York is hardly different from the average life in Wichita. The same motion pictures brighten the screen, the same voices and music well out of loud-speakers in every town, identical cans of tomatoes and packages of cereals are to be found on all grocers' shelves, identical electric toasters brown identical slices of bread everywhere, identical refrigerators freeze identical ice cubes in a million kitchens. If gunpowder made all men the same height, in Carlyle's classic phrase, mass production has standardized behavior, pleasures, tastes, comforts, life itself.
Mass production and labor-saving devices have created a social crisis. We cannot have mass production and mechanization without planning. Engineers and their financial backers are planners. Dictators are planners. Whether they know it or not, most corporation executives and engineers are necessary totalitarians in practice. Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin clearly have the instincts of engineers. Their states are designed social structures."
...
"Are the technical experts and their financial backers to shape the course of society unrestrained, and even to rule nations directly and indirectly, as they did in France, and as they do in part in Great Britain and the United States? The totalitarians say that a capitalistic democratic government cannot control the experts, the inventors, the creators of this evolving mechanical culture. They therefore have decided to take control of thinking, above all scientific thinking, out of which flow the manufacturing processes and the machines which change life.
But science is more than coal-tar dyes and drugs, electric lamps, airplanes, radio, television, relativity and astrophysics. It is an attitude of mind -- what Professor Whitehead has called "the most intimate change in outlook that the human race has yet experienced." If Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin are to rule, that scientific attitude will have to be abandoned when it conflicts with the official social philosophy. But if it is abandoned there can be no Newtons, no Darwins, no Einsteins. Science will be unable to make discoveries which will change the human outlook and, with the outlook, the social order. If the world wants to preserve science as a powerful social force for good the research physicist, chemist and biologist must be permitted to work without intellectual restraint, i.e. to enjoy the fundamental freedom of democracy."
...
"An essential to this progress has been that the scientist has not demanded that his theory be considered "true." He does not profess to know what the truth is. A theory must work. It is an expedient. When it ceases to work it is thrown overboard or modified. This method of merciless self-examination cannot be followed in a society where the result of each investigation is predetermined for extraneous reasons. Democracy flounders before it arrives at satisfactory solutions of its social problems. But it is better to flounder and progress than to follow the philosophy of a dictator and to remain socially and scientifically static.
It does not follow that under the Nazi or the Marx-Lenin dispensation there can be no science. What is likely to happen to science if totalitarianism prevails is revealed by the course of Egyptian art. In its earliest phases that art was fairly free; hence there was much experimenting, much striving for realistic modes of expression. When the priests took control of Egyptian life a dramatic change occurred. The ways of portraying the human being became stylized. For centuries the style hardly changed. Art had been frozen. And so must it be with research. There can be science and engineering under dictation; but it will be stylized science, engineering which does not progress."
I think the important truth in this is that looking at any system in one point in time is misleading, it's the evolution over time that matters more, and this is where monopolies (especially of political power) really fail. They are static and rigid, as opposed to free markets which are very rapid in responding to any change in conditions. Corporations and small businesses internally may be authoritarian, but they compete with each other. Markets force adaptation or they will see reduced market share and even total failure. Government central planning doesn't face that type of competition and usually adapts towards ever less market-based ways.
When corporations are partnered with government, "public-private partnerships" that government central planning antipathy for competition takes root in both and it all becomes a failed behemoth. And you get these types of anti-free market appeals where corporations and government get what they want, while consumers in the marketplace get told to shut up and just take what they're given:
Translation: "Please make us make only EV's! If you don't force us to then our customers might want us to make cars they actually want. We need to blame the government for taking away their choice or else they'll be mad at us and buy cars from competitors that make what they actually want!"
This is not the free market. It is crony capitalism. That has transitioned to full-on Fascism - central planned government-corporate partnership. EV's fail in a free market. Fascistic corporate central-planned markets require their government partners take away free choice in order to profit under central planning that ignores the demands of consumers. Failed technology is forced on an unwilling population. Total control is more important under total-itarianism.
Interesting how when the government decides to take away citizens' freedoms, e.g., to "stop the spread" (which was poorly defined) it was all just fine. Now when some of the government's power is threatened it's the worst thing ever. Payback is a bitch.
They are. Had a Jewish GF in college; she was utterly convinced that every human action/interaction had to be covered in gubbamint regulations or it would be chaos. Honestly, these people are TERRIFIED of not being told what to do in every little circumstance. They're scared of everything. They need Big Daddy Gubbamint to come around regularly to spank them and put them to bed.
I spent more than 30 years in DoD Research Development and Procurement. From the beginning, it was many starts, few successes, always bureaucratic nonsense. Then there was 9/11. Suddenly all the bureaucracy just disappeared. Things that had taken years were done in weeks. Oversight and legal requirements were still followed, but BS and consulting with no-value-added people were not. The number of people required to do the work was dramatically cut. Since we were standing up new organizations, we just didn’t staff the unneeded positions. There was a resulting great increase in efficiency, speed of decision-making, reduction in time to deliver equipment, etc. Around 2008, the bureaucrats started to creep back in. The number of workers required to do the job doubled. The size of the staffs increased 10x-20x. The time required to get something done increased back to the previous standard and worse. The number of times we spent money for years only to close down the effort without result skyrocketed. Back in the halcyon days after 9/11 we’d try something, find out it didn’t work, and terminate it in 6 months. Post-2008, we took years to even get permission to start. There is plenty of waste, non-value-added people, counterproductive regulations, & rent-seeking BS artists that can be eliminated. I suspect that the rest of the Federal Gov’t is worse. In fact, I know it is. Good Luck to Elon and Vivek.
Just hope we can avoid the NeoCon attempts to start World War III long enough for Trump to broker a peace between Ukraine and Russia. Then on to dismantling the Leviathan.
Excellent Essay, proving once again that Substack is the real home for substantive journalistic analysis.
I once had a passive aggressive & abusive husband who managed to get me completely confused as he was always telling me how "controlling" I was, until I realized-
a) I test basically zero on "controlling" but I also test basically zero on "being controllable." ; ))
His failure to be able to control me, (literally in every single moment,) made him think I was controlling him! He wasn't getting what he wanted so of course I was unreasonable & "controlling."
Sigh.
If DOGE does it's job this divorce will happen fast!
But the Government, it won't understand that killing people, bankrupting their businesses & wrecking their children's health is good enough grounds for a major "reset," and a complete shearing of unjust power & abusive authority.
(Brian Allen -- Lay off federal workers en masse with vague promises of severance packages and early retirement incentives that have no actual details.)
But who will make sure that Amos Miller can't sell raw milk, that someone doesn't shelter an orphaned squirrel or that Fema won't stop citizens helping after a natural disaster?
Love to hear the squealing of the media in the morning.....But we can just explain that we had to destroy the Government to save it....On 2d thought, let's just destroy it...
Well, poor Brian. Choking on history comin' 'round again. He used to be a priest in Ancient Egypt blanching to his toenails when Akhenaten said "One god's more than enough, guys. That's the whole point of being a god. He can do all of it himself."
READ the Constitution! MANY TIMES! You'll see that the government was supposed to be instituted for the securing of our rights, and a small number of essential duties to preserve our lives, our property and our freedoms! I wish you could see the Kris Anne Hall video called "Power of the Purse" to get a sense of just how much we're enslaved by the burdens placed upon us BEYOND the constitutional authority the government was given.
WE, as slumbering people, have ALLOWED government to grow so big. And we have not held our elected officials accountable.
Now do state and county … in my country the expected cost to replace a state bridge just went from $520 million to $1.2 billion…for a modest 2 lane bridge connecting a town of 7,500 people, in a county of 25,000 people. The beurocratic goal is to spend as much money as possible, tax payers and vehicle drivers be damned.
Want to build a house? State and local governments will require you to comply with the International Building Code. This is a compendium of standards with the force of law in most jurisdictions. You can’t obtain a building permit without compliance. But the code is published by a private organization and to read these laws will cost $167 for the pdf. Hard copy costs extra. But there’s more: the Electrical Code, Plumbing Code, Energy Code are also legal requirements and cost additional cash. Installing lawn sprinklers or rainwater barrels? These are two more volumes available for a fee. Imagine if you had to pay a fee to see the speed limit or stop signs. Same concept.
Yet the street people in their fire & health hazard shanties must abide by no codes, pay no taxes, in fact buy their drugs of preference on the taxpayer dime, living the high-life, pun intended, with no consequences and nothing impeding their lifestyles of choice. Don't tell me it has anything to do with lack of housing. Even I of average intelligence know better and so do the grifters at work serving the street vermin.
An illustration of this is someone getting pulled over by a cop and given a ticket for a moving violation, while across the street guys grilling hot dogs on propane grills are given a free pass.
Not sure about that analogy Jimmy… maybe I misunderstood your post? is there something illegal about grilling dogs with propane on a public street with a permit?
In Florida, Food vendors are required to have a business license, food handling certification, health inspection, liability insurance and permission from the property owner…
IIRC an article about a housing development for homeless in CA had a sobriety requirement…and many units remained empty. Priorities….
The homeless are the free Americans.
And then there's those LEEDS certification standards. Either touted as improving property value or full-on mandated. Thing is, the more energy efficient a property is deemed, with less airflow "leakage" the more likely the air inside a structure is going to be polluted and filled with dangerous microbiology toxins. Indoor air is some of the dirtiest air we ever encounter. Mold, mildew, mushroom spores. Our own dead human skin makes up most of the dust in a home. With all the microbiology that feeds off dead organic matter. Air pressure differences lead to structural problems when a building is sealed up tight. I'm not an expert with this subject, but I've encountered this type of information from those professionals before.
Energy efficiency shouldn't be the only goal, to the exclusion of all others. Much like the pandemic, myopic focus on one concern is detrimental to the totality of a situation, there's always tradeoffs. As with the pandemic protocols, the solution can't be worse than the problem it's trying to solve for it to be a desirable solution. Sames with energy efficiency. Government planners are notoriously myopic, unable to contemplate multiple concerns at the same time.
I just very briefly dipped my toe into our latest $2 million housing grant and what I found was crazy -- they wanted racial breakdown of potential tenants and warned that if the project had a risk assessment of "low or very low", it would likely not be considered.
Receipts: https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/biden-administration-worried-about
So should we all upgrade our risk factors so that housing grants may increase? May it never be!
It's just graft all the way down. How many millions are we spending to fight homelessness in Portland - by handing out drugs and tents?
The numbers will dwindle in the winter like always, but the "cocaine birds" will show up when the weather gets warm again.......
4 billion in federal funds to Seattle - to solve homeless crisis. Somehow, the only people getting new housing were among those commitees assigned to the task .
It sounds easy?
# of homeless.
Cost of 15sq Quonset hut.
Cost of communal showers.
Cost of communal kitchen.
Cost of supplies and staff, inc. armed guards.
Cost of admin, capped at 5% of total.
Something like that, and $4 000 000 000 ought to be plenty?
Guess the point isn't to solve anything, only to use the taxpayer as cattle for producing money for the state.
Well they plan to solve it now. Washington is set to make homelessness a protected class by law this year. Therefore no more moving them around or trying to solve the problem. There. They fixed it🙄
Money laundering. Not to mention intentional unchecked trafficking of illicit chemicals , fentanyl etc. Plus all the usual other suspects . Land grab. Push out small private business, sell to foreign corporates, jack up real estate and etc. Little by little . Unhoused people is the symptom
They’ve been stealing us blind for decades.
Cocaine Bird Flu?
Living the same dream, er scream! In Grants Pass. Thank Heaven for the Supreme Court allowing our city and parks to be again inhabitable and a modicum of safety. We kicked the bum Mayor and Council back to the sewer they crawled out of. Vini vidi vici
The smaller cities will regain their sanity faster than the bigger ones, that's for sure.
Im suddenly not allowed/able to post a comment anywhere on substack or even make a post of my own. I get not being able to post where Im not a pd subscriber, but i can't even restack with a note... what am i missing?
See if there’s an update to install? Sometimes functionality is affected due to that.
Good idea. Its behaving very randomly.... time for reset
Sounds like a turn it off/turn it on scenario. Maybe clear your cache?
I don't see anywhere Ive committed a substack sin, either...... anyone have any ideas on what's up with this?
When it has to be done fast for the elites, look no further than the example of the 1994 Northridge Earthquake. They repaired a massive freeway and connecting bridges through the most expensive parts of Los Angeles (Bel-air, Brentwood, West LA) Done in less than 100 days vs the projected 12 to 18 months.
"Immediately after the Northridge earthquake, Caltrans officials predicted that it would take 12 to 18 months to rebuild bridges on the Santa Monica Freeway and the region’s five other damaged freeways."
"Myers said he expected from the beginning of the project that he would be able to beat the Caltrans deadline by a wide margin.
“Nobody could build this any faster,” Myers said. “I wouldn’t say it was piece of cake, but we knew we could do it within 100 days.”
"Santa Monica Freeway to Reopen on Tuesday : Recovery: The contractor will get a $14.5-million bonus for finishing earthquake repairs 74 days early."
"Spurred by the promise of an extra $200,000 a day for every day work was completed ahead of schedule, the contractor, C. C. Myers Inc., will finish the project 74 days before a June 24 deadline and rack up a $14.5-million bonus for the company."
The high-speed construction was made possible by crews working around the clock, seven days a week, and by state officials cutting through red tape.
“This freeway, with its broken bridges, broken connectors, became one of the most visible signs of the devastation brought upon Los Angeles by the Northridge earthquake,” Wilson said during a news conference at the freeway. “Now its rebuilding and its reopening . . . will serve as one of the . . . symbols of the energy of this great community.”
"In Sacramento, Caltrans Director James van Loben Sels estimated that without the accelerated effort the project would probably have taken two years to complete."
“This Santa Monica project demonstrates what can happen when private sector innovation and market incentives replace business as usual,” said Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, who joined Wilson and Caltrans officials at the news conference. “This is the way government should be carried out all the time, not just in emergencies.”
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-04-06-mn-42778-story.html
Now remember, they have to abide ALLLLLLL the regulations and red tape erected to keep us safe while they spend our money...
Meanwhile I have a feeling that the private sector could have it done at the fraction of the cost once they removed all the bureaucratic mitigations.
Biden came to Cincinnati in January 2023 to announce a new bridge over the Ohio river. Anyone want to guess how much construction has taken place?
And the bridge a couple miles away burned down. Cincinnati is going to screwed for awhile.
Ah, the infamous Bridge to Nowhere. Same location as Brandon’s brain.
It is outrageous. Watch this clip from "The Jimmy Dore Show" here's the description from the show:
"The Pentagon recently failed its SEVENTH consecutive audit, but we’re supposed to be reassured that there’s no waste involved in the Defense Department’s $800+ billion budget. Jon Stewart confronted Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks about the issue and she laughed in his face.
"Jimmy and Americans’ Comedian Kurt Metzger discuss how immune the Pentagon must feel to public oversight for this woman to laugh at Jon Stewart when he has the temerity to question her BS about what an “audit” is."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJQa5HB567c
Beware unintended consequences.
Magnum Opus, Gato!
Yes they're going to play "DOGE ball". Fine, then let them know up front its really The Department of Elimination.
IMO Its not enough to drain the swamp. We must break the State in order to restore the Republic. This is about much more than just cost cutting, regulatory slashing and bloat elimination.
This started over 100 years ago with Wilson. Tgese are his exact words:
“We are not bound to adhere to the doctrines of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence. We are as free as they were to make or unmake governments.”
Trump should do a mental rotation, turning their logic on its head, and say:
"We are not bound to adhere to the doctrines of the founders of the Administrative State".
We The People should be free to undo "government" and break the bureaucratic statism that has beat down our spirit for over a hundred years. It should be made clear the foundation of the Swamp is the STATE....therefore it must be broken. Only then can we restore the Republic and balance out the 3 branches of government out Founders intended.
The unaccountable 4th branch must be DESTROYED, precisely because it's not even mentioned in the constitution. In fact, they represent the very top-down, authoritarian ruling elite our forefathers rejected in 1776 and replaced in the triumph of the American Revolution
Undoubtedly SCOTUS will have to make a ruling(s). So be it, during that time anyone caught resisting should be put (Literally) in a detention room so they don't have the ability to resist as they wait for SCOTUS ruling. This is about reminding the career bureaucrats they answer to the people through their elected representatives.
Bring out the BullDOGErs and chainsaws!!!
exactly this.
it's time to end the idea of "government say so so it's so" and return to "who died and made you king of anything?"
I would love to be able to say that right to their faces!...lolol...:)
Or as my friends and I used to say, "Who died and left you God?" I swear that's exactly what they all think they are, little tin gods that we all must obey or be sent to Hell, however Hell is what they've made our country into.
There's just no better way of putting it....and it might be the only way they could understand it.
Treat them with juvenile words, for the juveniles they are.
It's what they understand. SMH
Or, as Limbaugh used to put it: "I question your premise."
Its tough, taking the red pill, and seeing all the ways life is fkd up.. it is SO messed up, and the programming literally begins with cartoons/tv/tablets at birth. NOTHING you believed before is reality. Most people don't have it in them to relearn their whole way of thinking, hence the mess we have now. Govt has done quite a good job programming society to be passive drones, making us believe all they do is "for our own good".... which is BS. BUT they scream it often and loudly, so it MUST BE TRUE!
Love this community of red pilled folks who embrace, learn and grow.
Exactly! Let's bust out the rubber rooms for the soon-to-be-fired employees. Make them show up somewhere and work on their resumes or something if they want the severance pay. If we don't miss them at the end of the year -- bye bye!
https://nypost.com/2020/08/15/nyc-pledged-to-ban-teacher-rubber-rooms-they-went-underground-instead/
Lmao "rubber rooms ".
GLORIOUS!!!
When I grew up in rural NOVA in the 60's, Loudon County had two high schools. Now there are 17. My county has managed to stay rural but the rest of northern VA has exploded in population due mainly to the growth of government workers and lobbyists in need of homes. If all this government cutting indeed happens, that whole area will dramatically change. I'm thinking that these folks, if they're wise, will sell their homes before prices collapse. As we used to say, maybe they should "git out while the gittin's good."
And let Virginia return to the conservative state it really is.
Winsome Sears 2025
Amen!
I am still in Lo Co.
When we moved here, the saying was”don’t Fairfax Loudoun county” Remember that? Yes get them all out of here
Loudon and fairfax counties need to collapse. But first, Montgomery MD.
*Howard County has entered the chat*
Exactly. Just proves the point.
But, there are indeed some good hard-working government employees.
You know how we'll be able to tell?
The good ones will look at this as an opportunity, not an inquisition.
On the other hand, based on your point, im thinking it could be an investment opportunity!....:)
Agreed. The good hard-working people will easily find a private sector job.
Loudon county schools are churning out masses of indoctrinated kids who are and will be bent on the destruction of the USA. looks alot like indoctrination camps in communist countries...
Spot on, as usual.
Burn the fields and salt the earth. Leave not a single seed for the bureaucracy to regenerate itself.
Ryan Gardner: Some of the smartest political analysis I've read in years!
"IMO Its not enough to drain the swamp. We must break the State in order to restore the Republic." Indeed. I want the T-shirt.
"The unaccountable 4th branch must be DESTROYED"
"It's really The Department of Elimination." From your mouth to G_d's ears!
That's not a fourth branch, that's a vine that has been strangling the tree.
Well said.
...and down with bulldog bureaucratic belligerence!!!
Here in lies the distinction between gratitude and entitlement. These self righteous employees of the state believe they are a gift to the people and their employer - true civil servants. Where most privately employed people work with humility knowing that they are replaceable, a hard days work proves their worth. Government employees take to twitter and scream about unfairness and how the world will stop without them. Good luck to finding work in the private industry world of competition and proving your value.
"Yes they're going to play "DOGE ball". Fine, then let them know up front it's really The Department of Elimination" You are on FIRE 🔥, Ryan. And quite rightly so!
"If we can't steal money from you, this federal employee might not have a job!"
So.......a win-win?
That about sums it up. A system of leeches - why the best way to drain the swamp is by staying out of it, and creating a waterfall of decentralized independence that will rinse it out.
Going to drop this interesting AP article from 1958 here. Where the aristocracy laments "inefficient freedom." Citing how wonderfully "efficient" central-planned totalitarianism is. This was at the height of the Cold War. From the side of freedom? With "friends" like these...we've been in trouble and asleep at the wheel for a long, long time.
https://archive.org/details/dailycolonist0158uvic_1/mode/2up?view=theater
The Daily Colonist
Victoria Island's Leading Newspaper Since 1858
January 4th, 1958
‘Damned Efficient Slavery’ vs. ‘Inefficient Freedom’
SAN FRANCISCO (AP)
Communism is mounting an attack upon the western world with economic weapons, Sir David Eccles, president of the Board of Trade of the United Kingdom, declared yesterday.
He said that while the western nations are pooling their military resources against any war arising from the Soviet Union, “not enough attention has been given to pooling our economic resources, either for the expansion of trade between ourselves, or for meeting the economic offensive that is coming from the Sino-Soviet bloc.”
Sir David, member of the British cabinet, addressed members of the British-American Chamber of Commerce and Trade Centre, the San Francisco World Trade Association and the World Affairs Council of Northern California.
Because the Soviets mobilize and direct all their economic resources from one centre, he said, they have a great advantage.
“Vice-President Nixon called the Russian system slavery. All right, slavery it is. But damned efficient slavery.
“The west, on the other hand, is fragmented into sovereign states, as often as not pursuing rival economic policies.
“We lack imaginative plans for expansion of the free world’s wealth. Indeed, we go our own sweet ways protecting our domestic industries to the detriment of those of our closest allies, trying to block each other’s trade when we should be collaborating for raising standards of life.
“We cherish our freedom. All right, freedom it is, but sadly inefficient freedom.”
FF - Note: The Soviet Union was defeated by the economic might of a free market, innovation that outproduced the central-planned economy of the USSR. So much for the advantage that experts placed in charge of an economy are able to gain with "efficient slavery."
all the pseudointellectuals who claim that central planning is effective have never really looked at the issue deeply. It's terribly inefficient because entire bureaucracies must be built up to decipher supply/demand and replace simple signals like price.
I'm coming to the understanding that the pseudointellectual's claim central planning is effective have looked at the issue deeply. And know how inefficient it really is. And only use claims of "efficiency" to buttress the argument for their true agenda, which is the "slavery" part of the story headline. They don't care as much about efficiency as they do their status as "masters." If you've ever spent much time with them their egotism is insufferable. "I'm a doctor! Hmmrff!"
Status is all they really care about. Little distractions like economic prosperity discussions just occupy their time to make it like they're actually working, earning their status. While spouting off pseudointellectual musings that awe the other intellectually deficient pseudointellectuals who think multisyllabic redundant vacuous circular ramblings with citations and references to historical philosophers and figures are dreamy.
But it's not clear that the central planners ever cared about supply/demand. In the USSR there was arguably demand for decent attractive shoes of different colors. But all that was produced and sold were black shoes. Rows of black shoes on a wall of shelves. Take your pick!
decreased choice and inferior quality production only get you so far. There are also issues with everyone fighting over whose production is more important and therefore deserves access to scarce supplies, timeline questions, critical technologies that are in development...etc. As the profit motive disappears and is replaced with planners, everything that could be taken for granted before now becomes a problem that needs to be dealt with by bureaucrats and politicians.
The Vampire Economy, Doing Business Under Fascism is an excellent book that dives deep into these issues in Germany during 1930's. I'm sure there are many similar books about the USSR.
Exactly right. Any attemp to make shoes of different colors would be perceived as frivolous when all industrial sectors are fighting for more resources. The decisions are not even "basics vs. luxuries" decisions, but political decisions. The bureaucrats with the most political influence get the most resources.
right and so it evolves into a wasteful system of competitive bribery, with a ton of time wasted on communications with state officials that would have been completely unnecessary previously. It seems academics and governments are completely immune to learning from priors...or as Upton Sinclair reportedly said “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
This is a fascinating read. Pre-WWII, about science and innovation in a totalitarian state, with Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin front and center. It starts off slow, but gets better, more in synch with Bad Kitty's piece, this thread than it begins:
Science in the Totalitarian State
Foreign Affairs, January, 1941 (the magazine of the Council on Foreign Relations - one of the few times the CFR pushed something good for humanity)
https://web.archive.org/web/20181125112623/https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/1941-01-01/science-totalitarian-state
Select excerpts:
"Why was it that invention lagged before the liberal movement of the eighteenth century? Because it involved experimentation, work with the hands, dirty work. Also it was useful -- and anything that was useful or commercial was held in contempt by the nobility. When the business man and the inventor were freed from this aristocratic fetishism, machine after machine appeared, and with the machines came mass production and mass consumption of identical goods. Without standardization mass production is impossible. To have cheap, good clothes we must all dress more or less alike. To bring automobiles within the reach of millions we must have the assembly line. To live inexpensively in cities we must eat packaged foods, dwell in more or less standardized homes, bathe in standardized bath tubs, and draw water and gas from common reservoirs. Mass production has brought it about that the average life in New York is hardly different from the average life in Wichita. The same motion pictures brighten the screen, the same voices and music well out of loud-speakers in every town, identical cans of tomatoes and packages of cereals are to be found on all grocers' shelves, identical electric toasters brown identical slices of bread everywhere, identical refrigerators freeze identical ice cubes in a million kitchens. If gunpowder made all men the same height, in Carlyle's classic phrase, mass production has standardized behavior, pleasures, tastes, comforts, life itself.
Mass production and labor-saving devices have created a social crisis. We cannot have mass production and mechanization without planning. Engineers and their financial backers are planners. Dictators are planners. Whether they know it or not, most corporation executives and engineers are necessary totalitarians in practice. Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin clearly have the instincts of engineers. Their states are designed social structures."
...
"Are the technical experts and their financial backers to shape the course of society unrestrained, and even to rule nations directly and indirectly, as they did in France, and as they do in part in Great Britain and the United States? The totalitarians say that a capitalistic democratic government cannot control the experts, the inventors, the creators of this evolving mechanical culture. They therefore have decided to take control of thinking, above all scientific thinking, out of which flow the manufacturing processes and the machines which change life.
But science is more than coal-tar dyes and drugs, electric lamps, airplanes, radio, television, relativity and astrophysics. It is an attitude of mind -- what Professor Whitehead has called "the most intimate change in outlook that the human race has yet experienced." If Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin are to rule, that scientific attitude will have to be abandoned when it conflicts with the official social philosophy. But if it is abandoned there can be no Newtons, no Darwins, no Einsteins. Science will be unable to make discoveries which will change the human outlook and, with the outlook, the social order. If the world wants to preserve science as a powerful social force for good the research physicist, chemist and biologist must be permitted to work without intellectual restraint, i.e. to enjoy the fundamental freedom of democracy."
...
"An essential to this progress has been that the scientist has not demanded that his theory be considered "true." He does not profess to know what the truth is. A theory must work. It is an expedient. When it ceases to work it is thrown overboard or modified. This method of merciless self-examination cannot be followed in a society where the result of each investigation is predetermined for extraneous reasons. Democracy flounders before it arrives at satisfactory solutions of its social problems. But it is better to flounder and progress than to follow the philosophy of a dictator and to remain socially and scientifically static.
It does not follow that under the Nazi or the Marx-Lenin dispensation there can be no science. What is likely to happen to science if totalitarianism prevails is revealed by the course of Egyptian art. In its earliest phases that art was fairly free; hence there was much experimenting, much striving for realistic modes of expression. When the priests took control of Egyptian life a dramatic change occurred. The ways of portraying the human being became stylized. For centuries the style hardly changed. Art had been frozen. And so must it be with research. There can be science and engineering under dictation; but it will be stylized science, engineering which does not progress."
I think the important truth in this is that looking at any system in one point in time is misleading, it's the evolution over time that matters more, and this is where monopolies (especially of political power) really fail. They are static and rigid, as opposed to free markets which are very rapid in responding to any change in conditions. Corporations and small businesses internally may be authoritarian, but they compete with each other. Markets force adaptation or they will see reduced market share and even total failure. Government central planning doesn't face that type of competition and usually adapts towards ever less market-based ways.
When corporations are partnered with government, "public-private partnerships" that government central planning antipathy for competition takes root in both and it all becomes a failed behemoth. And you get these types of anti-free market appeals where corporations and government get what they want, while consumers in the marketplace get told to shut up and just take what they're given:
https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/energy/despite-lackluster-consumer-interest-automakers-are-asking-trump-keep-ev
Translation: "Please make us make only EV's! If you don't force us to then our customers might want us to make cars they actually want. We need to blame the government for taking away their choice or else they'll be mad at us and buy cars from competitors that make what they actually want!"
This is not the free market. It is crony capitalism. That has transitioned to full-on Fascism - central planned government-corporate partnership. EV's fail in a free market. Fascistic corporate central-planned markets require their government partners take away free choice in order to profit under central planning that ignores the demands of consumers. Failed technology is forced on an unwilling population. Total control is more important under total-itarianism.
Spot on, Mitch.
Interesting how when the government decides to take away citizens' freedoms, e.g., to "stop the spread" (which was poorly defined) it was all just fine. Now when some of the government's power is threatened it's the worst thing ever. Payback is a bitch.
I love dat bitch!
"i suspect they may even be sincere."
They are. Had a Jewish GF in college; she was utterly convinced that every human action/interaction had to be covered in gubbamint regulations or it would be chaos. Honestly, these people are TERRIFIED of not being told what to do in every little circumstance. They're scared of everything. They need Big Daddy Gubbamint to come around regularly to spank them and put them to bed.
Amazing.
I spent more than 30 years in DoD Research Development and Procurement. From the beginning, it was many starts, few successes, always bureaucratic nonsense. Then there was 9/11. Suddenly all the bureaucracy just disappeared. Things that had taken years were done in weeks. Oversight and legal requirements were still followed, but BS and consulting with no-value-added people were not. The number of people required to do the work was dramatically cut. Since we were standing up new organizations, we just didn’t staff the unneeded positions. There was a resulting great increase in efficiency, speed of decision-making, reduction in time to deliver equipment, etc. Around 2008, the bureaucrats started to creep back in. The number of workers required to do the job doubled. The size of the staffs increased 10x-20x. The time required to get something done increased back to the previous standard and worse. The number of times we spent money for years only to close down the effort without result skyrocketed. Back in the halcyon days after 9/11 we’d try something, find out it didn’t work, and terminate it in 6 months. Post-2008, we took years to even get permission to start. There is plenty of waste, non-value-added people, counterproductive regulations, & rent-seeking BS artists that can be eliminated. I suspect that the rest of the Federal Gov’t is worse. In fact, I know it is. Good Luck to Elon and Vivek.
Just hope we can avoid the NeoCon attempts to start World War III long enough for Trump to broker a peace between Ukraine and Russia. Then on to dismantling the Leviathan.
Excellent Essay, proving once again that Substack is the real home for substantive journalistic analysis.
Dick Minnis
removingthecataract.substack.com
Love it. Way to go El Gato.
They didn’t say shit when the government shut the entire economy and destroyed the fed debt over what turned out to be a cold.
They didn’t care when they tried to fire nearly 100M ppl for not taking a “vaccine” that didn’t work.
Welcome to the other side of that coin. The good side.
I once had a passive aggressive & abusive husband who managed to get me completely confused as he was always telling me how "controlling" I was, until I realized-
a) I test basically zero on "controlling" but I also test basically zero on "being controllable." ; ))
His failure to be able to control me, (literally in every single moment,) made him think I was controlling him! He wasn't getting what he wanted so of course I was unreasonable & "controlling."
Sigh.
If DOGE does it's job this divorce will happen fast!
But the Government, it won't understand that killing people, bankrupting their businesses & wrecking their children's health is good enough grounds for a major "reset," and a complete shearing of unjust power & abusive authority.
Come closer, 1776 and a new Independence Day!
Yeah!
(Brian Allen -- Lay off federal workers en masse with vague promises of severance packages and early retirement incentives that have no actual details.)
Can't they all just learn to code ?
LOL!!! 🤣🤣🤣
But who will make sure that Amos Miller can't sell raw milk, that someone doesn't shelter an orphaned squirrel or that Fema won't stop citizens helping after a natural disaster?
Nailed it!
👏👏👏
Love to hear the squealing of the media in the morning.....But we can just explain that we had to destroy the Government to save it....On 2d thought, let's just destroy it...
I keep trying to figure out how my life might be worse off without the CDC, or the EPA, or the FBI, etc. And I can’t come up with anything.
Well, poor Brian. Choking on history comin' 'round again. He used to be a priest in Ancient Egypt blanching to his toenails when Akhenaten said "One god's more than enough, guys. That's the whole point of being a god. He can do all of it himself."
Akhenaten's movement didn't last very long. It was snuffed out, along with his lineage, by the priestly class.
READ the Constitution! MANY TIMES! You'll see that the government was supposed to be instituted for the securing of our rights, and a small number of essential duties to preserve our lives, our property and our freedoms! I wish you could see the Kris Anne Hall video called "Power of the Purse" to get a sense of just how much we're enslaved by the burdens placed upon us BEYOND the constitutional authority the government was given.
WE, as slumbering people, have ALLOWED government to grow so big. And we have not held our elected officials accountable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6b70TUbdfs