I've heard the Drain the Swamp bullshit since Reagan's Grace Commission in 1982, when federal outlays were $745 billion.
For all of Trump’s and Musk’s talk of efficiency, their policies will likely slow down the government. The state needs capacity to perform core tasks, such as collecting revenue, taking care of veterans, tracking weather, and ensuring that travel, medicine, food, and workplaces are safe. But Trump seems intent on pushing more employees to leave and making the civil service more political and an even less inviting job option. He bullies federal employees, labeling them as “crooked” and likening their removal to “getting rid of all the cancer.” A smaller, terrified, and politicized public workforce will not be an effective one.
To start, let’s dispense with the notion that the government is too big. It is not. As a share of the workforce, federal employment has declined in the past several decades. Civilian employees represent about 1.5 percent of the population and account for less than 7 percent of total government spending. According to the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, seven out of 10 civilian employees work in organizations that deal with national security, including departments—such as Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security—that the public supports.
The reality is that the federal government has long faced a human-capital crisis. ...
More.
The country is $36 trillion in debt because it is not taxing enough, and hasn't been taxing enough since Ronald Reagan. We pretend we can borrow to infinity for what we want, but we can't afford it all anymore. That is why they're surrendering to Putin, and taking a meat cleaver to DC.
This is not a serious country, otherwise a South African wouldn't be running it.
I expect a federal judge to intervene on this one perty quick like.
The sums involved are paltry, but Elon Musk amusingly makes a mountain out of this molehill and says “This is our shot. This is the best hand of cards we’re ever going to have,” he said. “Now or never.”
Seems more like an admission that it will be impossible to slay the federal leviathan.
Elon Musk says he and Trump are shutting down USAID
... Congress annually appropriates money for USAID to spend, primarily for foreign aid and internationally focused charities. Its budget for the 2023 fiscal year was about $40 billion, according to a report last month from the Congressional Research Service. That’s a tiny fraction of the overall federal discretionary spending of $1.7 trillion. ...
A 1974 federal law known as the Impoundment Control Act says that the president generally cannot withhold funds that Congress has approved. Some Trump aides argue that the law is unconstitutional, foreshadowing a potential fight in the courts. ...
And Roger Kimball should know better.
Kimball completely underestimates the role that will be played by the federal government employee unions in opposing Trump's efforts to axe them. And it's downright preposterous to think that the Leviathan State is going to be unraveled by July 4, 2026 when it took literally decades to erect it.
Trump will fail to drain the swamp, and it will consume all the valuable energy of his victory, too, keeping him from succeeding on the agenda items which are within his reach. His actions might even strengthen those unions. His own new Labor Secretary actually advocates for that!
Democrats should be encouraged by this.
They are going to have a field day litigating everything Musk and Ramaswamy try to shut down, which will drag everything out interminably. Liberals funded the hapless Kamala Harris to the tune of $1 billion, so I'm confident the Marc Eliases of the Democrat Party will shift the Resistance to this effort with a similar level of support because it has a high likelihood of hamstringing Trump in the same way Russia Russia Russia did.
It's disappointing that Republicans don't understand that Trump is a deeply divisive transitional figure, not a transformational one, but Democrats made the same mistake with Joe Biden, until it was too late, on whom they turned as on a dime.
Ten points about The Swamp.
Seven points about The War on the Drug Cartels.
Trump's saying all this stuff and we don't even know yet if Republicans will win the US House, where they have 214 seats as of right now and lead narrowly in 8 undecided races. If they win them all they'll have 222 seats, with 218 needed for the majority.
If not, well that'll be the end of all ambition, now won't it?
222 at best is a very narrow margin to accomplish anything anyway, a mere continuation of the status quo where Republicans in the House must tread lightly to keep the caucus unified with a very similarly sized narrow majority (220).
What kind of sweep was this? Once again the Trump movement . . . isn't.
It would be easy to call this stuff hubris from Trump. Let's just say he still hasn't learned anything about how to accomplish anything of relatively permanent value. He has NO priorities when everything is a priority. He is, once again, unserious.
The Senate will be in Republican hands, so we'll at least get more judicial appointments who might advance traditional American principles of law and order.
The scuttlebutt is that the first agenda item in Congress will be making Trump's expiring tax reform permanent.
I can imagine him having to waste the entire first year on this. He'd be better off quickly settling for its extension for another ten years under reconciliation rules, and then move along smartly to immigration and energy reforms before the midterms are upon us in 2026, after which he'll be the lamest of lame ducks.
If there's any hope of boosting GDP and improving everyone's pocketbook they've got to make energy reform the priority. And mere immigration enforcement solves an untold number of other problems which bedevil the country, like illegal drugs, crime, and social spending.
Spending bills will come as they will, and should simply aim to starve the federal government of money to shrink it, as could have been the case last time but nothing changed. The beast grows naturally because permanent spending programs are indexed to inflation. That isn't going to be stopped. Growing the economy to pay the bills is therefore job one.
I'm expecting very little positive from this lot, but I do hope J. D. Vance will emerge at the end of it to take us to a better future.
Democrats who say they fear Trump because he's an authoritarian are absolutely comic. Watch for rogue judges to hamstring him just like last time, and Trump will bluster and fume and things will simply muddle along.
But, of course, unforeseen events like wars have a way of intruding and making mooks of us all. Let's hope Trump can finally make a deal to end and prevent them.
Just two of 85 institutions met the minimum standard, meaning most institutions of higher learning in the United States are Not Safe For Jews.
The white supremacy over blacks and Jews the Democrats keep warning us lurks in the fever swamps of rural America is endemic to the most prestigious institutions Democrats control.
The Hamas wing of the Democrat Party thrives in academia in the United States.
Reported here:
The campuses that received an "F" grade include Harvard
University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Michigan State
University, Princeton University, SUNY Purchase, SUNY Rockland Community
College, Stanford University, Swarthmore College, Tufts
University, University of Chicago, University of Massachusetts,
Amherst, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the University
of Virginia.
Here:
From the moment he opened his mouth at the first presidential primary debate in Cleveland, he took command of the discussion. Every voter knew he was going to build the wall, drain the swamp, and prevent radical Islamic terrorists from coming to America.
Yeah, build the wall.
Too bad about that.
A majority in Rapanos (2006) couldn’t agree on how to limit EPA’s authority over wetlands. Four Justices said the Clean Water Act’s scope extended to “only those relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water” such as oceans, rivers and lakes, and wetlands that were directly adjacent and “indistinguishable” from those waters.
However, the agencies and lower courts have adopted Justice Anthony Kennedy’s lone opinion that federal jurisdiction extends to land that has a “significant nexus” to a waterway. This test is as clear as a swamp.
While all nine Justices ruled for the Sacketts, they disagreed on the scope of federal power. The majority strips away the “significant nexus” ambiguity from Justice Kennedy’s Rapanos opinion, but reaffirms the conservative plurality’s view that a “wetland” must “be indistinguishably part of a body of water that itself constitutes ‘waters’ under the CWA.”
Ronald Reagan's worst appointment.
More.
The Washington Examiner obtained leaked video recordings of virtual meetings that Kerry Doyle, ICE's principal legal adviser, held with the more than 1,200 ICE prosecutors who bring cases against illegal immigrants nationwide, in which she explained in detail who should not be targeted for deportation. Illegal immigrants identified as national security and public safety threats, or those who had crossed the border illegally after Nov. 1, 2020, would be the only cases ICE would pursue. All others would be dropped. ...
“Congress hasn’t passed it, but [Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro] Mayorkas’s chief lawyer at ICE is telling all prosecutors to dismiss cases. Once it’s dismissed, they’re not required to check in with you anymore," said the ICE federal prosecutor who spoke with the Washington Examiner on the condition of anonymity. ...
The tens of thousands of noncitizens who have been cleared from the immigration court dockets over the past eight weeks may now apply to become permanent legal residents, the prerequisite to becoming a U.S. citizen. An illegal border crosser is barred from applying for legal permanent residency as long as his or her case is pending in court. With no case pending, they may apply. Once approved, they may apply for adjustment of status to citizenship after five years.
More.
This is The Swamp in action.
This response epitomizes what has been wrong with US policy in Afghanistan since 9/11, and everywhere, frankly.
America treats this like a matter of law enforcement instead of like what it is, a war.
It cannot bring itself to punish the nation and destroy its ability to make war, pretending justice for an individual is sufficient.
That's why we've been there for 20 years, hunting down individuals. We make fine but false distinctions between ISIS, al-Qaeda, Taliban, etc., instead of destroying them all.
The Taliban, now America's chosen people in Afghanistan, has simply run out the clock and exhausted us with our own inadequate, enervated Rules of Engagement.
Trump used to understand this but quickly was co-opted by The Blob, because his character was and remains weak, the fundamental reason why his presidency was such a disappointment.
