Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. DOGE
2. Arson
3. Knifing
4. Letitia
5. Blue Origin
6. Harvard
7. Dogs
1. DOGE. Question of the week: Is DOGE a failure? It might be and it might not. If it is a failure, what happens then? Let’s take a top-level look.
- The existential threat DOGE is intended to meet is that of overall default of the government due to the size of the national debt. I have come to the conclusion that the national debt is fast becoming a meaningless number. This is due to the need to print increasingly large amounts of money to respond to penetration of tech into the economy. Both increase exponentially over time. Kartik Gada has described how and why this works in his ATOM publication (online book). Long but worth the read. Printing money is necessary to fend off the profound deflationary impact of tech penetration into the economy. We need 2.5 – 3% inflation rate to provide sufficient liquidity for the economy to operate.
- The only bad thing about the national debt is the $1.5 trillion in bonds sold to service that debt. Quit borrowing and start printing and that problem goes away. Make this change over the course of a few years to minimize disruption.
- Our real problem is the annual deficit. It is that annual spending that causes inflation or deflation, both of which need to be controlled. Printing money in the amounts we have been doing since the 2008 crash (quantitative easing) simply does not cause inflation. The Biden inflation 2021 – 2014 was entirely caused by the shutdown of oil and natural gas exploration on federal lands. It disappeared as soon as production increased sufficiently on state and private lands.
- Was DOGE a failure? Maybe, as its current $150 billion in spending cuts is far below the $1 – 2 trillion they wanted. Maybe not, as the very first thing it did was uncover and shut down the largest and most damaging democrat slush funds, defunding the left using taxpayer dollars. It also started the various databases talking to one another. It uncovered massive Social Security fraud (money to illegals). Medicare and Medicaid are up to bat.
- I suppose it all depends on perspective. If you want instant gratification, DOGE was a stark failure and we are back to business as usual until everything crashes in a couple years. But if you are a systems kind of guy (and most conservatives are), we now have a new system in place that can and will uncover fraudulent spending. DOGE was always at least a 2-year project. We are barely 90 days into it. At this point, I would suggest we are in Trust but Verify land.
2. Arson. Our first crime story is the attempted murder of PA Governor Josh Shapiro and his family by a guy who decided that the governor who happens to be Jewish was insufficiently supportive of the “plight of the Palestinians.” He showed up at the Governor’s Mansion with gasoline and a hammer on Passover while the family was asleep upstairs and attempted to burn them alive. While he did a number of the mansion, his targets managed to escape alive. Make no mistake, this guy went after Shapiro and his family because they are Jewish. He went after them on the High Holy Day of Passover. He intended to kill one to all of them. He may be bailed on the basis of mental deficiency and erratic behavior out by a perverted state justice system, one which Shapiro himself managed to create while Attorney General. Once again, we are at the point where when one of these things happen, we have to ask ourselves who is responsible? The puppets, the puppet masters or those who created the puppets? Clearly the perp ought to be tried, convicted and punished to the maximum extent of the law. But so should the vermin who have done their level best to create our current anti-Jewish jihad.
3. Knifing. A really ugly racial incident is unfolding in Frisco, TX, just north of Dallas. A black 17-year-old stabbed and killed a white student at a track meet on April 2. The black decided it would be fun to enter a tent belonging to students of the school the track meet was being held. He was asked to leave. Refused and festivities ensued. Somewhere along the line, he decided was being disrespected, and responded with deadly force, claiming self-defense. The kid was initially charged with first degree murder and a million-dollar bail set. That was reduced to $250,000 and he is out of jail at his new home. The kid’s family set up a pair of Go Fund Me accounts that have raised over $400,000, money which allowed them to rent a very nice new home and purchase a new car. They are working with a local black minister doing his best Al Sharpton impersonation, stirring up racial animosity to the maximum extent possible. Appears he is pretty good at his chosen craft, as local racial animosity is off the charts. An attempt by the father of the slain teen to start a dialog between the two families ended poorly when he attended a press conference by the black family. He was ejected for being insufficiently supportive (white) and not being invited. His home was also swatted that night. So much for trying to tamp down passions being intentionally inflamed. This sort of thing doesn’t happen all that often in Texas. I don’t think it is going to end well for anyone involved, especially for those who are profiting off it and learning the wrong lessons. What do I think happened? Kid shows up at a track meet. Decided he wants to stir up some crap with the Home Team fans. Crap ensues, which ended up being more than he expected. He reverts to his inner gang banger and murders a kid who stood up to him, immediately afterwards starts claiming to be a victim because he is black. His family is too busy grifting off the donations to his legal defense to tell him to do the right thing, while the entire mess is allowed to spiral down into Sharpton-land.
4. Letitia. Karma is a b!@#$. NY Attorney General Lititia James is about to get hoisted on her petard on the identical issue she charged, tried and convicted President Trump of in in a NYC courtroom. That case in front of Judge Engoron found Trump guilty of mortgage fraud and slammed him with fines over $464 million. Trump is appealing the ridiculous conviction and fine. Well, it turns out that James may very well have committed several instances of mortgage fraud, these ones actually provable. The FHA sent criminal referrals to DoJ claiming that James lied on a mortgage application that her purchase of a home in Virginia was going to be her principal residence, that she was married to her father. A third instance was her condo in NYC has a different number of rooms than it actually does. All of these actions intended to get her more favorable loan rates. All of these are commonly prosecuted with the perps going to jail for a while. Note that the NY Attorney General has to actually live in NY (principal residence). James responded with predictable bravado and scheduled a high dollar fundraiser while calling Trump every name in the book, claiming the referral was little more than political payback. Welcome to FAFO-land, Madam. Enjoy your visit.
5. Blue Origin. Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin flew its 31st suborbital flight last week, their 11th manned flight with an all-female crew. The flight was roundly derided as a stunt (which it was) and worse, with the passengers blasted nine ways from Sunday for what they did and didn’t do. To date, Blue Origin’s New Shephard has carried 58 people into space. The flight even got the conspiracy theorists to trot out “proof” that the flight didn’t take place. One of the arguments was that the capsule wasn’t streaked with heat during reentry like the SpaceX Dragon. Of course, the Blue Origin flights is up and down, meaning that it is at zero velocity at 100 – 110 km, and ballistically falls back into the atmosphere. In contrast, the Dragon hist the atmosphere at 27,300 kilometers per hour (kph) and has to turn that velocity into heat to slow down. I think those on Our Side deriding the flight are missing the bigger picture here. If your goal is to have the maximum number of people permanently off planet, this is how you do it. You fly the ultra-rich. You schedule no small number of PR stunts. Most importantly, you keep on doing it in the face of predictable criticism. Ultimately, the more people who fly, the more people will later be able to fly. Why? Because you get better at it. You drive down costs. You make the entire journey safer. Most of all, you figure out how to repeat it time after time after time. This crew of women essentially did what Gus Grissom almost lost his life doing July 1961. However much we may all despise their politics, they did make the decision to step into the ring, take a chance, and take a ride. One of the entertaining fallouts from the flight was the FAA talking about not handing out astronaut wings anymore to everyone who flies above the Von Karman Line (100 km (62 miles), the recognized boundary between the atmosphere and space). I don’t mind this one either, as we have over the years seen its analogue in aviation for over half a century. Anyone else remember the airlines handing out plastic pilot wings to kids who fly on commercial airliners? First remember seeing it in the early 1960s. They weren’t real pilot wings either, though the kids at the time thought they were fun.
6. Harvard. Harvard decided that their $53 billion endowment is sufficient to allow them to push back and ignore the Trump administration new edicts on civil rights (anti-DEI), harassment of Jewish students, and men in women’s sports, proudly announcing the new rules do not apply to them. In response, the Trump administration froze $2.1 billion in federal money to Harvard pending review, a freeze that will be undone by some idiot federal judge in Boston at his or her earliest convenience. In response, the Trump administration upped the ante, starting a review of Harvard’s international students, tax-exempt status and a probe into its unlawful hiring and civil rights practices (DEI). While I could be torn by this, as higher education ought to be free of federal meddling, it is that very federal meddling that enabled higher education to morph into leftist indoctrination centers, making this a fight well worth having. And if the international students from the Middle East are leading the harassment and bullying of Jewish students like they have been doing at other Ivy League universities, they no longer have a place here in the US to spread their poison. In traveling this path, Harvard joins a small religious college slapped down by an 8-1 SCOTUS opinion in 1983. This was Bob Jones University, a small liberal arts college in South Carolina. Bob Jones catered to the evangelical world and had a rather ugly racial streak, with rules against interracial dating and marriage. IRS revoked the tax exemption in 1976 retroactively to 1970 slamming it with millions in back taxes. SCOTUS upheld the revocation in 1983 on civil rights grounds, much to the delight of the political left and media at the time. In its defense of DEI and anti-Jewish discrimination, Harvard runs smack into the precedent set against Bob Jones. Worse, they hope to maintain their discriminatory practices in the face of a far more conservative SCOTUS than was in place in 1983.
7. Dogs. The striking thing about democrats wandering the wilderness in search of the perfect issue for their performance artists is that they have chosen issues that break solidly 80 – 20% among the general public. Their problem is that they invariably come down on the 20% side as they send their performance artists into the persuasion battle. Their defense protecting Tren de Aragua and MS-13 gang bangers from deportation are the most recent examples. Men in women’s sports is only slightly older. Last week’s new example of picking the wrong side of a public issue is picking a fight with dog owners. While dog owners got all the news, the complaint is aimed at all pets, starting with dogs and cats. You see, they are neither environmentally friendly nor is their upkeep environmentally sustainable. Earth.org claims that the average cat adds 310 kg of CO2 to the greenhouse annually. Dogs are even worse, adding 770 kg/year. A large dog may add twice as much CO2 as an average sized family car yearly. Oh, the horror. Oh, the humanity (/sarc). It gets worse, with annual meat consumption by pets causing 25 – 30% of annual impact of all meat consumption nationwide (also a Bad Thing according to the greens). The writer prattles on for a bit about solutions to the conundrum and arrives at fish and seafood as the solution, though commercial fishing has its own special little negative environmental impact, one that we here in Alaska live with every single day. And they finally end up with a recommendation for an insect-based diet for your pets. I couldn’t think of a better way to get your critters to kill you in the middle of the night than that, but that’s just me. There are some final arguments made against cat litter as unsustainable, though most of it is clay-based, with clay being an integral part of most naturally occurring soils. But what do I know? I welcome our new environmental overlords and wish them every bit the success the renewable energy grifters have had over the last few decades. Go ahead, guys. Knock yourselves out. Meanwhile, I’ll make popcorn and watch the show.
More later –
- AG