Xi Is Trying to Secure the Devotion of China’s Military
The problem with working for a despot is that he can turn on you in an instant.
‘Chinese leader Xi Jinping has purged dozens of military commanders in his latest bid to wipe out corruption and disloyalty—a scourge he blames on a weakening of ideological zeal and moral rectitude.’
DOGE Is Searching for Wasteful Spending. It Isn’t Hard to Find.
The hard part is clawing back the waste.
‘It is one of Washington’s most persistent and challenging problems: The federal government misspends at least $100 billion each year out of its multitrillion-dollar budget. Identifying the wasteful outlays isn’t the hardest part; it is actually doing something about it.
‘Every year, agency reports posted online document billions in improper payments, which include fraud but also underpayments, duplicate payments, payments to ineligible recipients or for ineligible goods or services. According to the Government Accountability Office, they can also include correctly paid amounts that didn’t follow regulations, such as a contract missing a required signature.’
The Obama Plan That Presaged DOGE
Was it wrong when Obama tried to do it?
‘The best example is President Barack Obama’s 2012 proposal to merge into one entity the Commerce Department and five other agencies dealing with business or trade. “No business or nonprofit leader would allow this kind of duplication or unnecessary complexity in their operations,” Mr. Obama said in announcing the consolidation, which would have saved $3 billion over 10 years and eliminated up to 2,000 jobs.
‘Unlike Mr. Trump, Mr. Obama approached the belt-tightening idea the right way: He sought congressional authority. The Consolidating and Reforming Government Act would have authorized the president to merge, eliminate or restructure agencies to improve performance and reduce costs.
‘But lawmakers in Mr. Obama’s own party gave him a frosty reception. Senate Democrats, then in the majority, hunkered down in their familiar narrow lanes, protecting special interests and arguing that U.S. trade might suffer from the proposed consolidations. They bickered, dithered, and eventually buried Mr. Obama’s plan.’
Reducing Regulations Produces Strong Economic Growth Responses
Imagine what a reduction in regulation can do if a freeze on regulation growth increases economic growth.
‘This paper presents statistical evidence that reducing regulations is associated with positive and significant gains in economic growth. We review economic literature that reflects a growing consensus that increasing regulatory burden reduces economic activity that is theoretically associated with economic growth. This literature also supports the analytical strategy taken by this paper. We employ a dataset designed to measure regulatory changes (RegData 5.0) in a series of Bayesian statistical simulations to estimate ranges of unconditional and conditional economic indicator changes. Our conditional simulations assume a freeze on regulation growth over a 10-year period, which results in a 1.8 percentage point increase in GDP growth. This result compares well with economic output gains from substantial tax policy changes.’
Pentagon officials are bracing for Musk's DOGE
Everyone seems worried about the access “young, inexperienced software engineers” gain to critical systems.
Nobody seems to have been worried about the old, experienced software engineers when they had exclusive access. It seems as if they would now much more about how to extract data and where the bodies are buried than the young guns on the scene now.
Why is that ?
‘Few would deny that the Defense Department, with its $886 billion budget and byzantine ways, could be run more efficiently. Many have called for sweeping reforms of one sort of another. But if billionaire defense contractor Elon Musk and his DOGE team disrupt Pentagon data systems, contracts, and employees as they’ve done at other federal agencies, the results could expose critical national-security data, endanger personnel, and create unprecedented conflicts of interest, say current and former officials and outside experts.
‘The danger posed by young, inexperienced software engineers with an overly broad mandate to access information, and who may not have received the usual background checks for top-secret clearances, “should be raising alarms all over Congress,” said one defense information-security official, one of several discussions we had with defense officials that were fearful in tone.’
The Incompetence of DOGE Is a Feature, Not a Bug
When the standard is perfection (something nobody has ever demanded of government previously), of course failure will be the judgment.
‘There are two possible explanations for this mess. One is that Musk and DOGE have no interest in the government, or efficiency, but do care deeply about the data they can reap from various agencies and revel in privatization for its own sake. The other is that a bunch of purportedly talented coders have indeed responded to a higher civic calling but are out here batting .202.
‘Musk did have a rare moment of self-awareness late last week, during an Oval Office appearance with his 4-year-old son and President Donald Trump. “We will make mistakes,” he said, “but we'll act quickly to correct any mistakes.”’
How DOGE Could Take Down the Department of Education
The quick wins are impressive, but the battle is in its early stages. Wait until the bureaucracy organizes its response.
‘So far, the approach seems to be bearing fruit, but as with any initiative involving government, we should remain cautious. The bureaucracy has a remarkable ability to survive, in part because of its scale. Even with artificial intelligence and squads of talented engineers, the DOGE team is the underdog.
‘DOGE is winning for now. But the bureaucracy has barely begun to fight back.’
The people in Elon Musk’s DOGE universe
Wired puts together a profile of the DOGE team.
Zeldin EPA discovers $2 billion stashed away by Biden admin for Stacey Abrams-linked climate group
Curious.
‘The Environmental Protection Agency recently discovered that the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a climate group with ties to former Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, a fierce supporter of former President Joe Biden.
‘The money was earmarked for Power Forward Communities — a nonprofit partnered with multiple left-wing groups founded by Abrams and which the Georgia Democrat has stated she was “thrilled” to be part of, the Washington Free Beacon reported on Wednesday.
‘The funds were set aside at an outside financial institution — Citibank — before Biden left office and part of a larger, $20 billion pot of money the former president’s EPA received through the Inflation Reduction Act to dole out to climate groups.
‘“It’s extremely concerning that an organization that reported just $100 in revenue in 2023 was chosen to receive $2 billion,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin told the outlet, referring to Power Forward Communities’ latest tax filings. “That’s 20 million times the organization’s reported revenue.”’
All we hear is that the civil service is professional and self-less.
What if they’re not? Or at least some of them.
This smacks of the kind of self-dealing we see in accusations against the defense industry.
‘SCOOP: Biden's EPA awarded a $5B eco grant to a group that had employed Jahi Wise, the senior EPA official overseeing that same grant program. After his team at EPA disbursed the grant, Wise left to join a Soros group as a fellow. The situation raises major ethics concerns.’
Why Student Loan Borrowers Are Losing 100+ Credit Points
The Biden student loan relief starts to bite back.
‘Thousands of borrowers are seeing sudden credit score drops after student loan servicers began reporting delinquencies following the end of the federal repayment on-ramp period.
Many were unaware they were considered late due to confusion over the repayment timeline and loan servicer communications.
Borrowers may have limited options to fix their credit, but retroactive forbearance and goodwill requests to servicers could help.’
It’s Easy To Save Billions In Taxpayer Funds When Everything Is Made Up
‘See, when DOGE claims they’ve saved $55 billion, you might expect that number to at least match the total of their own receipts. It doesn’t. Their own documents only add up to about $16 billion, which means they’ve somehow managed to inflate their headline number by more than 3x before we even start checking their work.
But oh, it gets better (or worse… yes, actually, worse). Let’s look at their crown jewel: an $8\ billion contract that DOGE proudly claims to have canceled. Except…
DOGE Claimed It Saved $8 Billion in One Contract. It Was Actually $8 Million.
DOGE Claimed It Saved $8 Billion in One Contract. It Was Actually $8 Million.
Time will tell what the actual numbers. We need the fog of war to burn off. The New York times is skeptical.
‘Almost half of those line-item savings could be attributed to a single $8 billion contract for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. But the DOGE list vastly overstated the actual value of that contract. A closer scrutiny of a federal database shows that a recent version of the contract was for $8 million, not $8 billion. A larger total savings number published on the site, $55 billion, lacked specific documentation.
The contract, with a company called D&G Support Services, was to provide “program and technical support services” for the Office of Diversity and Civil Rights at ICE. The Trump administration has been purging diversity programs from the federal government.