I've been offline due to a family property calamity (all are healthy.) But this here set of facts (that you'll see nowhere else) needs urgently to be said about the DOGE 'efficiency' campaign: Nathan Gardels, at Noema Magazine*, offers excellent points about Evolutionary Stability vs. Revolutionary shake-ups, like Elon Musk's massive, Robspierre-style purge of civil servants. It's a distinction that both right and left ought to learn, especially as:
1. No one - and I mean no one at all - appears to be mentioning the most-successful campaign ever to improve government efficiency. One that was 'evolutionary' and - at the time - recognized as a huge success, even if it did not use chainsaws.Al Gore's "Reinventing Government" endeavor used systematic methods to reduce duplication, redundancy and unnecessary procedures across all bureaucracies. The program won plaudits across the spectrum, including JD Powers awards. Solid metrics showed increased efficiency and service across all agencies. In particular Gore's RG program reversed the long plummet in veterans' opinions on the VA, transforming it into among the most loved and trusted of all U.S. institutions.
Why does that earlier endeavor to increase government efficiency go entirely unmentioned today, amid mass, unexplained and destabilizing 'chainsaw' firings?
Of course, time and the steady lobotomization of American discourse help to explain it. As does the heady rush of sanctimony rage, today's most-damaging addiction.
As well, the utter difference in personalities between Al Gore and Elon Musk make them seem different species. Any comparison would thus stretch imaginations too thin, among modern journalists. Still, the contrast would seem to be worth offering. By someone. Anyone. Anywhere. Yes, I know. I ask too much.
2. But more is at fault than the Right's mania or microcephalic journalism. The Left's fervid, revolutionary-transcendentalist impatience - which blatantly cost Kamala Harris election - fulminates contempt toward boring, undramatic efforts at incremental reform. This, despite the historical fact that 'incremental reforms' - often frustratingly slow - are exactly why the American Experiment has worked, while other revolutions soon devolved into chaos, often worse than the ancièn regimes they replaced.
3. Alas and worst of all, there does not appear to be much - or even any - effort at tracking "who will gain most" from these Trumpian chainsaw slashes. Are there particular interest groups who will benefit?
I cannot prove, yet... but I assert... that these "DOGE" slashes at Education and Health and CDC and other agencies have one core aim: to rile a vast range of opponents and thus distract from the administration's two top goals:
FIRST: evisceration of the FBI, CIA and counter-intelligence services. (Now who benefits from that?)
SECOND: to crush the IRS.
Nothing has terrified the cheater wing of American oligarchy more than the 2021 Pelosi bill that ended 40 years of starvation at the Internal Revenue Service. Forty years preventing computer upgrades, software updates or the hiring of sufficient staff to audit upper-crust tax-dodgers and outright criminal gangs.
Desperation to re-impose IRS starvation is (I maintain) the core goal for which that wing of oligarchy flooded the Trump Campaign with funds and cryptic aid. Now, the cheaters and their inheritance brat New Lords are getting their wish. And it's working. While cuts at CDC and Health and Education raise howls, you'll notice almost nary a peep from liberals and moderate about the poor, friendless IRS. And the cheater lords smile.
4. Final point. Might anyone apply actual Outcome metrics comparing Al Gore's Reinventing Government campaign to Elon Musk's DOGE?
What're 'metrics'? If both the left and right share one trait... it is utter contempt for nerdy stuff like facts.
5. Compare outcomes from historical revolutions. It reduces to Hamilton, Adams & Jefferson vs. Robspierre, Lenin and Hitler. Look them up.
PS... nothing better disproves the old saw that "Both parties are the same and both are corrupt."
That is disproved absolutely and decisively by the IRS matter. Demp pols voted for the IRS to audit bigshots... including some of their own. Republicans live in daily terror of that possibility. Proved. QED. Step up with wager stakes.
58 comments:
"And there was much rejoicing!"
So good to "see" you back "here", considering the last main post was so long ago that Joe Biden was still president of the United States and leader of the free world. I can hardly imagine what you must have been going through to keep you away all this time, but it's good to hear that no one was at least in medical distress.
(I had imagined that you were possibly threatened off by MAGA terrorists and that the garage fire was a warning. While Treebeard rightly accused me of hyperbole, it says something that the possibility did not seem implausible)
* * *
I do have a question I've been sitting on concerning my recent re-read of Glory Season (after about 20 years), but I'll hold it for a more opportune moment.
Welcome back.
Welcome back. We were worried about you.
Of course, now I can't go on my latest rant about Bill Maher... :(
Good you are back. I had similar thoughts as Larry.
From what I know, there is only one nation on Earth that successfully abandoned worship of the paper god with it's massive bureaucracy-temples and replacing it with a digital system - little Estonia. The Netherlands are on their way, too.
DOGE's invasion of IRS is not just about taxes, it is also about gaining access to financial records. I would not be surprised if promising opposition candidates are mired in fake tax fraud allegations and investigations.
"Small and incremental reforms" will most likely not help to mend the damage already dealt to the system. In addition, most commentators (Applebaum, Snyder et al) came to the conclusion that the mass firings serves in undermining the trust in the system in the broader population (by making them ineffective) and thus facilitate the acceptance and rise of strongmen. (I come to the conclusion that centrism can have a radicality of it's own - abandoning facts if those facts would urge them to make bold changes, or/and puts deciders in personal political risks. Think of a triangle, not a line representing the political spectrum.)
Al Gore's Efficiency Drive didn't make any lasting difference or we wouldn't be doing DOGE now.
The two projects have completely different goals as well. Al Gore's goal was improving the experience people had when interacting with government, hence the J.D. Powers awards.
DOGE is all about reducing the size of government, since as this https://www.usdebtclock.org shows, we have a completely unsustainable level of debt. Therefor, the annual deficit must be cut until the government is actually running a surplus.
Ah, good. It's not how many times you get knocked down that counts, it's how many times you get back up.
Dr Brin in the main post:
No one - and I mean no one at all - appears to be mentioning the most-successful campaign ever to improve government efficiency. One that was 'evolutionary' and - at the time - recognized as a huge success, even if it did not use chainsaws. ...
Doonesbury was reading your mind, or at least reading that post.
https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/2025/03/16
Therefor, the annual deficit must be cut until the government is actually running a surplus.
You mean like Clinton (and yes, Gingrich) did in the 90s when we were actually paying down the debt? Until Bush's tax cuts put paid to that, even before two off-the-books wars.
"We need to have a surplus" is kinda like "We should have year-round Daylight Saving Time," in that every time we try it, we are forced to remember why it didn't work the last time. Alan Greenspan was absolutely terrified at the possibility of a national surplus replacing the national debt, and insisted that W make sure it never happened.
Larry Hart
I just googled Al Gore and google put these at the top of the results.
One from the left https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/what-previous-government-reform-efforts-tell-us-about-doge/ar-AA1AaAyZ?ocid=BingNewsSerp
and one from the right https://www.theamericanconservative.com/how-trump-can-succeed-where-reagan-and-gore-failed/
So google isn't nearly as biased as they used to be.
Dr. Brin utters this statement -
"The Left's fervid, revolutionary-transcendentalist impatience - which blatantly cost Kamala Harris election - " without a scintilla of proof.
Prove your assertion with facts, sir.
You have made this charge multiple times and have offered no proof of it.
Most political scientists disagree with you.
The only folks saying this are centrists trying to cover their complicity in the loss.
So, put up evidence. Let's see the facts you use to justify this statement.
Reputable polling, not vibes.
Welcome back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mmm3KTa601s
@matthew,
Luke 15:31-32
31 “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.
32 But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”
Welcome back.
To break the Trump glee/doom scroll* we normally have going here, I note in passing that there's evidence that the 'giving plague' is good for you.
* understandable in an existential crisis.
Welcome back, sir.
We all look forward to the ringing praise that you will doubtlessly heap upon the legions of unaccountable California bureaucrats who have aided, abetted & facilitated your near effortless recovery from your recent 'property calamity'.
Until then, we are with you as you celebrate the many accomplishments of the US Federal Government which includes (1) a US Department of Education that has 'enstupified' the US public educational system from 1st place to 32nd place, all while increasing public expenditures per student by 500%, along with (2) NASA & its $21.5 Billion dollar annual budget that it has used to heroically ignore the plight of the 2 Boeing Starliner astronauts who have been stranded in space for the last 9 months.
We are with you 110% when you claim that we need an EVEN LARGER burden of bureaucratic parasites, revenuers & no-accounts until all private initiative & competency has been crushed, if only to prevent the reoccurrence of evil critical-thinking nazis like Musk.
Best
... well, we appear to agree on one thing.
The US Democratic Party is not the ultimate bulwark, neither are the courts.
Citizens around the world are.
"Only a knowledgeable, empowered and vocal citizenry can perform well in democracy." - David Brin
Good to hear you're still this side of the grass. On Gore v DOGE, Gore wanted Government to work better, DOGE wants to destroy it, if they succeed, we'll all miss the comparatively modest thirst of parasitic bureaucrats compared to privatized, unaccountable replacements.
Any argument that DOGE is lowering our unsustainable debt is disingenuous. Even if they were actually saving the money they claim they are (which is in serious doubt), all of those "savings" are in service of letting Trump cut taxes on billionaires. There will be no net savings, in fact, the Republicans raised the debt ceiling by an additional four TRILLION dollars.
I think this captures the Zeitgeist: https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/files/2025/03/brain-drain-by-oliver-schoff.jpeg
Have you ever wondered why there never has been a successful Libertarian or anarchist society. Hint: it doesn't work. Capitalism needs government spending to provide the fuel for the economic system. And as far as the debt problem, that is mostly caused by excessively low taxes. Plenty of economies have chugged along happening on much higher levels of government spending than the US has.
Really glad to see u back, Dr. Brin. Your long absence worried a lot of us.
There's money in, and money out. So instead of always cutting spending, we could be raising taxes. Remember when rich people and rich companies actually paid taxes? It's fun to walk around and look at all the 60+ y/o infrastructure that we could never build again. It's simply because we allowed all the increase in wealth to go into a few billionaires' pockets instead of going towards the public good.
Welcome back, David. Glad to hear that everyone is safe and sound.
I believe the Alt National Parks Service are putting up a website listing the *real* savings, or otherwise.
putting up a website listing the *real* savings
"While you can no longer visit or enjoy this park, think of the money we're saving!"
Not sure that's the winning message they think it is.
As North American spring approaches, the ersatz nature of National Parks "Savings" will become apparent. By autumn, even to the obtuse.
In Canada, we're ramping up Citizen Science efforts in National Parks.
https://parks.canada.ca/nature/science/impliquez-involved#heading-0
Sarah Kendzior's next book is called "The Last American Road Trip" as she's been visiting all the places before Trump puts an end to them (she never thought of Biden as anything but a stop gap)
Good to have you back David. The Thread of a Thousand Comments was actually free wheeling and rather interesting. Only 27 comments in the current run? Rookie numbers.
Glad to be at least partly back and I hope all of you have been doing okay. We certainly did not need this major tsuris and disruption in our lives, right now and I would much rather have been fighting the good- if futile – fight against the lobotomization of the American public… especially the New Commies slavishly serving the Kremlin…
…like mcsandberg, not one of whose assertions here would hold up under scrutiny and my wager offer stands. What a chain of utter bollocks!
And yes, Gary Trudeau was clearly reading my mind, because his cartoon made my point just two days after my post. And did a far better job.
https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/2025/03/16
Matthew YOU make it worth my while to bet with you. I always say EsCROW MAJOR STAKES!
In your case bullshit. You lefties did everything in your power to SHRINK our coalition by screaming at marginal or even dedicated allies. Even now you do it. The FACT is that you drove millions of blacks and Hispanics out of the coalition and never ever talked about ways to peel away the opposing coalition. Because you are morons.
Locum is at least honest, if insane. Doofus! RANK THE STATES by order of education levels. Or inventiveness. Or entrepreneurship. Or net tax parasitism. OR EVERY OTHER TURPITUDE, from murder and incest, divorce, gambling, domestic violence. THERE IS NO OTHER METRIC SO DEVASTATING TO YOU CRETINS…
…and hence you always ignore it. Like you ignore that – except for Marxist rhetoric – YOU are the Kremlin commies now in every way.
Commie.
Reason ALMOST has it right. Adam Smith himself said some kinds of levelling socialism are needed in order to create the flat-fair playing field where market thrive, providing whay HAYEK HIMSELF said is needed, the largest number of fair, confident players. And the latter is exactly what the Kremlin led cabal of inheritance brats aim to destroy.
David, I think you missed my point (partly due to a typo I suppose - happening should be happily). The point is actually more complicated - there is no example of capitalist societies thriving without government spending (not least, on infrastructure and education), but there are plenty of examples of capitalist societies thriving with much higher levels of government spending than the US has. I think flows from the government sector to the private sector are necessary to enable strong private sector growth (because it provides opportunities for profitability). The only other possible source of profits come from increasing private debt or a positive trade balance - because for there to be profits, total sales income must exceed total wage income - assuming higher rates of savings for capital income. That is why yields are so low at the moment (because of the zero deficit meme), because if wealth and income become too concentrated hoarding will always eventually send the economy into stalls.
But one thing is often missed. The important metric is not tax bite or total government spending - it is total government direct spending on wages and goods. Transfers are NOT part of government crowding out. But they are part of what allows the economy to grow in efficiency as markets for the mass of people are enabled, instead of just for a narrow elite.
I come back after over a year and it is amazing how nothing has changed here. The same people are promoting the same ideas that have been promoting some for six, seven years now with absolutely no changes as if nothing had changed over the time period. It's like being in the movie Groundhog day.
It's inadvertent irony & high comedy as Dr. Brin comes out with guns blazing:
Conservative Morality, he asserts,THERE IS NO OTHER METRIC SO DEVASTATING TO YOU CRETINS.
By this act, he invokes Alinsky's Rule #4 -- "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules" -- even though he absolutely despises the moral code for which he condemns conservatives for not fully living up to.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/tables/table-43
A quick glance at FBI Table 43 'puts to lie' Dr. Brin's every assertion about progressive moral superiority, as progressive communities outpace white conservative areas by every criminal metric from assault, murder & rape to prostitution, robbery & drug abuse.
Res ipsa loquitur.
Best
An analysis of the voting results at Ezra Klein: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx0J7dIlL7c
There are interesting takeaways. Especially the results in the young voters section of the electorate was similar to that of our own federal election.
@Dr. Brin: The wish for stability and preserving the status quo is understandable.
Bravo! The democratic party has successfully managed it to stall progress and keeping those pesky radical leftists in check that people voted red all over in desperation. 53% of people asked in polls show in the video above voted in a way that they wanted to burn the system down instead of reforming it.
DOGE is all about reducing the size of government, since as this https://www.usdebtclock.org shows, we have a completely unsustainable level of debt. Therefor, the annual deficit must be cut until the government is actually running a surplus.
Except Republicans never cut the debt. Haven't you noticed that?
How much you want to bet that the deficit will be higher at the end of this year, and next year, and the next year, than it was during the Biden administration? (Using the same rules for calculating the deficit as during the Biden Administration.) It's going to be higher, because Republicans aren't in it for running a government.
The table you link to sorts crime by race and ethnicity, not by state or other region. I don't see how you extract "progressive communities" and "white conservative areas" from this table. Perhaps you'd like to explain?
Is it just me, or are a lot of Federal judges starting to push back on the Doge and First Felon's executive orders?
STEP UP locum. Red States have been net tax parasites for 150 years and score bottom in education and every other factor including every turpitude. By outcomes you commies are judged.
And except for wanting idealistic egalitarianism, you ARE today's commies. Reagan wouldn't just spit in your eye, he'd kick you in the teeth.
I think this is the table you were looking for:
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/table-4
Tony,
Seems that there is some judicial pushback, but now we find out if it means anything to this administration. There isn't a judge in the US with a division at their command, and if the Justice Dept run by Pam Bondi (??!!!?) doesn't back them up, they can be ignored.
I guess the question is, do the people who should be taking action to stop rumpT think they will become in danger of arrest and trial themselves when (not if) Hair Furore loses power? It does seem as if the Heritage Foundation/P2025 crew are acting as if their thousand years are at hand.
I'd bet against a reactionary permanent reset as an apprentice historian - there is no such thing as action without reaction. The question is how long it takes. Even Orban's regime, considered the benchmark of neofash by our own crew of fash-admirers, is facing a backlash.
Pappenheimer
Chief Justice Roberts emphatically nixed the idea that judges can be impeached for going against the edicts of Glorious Leader. I think we'll see soon enough whether or not that act of defiance boils down to just words.
At this stage, I'm not sure who'll be first for the high jump: Roberts or Musk.
@David Brin: If you want to build a stable coalition, you'll have to share power and compromise. That works in both directions.
Also, internal finger-pointing does not help.
Again, both directions.
You do injustice to the original commies. At least, they had plans. Many of them. Maggots have not.
As long Hungary is subsidized by EU net payers, there won't change much. They just banned the pride parade, making it illegal to participate. Also, educated people leaving the country in masses does not help either.
On the other hand, Estonia just proposed suspending the Hungarian voting rights, so we might be See more pushback from Brussels.
I view Oscar Lafontaine as the destroyer of the SPD. The SPD needs a left flank, as the democratic party does.
Yes. And then he and his wife nearly destroyed Die Linke (Though they are recovering, being at 11% post-election.) But I would add Gerhard Schröder, too.
My single issue with both SPD and Die Linke is the appeasement strategy towards Putin.
True this:
https://bsky.app/profile/rudepundit.bsky.social
...
That’s why Democrats can’t function: they think they need Republicans on their side to be legitimate while Republicans would make being a Democrat a crime punishable by death and still might.
Great Leader says that Canada is not a viable country.
Russia GDP: 2.01T
Canada GDP: 2.24T
Canada's per capita GDP is 4X Russia's
https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/russia/canada
During the last few weeks, I have somehow come up with a scenario that in 13 years from now, the former US will be divided into a Canadian, EU, Mexican and Chinese occupation zone.
Same site:
https://bsky.app/profile/rudepundit.bsky.social
So I'm going to go ahead and assume one reason the former presidents are silent on Trump's blatant violations of the Constitution is that he's threatened to release classified info that would make them look bad (or, in Bush's case, worse). Because, see, I would actually understand that reason.
Beating Larry to the punch (at least, I hope I am!), there is an interesting letter at Electoral Vote.com describing why small towns are in such bad shape. He mentions these communities being "abandoned by younger people seeking jobs, a modern education, and a better quality of life" among a host of other problems, so I thought you might be interested. Sounds like it would fit in with your views on the problems.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2025/Items/Mar19-6.html
David has long been pointing to the ongoing abandonment of small communities by their youngest and brightest as a major source of bitterness to those left behind.
Conversation topic reminds me of that New Model Army Song, "Green & Grey".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGpV0Ot3EeM
Just so you guys know, my new pronouns are: Her Infallible Majesty and Her Unerring Highness. I now identify as an infallible female, and thus disagreeing with me means you ate denying my gender identity.
The sun sets in the East.
The sky is green.
Emilia Perez is the greatest movie ever made.
STEP UP locum. Red States have been net tax parasites for 150 years...
Rural Red States do receive more federal largesse than do their blue counterparts, but only because the urban Blue 'City States' have long used economic manipulation to exploit the rural producer (thru artificial price caps & controls) and offered fake charitable subsidies instead of fair market value to rural producers, as in the case of Medicare's Geographic Practice Cost Indices (GPCIs) which arbitrarily pay rural medical providers significantly less than urban providers for exactly the same services, the rationale being that country bumpkins are of less value than their suave urban counterparts.
So, please feel free to 'fafo':
STOP all those fake rural Red State subsidies if only to see what happens when all those rural producers can no longer provide your cities with all the food, fuel & services at 'below market; bargain-basement; discounted' prices that they now receive.
and score bottom in education and every other factor including every turpitude.
Again, more manipulation and definitional fraud, as evidenced by the rampant 'grade inflation' by our fake & effete educational institutions, as shown by Harvard giving 80% of its fee-paying students perfect marks in fake degree programs even when they don't show up.
And now, on to the (moral) turpitudes...
According to Christian & classical pagan belief systems, the 7 main turpitudes are pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth, yet most progressives have chosen to redefine these deadly sins as VIRTUES, as illustrated by the 'enlightened' progressive decision to expose primary school children to federally-mandated sodomy instruction.
Across the board, it's the progressively diverse Blue States which have higher rates of every 'turpitude' -- including assault, murder, rape, prostitution, drug abuse & out-of-wedlock births -- except that progressives have FORBIDDEN critical thinking on these topics, even though they all are exceptionally eager to volunteer the very strong correlations between Crime & Poverty and Poverty & Race, but NEVER (under any circumstances) the inescapable connection between Crime & Race, as seen in FBI table 43.
Best
Not a single thing the twit just said is anything but a yammer lies diametrically opposite to fact.
onward
onward
Saying mean things about the First Felon* will now get you banned from entering the country on grounds of potential terrorist activity (like.... *science*!!). **
How long before this service is extended to folk already in the country?
* I have no immediate plans to enter the country.
** I am aware that permission to enter the country has always been up to the border officials, but this case is pretty stark.
... dangit, David!!!
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