Category: Bureaucracy

Wasted Money

Bureaucracy, Foreign Affairs, Good Stuff, Trumpism

I see that the Department of Labor, not to be outdone by other federal departments in Extreme Chainsaw Activity, has done The Right Thing:

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has canceled nearly $600 million in grants to foreign countries in another round of major funding cuts.

John Clark, a DOL official appointed by President Donald Trump, directed the department’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) to axe all 69 of its active grant programs on Wednesday due to a “lack of alignment with agency priorities and national interest.”

Quite what the Department of Labor was doing in giving money to furriners in the first place… well, we all know the answer to that one.  [humming the tune to “The Internationale”]

And seeing as the U.S. is no longer part of the international socialist collective — or at least we’re heading in that direction, at long last — there’s no reason for us to fund the wellbeing of foreign workers anyway.

One particular item did catch my attention, though:

“$3 million for ‘safe and inclusive work environments’ in Lesotho”

I’ve been to Lesotho several times, know the place quite well in fact, and for three million bucks you could probably buy the country’s entire industrial infrastructure, pay the workers a fat cash bonus and still have some money left over to  gamble  invest in a couple of their casinos.

Of “$3 million to ‘enhance social security access and worker protections for internal migrant workers’ in Bangladesh”, we will not speak.  (It’s a Muslim country;  let the fucking Arabs pay for it.)

Similar arguments can be made for all the other useless items.  Read the article for the full flavor of the wastage, and if you have specific knowledge of the circumstances of any of them, feel free to comment.

In the meantime:

Augean Stables

Bureaucracy, Trumpism

From Jeff Tucker:

For more than a century, even dating back to 1883, the civil service has grown and grown without check from the elected branch, either the presidency or the legislature . The bureaucracies have ballooned from a few to 450 or so. The bloat and absurdities have grown too. Get this: no one has ever known what to do about it. Not Coolidge, not Hoover, not Nixon, not Reagan, not Clinton, no one. No president has been able to crack this nut.

The only reforms ever to have made it through are those that make the administrative state bigger, never smaller. Countless cabinet secretaries have come and gone, always with the intention of making a change but leaving saddened, demoralized, outwitted, outgunned, and ultimately devoured. No president has seriously taken on this problem because they simply did not know how. The unions are powerful, the intimidation from the deep institutional knowledge is overwhelming, the fear of the media as been powerful, and every single president comes to power vaguely feeling threatened by the intelligence agencies. The industries that have captured every single agency were also far too powerful to unseat or control.

This combination of institutional inertia has blocked serious reform for a full century. No one has dared. No one has even had a theory or strategy about what to do about this problem. It had become so terrible that most people in politics have simply surrendered, like homeowners who know there are rats in the basement and bats in the attic but long ago gave up trying to fix the issue.

All this time, the American people have felt themselves ever more oppressed, weighed upon, taxed and regulated, spied upon, brow beaten, and otherwise overwhelmed. Voting never made any difference because the politicians no longer controlled the system. The bureaucracies ruled all.

But now we have a chance.  It may be our last, because right now, in the paraphrased words of John Adams, we have men worthy of the time:  a president who has a burning desire to make the changes necessary, an associate of towering intellect and inherent power who may be able to execute that change, and the subordinates who are just as willing to make those changes with the necessary authority (in the shape of presidential appointees), and others (the twenty-something hackers and geeks) who have the knowledge, skills and the tools to be able to root out the corruption and deadweight of accumulated bureaucracy and perverted, un-American policy.

More Wastage

Bureaucracy, Trumpism

Boy, the hits they just keep on coming:

All the above make various of my digits itch (and one specifically, guess which one), but the last item in particular makes me want to reach for the Mauser.

Fifty-two million tax dollars to the WEF? Don’t those assholes have enough of their own money?  (Never mind that I find their entire existence as an organization revolting.)

Don’t get me started on the rest, because as it is I feel the need for an extended range session coming on.

Quote Of The Day

Bureaucracy, QOTD

“25 million individuals over age 100 remain in the Social Security database even though there are fewer than 100,000 people aged 100 or older alive in the U.S. today.” — DOGE

Let’s hear it for Gummint efficiency.  And if it’s not inefficiency… then it’s fucking fraud, and the recipients of said fraudulent payouts need to go to jail.

And while we’re there, the people responsible for checking for and preventing such anomalies should be fired.

Small Beginnings

Bureaucracy, Trumpism

I submit these two little snippets for your  enjoyment  contemplation:

First:  the I.R.S.:

The Trump administration has executed one of the most significant workforce reductions in U.S. history, targeting over 200,000 probationary employees across multiple government agencies.

It was first reported that Trump’s administration plans to axe around 9,000 jobs at the IRS, primarily targeting employees still in their probationary period.  However, as many as 15,000 IRS workers have been identified for possible termination as early as next week.

The targeted employees, many of whom were added during the Biden administration’s expansion of the IRS, reportedly hold non-essential roles unrelated to processing tax filings.

One can only hope that this will end with the department’s complete abolition.   I’m not kidding, either.

Second, the CDC:

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is poised to lose roughly one-tenth of its workforce due to a Trump policy axing probationary employees as part of a larger effort of the Trump administration to cut the size and scope of government.

This reality comes as the Trump administration orders federal agencies to cut off probationary employees. That includes roughly 1,300 staffers at the CDC alone. Those employees, according to the Associated Press, are expected to receive roughly four weeks of paid administrative leave.

Let’s hope that the reduced CDC staffing means that those quacks will be going after actual diseases like smallpox and malaria, instead of inventing “epidemics” like accidental gun deaths and suchlike.  (I’m hopeful, but not optimistic that this will happen;  if it doesn’t, shut them down too and leave it to the states to deal with.)

Like I said, this is a good start, going after the low-hanging fruit (“probationary”, “non-essential”, FFS), but let’s not stop there.