“I think that Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, have been misinformed. I don’t disagree with their shutting down USAID, but I think it’s rather small fry. There are much, much bigger fish to fry if you want to really save U.S. government money that is being wasted in programs that are mischievously justified as aid to the poor people of the world. Elon, hear me out: if you walk northwest from your headquarters at the Eisenhower Executive Building along Pennsylvania Avenue, you’ll come after one long block upon two ugly buildings squatting beside each other. One is the World Bank. The other is the International Monetary Fund (IMF).” (02/25/25)
“Things looked bad recently for Leland Dudek, an employee of the Social Security Administration. Dudek almost got fired for helping the DOGE team understand how SSA’s systems work so that DOGE could zero in on wasteful or fraudulent payments. … An investigation? Administrative leave? For helping, as an executive-branch employee, the head of the executive branch to find and extirpate waste and fraud? SSA managers may have been confused about whether Donald Trump really is the president. The suspense didn’t last long. Dudek was not fired. Instead, the SSA commissioner was fired and Dudek became acting commissioner.” (02/25/25)
Source: Antiwar.com
by Dennis Kucinich and Elizabeth Kucinich
“The era of unchecked military expansion may be coming to an end, and for the first time in decades, the ability of the defense industry to influence U.S. military policy is being curtailed. Will it happen? We don’t know, but President Trump’s bold proposal to cut Pentagon spending reflects his signature negotiation style – starting with an aggressive position to shift the conversation and force a change in conditions, in this case – scrutiny of military waste. Rather than a rigid policy demand, Trump’s talk of a 50% cut in military spending challenges the entrenched interests of the military-industrial complex, putting pressure on defense contractors to reduce costs, compelling Congress to justify every dollar spent.” (02/25/25)
“The law of supply and demand is the most basic insight in economics. When there’s more of a good available for sale than people who want to buy it, the price goes down, and when more people want to buy the good than is available, the price goes up. As progressives have learned the hard way with housing, there is no magical government intervention to get around this. That law presents a bit of a problem for President Donald Trump’s agenda on oil. On one hand, Trump ran on criticisms of Biden-era inflation, including high gas prices. He also wants to drive down oil prices to pressure Russia. On the other hand, Trump wants to cut off Iranian oil exports in order to ‘bankrupt’ the country and build leverage in negotiations. In other words, he’s trying to both increase and reduce the oil supply at the same time.” (02/24/25)
“The outrage over $2 billion being handed to a Stacey Abrams-related start-up by the defeated Joe Biden administration is justified. But it is not surprising. Climate spending by the Biden White House was always political. In 2022, President Joe Biden tapped long-time Democrat operative John Podesta to oversee the disbursement of $375 billon to climate-related initiatives – monies that were included in the dishonestly named ‘Inflation Reduction Act.’ Those funds were supposed to be spent on projects that would drive the country towards Democrats’ goal of a 40% reduction in carbon output below 2005 levels by 2030. In reality, the funds set up a gigantic slush fund within the White House, available to Podesta as he set about boosting Democrats’ prospects in 2024.” (02/25/25)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by David Youngberg
“Los Angeles needs more housing. Now, more than ever.
The fires that roared through the city in January 2025 were nothing short of devastating, with over 16,000 structures destroyed and an estimated 150,000 people displaced. In the wake of the disaster, victims scoured the still-hot wreckage for scraps of their former lives. The immensity of their loss was only dwarfed by its suddenness. And then there’s the rent. The mass destruction of homes exacerbated L.A.’s already pricey housing market. Rents substantially shot up, sometimes more than doubling. As is often the case in the aftermath of disaster, the public demanded that the government freeze prices. Disasters create the political will necessary to enact sweeping reforms, but rent control is the wrong approach because it discourages construction and causes more harm than good. Fortunately the city has not (yet) gone down this route.” (02/24/25)
“High inflation spurred Donald Trump’s defeat of Kamala Harris last November. The economy was the top issue for most voters, and inflation was the top economic issue. As Biden’s partner in economic crime, Harris could not escape the blame for the torpedoing of the dollar’s value in recent years.” (02/24/25)
“President Trump recently issued an executive order instructing the US Mint to stop producing pennies. The reason for this is it costs nearly four cents to produce one penny. That’s right: the US government can’t even make pennies without losing money! President Trump may have signed the death certificate, but the Federal Reserve is the penny’s true killer. Since the Fed’s creation, the US dollar has lost over 97 percent of its value! President Trump’s hopes for a successful presidency may be the Fed’s next victim.” (02/24/25)
“You probably know the old joke about the three greatest lies: One size fits all, the check is in the mail, and … I won’t embarrass myself by repeating the third one. But the greatest lie of all is that democracy and capitalism are natural complements. Both, supposedly, thrive on free inquiry, free markets, and the rule of law. Milton Friedman argued that capitalism and freedom were two sides of the same coin. More recently, the Harvard economist Rebecca Henderson wrote in the Harvard Business Review, ‘The free market is one of the great achievements of the human race. It has been a driver of innovation, opportunity, and wealth around the world. But free markets need free political systems to succeed.’ Well, think again. In the past weeks, we’ve seen a near-total capitulation of capitalists to incipient dictatorship.” (02/25/25)
“Consider America’s roughly 14,000 Federal Aviation Administration air traffic controllers. If each of them spends just 10 minutes opening their work email, finding this request, drafting a response, proofreading it, and sending it off, that adds up to 2,333 hours of work. Can you think of a more cartoonish example of government waste than using 292 workdays’ worth of man-hours to clarify that, last week, air traffic controllers monitored airplanes? I actually can think of a more cartoonish example, in that it is even bigger in scale: Some 74,000 U.S. Postal Service letter carriers deliver mail on foot, making roughly $29 an hour on average. If they spend 10 minutes each, or 740,000 total minutes, drafting emails, that works out to nearly $360,000 in labor costs. For what? And how long will it take other workers to read ‘I was delivering letters’ 74,000 times?” (02/24/25)
