Washington is hyperventilating about the Department of Government Efficiency. Here's my $0.02 for helping the D.O.G.E. cut $2 trillion and drain the swamp.
Executive Orders abuse is a large part of government abuse. Runaway government cannot be reversed by more executive orders. It's ridiculous to have so much present-day government contingent of executive orders by past presidents. The executive has no constitutional authority to make laws. Therefore, all executive orders that have resulted in spending (and thus in taxation) should be rescinded, and no new executive orders that require funding mat be made.
I agree with this sentiment and believe that if more people rallied around this doctrine, we I agree with this sentiment and believe that if more people rallied around this doctrine, we would all be better off. But assume there is a powerful class that doesn’t. Beyond shouting such from the rooftops, which is rather like a lamb, shouting ‘stop’ at the wolves, what are we to do in the face of such power besides shout? We can hope that sufficient counter power infects the highest echelons and innervatesthe leviathan. And we can hope that the people lateralized their relationships to such a degree that top-down power finds it increasingly difficult and costly to keep us under its thumb. But at some point rights moralisms don’t do anyone any good when our abusers don’t believe in rights. Rights talk rallies the troops. But what are the troops to do? all be better off. But assume there was a powerful class that doesn’t. Beyond shouting, such from the rooftops, which is rather like a lamb, shouting ‘stop’ at the wolves, what are we to do in the face of such power besides shout? We can hope that sufficient counter power infects the highest echelons and innervatesthe leviathan. And we can hope that the people lateralized their relationships to such a degree that top-down power finds it increasingly difficult and costly to keep us under its thumb. But at some point rights moralisms don’t do anyone any good when our abusers don’t believe in rights. Rights talk rallies the troops. But what are the troops to do?
This is a good attempt with a nice structure to solving an everyday problem. However, we have a systemic cancerous problem that has metastasized very deep in the administration state of the U.S. government. Probably in a lot of states also.
We have allowed our gov't to suffer a 'spending' sickness and no amount of revenue from us can solve it.
If you've not seen this Carlson/Vought long (1 3/4 hr) just scan through it to get an overview of the OMB candidate (with experience there) as he identifies an out of control monster. The gov't is not able to tell us how many agencies they have (est. 450-635) or how many employees they have (est. 2.5-4.0 million). Remember Adam Smith: every person is motivated by their own self interest, including gov't employees.
The Swiss had a similar problem (not the same magnitude) 25 years ago and they solved it and have turned from one of the bottom feeders to a top of the nations performing economy. And with the approval of 80% of their population and with the least pain.
Congress will not attempt to fix the problem because they are drunk on the power and money flowing into their nest. Their self-interest prevents them from fixing the problem.
The only solution is not from inside the government but by the states proposing a fiscal responsibility amendment to the Constitution to define limits on Congress' loose spending. The Swiss did it and it worked. Article V convention of states.
That's the process that actually allowed the states to invent the federal gov't in 1789. Let's meet again and fix what needs fixing to save America from immorality, bankruptcy and collapse.
George Washington said, "Government is force!" Government's right to use force could be derived from each citizen's delegation of one's right to use force in defense to his representatives in government. And each individual in government has precisely the same rights as any other person, no more, no fewer. Therefore, they have a right to use or authorize the right to force in defense to their agents. But no human on earth ha a right to use force in offense and every tax and every regulation is a threat and use of force in offense and can't be justified for any conceivable reason. Every person on earth has a right to earn what one wants from others in voluntary capitalist Trade as humans did before fascist governments were invented thousands of years ago. We will phase governments out of existence once again as no one in them can justify them.
This is an easy to solve problem under the Constitution. All that is needed is to recognize and enforce the Bill of Rights with its all important but obscure 9th Amendment which, properly understood, is an expression of the Prime Law. What rights does any human have? Only the rights to take any innocent acts they choose in the pursuit of their happiness. That applied to the first caveman, the Founders and people today. The Founders had no right to create a government in the first place - only a rights protective business such as insurance companies. All governments are organized fascist crime syndicates preying on innocent productive people by the crimes of tax and regulatory extortion. Here is how I rewrote the Bill of Rights including the meaning of the 9th Amendment: "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of individuals to take any conceivable innocent actions in the pursuit of their happiness. These include the 5 rights of property of INNOCENTLY acquiring, possessing, using, defending and disposing of any item of property including money, weapons of any kind, drugs of any kind, one's labor, parts of one's body, but excluding another human being." The purpose of government is rights protection, not powers protection. The Founders made just 2 small mistakes that could have prevented our present tyranny - they said Congress shall have power to ...tax and regulate commerce = both threats of fascist harm to innocent people the Founders and politicians have never had a right to do. Rights cancel powers, but every fascist reverses this. There has never been in the history of man, such a thing as a lawful tax or regulation of innocent behavior. When I discovered this natural law, I quit paying and obeying 30 years ago and, if Trump, Elon and Vivek, all capitalist giants like Gulliver who was shipwrecked, washed upon the shores of the island of Lilliput, where tiny beings called Lilliputian fascist democrats viewed them as threats, tied them hand and foot with taxes and regulations, and finally, recognized that it was in their rational self interest to free giants to benefit themselves, come to recognize that all governments are criminal in nature, they can solve the problem by just eliminating the crimes of taxes and regulations and reg agencies altogether as violations of the 9th Amendment and the rest of the bill of rights all have sworn to uphold and defend. Any statute in violation of any right is null and void from the moment it was written, no one is required to obey it and no court is required to enforce it. AND, under the 9th Amendment, there are 3 provisions that are not widely known, Habeas Corpus, a provision for reinstating a concluded case if new evidence comes to light and a Quo Warranto action which any citizen can bring against any or all public officials who 1. can't show authority for their acquiring the office, 2. can't show why they performed acts forbidden by law and/or 3. can't show why they failed to perform acts required by law. Not one person in government at any level can meet all 3 requirements. I filed such an action with AG Garland nearly a year ago, knowing he was too corrupt to enforce it. Then the dty of prosecuting the case descended to my shoulders and not one person in government, no judge, president, governor, mayor, cop nor bureaucrat has met the requirements of showing their authority. There should never have been an election, the new Chief of Staff calls me a clown, but it is everyone in every government around the world pretending to be superior beings who are not only clowns but criminals, not the elites of society, but its dregs. Man lived for millions of years before governments were invented and thrived, living by the universal natural human law all innocent from cave men on everywhere have lived by and will again after we abolish all governments.
I'm sure you're not giving up. I believe the old saying, 'follow the money'. Congress doesn't have a revenue problem, they have a spending problem. That yields power and influence resulting in decadence for all. If our states were to regulate the foundational rules of national spending by stopping the flow out of DC, the changes would reverse the decadence.
The extra money floating around DC's 450+ agencies and K Street, would dry up. Planned Parenthood, block grants, overseas funding, DC parties, etc would cause a reduction in DC operations. The unemployment lines there would be long.
Article V convention of states could propose and then approve a similar method used by the Swiss to avert the same situtation in 2000. We have a 400 year history of the process...to 2017. And the Swiss pulled it off with 80% approval of the population.
Just saying...there is a solution...but we have to get off our collective butts and grow a backbone!
These are great ideas and I hope that they do get used in one way or another. Most important to this type of austerity is to contemplate the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th order effects on the system we have and be ready for the effects, because the disruption would be Yuge!
With its promise to “save $2 Trillion,” it will be interesting to see if Musk’s brainchild DOGE ~ the so-called "Department of Government Efficiency" ~ includes The Pentagon, and the rest of the MICIMATT wing of The Deep State
Think that Deep State will let DOGE get anywhere close to The Pentagon, which just failed its seventh consecutive Audit?
And isn’t it noteworthy that the “E” in DOGE stands for “Efficiency,” and not “Effectiveness’?
As Management Guru Peter Drucker once put it: “Efficiency is doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things.”
Which raises the questions: What ARE the right things for Government to be doing? What IS the proper function of Government? What is its Purpose? Why do Humans have Government?
In any event, for The Pentagon to be “doing the right things,” what would be required is the end of The American Empire.
What America has today ~ and has had since its beginning ~ is a system of Government and Governance whereby Vested Special Interests can gain ready and easy, but expensive access to the legal power, the administrative authority, and, above all, the spending capacity and capability of that Government as governed by its elected politicians, entrenched civilian and military bureaucrats, and anointed political appointees. And use that access to advance the agendas, profits, and returns-on-"investments" of those individual, group, organizational, and institutional VSIs.
[Note: What is needed at The Pentagon is not another conventional Financial and Fiscal Audit, but a Criminal Audit that specifically targets illegal/immoral activity by DoD personnel and defense contractors; and the individuals perpetrating them. But that’s a separate rant.]
Executive Orders abuse is a large part of government abuse. Runaway government cannot be reversed by more executive orders. It's ridiculous to have so much present-day government contingent of executive orders by past presidents. The executive has no constitutional authority to make laws. Therefore, all executive orders that have resulted in spending (and thus in taxation) should be rescinded, and no new executive orders that require funding mat be made.
I agree with this sentiment and believe that if more people rallied around this doctrine, we I agree with this sentiment and believe that if more people rallied around this doctrine, we would all be better off. But assume there is a powerful class that doesn’t. Beyond shouting such from the rooftops, which is rather like a lamb, shouting ‘stop’ at the wolves, what are we to do in the face of such power besides shout? We can hope that sufficient counter power infects the highest echelons and innervatesthe leviathan. And we can hope that the people lateralized their relationships to such a degree that top-down power finds it increasingly difficult and costly to keep us under its thumb. But at some point rights moralisms don’t do anyone any good when our abusers don’t believe in rights. Rights talk rallies the troops. But what are the troops to do? all be better off. But assume there was a powerful class that doesn’t. Beyond shouting, such from the rooftops, which is rather like a lamb, shouting ‘stop’ at the wolves, what are we to do in the face of such power besides shout? We can hope that sufficient counter power infects the highest echelons and innervatesthe leviathan. And we can hope that the people lateralized their relationships to such a degree that top-down power finds it increasingly difficult and costly to keep us under its thumb. But at some point rights moralisms don’t do anyone any good when our abusers don’t believe in rights. Rights talk rallies the troops. But what are the troops to do?
This is a good attempt with a nice structure to solving an everyday problem. However, we have a systemic cancerous problem that has metastasized very deep in the administration state of the U.S. government. Probably in a lot of states also.
We have allowed our gov't to suffer a 'spending' sickness and no amount of revenue from us can solve it.
If you've not seen this Carlson/Vought long (1 3/4 hr) just scan through it to get an overview of the OMB candidate (with experience there) as he identifies an out of control monster. The gov't is not able to tell us how many agencies they have (est. 450-635) or how many employees they have (est. 2.5-4.0 million). Remember Adam Smith: every person is motivated by their own self interest, including gov't employees.
https://x.com/i/status/1858640384643002751
The Swiss had a similar problem (not the same magnitude) 25 years ago and they solved it and have turned from one of the bottom feeders to a top of the nations performing economy. And with the approval of 80% of their population and with the least pain.
Congress will not attempt to fix the problem because they are drunk on the power and money flowing into their nest. Their self-interest prevents them from fixing the problem.
The only solution is not from inside the government but by the states proposing a fiscal responsibility amendment to the Constitution to define limits on Congress' loose spending. The Swiss did it and it worked. Article V convention of states.
That's the process that actually allowed the states to invent the federal gov't in 1789. Let's meet again and fix what needs fixing to save America from immorality, bankruptcy and collapse.
i would say, Mike, that America is already deeply immersed and embedded in immorality, bankruptcy, and collapse.
"The Decline" of The American Empire has ended, and "The Collapse" has begun.
And with it, the end of the Experiment that was and is The United States of America.
George Washington said, "Government is force!" Government's right to use force could be derived from each citizen's delegation of one's right to use force in defense to his representatives in government. And each individual in government has precisely the same rights as any other person, no more, no fewer. Therefore, they have a right to use or authorize the right to force in defense to their agents. But no human on earth ha a right to use force in offense and every tax and every regulation is a threat and use of force in offense and can't be justified for any conceivable reason. Every person on earth has a right to earn what one wants from others in voluntary capitalist Trade as humans did before fascist governments were invented thousands of years ago. We will phase governments out of existence once again as no one in them can justify them.
See comment above.
This is an easy to solve problem under the Constitution. All that is needed is to recognize and enforce the Bill of Rights with its all important but obscure 9th Amendment which, properly understood, is an expression of the Prime Law. What rights does any human have? Only the rights to take any innocent acts they choose in the pursuit of their happiness. That applied to the first caveman, the Founders and people today. The Founders had no right to create a government in the first place - only a rights protective business such as insurance companies. All governments are organized fascist crime syndicates preying on innocent productive people by the crimes of tax and regulatory extortion. Here is how I rewrote the Bill of Rights including the meaning of the 9th Amendment: "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of individuals to take any conceivable innocent actions in the pursuit of their happiness. These include the 5 rights of property of INNOCENTLY acquiring, possessing, using, defending and disposing of any item of property including money, weapons of any kind, drugs of any kind, one's labor, parts of one's body, but excluding another human being." The purpose of government is rights protection, not powers protection. The Founders made just 2 small mistakes that could have prevented our present tyranny - they said Congress shall have power to ...tax and regulate commerce = both threats of fascist harm to innocent people the Founders and politicians have never had a right to do. Rights cancel powers, but every fascist reverses this. There has never been in the history of man, such a thing as a lawful tax or regulation of innocent behavior. When I discovered this natural law, I quit paying and obeying 30 years ago and, if Trump, Elon and Vivek, all capitalist giants like Gulliver who was shipwrecked, washed upon the shores of the island of Lilliput, where tiny beings called Lilliputian fascist democrats viewed them as threats, tied them hand and foot with taxes and regulations, and finally, recognized that it was in their rational self interest to free giants to benefit themselves, come to recognize that all governments are criminal in nature, they can solve the problem by just eliminating the crimes of taxes and regulations and reg agencies altogether as violations of the 9th Amendment and the rest of the bill of rights all have sworn to uphold and defend. Any statute in violation of any right is null and void from the moment it was written, no one is required to obey it and no court is required to enforce it. AND, under the 9th Amendment, there are 3 provisions that are not widely known, Habeas Corpus, a provision for reinstating a concluded case if new evidence comes to light and a Quo Warranto action which any citizen can bring against any or all public officials who 1. can't show authority for their acquiring the office, 2. can't show why they performed acts forbidden by law and/or 3. can't show why they failed to perform acts required by law. Not one person in government at any level can meet all 3 requirements. I filed such an action with AG Garland nearly a year ago, knowing he was too corrupt to enforce it. Then the dty of prosecuting the case descended to my shoulders and not one person in government, no judge, president, governor, mayor, cop nor bureaucrat has met the requirements of showing their authority. There should never have been an election, the new Chief of Staff calls me a clown, but it is everyone in every government around the world pretending to be superior beings who are not only clowns but criminals, not the elites of society, but its dregs. Man lived for millions of years before governments were invented and thrived, living by the universal natural human law all innocent from cave men on everywhere have lived by and will again after we abolish all governments.
I'm sure you're not giving up. I believe the old saying, 'follow the money'. Congress doesn't have a revenue problem, they have a spending problem. That yields power and influence resulting in decadence for all. If our states were to regulate the foundational rules of national spending by stopping the flow out of DC, the changes would reverse the decadence.
The extra money floating around DC's 450+ agencies and K Street, would dry up. Planned Parenthood, block grants, overseas funding, DC parties, etc would cause a reduction in DC operations. The unemployment lines there would be long.
Article V convention of states could propose and then approve a similar method used by the Swiss to avert the same situtation in 2000. We have a 400 year history of the process...to 2017. And the Swiss pulled it off with 80% approval of the population.
Just saying...there is a solution...but we have to get off our collective butts and grow a backbone!
These are great ideas and I hope that they do get used in one way or another. Most important to this type of austerity is to contemplate the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th order effects on the system we have and be ready for the effects, because the disruption would be Yuge!
Earlier, jesse porter raised some excellent points about Executive Orders.
The National Constitution Center has a good overview of Executive Orders at https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/executive-orders-101-what-are-they-and-how-do-presidents-use-them .
As does Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_order .
With its promise to “save $2 Trillion,” it will be interesting to see if Musk’s brainchild DOGE ~ the so-called "Department of Government Efficiency" ~ includes The Pentagon, and the rest of the MICIMATT wing of The Deep State
Think that Deep State will let DOGE get anywhere close to The Pentagon, which just failed its seventh consecutive Audit?
And isn’t it noteworthy that the “E” in DOGE stands for “Efficiency,” and not “Effectiveness’?
As Management Guru Peter Drucker once put it: “Efficiency is doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things.”
Which raises the questions: What ARE the right things for Government to be doing? What IS the proper function of Government? What is its Purpose? Why do Humans have Government?
In any event, for The Pentagon to be “doing the right things,” what would be required is the end of The American Empire.
What America has today ~ and has had since its beginning ~ is a system of Government and Governance whereby Vested Special Interests can gain ready and easy, but expensive access to the legal power, the administrative authority, and, above all, the spending capacity and capability of that Government as governed by its elected politicians, entrenched civilian and military bureaucrats, and anointed political appointees. And use that access to advance the agendas, profits, and returns-on-"investments" of those individual, group, organizational, and institutional VSIs.
[Note: What is needed at The Pentagon is not another conventional Financial and Fiscal Audit, but a Criminal Audit that specifically targets illegal/immoral activity by DoD personnel and defense contractors; and the individuals perpetrating them. But that’s a separate rant.]