Tag Archives: government

DOGE is a disaster

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As we’re now a month into the Trump administration, we’re seeing the fruition of Project 2025 dreams. Elon Musk is taking both a figurative and literal chainsaw to the federal government.

This half trillionaire man-child has come into the government and acted as if Trump and Musk have a mandate to make dramatic changes to the US Government. That, instead of winning with a small majority, they assume they won by a landslide. They didn’t. Most Americans do not want what Elon is selling to us.

The Fork in the Road email was likely illegal, for a number of reason. As outlined by Legal Eagle in the video below.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/PT848djz4jA?si=fjj-uv3pU-vxjBRK

The firings are likely to cause mini recessions across the US as large number of people are suddenly unemployed. All in the name of reducing the size of the federal government. However, the job cuts have been done in such a sloppy way that many agencies are trying to rehire people they’ve fired.

This will make us less safe. We are firing flight controllers, which will negatively impact small and regional airports the most, but will lead to issues at our main hubs too. The goal, of course is privatization. That’s been a clear goal of republicans for decades. Privatizing an organization like the FAA is not a good idea. A consistent overarching regulatory regime is good for our airlines. It’s also unclear how Musk/Trump would privatize the FAA. Would they fracture it by state, would they just make it a single company.

How would states respond? Would some of them decide they need to have some sort of statewide institution to address the gap left by the FAA? Would we see significant deviations between the west coast and the south?

Piecemeal regulation like this causes issues with car manufacturers. As they are basically being driven by the most stringent regulations, mostly California. Would Boeing and Airbus find themselves under a similar sort of policy regime? Would Trump then try to kill the state’s ability to do this? Which they’ve tried to roll back California’s regulatory regime around emissions.

Many of these changes are illegal too. As Legal Eagle explains above. We need to take the legality of these issues seriously. We are a country of rule of law, even if the history of that application has been rather uneven.

We are the most powerful nation in the world and we have always had countries looking to the US to emulate our behavior. DOGE is certainly going to be emulated in other countries with dictators. We will see then, that the US media will broadly report how despotic those leaders are. We need to apply that mirror to ourselves.

DOGE is part of a dictatorship. Trump is in the middle of a bureaucratic coup. We need to fight it however we can. Call your Senators, Representatives, both Federal and State. Donate to organizations dedicated to fighting this. If you can, protest.

You aren’t impotent right now. You can fight back.

Book Review: The Myth of American Idealism

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I just wrapped up the Myth of American Idealism: How US Foreign Policy Endangers the World, by Noam Chomsky and Nathan Robinson. It’s been a while since I read a book by Chomsky. I heard about this one through an interview with Sam Seder of the Majority Report and Nathan Robinson a few days ago (mid Feb 2025). This book is apparently hot off the presses. Despite that they weren’t able to adequately discuss the Israeli invasion of Gaza, only the history leading up to it. It seems they finished that section just days before the October 7th attack.

As always Chomsky offers an interesting counter view to the mainstream press and often the view American historians. I think these views are important, as they can provide clear eyed discussions on what the US is doing at home and abroad. I think as Americans we need that. We need someone to pick us up and put us in the position of the outsider. We need to look at what our country does with the same critical lens our Press analyzes our national enemies.

Much of this book was relatively new to me. Or rather, I was aware of the events happening or that they had happened, but not to the extend described. Chomsky and Robinson constrain their review of US history to, mostly, the past 50 years, so shortly after Vietnam. However, to understand the US post Vietnam, you need to understand the Vietnam war and to understand that you need to go back at least to World War II.

As I said in my short the other day, History didn’t start on October 7th. Decisions made by one President influence and constrain the available options for the next President. Regardless of party, there is more often a likelihood of the next President will continue existing US policies. There are a variety of reasons for this, which is outlined in the book, including that even if the specific action was illegal, it’s already been done, so it’s unlikely to lead to repercussions. If the action is stopped, it may lead to a constraint on Presidential power and that would be unacceptable for the US President.

One thing that I had always wondered, since I was a teenager, is why the US sphere of direct influence, the countries in the western hemisphere are in such horrible states. This book answers it. It is US policy for these countries to be in the states they are. We have overthrown or supported the overthrow of a majority of South American countries. We have supported militaries and far right groups that support US business interests. We do not support New Deal based politics in the global south. Because that may mean providing more for the people of that country and less to the United States.

Chomsky and Robinson highlight cases in Nicaragua, Chile, Guatemala, Brazil, Ecuador, Panama, El Salvador, Honduras, and more. They describe in specific details what intervention we did. What sort of regime we supported, which includes Pinochet, which made me nauseous to read. Hell, we supported the Khmer Rouge until it wasn’t politically convenient any longer. The Khmer Rouge. Just despicable.

We, Americans, mostly White Americans, need to look at these choices head on. We need to understand what our country is doing in our name. We need to say, “No. I do not want to bomb those countries. No I do not support demanding 50% of mineral rights from Ukraine.”

Many US leaders do not want us to feel shame in our history. They do not want us to feel shame, because that shame will lead to anger and anger will lead to action. I do not feel shame over what the US has done. I feel angry. I never supported these actions. I never wanted the state to do these things. I protested against them. We should be angry. The US is a destabilizing force in the world. We need to reckon with that and make a decision on what we should do about that. We should be angry. Be Angry. Do something.

Note: Some links will be affiliate likes to Bookshop.org

Trump will not give up power

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The Trump administration has only been in power for four days so far and it is clear he will not give up power after his term is over. Why do I think this?

First, he floated the idea of running for a third term during his campaign. He floated it more recently before his inauguration. Now, a member of the House of Representatives, Rep Ogles, has actually filed an amendment to the Constitution to amend the 22nd amendment to change the term limits from two terms to three terms. The US has had a norm for Presidents serving more than two terms since Washington. FDR broke this norm and was elected to four terms. After his death the Constitution was amended to ensure no other President held the office more than two terms. This amendment should not be changed. It should not be changed for Trump.

Regardless, the door is open for Trump to disregard the 22nd Amendment. With the Republicans onboard for Trump to run again and to stay in office another term, because of his “bold” “Leadership”, Trump will use this as pretext to stay in office.

I cannot stress enough, this would be simply inexcusable for a Democrat to do. They would be castigate about this unendingly in the press. However, this is treated as a serious proposition rather than an unadulterated power grab.

Trump has already start the process to disregard other Constitutional Amendments. He is attacking the Birthright Citizenship, which is the 14th Amendment. We implemented the 14th amendment because of Slavery. After the Civil War, we implemented this so all the previously enslaved people were considered full citizens, as they should have been. Trump is attacking this amendment in an effort to go after immigrants, but this will continue with other US citizens. He will have the power to decide who is and who is not a citizen. Trump will claim his political enemies are not citizens.

Trump has effectively ignored portions of the 14th Amendment already, which prevents traitors from holding office. He has already pardoned the 1,500 traitors who stormed the Capitol. These 1,500 traitors were loyal to Trump while they were in prison. These people are still loyal to Trump. These people will continue supporting Trump. They will support Trump in staying in office. We should expect another insurrection in four years, if Trump isn’t allowed to stay in office.

This is NOT a reason for allowing Trump to stay in office by abandoning the 22nd Amendment. This is not a reason to fold up shop and just let Trump stay in power. These are all warning signs that we should listen to, so we can plan to prevent Trump from staying in power. We need to assume there will not be a peaceful transition of power at the end of this Presidency. We should assume there will be an armed mob attacking our voting apparatus. We should assume there will be voting intimidation. We should assume, there will be more stop the steal attacks.

Trump has an openly declared Nazi in his administration. Elon Musk, literally gave a Sieg Heil salute, at least twice, during his speech at the inauguration. He is a Nazi. Trump must be assumed to like Musk’s political stances. Trump is a racist old man with a racist Nazi sympathizer Co-President. He will try to stay in power. Musk may try to assume power if Trump dies in office. Musk cannot be President, because he’s an immigrant, but if Trump has shredded the Constitution to the point that we’ve destroyed the 14th and 22nd Amendment.

Democracy, Corrupted

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Several years ago I read a great book called Republic, Lost by Lawrence Lessig. Wrote a blog about it back when Occupy Wall Street was a thing. Lessig has since ran for President and subsequently dropped out of this year’s race, but I think the points in his book are a salient now as ever. His platform was to eliminate corruption government by changing campaign finance laws. Of the remaining candidates, I believe Bernie is the only one that has portion’s of Lessig’s platform in his. As I mentioned in my blog a few days ago, money influences people even when they don’t believe that it does. In fact, simply having a conversations with someone can either normalize or prime a certain behavior. For example, a lobbyist may call from the cable industry to discuss some topic that’s going to be up for vote in some time, they also mention donating to the next election cycle. That same day an unrelated bill may be up for vote that tangentially impacts the cable industry, because of this priming the politician will be more sympathetic to the cable industry than they may have been otherwise. In some cases this type of priming or normalization can result in some pretty disastrous policies for the American people.

This is a horrible problem caused by us vs. them mentality of current politics. It’s also caused by the need to raise money. The ability to disenfranchise voters is powerful, because it robs them of their voice and replaces their voice with a special interest voice. These voters aren’t being disenfranchised for no reason. This is a systematic effort to eliminate the influence of a group of minorities that would push for dramatic changes in the criminal justice system. This impacts a large number of groups, private prison companies, law enforcement, lawyers, etc. As the Pennsylvania Republican points out at the end of the segment, this voice has serious impact on the direction a state can go in a general election thus impacting policy.

All of the other things I write about are the result of policy, which fundamentally comes from who is in office. When elected officials abuse their position to prevent other people, who I might not agree with, from voting our Democracy is corrupt. It is important to note that the actions described in the video above, while likely coordinated by the RNC, happens at the state and city levels. These are areas that people, myself included, largely ignore when thinking of voting. With so much focus on the national elections, these smaller roles largely don’t seem to matter to voters. These policies impact us as much, or in some cases more, than national polices. These are the policies that prevent cities from deploying their own broadband or the lead to the militarization of police departments in cities like Ferguson.

Lessig started a group called Mayday.us which highlights candidates, mostly at the national level, that are working for eliminating corruption in government. I supported them last year and plan to do so again this year. I also believe it is time for me to get more actively involved in this and other movements to address the fundamental corruption issues in government. This is truly the only way to level the playing field so that the best ideas win out rather than the biggest budget.

Restrictions Can Drive Innovation

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As a Lean process improvement guy as well as someone that really loves reading about innovation I’ve always taught my students that regulations, limitations, and restrictions on processes, equipment, and activities offer us an opportunity to innovate around those rules. The way that I describe it is that rules place you in a box, but within that box you can move up and down and diagonal and develop some really interesting ideas because of what you can’t do. However, you don’t focus on what you can’t do as much as focusing on how you can avoid that and what you CAN do.

I saw a picture to a great discussion about how gluten free diets are forcing, at least one chef, to be more innovative in their cooking. I’d post it, but the image is so large it’d take up the entire post, so I linked it above. Essentially the chef had a dish with polenta on it and a base that was all glutenous flour, but he figured out a way to make it all polenta, which actually created a unique dining experience that he felt offered a superior taste.

Another area where regulation has been the root of many innovation is the financial sector. They complain the most about regulations because it’s “bad for the economy” or something like that. However, CDO’s and everything that caused the last collapse was in response TO regulations. They figured out how to work around the regulations and make even more money than before. In fact, many banks started to follow suit because they weren’t able to post as high of profits and were getting hit by Wall Street for under performing comparatively.

This is one of the reasons why I personally don’t see value in fighting regulation other than to shape it in one direction or the other. The companies that are able to exploit the regulation the best are going to end up being first to market or extremely fast followers. Meaning they will make a great deal of money and likely dominate the market. If you look at regulation as a “disruptor” and an opportunity to disrupt the regulation, you’re going to do really well as a business.