Going Fast And Breaking Things Has Consequences

While Trump is right to be proceeding with reforms, in doing so he and his administration are going a tad too fast. This is causing a lot of own-goals and public embarrassments, not to mention unnecessary disruption and collateral damage, which serves to reduce the enthusiasm and support for the reforms.

For example it has caused some major and completely unnecessary turmoil at the National Institute of Health :  The Transmitter: U.S. health agency purge includes 10 lab heads at National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke

This firing included one of the world's top researches on Parkinson's disease.

This firing led a lot of people to calmly ask:  "WTF?".

Well, turns out the firing was apparently a mistake caused by a "coding error" that mislabeled employees -- once people started making noise about it they were rehired.

The Transmitter: Coding error caused layoffs at National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke this week, source says  

Thirty employees—including 11 lab heads—at the institute should “immediately return to work,” according to an email the institute’s Office of Human Resources sent to top administration at the institute Wednesday evening.

Reform is a good thing,  doing it stupidly and making the reformers look incompetent in doing so is not helpful to actual reform of the many, many, real problems in government agencies.

The blanket reductions and stoppages in research funding is having a major effect on good solid research in addition to the wasteful stuff that should be defunded.

"Hasten Slowly" is good advice.

Chesterton's Fence, while usually applied to progressives tearing down institutions, also applies to the Right when they tear down stuff without understanding the direct and indirect effects and implications of what they are doing.

Getting rid of fraud and waste and ridiculous programs that are little more than grants to progressive organizations along with associated graft  is a good thing, burning down the entire research "village" in order to do so is quite another.

Do it smartly, and quickly if need be, but make sure above all that you do it competently and show positive results. 

Corruption And The Problem Of Scale

DOGE is finding an impressive amount of government corruption, fraud, and featherbedding networks in US Treasury payments.  Verily they are uncovering the Democrat-Progressive-NGO complex with their probe into USAID and Treasury spending.

In a single area of government spending, DOGE learned that $100 Billion (with a B) in entitlement payments were going out to people with no social security number or other identifiers attached to the payments. Treasury officials apparently stated that $50 Billion of that was outright fraud.  Yet the payments were made year after year. It is likely even more programs will show outright fraudulent transfers.

Now $50 Billion in fraud in a single program could be dismissed as just a rounding error in the US Treasury's annual spending of over 6 Trillion dollars. 

And therein lies the problem.  When $50 Billion in fraudulent spending in entitlement programs is just considered a rounding error, you've lost the plot.

 $50 billion is the equivalent of a an entire lifetime of income tax payments by 153,581 Americans. Every dollar in income taxes paid for their entire lives, wasted on fraud in a single program - in one year - every year.

This $50 Billion in spending isn't just a political disagreement over priorities or funding Democrat's friends and buddies in NGOs or throwing money at SPPL (Stuff Progressive People Like). It is an outright transfer of payments to fraudulent recipients.

One should note that $50 Billion is higher than the entire GDP in 112 countries!  

If the fraudulent payments were a country's GDP, the Country of Entitlement Fraudlandia with a GDP of $50 Billion has a GDP equivalent to 14 Haitis, and handily would beat out Bangladesh, Romania, Nigeria, Ukraine, and Morrocco in world rankings at 51st in the world.

The $50 Billion received by Entitlement Fraudlandia is far more than the amount of aid sent so far to North Carolina after Hurricane Helena, which is, depending on what source you look at as a clear answer is interestingly hard to find, anywhere from 3 billion to up to 9 billion total in the latest round of aid.

Even worse, a General Accounting Office report from late April estimated outright fraudulent spending by the Federal Government to be  233 Billion to $521 Billion each year.

That would make The Nation of US Spending Fraudlandia have a greater GDP than India and it would be a Country with the 11th highest GDP in the entire World.

Again, that's just from outright fraud, not even touching cutting what are arguably legitimate, while still being  rather objectionable, payments that are being made on rather questionable spending priorities and to reinforce the Democrat-Progressive NGO complex.

Michigan Liquor Control Commission Under The Democrats : A Million $ In Booze Disappears

This is fine: $961K in liquor went missing from Michigan commission's inventory, audit finds

Quality Democrat competence here, and yes the MLCC is Democrat controlled, almost entirely composed of Democrats, and indeed most of them are Governor Whitmer appointees. 

Michigan’s Liquor Control Commission lacked the proper controls to accurately track its spirit inventory or its licensing program, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in missing liquor, significant excesses and negative balances in its inventory and the issuances of a handful of liquor licenses in dry communities.

One of the largest findings of the audit released Tuesday indicated the commission was missing 20%, or roughly $961,000, of the $4.9 million recorded in inventory between January and February 2022 — a count not confirmed through a state-led physical inventory of Michigan warehouses, but through distributors at the behest of the state.

The missing liquor inventory was one of three material conditions and two reportable conditions found at the liquor commission, whose overall performance was rated as “not sufficient” in an audit released Tuesday. The audit by Auditor General Doug Ringler’s office reviewed records between 2019 and 2022.

Yep, the Auditor General caught the malfeasance.  You know, the very same  Auditor General's Office that Governor Whitmer is trying to gut because it keeps finding Democrat malfeasance in government.

Interesting  how almost a million dollars in liquor goes missing and the Democrat response is to defund the watchdog that caught it.  Funny that. Be interesting to see if this report  is followed up and they track into whose pockets the funds for the missing liquor went - but don't count on any real follow-up anytime soon.

Electric School Bus 2: Electric Boogalo and A Little Democrat Corruption Too

Turns out Electric Buses aren't as reliable nor as cost-effective as they are cracked up to be, shocking, I know.

Washington Free Beacon: Biden Spent $1 Billion To Get Schools Electric Buses. This Michigan District Says Theirs Hardly Work. 

During an April 19 presentation to the Ann Arbor Public Schools Board of Education, the district's environmental sustainability director, Emile Lauzzana, highlighted a number of issues with the district's electric bus fleet. Those buses, Lauzzana said, have "a lot of downtime and performance issues" and aren't "fully on the road," despite the fact that they are "approximately five times more expensive than regular buses." The infrastructure upgrades required to use the buses, meanwhile, were "originally estimated to be only about $50,000" but "ended up being more like $200,000," according to Lauzzana. "I have a number of colleagues in different states who are facing similar challenges," the district official lamented. "For the school bus market, it's been challenging for us."

Note that this is in solid-Blue Ann Arbor.  When even the enviro-nut, quasi-commies of Ann Arbor are complaining about these electric green busses, you know it's bad.

But, no worries, Democrats still made bank on the deal, and that, after all is what matters along with the "green" virtue signalling at the public' expense:

The Biden administration has faced intense criticism from congressional Republicans over its ties to electric bus maker Proterra. Administration officials repeatedly showcased the company while Biden's energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, held up to $5 million in Proterra stock. Granholm eventually sold her 240,000 Proterra shares in May 2021, with the former Michigan governor earning a cool $1.6 million.

Nice bit of insider trading if you can get it, neh?

This is What Happens When A City Doesn't Pay Its Bills For 10 Years

The City of Highland Park decided it was going to refuse to pay its water bills for 10 years, claiming it was being overcharged.  

That didn't stop them from using the water all that time, collecting payments form the city residents, and racking up $24 Million with an M in non-payment.   Other municipalities in the region were getting soaked with Highland Park's unpaid bills through higher water rates to their residents.

Now the Piper (of water) has demanded to be paid:

Since the ruling, Highland Park officials have said the bill will financially sink the city. The majority Black city has a population of 8,900 residents, a per capita income of $19,401 and a 41% poverty rate in 2021, according to the Census Bureau. The estimated $24 million tab, the exact amount with interest is still being determined, is two and a half times larger than the $9.6 million Highland Park collects annually in property tax revenues.The Detroit News: Highland Park mayor: City in state of emergency

Yet another Democrat-run city, now hoping for a state-level bailout for its profligate actions. They certainly could have escrowed their water payments over those 10 years, but they apparently spent it on whatever corrupt local units of government spend stuff on, and now they have to come up with the money - or get bailed out.

So of course our dear Governor Whitmer instead of having them responsibly handle the situation of their own making,  suggested the city should be bailed out: 

Whitmer's office for months has suggested that GLWA could help solve the debt issue by tapping a $25 million state clean drinking water grant that the Democratic governor and Republican-led Legislature approved last year. Whitmer's office didn't immediately respond Thursday to a request for comment.

So instead of using that grant money for the purpose that it was appropriated for - ensuring clean drinking water for the region (kinda an important use of the funds, yes?), the governor wants to use it to bail out a Democrat scofflaw city that failed to pay its water bills for 10 years.

So the politicians and city that messed this up for 10 years should face no consequences and should be bailed out for their failure. That's Michigan under Whitmer for you.

Surprise: Not Only Do Michigan Roads Suck, But The Quality Control Does Too!

Well, surprising no one really, there's a very cozy relationship between the state road agency and the contractors that "fix" the damn roads.

That cozy relationship extends to a lack of competent quality testing, resulting in you guessed it - roads that don't even meet the already low quality standards in this state.

The Detroit Free Press: MDOT fails to ensure quality of gravel used in Michigan road projects, audit shows

I mean, our current road construction and quality standards are great - if this state was Georgia.  

For Michigan, however, with our winters even our current standards are not enough, and the state can't or will not even enforce those basic standards. 

So much for Gov. "Fix the damn roads" Whitmer - it's now over four years and she can't even ensure her own agency is holding the (union) road construction companies to the bare minimums, or her own state agencies to do their own damn jobs.

This is but one of the reasons why Michigan has some of the highest gas taxes and spending on roads, and yet continues to have some of the worst roads in the nation.

There Is Nothing Government Operates That Cannot Lose Money

From marijuana, to whorehouses to now legalized gambling.  Government somehow always manages to lose money on a sure thing.

Reason: D.C. Managed To Lose $4 Million on Its Own Sports Betting App

After the D.C. Council approved sports gambling in the district in 2018, it further authorized a single company to develop the GambetDC app, at a cost of $215 million over five years. In return, the District hoped to see annual tax revenues of $20 million from bets placed. Instead, the lottery admitted this week that the D.C. government only took in about $1.5 million from the app in 2021, its first full year of operation. In fact, after adjusting for the cost of advertising the app, the government actually lost more than $4 million last year. 

One has to wonder at the relationship, if any, of the company to any of the City Council members or officials for this kind of deal to get authorized, or is it just standard government inefficiency and lack of any business acumen and oversight at work?

If the rosiest projection is it costs $215 million and you're expecting a revenue of only $20 million per year, then that's over a 10 year period before you even see any positive cash flow from the venture (DC council, I'm sure, hates the word profit).  

That's bad enough, but to then show a loss of $4 million a year due to it not working destroys these projections entirely and makes you wonder if anyone did any due dilligence on this at all.  DC losing money from legalized gambling is simply nuts.

Of course, it's not their money at stake, and it's unlikely that any of the decision makers will suffer any consequences from this which partially explains why these inexplicable losses keep occurring - the ones making the decision have no skin in the game and no downside to their bad bets, and in fact win either way while the taxpayers take the loss.

Opportunity Lost: Chance For Huge Michigan Crawfish Boil Goes Up In Smoke

The Michigan DNR in Port Huron made the largest seizure of an invasive species - 2,000 pounds of live red swamp crawfish, found in a truck, which are illegal to bring into Michigan.

So what do you do with a ton of illegal crawfish? One would think a crawfish boil would be in order to celebrate such a seizure.

But no. Lacking such imagination, the DNR decided to have all those lovely crawfish go up in smoke.

The Detroit News: DNR seizes, incinerates ton of illegal crawfish

Such a terrible waste.

Now I want to go back down to visit Murphy's Law and attend a crawfish boil in N'awlins.

Bureaucrats Naturally Waste Money 'Cause It Isn't Theirs

Typically if money isn't yours and you have control of it, you don't care all that much about using it wisely or preventing it from going to waste. When the money comes from a theoretically inexhaustible supply of taxpayer money, it's even easier, at least until that supply runs out.

The Detroit Free Press: Tab for Guardian Building scaffolding keeps growing

Wayne County has spent close to an estimated $100,000 to rent scaffolding outside the Guardian Building even though the related work happened more than two years ago.

The scaffolding is still there as some work still needs to be done, but Wayne County officials then sat on the second phase that would complete the work and simply kept paying the rent on the scaffolding. For TWO YEARS.

This is after the County bought the building for 14.5 million, knowing it needed 13 million dollars of repairs but actually spending at least twice that so far. One would hope the Free Press will dig deeper to see who paid what to whom, and for what quid pro quo in this mess.

Waste on top of waste, which helps explain the predicament Wayne County is in.

But what the heck, it's just taxpayers' money and the potential for a state bailout later when it all falls apart, right?

A Port Authority Building To Nowhere

With great fanfare, and with over $22,000,000.00 in public funds spent on a Port Authority public dock and terminal building designed for international cruise ships and acting as a customs point of entry on the Detroit River, there's just a small problem.

It is not suitable for US Customs to use and it failed to meet their requirements so they refuse to use it, so it cannot be used as designed. You would think a building designed for US Customs to use would not have overlooked that minor detail.

Instead the Port Authority building is currently being used for catering and holding wedding parties in a portion of the building.

Instead of spending an additional $170,000 to make it suitable for use, the plan now seems to be to sell it at a loss, likely to some politically connected developer.

Then again, all of one cruise ship docked there in the past two years. So it was a great investment of $22 million in public funds. On the upside 80% of the money came from the federal government so the building could be named after Senator Carl Levin with the remaining 20% from local boundless fonts of money - the City Detroit (now out of bankruptcy) and Wayne County (teetering on the verge of bankruptcy).

Yet another edifice and result of Democrat deficit spending, profligate waste, and incompetency in action.

The Detroit News: Port Authority open to selling $22M terminal building

Government Waste is the (Cherry) Pits

Mich. tart cherry growers ordered to dump part of crop

Michigan tart cherry growers say they're preparing to let up to a quarter of this year's bumper crop rot on the ground under a federal marketing order, and some say they'll shift into more profitable wine grape production.

The order will divert 42 percent of the nation's about 300 million-pound tart cherry harvest this year.

Growers in the Grand Traverse Bay area estimate they'll abandon 20 to 25 percent of their crop.

Some producers are unhappy about the dumping, and grower Leonard Ligon made his feelings known by dumping his 72,000 pounds of cherries along a road in Grand Traverse County's Peninsula Township.

New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin are the other major producers.

Just led food go to waste as part of the boondoggle we have with agriculture in this country. Too bad, tart cherries are good eating.

More Government waste - Clinton Firearms destruction policy still alive and well

Under 41 CFR 101-42.1102-10, Firearms from Federal agencies can only be transferred to State law enforcement which must abide by the same regulation for disposal, or smelted down.

This leads to an incredibly wasteful and spiteful destruction of fine, collectible firearms.

For example, the United States Park Police is transitioning from the HK P7 M8 and M13 in 9mm to the HK USP in 40 S&W. With approximately 600 officers, this is a large purchase, and a large number of P7s, marked with United States Park Police markings that will face destruction. Indeed, even officers are not being allowed to purchase their old service firearms but all will have tio be turned in and destroyed.

Based on good information from an anonymous source with knowledge of the transition, it is known that Glock Inc offered to trade a Glock 22 and a Glock 27 for each P7, at no cost to the agency. HK apparently offered a similar trade-in deal for their USP 40s.

Unfortunately, due to this Clintonian regulation, the P7s are going to be destroyed and the department has to spend some serious money, reequipping its officers with the new firearms rather than obtaining the same firearms without any cost to the Agency or the taxpayer.

Given the value of the P7s on the collector market are probably in the range of $600-700 dollars at least, and we're talking about a minimum of 600 firearms, that's a seriously wasteful and spiteful destruction of firearms, depriving collectors of rare firearms marked from a Federal law enforcement agency.

Multiply this waste by each armed federal agency and this is a serious wasteful legacy from the Clinton war on guns that has yet to be repealed or even addressed.

Abuse of Alcohol- Historic Fine Whiskey to be destroyed

While the raison d'etre of government is waste this needs to be halted: From WSMV Nashville:

Vintage Whiskey May Be Poured Out

Law Requires Officials Destroy Whiskey That Cannot Be Sold Legally
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Here's a sobering thought: Hundreds of bottles of Jack Daniel's whiskey, some of it almost 100 years old, may be unceremoniously poured down a drain because authorities suspect it was being sold by someone without a license.

Officials seized 2,400 bottles late last month during warehouse raids in Nashville and Lynchburg, the southern Tennessee town where the whiskey is distilled.

"Punish the person, not the whiskey," said an outraged Kyle MacDonald, 28, a Jack Daniel's drinker from British Columbia who promotes the whiskey on his blog. "Jack never did anything wrong, and the whiskey itself is innocent."

Investigators are also looking into whether some of the bottles had been stolen from the distillery. No one has been arrested.

Authorities are still determining how much of the liquor will be disposed of, and how much can be sold at auction.

Tennessee law requires officials to destroy whiskey that cannot be sold legally in the state, such as bottles designed for sale overseas and those with broken seals.

"We'd pour it out," said Danielle Elks, executive director of the Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission.

“If it's forfeited to the ABC, we will divide the alcohol into sellable and unsellable alcohol. The alcohol that's available for sale will be auctioned off to the licensees in the state, and the funds will go to the state,” she said.

The estimated value of the liquor is $1 million, possibly driven up by the value of the antique bottles, which range from 3-liter bottles to half-pints.

One seized bottle dates to 1914, with its seal unbroken. Elks said it is worth $10,000 on the collectors market. Investigators are looking into whether the liquor was being sold for the value of the bottles rather than the whiskey.

"Someone was making a great deal of profit," she said.

Tennessee whiskeys age in charred white oak barrels, but the maturing process that gives them character mostly stops when it is bottled. A bottled whiskey can deteriorate over a long period of time, especially if it is opened or exposed to sunlight and heat.

Christopher Carlsson, a spirits connoisseur and collector in Rochester, N.Y., said old vintages of whiskey in their original containers are highly prized.

"A lot of these bottles are priceless," he said. "It's like having a rare painting. It's heavily collected."

...

For now, the whiskey is being stored in a Nashville vault.

Elks acknowledged that pouring out the whiskey would not be a happy hour for her.

"It'd kill me," she said.

Officials with Jack Daniel’s agree.

“Certainly we would be all in favor of the bottles being auctioned off in some way in which the proceeds could go to charity. We've had some discussions with ABC in Tennessee about that particularly, with the oldest bottle that dates back to 1914,” said Jack Daniel’s spokesman Phil Lynch.

But not everyone’s motives are so noble. Some just wish that enormous stash of Tennessee sipping whiskey could be put to good use.
. . .

Attorneys are currently researching Tennessee law to see if the bottles that aren't sold at auction could somehow be preserved for historical purposes.

Pouring a million dollars, literally down the drain is unconscionable and the law should be changed immediately to prevent such waste. At the very least convert it into E85 rather than pour it down the drain - some lucky car would get some very vintage fuel.

This is Jack Daniels Whiskey - a signature American and indeed Tennessean product, for the State of Tennessee to desecrate such a fine and historic item is simply awful. Indeed, the Executive Director of the Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission even acknowledged it would be a terrible fate for such fine alcohol.

While my personal favorite is Irish Whiskey, specifically Bushmill's or Jameson's, Jack Daniels is an American icon and a fine and noble whiskey that can stand on its own merits and such historic whiskey, especially the 1914 bottle should be preserved. At least give it to the Jack Daniels Distillery with the condition that it must be kept there in a museum to show the history of their fine product, auction it off for charity in the state, or simply, since its already seized, make any buyer pay the appropriate tax on the alcohol and reintroduce it into the stream of alcoholic commerce.

Save Jack!