DOGE looking to dodge bullets

I realize, everyone realizes that there is some waste in the Federal government and some cutbacks make sense.  Naturally this is easy to say unless it’s your Aunt Mable or Uncle Fred who just got whacked.  Like any large organization, there are some departments that are more bloated than others.  Taking the time to do a reduction in force (RIF) where appropriate just makes sense.  And if the year one tally of head chopping isn’t large enough to support the promised tax cut for the ultra rich – no big deal.  You have three more years.  And let’s face it, no matter what, each year there will be cries of agony from the .01 percenters about needing more tax cuts.  The beast will always need to be fed.  President Trump should not try to eat the whole whale in one bite… And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

But seriously, the methodology, timetable and people being used to execute these cutbacks, legal or not, needs to be investigated and changed. For lack of a better description, the rushed shotgun approach Musk and Trump are taking is flawed.  They have the time to execute a more precise method of evaluating personnel vs. just firing large swaths of people and risk losing valuable employees.   As an example, the brain trust of the department of government efficiency (DOGE) decided to cut a number of people from our National Nuclear Security Administration.  These folks have very serious jobs.  If that department doesn’t run correctly big chunks of our country can go boom.  But it seems that after abruptly locking these NNSA people out of their email accounts and walking them to the door, someone alerted the doge elites that, “Oh Crap, we need these people back or really bad things will happen.”  And now they’re having problems finding said employees.  

Another example, our National Parks, America’s Best Kept Secret is no longer a secret.  Park activity is bursting at the seams – they are not sun setting.  We actually need more rangers to handle the overflow of people coming into the parks as well as protecting the parks from bad actors, which happens when there are not enough rangers to support good behavior.  The destruction of a million year old edifice can’t be replaced next year when appropriate funding is determined to be needed.  And National Park Rangers and staff are not overpaid individuals.  Many need second jobs in order to make a living.  They’re dedicated to their work because they love our National Parks.

And a fan favorite:  Social Security & Medicare.  This department’s employment is at it’s lowest point since 2010.  They have automated and still you can have wait times on the phone for two hours.  The people are great when you get them, but there aren’t nearly enough of them.  I sometimes believe the government is taking a lesson from the Insurance companies playbook where they’ll deny a claim as a matter of course hoping you’ll give up and go away.  More money for company executive as they hit their income targets and keep Wall Street happy.  And the phrase, “Trickle Down” is still acceptable, but the actual act of trickling down is now derogatory.  

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against successful people living a good life, unless of course they accumulated their wealth by emulating Bernie Madoff or Al Capone.  I just believe they should pay their fair share of taxes.  But with the IRS being cut to protect a certain class, I don’t believe that’s going to happen too often. 

And the people being used to do the hatchet work have obviously have not been appropriately vetted.  For instance, one 19 year old Edward Coristine who works for Elon Musk at DOGE has been in the news regularly.  First, at 17 he was let go from an internship because he stole secure company information.  He also goes by a self-given nickname that describes his perceived view of his genitals.  You’d think that someone doing a simple background check might have seen those two items and raised a red flag.  In my humble opinion, this is a dangerous person and should never be given access to the personal information of any federal employee.  And get this: he was given access to all of our information too!  Who knows what other creative uses he has for that information.  He needs to be permanently removed ASAP.  And any other members of the Musk team need to be vetted first, like any other person being given access to sensitive or classified government information.  This is just common sense.  Do these people have security clearances, NDAs, and financial disclosure agreements?  We’re looking for our representatives to do their jobs and protect us from bad actors.   

I know, a lot of gloom and doom, right?  We should all be thankful though.  It could be a lot worse.  Imagine being the President of the Ukraine.  How on God’s green earth can the President of the United States team up with Vladimir Putin?  It must be his steely, I’ll stab you in the back and I’ll burn your family charm.  To team with Putin would be akin to Franklin Delano Roosevelt deciding in 1941, “I think I’m going to cozy up to Hitler.”  Here’s to hoping my next Social Security check doesn’t come payable in rubles.

Serf and the Lords of the Manor

Regarding Jacob Perry’s article on January 23rd re:  Farmland tax break for millionaires: Over the years it has boggled my mind as to why 99% of the population of New Jersey has had no problem paying the real estate tax bill of the 1 percenters.  If I want to get dark, I imagine the multi-millionaires going to their annual meeting of the “Lords of Jersey.” They’re in a fantastically large hall that wreaks of old money.  They’re sitting in comfy leather chairs drinking ancient cognac.  All of a sudden, someone raises a glass and makes a toast to the Jersey Serfs (that’s us) who have no problem paying them hundreds of millions of dollars annually.  And with that the room erupts into uncontrollable laughter.  One of the Lords cries out, “Next year I’ll be raising Sheeple on my farm.”

What, are we back in the Middle Ages?  Isn’t anyone upset over this ludicrous situation?  Could it be that people are not aware? Or in today’s world, is it just seen as too big and time consuming an issue to fight.   Remember, a good chunk of our days have to be dedicated to viewing Facebook and TikTok – how else can we get out news?  

But the good news is we have the protection of our politicians that represent us.  (Did anyone else just shoot milk through their nose?)  

The New Jersey Bills we should all be watching:  In the Senate: S-3446 and in the Assembly A-4875.  These Bills look to establish a Farmland Review Commission to meet annually with a mission to right the ship.  Unfortunately, to date, no action has been taken to stop the raping and pillaging of the Serfs.   

The second to the last paragraph of Jacob Perry’s article is telling.  In it, he cites a conversation that Jack Curtiss of Mendham Township had with a legislator regarding the flaw in the farmland assessment tax system. During the conversation, the legislator said something to the effect of, the millionaire beneficiaries are all big political donors, so nobody wants to…gulp, lose their donations.  To that concern I offer my very realistic view:  The Lords of Jersey are all multi-millionaires.  They’re probably making more than a million dollars a year.  For them to pay their fair share of real estate taxes would be a minor rounding error for them.  And besides, I doubt that Bruce Springsteen is doing his taxes every year and sees the amount he’s paying.  He, like the other multi-millionaires in New Jersey have tax accountants filling out their returns and paying their bills.  The only thing those accountants are looking for is a piece of paper with a number on it that says, this is the amount you can claim on your Federal and State tax returns.   They’ll Never Know a Change Has Been Made!  So let’s just quietly fix the situation and nobody will be the wiser.

Joy of the Holiday Season

So four nights before Christmas I had a three hour “experience” driving to Newark Airport to pick up Prince Charming, aka my son.  Since they opened the enhanced Terminal A, the few times I’ve still flown out of old terminal C, it’s been nothing but a cakewalk.  Nobody is there.  It’s as if you now have a personal terminal with concierge service allowing you to come and go as you please – how civilized.  Alas, when they moved all of the workers from C to A and its Christmas time and there is an ungodly overload of humanity flying in, they don’t have the workers to man Terminal C.  When you drive into the airport complex you enter a lit up wonderland, but not the good kind.  You quickly start wishing you had taken that third blood pressure pill.  The roadway approaching terminal C is like the wild wild west.  The closest analogy I can think of is that it’s like being in a slow-mo version of a demolition derby with no rules.  It was every man, woman and child for themselves. What makes this endeavor a multifaceted challenge is that trying to get your luggage is like being in medieval times where the workers have lost the gift of speech and nothing requiring electricity is operational.  After an hour of sitting in this chaos I started thinking, “Ya know, junior might have really enjoyed a cross country bus trip - definitely next year.”  

What made the nightmare trip to the airport excruciatingly more enjoyable was that the week before, I blew up every nerve ending in my back when I thought I was 22 years old, again.  We had ordered a new bed, as the existing torture device we owned for over ten years had imploded.  The trench I was trying to sleep in had a crevasse as deep as the Grand Canyon.  We ordered this new bed online (actually my wife did) and it came in multiple shipments, each weighing three tons.  So we hired a burly Taskrabbit person to put it together and assist with the heavy lifting.  My wife asked me, “Do you think we need two rabbits?”  I, being a painfully cheap moron said, “Nah, I can help the guy.”  Remember, in my delusional state I’m “22” and it only gets better.  Because they charge you extra to move the furniture up and down steps, I decided I could move the new stuff up the stairs by myself...saving pennies in comparison to the expensive back brace I now need to buy.  (A really sad part of this story is that I almost got a hernia getting the boxes off my driveway into the house.  I’m not sure what part of my brain blocked that memory out and allowed me to think that dragging said boxes upstairs was a viable option.) 

As I spiraled into full on dementia, I also thought I could move the old king size mattress downstairs by myself.  My thinking was, I’ll be going down stairs, how hard would it be?  Somewhere deep in my gray matter I was picturing this mattress walking itself down the stairs, opening the front door and parking itself on the curb.  Then I woke up and found out it weighs 9 tons.  It was as if it was soaking wet, which might have been the case.  But that’s another issue I’ll be following up on at the urologist’s office next week - I’m hoping he does hernias too.  Needless to say I could barely stand up the old bed mattress let alone move it.  Then Mr. Rabbit and I proceeded to bringing it down the stairs. I was like a rag doll being dragged behind.  I also found out the hard way that our beautiful wood head and footboards...well they may have looked like wood, but they had to be made out of lead.  I figure once I get this body cast off, I’ll be ready to try driving again, once I re-learn how to walk.   Hoping for a kinder, gentler New Year.