"If the bureaucracy’s in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have?... It does not match the will of the people."
ADDED: "We're told the most number of people that could retire possibly in a month is 10,000. We're like well, why why why is that? Well, because all the retirement paperwork is manual — on paper — it's manually calculated, then written down a piece of paper, then it goes down a mine. I'm like what do you mean a mine. Like, yeah, there's a limestone mine where we store all the retirement paperwork... and this this mine looks like something out of the 50s because it was started in 1955 so it looks like it's like a time warp and then... the limiting factor is the speed at which the mine shaft elevator can move determines how many people can retire... and the elevator breaks down and then sometimes and then you can't — nobody can — retire doesn't that sound crazy? Like, a thousand people that work on this... working in in a mineshaft, uh, carrying manila envelopes to, you know, boxes in a mineshaft..."
Posts
83 comments:
It is not a rhetorical question…
No democracy is a given. But not even a republican form of government under the Constitution would be terminal.
No children in politics tag?
Boyers, Pennsylvania! It is legendary. I've heard they have rows of bureaucrats sitting in a mine in front of computers processing papers by the bundle. They are said to eat Twinkies from a huge bowl of complimentary Twinkies. Seriously.
https://federalnewsnetwork.com/causey/2012/10/all-feds-wind-up-buried-in-limestone-mine/
I LOLed when they zoomed out, and Lil' X was on Elon's shoulders! I love that this administration is making kids part of the program, again.
"After fact check, the 50 million dollars for condoms was sent to Mozambique, not Gaza, could you correct this statement?"
Great gotcha question.
To be fair, Boyers processed my federal retirement in five days, after 26 years of work. I had everything in order, though
"Democrats Uncover Devious Billionaire Plot To Spend Billions Buying Social Media Company To Get President Trump Elected In Order To Access The Treasury Database And Steal Grandma's $695 Social Security Check."
-The hivemind
No inflation!
Bring on the democratic mob disease spread a-holes.
the corrupt leftist democratic media are completely annoyed and stunned - because they are economic idiots. All of them.
Working in the file mine
Going down, down, down
Working in the file mine
Whoop, I wanna sit down
Five o'clock in the morning
Ten thousand already quit
Lord, I'm so tired
How long can Trump do it?
Working in the file mine
Going down, down, down
Working in the file mine
Whoop, I wanna sit down
'Cause I work every morning
Hauling files by the ton
But when Saturday rolls around
Ten thousand more, sez Elon
Working in the file mine
Going down, down, down
Working in the file mine
Whoop, I wanna sit down
JSM
Corrupt left are furious that our books are being cleaned up.
If this was a book I would stay up all night to finish it.
Corrupt Biden butt sniffers don't want the war in Ukraine to end - because it ends a lot of American Democxratic grift.
Duty of Inquiry said...
"If this was a book I would stay up all night to finish it."
It is, but I'm betting Infinite Jest will take you at least a week
"Boyers, Pennsylvania! It is legendary. I've heard they have rows of bureaucrats sitting in a mine in front of computers processing papers by the bundle."
I got to visit the former limestone mines in Boyers Pennsylvania that were repurposed for storage of government paperwork when I was working for the MITRE corporation. This was at least 35 years ago. Those huge caverns were filled with rows and rows of filing cabinets containing federal government workers records. At that time the government was mandated to maintain paper copies of these records. Every Christmas vacation they would have new filing cabinets brought in. They would they hire an army of students to come in and empty the documents from half of the filled filing cabinets into the empty ones. I asked the government workers what happens if the records were misplaced. They said that they would be lost forever.
This $30m woman needs to be named and arrested if she stole money.
@Dave Begley: She has been named. Samantha Powers --- former head of USAID.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/doge-investigating-feds-whose-net-worths-have-exploded-after-samantha-power-bombshell
I suspect its was nominally "legal" insider trading akin to Nancy Pelosi.
“It’s mind blowing.”
Yes, it is. Happy to see the Dems defending theft, corruption and paying terrorists.
Enigma:
I told Samantha Power, to her face at the Texas Book Festival, that she was a liar. Hope to see her in prison.
There are people under the top managers that have a ridiculous net worth making $150K. Musk seemed to suggest they were looking at that at well. They are smoking out the whistleblowers.
the "mineshaft gap!" That's funny.
As we watched the interview on the news, and Little X picking his nose, I turned to my wife and said, "You know, I bet there's a lot of presidential boogers on the underside of that desk."
JSM @5:55pm… Nice take on a tune from one of America’s best songwriters (IMHO), Allen Toussaint!
I thought both Musk and President Trump did a good job explaining this to the reporters who, as usual, didn’t want to hear it.
“I told Samantha Power, to her face at the Texas Book Festival, that she was a liar. Hope to see her in prison.”
You’d better return those library books and pay the late charges, Begley, or you just might do that.
Elon giving America a civics lesson
I like Musk's coat. Has that "Tombstone" look. Keep it up Elon!
Trump's ego doesn't look threatened by Musk at all. Looks like he knows he hired the best man possible to get a job done. That a real executive. A real President.
It's always worse than initial report. I knew it.
Begley and Iman, ref seeing Samantha Power in prison:
Iman’s joke reminded me of a scene in The Chosen. The centurion whose servant Christ later heals is (non-biblically) in the stockade for disobeying his (non-biblical) legate. The legate then gets in trouble, and the centurion is freed and promoted to replace him. They wind up passing each other, one on the way into jail, one on the way out.
Too bad things don’t work fast enough for all the old regime’s people and the Trump prisoners to pass each other the same way.
Maybe it will become part of the peaceful transfer of power every four years, like the Warner Bros wolf and sheepdog clocking in and out each day.
JSM
"I thought both Musk and President Trump did a good job explaining this to the reporters who, as usual, didn’t want to hear it."
They sure seemed less interested in the actual fraud that's been found so far than the imagined fraud they're trying to imply Musk plans to commit.
Next key step ... have Congress outlaw federal public service unions. And maybe set compensation for GS-1 to GS-15 at 80 to 100% of private-sector median in the 6 dozen or so regions.
I am, however, strongly pro trade unions, to the point I believe they should be put in charge of high school trades classes. Kids graduate with a GED, plus an Apprentice license, at the same graduation ceremony as the university track kids.
Saw some CNN this morning. Dana Bash looked like she was about to faint over having to say Harry Bōlz on the air.
My suggestion is drill two more mine shafts down in the limestone mine and transfer egregious offenders like Samantha Powers and the Dept of Ed people where the sun don't shine.
I had no idea they were taking the Deep State stuff this literally.
Putin, after learning about this revelation. must be thinking "How did we ever lose the Cold War to these idiots?"
I feel like these men are now in the most pivotal battle for the Union since the Civil War. And once again, the Democrats are the bad guys. I hope they win.
As usual - the corrupt democrat party press are uninterested in cleaning up a massive and corrupt financial mess made by Crook Joe and the mob democrats. They are all part of it.
Democratic media not interested in aiding the American Tax Payer.
Nobody has a clue what’s going on in the government then Trump sends in Elon to take a look, and then they’re all worried claiming that Elon is not being transparent when he’s the one making the not-transparent, transparent,
They keep such poor records it's impossible to audit?
Somebody's got to the bookie. What's Elon Musk talking about?
"I had no idea they were taking the Deep State stuff this literally."
😂
"Putin, after learning about this revelation. must be thinking 'How did we ever lose the Cold War to these idiots?'"
I'd put our limestone warehouse against their Gulag archipelago any day.
I love Little X's reaction after Musk's "mind-blowing" revelation that a suspect identity list is not even used once it finally becomes available after a year.
You don’t need more shafts, just have two loop chains with sprockets at the top and bottom, attach flat bottom buckets every 5 feet, then drop the boxes into the buckets at the top, you could have boxes dumped at the lower shaft station every second.
I watched all of that. That is why I voted DJT 2024. I liked DJT as CEO and Elon as project manager. Elon talking while dealing with his son was funny/crazy/hilarious. Alas, I doubt there is fraud like they are talking. Not entering a memo on a payment is not great accounting control, but it does not mean there was fraud. If fraud is at the 500 billion level, then this will be bigger than Watergate. Hell, in some ways, it would be bigger than the Boston tea party. We shall see. Cheers all.
So, if there's (God forbid) an earthquake and the mine collapses, nobody can retire... until the mine is restored?
I'm so confused.
Democrats are mobsters.
Joe and his Obama cabal rigged the payments. Evil.
Democrats are pure evil.
On X there was a clip of him and the kid seemed pretty cool. Someone said that he was the mysterious "Mr X" the ultra young wiz kid behind the Doge team.
After all, when he was half his current age he suggested to Big E that the solution to the rocket landing problem was the Mechano arms. (Per Isaacson's book, available at the portal)
John Henry
I am, however, strongly pro trade unions, to the point I believe they should be put in charge of high school trades classes. Kids graduate with a GED, plus an Apprentice license, at the same graduation ceremony as the university track kids.
Me too, at least in theory. There are good unions out there but there are also corrupt ones.
But to your general point about more apprenticeship and trades training programs, right on, brother!
I was talking to people at the PackExpo show last November who run companies building automated manufacturing machines. They are DESPERATE for PLC programmers (and skilled people in general) PLC programmers can make $50m right out of a 1 year (or less) training program and $80m by the end of their first year.
John Henry
I heard today on the No Agenda podcast that the minute Trump was sworn in, the DOGE boys were in Treasury downloading everything. Within a couple hours, they were offsite with hard drives.
The hoorah about them being in the Treasury building is just that hoorah. They've already got everything. If they get kicked out of Treasury, it doesn't matter.
And I'm glad to see the dept of Ed on it's last legs.
John Henry
So when it comes to gutting a bloated beauracracy and trimming waste from government… government is giving us the shaft.
“After fact check, the 50 million dollars for condoms was sent to Mozambique, not Gaza, could you correct this statement?"…”great gotcha question”.
— I liked Elon’s answer. Two points: one, he said, they’re going fast. They’re going to make mistakes. They will correct them. Two: 50 million dollars, that’s a lot for condoms, no matter where they go.
I thought this press conference was next level entertaining. Lil x stole the show.
Trump, Musk
Biden, S. Power
"A" people hire "A" people.
"B" people get rolled by the "C" rooks they hire
The FEMA situation is MUCH worse than them spending $59M on illegals as our citizens still suffer after natural disasters. Per the great work of @BreannaMorello
, we know FEMA spent hundreds of millions on illegals over the past 4 years and that’s only ONE agency. Total betrayal.
Musk demonstrates he doesn't understand how government financing works. We’re in for weeks of this on end. One of Musk’s teenage subordinates stumbles into a complicated system they don’t understand, thinks they’ve discovered something earth-shattering the veteran dunces never noticed, relays to Musk who also doesn’t understand, and broadcasts it to millions of followers.
Musk demonstrates he doesn't understand how government financing works.
I'd say he made it pretty clear that "government financing" doesn't work. Or at least that those responsible for attempting to work it are not working it the way it's supposed to work. No spending or budget codes. No attention paid to Do Not Pay lists. Payments for 150yo retirees.
What makes you think the codes who are matching girls and teaching relationships (a) need to understand the government procurement process in order to understand dependencies in coffee? And (b) don't have sufficient understanding of what they're doing? Of what they've brought to light with regard to payment processes and controls, does it sound as if a reasonable business entity would operate this way?
The question of spending priorities is separate, of course. But when you hear about $50mm going to Mozambique, population 34mm (male population under 70yo about 7.5mm per Google), for "condoms for HIV prevention," doesn't it sound as if there might be some payola happening there? I'm sure that a certain amount of bribery is required in some areas in order to get aid to where it's needed. But why shouldn't we know how much and to whom? The bribees clearly have no sense of shame or reluctance about demanding it, it's counted as "cost of doing business" in many countries, so why not make it public?
Of course, if some of those funds are being, shall we say, "diverted" to Good Friends of USAID, those payees might be a little less willing to have their names publicized.
"Musk demonstrates he doesn't understand how government financing works."
Yeah, paper processing in a mine is world class information management.
Musk demonstrates he doesn't understand how government financing works.
He understands it better than you do.
Lord. Too many typos. The CODERS who are matching FIELDS and TRACING relationships. And dependencies in CODE.
Tiny font, tired eyes!
Furthermore - considering that SpaceX (for instance) uses accounting and procurement software developed in-house, do you think maybe some of those "teenage subordinates" might have some experience with it? Or is every coder Musk hires doing web code for X?
“Musk demonstrates he doesn't understand how government financing works. We’re in for weeks of this on end. One of Musk’s teenage subordinates stumbles into a complicated system they don’t understand, thinks they’ve discovered something earth-shattering the veteran dunces never noticed, relays to Musk who also doesn’t understand, and broadcasts it to millions of followers.”
Best comment ever.
I would pay to watch you explain “how government financing works” to Elon Musk and to his “teenage subordinates”.
It’s so complicated Elon. Here, let Kakistocracy explain it you.
I need someone brilliant to explain the limestone mine to Elon Musk and his “teenage subordinates”. I’ll watch.
https://www.mediaite.com/trump/the-limestone-mine-that-elon-musk-said-manually-processes-federal-retirement-paperwork-is-actually-real/
The Harry Sisson of Althouse blog, Abacus Boy LLR-democratical Rich: "Musk demonstrates he doesn't understand how government financing works. We’re in for weeks of this on end. One of Musk’s teenage subordinates stumbles into a complicated system they don’t understand, thinks they’ve discovered something earth-shattering the veteran dunces never noticed, relays to Musk who also doesn’t understand, and broadcasts it to millions of followers"
LOL
Lets break this down, shall we?
"Musk demonstrates he doesn't understand how government financing works."
No "evidence" which "demostrates" this is provided.
"We’re in for weeks of this on end."
Meaningless blather.
"One of Musk’s teenage subordinates stumbles into a complicated system they don’t understand,..."
No evidence anyone "stumbled" into anything nor that the DOGE members, systems experts at the highest levels from leading edge tech companies dont "understand".
"...thinks they’ve discovered something earth-shattering the veteran dunces never noticed, ..."
The "veterans" have had their entire careers to become whistleblowers and expose corruption, malfeasance and massive waste. They never did. The DOGE team is...and it angers Li'l Richie Boy to no end...because its Elon's Team. And Li'l Richie Boy has told us all for years that ALL of Musk's companies were fake and would fail within a short period of time and Li'l Richie is embarrassed by his predictive failures made public for all to see.
"...relays to Musk who also doesn’t understand, and broadcasts it to millions of followers..."
More gaslighting lies from the Harry Sisson of Althouse blog.
LLR-democratical Rich racing to gadfly levels of stupidity.
And its magnifincent to see in real time.
Magnificent.
@Bart Hall: Next key step ... have Congress outlaw federal public service unions. And maybe set compensation for GS-1 to GS-15 at 80 to 100% of private-sector median in the 6 dozen or so regions.
Federal unions: None other than FDR opposed federal unions because he held that the regulators (government) could not be in an adversarial relationship with themselves (federal employees). The unions are given lip service by the Democrats per talk of "negotiation with our union partners," but they have no meaningful power. Trump tore up Biden's remote work agreement with the unions in one day. They are suing, but will likely lose.
Pay rates: that is not too far from the current practice of federal "locality pay" -- it is adjusted to match the local cost of living and to be able to survive in places like SF or NYC. The huge, enormous fraud of this system is that D.C. receives locality pay too. This is an area with unlimited regional development in Maryland and Virginia, and salaries are largely set by the federal managers in the region. So, they get high locality pay mainly to be paid more than lowly "field staff" in SF or NYC. If the pay boost was taken away the cost of living in DC would drop by the same amount of the locality pay boost.
Similarly, all the local landlords know the size of federal raises and annual COLAs, so they bump up rents in parallel.
"At that time the government was mandated to maintain paper copies of these records."
Yeah, the paper copies requirement died. I retired from Federal Service in 2010. I was asked if I wanted copies of all my personnel records. Sure, sez I. If there was a question of time served, or other SNAFU I'd like the proof. In a couple of weeks I was given a package of papers that contained, so I was told, copies of all my service records.
I came to believe the copy effort was likely a minority contractor and/or low bid.
Many of the copies were illegible. Several pages were placed in the copier at an angle so that a large corner of the page was not on the copy provided.
I called Washington D.C. HR folk to see if I could get legible copies of the missing/poor pages sent to me.
Oh no, you can't was the reply. We shredded the original papers after the copies for you were made.
Your tax dollars at work.
THERE was a great operations management book that focused on eliminating bottlenecks in manufacturing that would lead to efficiency gains, often with little further capital investment needed. At a very well known Fortune 500 company I worked for a bit later they would field teams made up of several departments called Rapid Continuous Improvement. Same concept: streamlining operations to improve efficiency.
That is essentially what DOGE is engaged in and because the stakeholders are all of us we need to hear about these limiting factors, especially ones as ridiculous as the elevator in a limestone mineshaft.
Darkisland the No Agenda reference was to a Free Press article by Eko. Search "eko loves you" to locate the original. It has the appearance of being written by someone very close to DOGE if not actually a part of the team.
@Mike: The primary purpose of many or most federal jobs is pork, patronage, and DEI. This dates back to the Revolutionary War era when the Navy tried to build its own wooden ships. The jobs went to the friends of the elected officials, while the prices were high and quality was low. Federal contracting was born from that -- open market ships were cheaper and better. Military veterans (especially disabled ones) were given veteran's preference roles too -- now 600,000 of those roles exist. They are often filled by people with weak KSAs. Good luck implementing obvious and easy RCI by firing them...
Similarly, many anti-slavery (Republicans of the time) created quasi-servant maintenance and service jobs in DC for escaped slaves. These were proto-DEI positions and they continued until LBJ's Great Society of 1965 made DEI and promotions to higher tiers an official thing. The Democrats became the DEI party only after WW2, but Nixon was hardly different.
Almost literally down the rabbit hole.
“the limiting factor is the speed at which the mine shaft elevator can move determines how many people can retire”
Somewhere in the deep state the federal employee who told Musk that is guffawing with his colleagues about how he put one over on Musk and he used it in his press conference.
What Musk should and probably does know, and anyone who has been part of a reduction in force at a private company knows, is that the HR department has to be staffed up to handle the terminations and early retirements, often by bringing in an outside company. We’ll see who gets that contract.
How did that conversation go?
“I’m sorry Mr. Musk, but we just can’t fire or retire federal employees as fast as you would like because all the paperwork has to be sent down the mineshaft, and if the mineshaft elevator breaks, no one can be fired or retire,”
I have to give that person props for being able to deliver that message with a straight face. Of course, The Boring Company guy just ate it up. Will he hire his own company to dig another mineshaft?
Stop saying DOGE is being transparent when they haven't shown any proof of all the things they're alleging.
@Left Bank of the Charles: What Musk should and probably does know, and anyone who has been part of a reduction in force at a private company knows, is that the HR department has to be staffed up to handle the terminations and early retirements, often by bringing in an outside company. We’ll see who gets that contract.
Federal HR departments are often weak and ineffective. This follows from (1) the unintended effect of nepotism and DEI programs led to many HR management positions being held exclusively for women, such as wives and daughters, (2) highly-political managers who do not want or tolerate true competence near their throne. A strong HR manager could easily outlast the election-driven agency heads by decades. Or, a capable underling may move into their jobs. (3) Federal rules allow the highly connected Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in charge of most everything -- they run the Boyers mine.
Congress and the feds also set up the system so that contractors cannot perform "inherently governmental functions" -- so they tend staff HR units from the pool of leftover veterans and DEI hires.
The most successful businessman of our time--and of all time--tells the world that the federal government's financing and payment systems are completely screwed up and rife with fraud, and the response of our resident genius lefties is to tell us that he doesn't understand these complicated systems.
Go figure.
It's like me telling Tom Brady that the Chief's offense is way too complicated for him to understand.
I think that when all is said and done the actual waste due to fraud , mismanagement and overpaying will be close to a trillion dollars. Once they start working on Medicare and Medicaid you'll really start to see some numbers.
This was undeniably one of the weirdest press conferences of all time. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I saw a couple clips yesterday, but seeing it in its entirety was remarkable. I can't think of any normal American who has a problem with anything they're doing. The Dems really screwed up. They should have said we're going to help with the obvious fraud and then complain about the gray areas. They might have been able to save USAID that way. Placation and cooperation engenders good will. But they don't look good allowing social security payments to 150 year olds.
A man who has billions of dollars worth of government contracts waltzes into the oval office (with his child on his shoulders) and proclaims he is going to dismantle the government and police himself. Seems legit.
The mineshaft thing sounds like the plot of a new Terry Gilliam movie.
Yeah, we can't let someone on the board of Raytheon be in charge of defense. That would be crazy!
bich whined Stop saying DOGE is being transparent when they haven't shown any proof of all the things they're alleging.
I've seen a lot of proof from what DOGE uncovered, and anyone with access to X can too. Not to mention Karolyn Leavitt's news conference yesterday where she showed contract after contract for DEI "consulting" issued AFTER Trump's executive order banning DEI. That was broadcast live and is available on the Whitehouse.gov site.
To sum up, I've seen far more proof of DOGE's finds in the last WEEK than you've EVER shown for the stupid shit you assert on here.
Pretty witty Lucille, if one overlooks the fact he didn't waltz, didn't proclaim he was dismantling government and didn't say he'd police himself. But yes, his child was on his shoulders. One outta four is totes legit!
Post a Comment
Comments older than 2 days are always moderated. Newer comments may be unmoderated, but are still subject to a spam filter and may take a few hours to get released. Thanks for your contributions and your patience.