There’s 12m entries aged over 120, and they’re not all exactly the same age.
Suspect there’s a lot of dates of birth that are 100 years away from what they should be, and 1,000 people seemingly born in 1,800.
(Snip)
What amazes me is that you believe what Musk and his pimply nerds come out with. Why?
It's also looking in the wrong place. The Real Steal happens inside FAR contracts. And is completely legal.
The US government contracts most stuff under the Federal Acquisition Regulations. These came about by, every time there was fraud or profiteering, adding more regulation.
So a company working on a FAR contract can often only make a certain amount of profit. Yes, being too profitable is an offence (see War Profiteering and WWI).
An intense system of paperwork and supervision is put in place inside the companies to enforce all this. This is all paid for by the government via increased cost. Better yet, this forms a massive barrier to entrants - only companies setup to generate the tidal wave of paperwork can get involved.
The fun really starts at outsourcing. The simplest thing to do (paperwork wise) is to subcontract a piece of the work to another company. And they in their turn etc etc. The beauty of this is that profit is allowed at each stage in the pyramid of outsourcing. So I contract Fred to make something. He gets it made by Dave, who puts 20% on top. Dave gets Arnold to make it and puts 20% on top.....
Awesome fun.
But it gets better. This structure is awesome for distributing work politically. So you don't donate to Congressman Turd. No Sir. But all the companies in the pyramid, in his district do.... So you align the pyramid with those who vote to pour money in at the top.
It's a bit like those stack of champagne goblets they use in the movies to express conspicuous consumption by rich people. A flunky pours champagne in at the top and it fills all the glasses in the pyramid.
And even better. What happens, if you accidentally own shares in companies that own shares in companies that are part of the pyramid? Well, you collect far more than your profit..... It's enough to make you cry with joy, isn't it?
And it's all legal and In The Best Possible Taste! (as Kenny Everett used to say)
The contract corruption is much more difficult to unpick though, much easier to start with the silly line items in the international aid budget and the absurdity of the social security database, things that don’t need any more explaining to the average man in the street.
This gives them political cover, for when they come for the really dodgy but complex contracts where the serious money laundering happens.
The really interesting thing to watch is when the pushback starts from the politicians and their campaign funds, that are right in the middle of all this web and making serious bank.
I suspect the inflexion moment is probably going to be RFK’s proposal to get the pharma ads off TV, to which the entire mainstream media and political ecosystem is going to go totally ballistic against the idea.
Then the fun is going to be the public reaction to the political reaction. Are they going to accept the politicians voting to keep greasing their own palms, or will there actually be a serious backlash that leads to primary challenges?
The last civil war widow didn't actually receive her pension - she didn't claim it because her son-in-law threatened her if she did.
A disabled daughter of a veteran was still receiving a pension until 2020, however.
Ah so the last widow actually receiving a pension died only 144 years after the war ended!
Apparently the thinking within US social security is that their primary aim is to minimise complaints, which means minimising false negative flags in the database. No-one receiving money they’re not expecting is making a complaint, and for various reasons this has been happening for decades with no auditing.
The working estimate for Musk’s team is several hundred billion dollars a year paid out incorrectly.
When added to the story from last week of the federal employee retirement process still being done on paper and taking months to complete, It’s quite the insight into just how antequated are all of the systems they’re using. One can imagine that the UK government will also have a number of equally silly stories about systems that hang together by the barest of threads.
US gov't spend is/was ~ 23% of gdp, whereas we're at ~45%. If you allow 11% for health it's still 23/34 as comparable figures to my mind. I think this is a large part of why they've got so much richer than us since 2008. We need to cut a heck of a lot. Some good news on the NHS numbers this morning. If Starmer goes before the election Streeting might be the one to fight 2029.
The reason they’ve got so much richer than us since 2008, in 3 charts and one paragraph:
Exports The top exports of United States are Crude Petroleum ($125B), Refined Petroleum ($107B), Petroleum Gas ($83.2B), Gas Turbines ($69.3B), and Cars ($65.3B), exporting mostly to Canada ($269B), Mexico ($243B), China ($154B), Germany ($94.8B), and Japan ($80.2B).
USA = petrostate. A giant Saudi, but with alcohol.
There’s 12m entries aged over 120, and they’re not all exactly the same age.
Suspect there’s a lot of dates of birth that are 100 years away from what they should be, and 1,000 people seemingly born in 1,800.
(Snip)
What amazes me is that you believe what Musk and his pimply nerds come out with. Why?
It's also looking in the wrong place. The Real Steal happens inside FAR contracts. And is completely legal.
The US government contracts most stuff under the Federal Acquisition Regulations. These came about by, every time there was fraud or profiteering, adding more regulation.
So a company working on a FAR contract can often only make a certain amount of profit. Yes, being too profitable is an offence (see War Profiteering and WWI).
An intense system of paperwork and supervision is put in place inside the companies to enforce all this. This is all paid for by the government via increased cost. Better yet, this forms a massive barrier to entrants - only companies setup to generate the tidal wave of paperwork can get involved.
The fun really starts at outsourcing. The simplest thing to do (paperwork wise) is to subcontract a piece of the work to another company. And they in their turn etc etc. The beauty of this is that profit is allowed at each stage in the pyramid of outsourcing. So I contract Fred to make something. He gets it made by Dave, who puts 20% on top. Dave gets Arnold to make it and puts 20% on top.....
Awesome fun.
But it gets better. This structure is awesome for distributing work politically. So you don't donate to Congressman Turd. No Sir. But all the companies in the pyramid, in his district do.... So you align the pyramid with those who vote to pour money in at the top.
It's a bit like those stack of champagne goblets they use in the movies to express conspicuous consumption by rich people. A flunky pours champagne in at the top and it fills all the glasses in the pyramid.
And even better. What happens, if you accidentally own shares in companies that own shares in companies that are part of the pyramid? Well, you collect far more than your profit..... It's enough to make you cry with joy, isn't it?
And it's all legal and In The Best Possible Taste! (as Kenny Everett used to say)
The contract corruption is much more difficult to unpick though, much easier to start with the silly line items in the international aid budget and the absurdity of the social security database, things that don’t need any more explaining to the average man in the street.
This gives them political cover, for when they come for the really dodgy but complex contracts where the serious money laundering happens.
The really interesting thing to watch is when the pushback starts from the politicians and their campaign funds, that are right in the middle of all this web and making serious bank.
I suspect the inflexion moment is probably going to be RFK’s proposal to get the pharma ads off TV, to which the entire mainstream media and political ecosystem is going to go totally ballistic against the idea.
Then the fun is going to be the public reaction to the political reaction. Are they going to accept the politicians voting to keep greasing their own palms, or will there actually be a serious backlash that leads to primary challenges?
There is not the slightest possibility that they will touch FAR and the pyramids.
Every single person in Washington, in politics, and the permanent apparatus of government feeds off the system.
The only possibility of reform is slowly edging non-FAR, fixed price contracts into more areas. But Congress has carefully and specifically banned that.
The last civil war widow didn't actually receive her pension - she didn't claim it because her son-in-law threatened her if she did.
A disabled daughter of a veteran was still receiving a pension until 2020, however.
Ah so the last widow actually receiving a pension died only 144 years after the war ended!
Apparently the thinking within US social security is that their primary aim is to minimise complaints, which means minimising false negative flags in the database. No-one receiving money they’re not expecting is making a complaint, and for various reasons this has been happening for decades with no auditing.
The working estimate for Musk’s team is several hundred billion dollars a year paid out incorrectly.
When added to the story from last week of the federal employee retirement process still being done on paper and taking months to complete, It’s quite the insight into just how antequated are all of the systems they’re using. One can imagine that the UK government will also have a number of equally silly stories about systems that hang together by the barest of threads.
The biggest problem with the incompetent and ham fisted way this is being done, is that it will be a disaster and block attempts at genuine reform for a generation.
Musk and his "pimple faced teenagers" are doing fine, some stuff will inevitably be cut too far but shouting in the media about particular hobby horses doesn't mean what he's doing isn't working.
The live stream of savings is on: https://doge.gov/ If it's going to be stopped it'll either be because of the courts or congress people's vested interests.
Next stop the US military, and err "emphasising" the need for Europe to deal with it's own issues will allow an absolute chainsaw to that budget. Seems like Cooper is going to copy aspects of DOGE anyway to try and find savings.
At a guess – year of birth is a 4-digit field but when only two digits are entered, as is the human way, the system automatically adds 1900 because no-one updated it for the new millennium.
The last civil war widow didn't actually receive her pension - she didn't claim it because her son-in-law threatened her if she did.
A disabled daughter of a veteran was still receiving a pension until 2020, however.
Ah so the last widow actually receiving a pension died only 144 years after the war ended!
Apparently the thinking within US social security is that their primary aim is to minimise complaints, which means minimising false negative flags in the database. No-one receiving money they’re not expecting is making a complaint, and for various reasons this has been happening for decades with no auditing.
The working estimate for Musk’s team is several hundred billion dollars a year paid out incorrectly.
When added to the story from last week of the federal employee retirement process still being done on paper and taking months to complete, It’s quite the insight into just how antequated are all of the systems they’re using. One can imagine that the UK government will also have a number of equally silly stories about systems that hang together by the barest of threads.
US gov't spend is/was ~ 23% of gdp, whereas we're at ~45%. If you allow 11% for health it's still 23/34 as comparable figures to my mind. I think this is a large part of why they've got so much richer than us since 2008. We need to cut a heck of a lot. Some good news on the NHS numbers this morning. If Starmer goes before the election Streeting might be the one to fight 2029.
The reason they’ve got so much richer than us since 2008, in 3 charts and one paragraph:
Exports The top exports of United States are Crude Petroleum ($125B), Refined Petroleum ($107B), Petroleum Gas ($83.2B), Gas Turbines ($69.3B), and Cars ($65.3B), exporting mostly to Canada ($269B), Mexico ($243B), China ($154B), Germany ($94.8B), and Japan ($80.2B).
USA = petrostate. A giant Saudi, but with alcohol.
Ukrainian President Zelensky says more than 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, with "tens of thousands more missing in action or in captivity".
Those missing in action could be dead or in captivity, Zelensky told NBC News on Sunday.
Ten days earlier, on 6 February, Zelensky said 45,100 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and around 390,000 had been wounded. Military experts in Ukraine and the West believe the number could be far higher.
Russia hasn't released an equivalent figure, but UK Defence Intelligence estimated in December that an average of 1,523 Russian soldiers were being killed and wounded every day.
Zelensky says up to 350,000 Russian soldiers have been killed - other reports suggest that number could be much higher.
This is timely given Perun's latest video on Russian recruitment.
Does this mean that the Red Cross is not getting access to Ukrainians in Russian captivity?
There was a four-way meeting back in January with RU, UKR and the ICRC representatives in RU and UKR.
Essentially, there are packages and letters being delivered both ways, and an awful lot of missing UKR POWs and undeclared RU detention sites. So there are *some* ICRC visits, but only *some*. And UKR are also complaining that casualties are not being properly assessed and prioritised for repatriation.
The last civil war widow didn't actually receive her pension - she didn't claim it because her son-in-law threatened her if she did.
A disabled daughter of a veteran was still receiving a pension until 2020, however.
Ah so the last widow actually receiving a pension died only 144 years after the war ended!
Apparently the thinking within US social security is that their primary aim is to minimise complaints, which means minimising false negative flags in the database. No-one receiving money they’re not expecting is making a complaint, and for various reasons this has been happening for decades with no auditing.
The working estimate for Musk’s team is several hundred billion dollars a year paid out incorrectly.
When added to the story from last week of the federal employee retirement process still being done on paper and taking months to complete, It’s quite the insight into just how antequated are all of the systems they’re using. One can imagine that the UK government will also have a number of equally silly stories about systems that hang together by the barest of threads.
US gov't spend is/was ~ 23% of gdp, whereas we're at ~45%. If you allow 11% for health it's still 23/34 as comparable figures to my mind. I think this is a large part of why they've got so much richer than us since 2008. We need to cut a heck of a lot. Some good news on the NHS numbers this morning. If Starmer goes before the election Streeting might be the one to fight 2029.
The reason they’ve got so much richer than us since 2008, in 3 charts and one paragraph:
Exports The top exports of United States are Crude Petroleum ($125B), Refined Petroleum ($107B), Petroleum Gas ($83.2B), Gas Turbines ($69.3B), and Cars ($65.3B), exporting mostly to Canada ($269B), Mexico ($243B), China ($154B), Germany ($94.8B), and Japan ($80.2B).
USA = petrostate. A giant Saudi, but with alcohol.
Meanwhile in the UK we have Ed Miliband.
Even if we squeezed every last drop out of the North Sea and dug up the whole of Lincolnshire for fracking it wouldn’t touch the sides. The US has vast reserves.
Of course another cause of recent US GDP growth has been the investment boom triggered by Biden’s IRA. The UK could learn a thing or two about how to encourage green energy growth from the (pre-Trump) USA.
The last civil war widow didn't actually receive her pension - she didn't claim it because her son-in-law threatened her if she did.
A disabled daughter of a veteran was still receiving a pension until 2020, however.
Ah so the last widow actually receiving a pension died only 144 years after the war ended!
Apparently the thinking within US social security is that their primary aim is to minimise complaints, which means minimising false negative flags in the database. No-one receiving money they’re not expecting is making a complaint, and for various reasons this has been happening for decades with no auditing.
The working estimate for Musk’s team is several hundred billion dollars a year paid out incorrectly.
When added to the story from last week of the federal employee retirement process still being done on paper and taking months to complete, It’s quite the insight into just how antequated are all of the systems they’re using. One can imagine that the UK government will also have a number of equally silly stories about systems that hang together by the barest of threads.
US gov't spend is/was ~ 23% of gdp, whereas we're at ~45%. If you allow 11% for health it's still 23/34 as comparable figures to my mind. I think this is a large part of why they've got so much richer than us since 2008. We need to cut a heck of a lot. Some good news on the NHS numbers this morning. If Starmer goes before the election Streeting might be the one to fight 2029.
The reason they’ve got so much richer than us since 2008, in 3 charts and one paragraph:
Exports The top exports of United States are Crude Petroleum ($125B), Refined Petroleum ($107B), Petroleum Gas ($83.2B), Gas Turbines ($69.3B), and Cars ($65.3B), exporting mostly to Canada ($269B), Mexico ($243B), China ($154B), Germany ($94.8B), and Japan ($80.2B).
USA = petrostate. A giant Saudi, but with alcohol.
There are also the tech giants.
They also did not have those economic fuckwits Osborne and Merkel imposing austerity and proving you can't cut your way to growth.
Ukrainian President Zelensky says more than 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, with "tens of thousands more missing in action or in captivity".
Those missing in action could be dead or in captivity, Zelensky told NBC News on Sunday.
Ten days earlier, on 6 February, Zelensky said 45,100 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and around 390,000 had been wounded. Military experts in Ukraine and the West believe the number could be far higher.
Russia hasn't released an equivalent figure, but UK Defence Intelligence estimated in December that an average of 1,523 Russian soldiers were being killed and wounded every day.
Zelensky says up to 350,000 Russian soldiers have been killed - other reports suggest that number could be much higher.
46 000 dead and 390 000 wounded would be about half of Russian losses by best estimates. It sounds about right.
What a waste, and Putin could stop it any time by withdrawing.
Poor medical care means about 50% of Russian wounded die.
There was no other memorial, nothing but the cross, it was otherwise just a patch of waste ground in the thin Siberian summer sun (this was one year after the end of communism)
Yekaterinburg is not in Siberia. It's in the Ural Federal District.
Ukrainian President Zelensky says more than 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, with "tens of thousands more missing in action or in captivity".
Those missing in action could be dead or in captivity, Zelensky told NBC News on Sunday.
Ten days earlier, on 6 February, Zelensky said 45,100 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and around 390,000 had been wounded. Military experts in Ukraine and the West believe the number could be far higher.
Russia hasn't released an equivalent figure, but UK Defence Intelligence estimated in December that an average of 1,523 Russian soldiers were being killed and wounded every day.
Zelensky says up to 350,000 Russian soldiers have been killed - other reports suggest that number could be much higher.
That's an extraordinary figure.
To put it in context, 265,000 British combat personnel were killed in the whole of the Second World War.
That's the problem with Russia - Putin doesn't seem to regard it's population as anything other than expendable.
The fact that Russia’s least cruel ruler was probably Catherine the Great, 250 years ago, says everything about the place.
It’s like a massive version of Sparta, with violence cascading from top to bottom.
I'm not so sure on Reform. To me their coalition looks fragile.
How will they resolve their tensions:
- Patriotism vs Trumpism when the USA turns its back on allies and the rest of the world. - Between Rich men based in Dubai or the US or wherever feathering their nests vs grass roots who want to be loyal British. - The enormous black holes in their Manifesto between declared intention to shrink the state and policies that require much more public investment. - The contribution their MPs actually make to doing their jobs vs their second jobs in media. - The tensions between various shades of Right in their internal coalition, and the supporters they need to attract from the mainstream.
I don't see it holding together.
The key factor on Reform is that they are plausible protest votes, and that's largely immune to practical issues. People inclined to "try someone else" have been through all the major parties already, so they feel up for trying Reform. They aren't in general students of manifestos.
If Reform actually seemed to be poised to win that would change, at least somewhat. But that's a couple of years off. Canvassing in the local elections, I'm finding lots of evasive people who I assume are at least partly planning to vote Reform.
Ukrainian President Zelensky says more than 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, with "tens of thousands more missing in action or in captivity".
Those missing in action could be dead or in captivity, Zelensky told NBC News on Sunday.
Ten days earlier, on 6 February, Zelensky said 45,100 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and around 390,000 had been wounded. Military experts in Ukraine and the West believe the number could be far higher.
Russia hasn't released an equivalent figure, but UK Defence Intelligence estimated in December that an average of 1,523 Russian soldiers were being killed and wounded every day.
Zelensky says up to 350,000 Russian soldiers have been killed - other reports suggest that number could be much higher.
That's an extraordinary figure.
To put it in context, 265,000 British combat personnel were killed in the whole of the Second World War.
That's the problem with Russia - Putin doesn't seem to regard it's population as anything other than expendable.
The fact that Russia’s least cruel ruler was probably Catherine the Great, 250 years ago, says everything about the place.
It’s like a massive version of Sparta, with violence cascading from top to bottom.
"Is Russia still the danger?”
“We are all very worried about her.”
“We always were in my day, and in Dizzy’s before me. Is there still a Tsar?”
“Yes, but he is not a Romanoff. It’s another family. He is much more powerful, and much more despotic.”
There’s 12m entries aged over 120, and they’re not all exactly the same age.
Suspect there’s a lot of dates of birth that are 100 years away from what they should be, and 1,000 people seemingly born in 1,800.
(Snip)
What amazes me is that you believe what Musk and his pimply nerds come out with. Why?
It's also looking in the wrong place. The Real Steal happens inside FAR contracts. And is completely legal.
The US government contracts most stuff under the Federal Acquisition Regulations. These came about by, every time there was fraud or profiteering, adding more regulation.
So a company working on a FAR contract can often only make a certain amount of profit. Yes, being too profitable is an offence (see War Profiteering and WWI).
An intense system of paperwork and supervision is put in place inside the companies to enforce all this. This is all paid for by the government via increased cost. Better yet, this forms a massive barrier to entrants - only companies setup to generate the tidal wave of paperwork can get involved.
The fun really starts at outsourcing. The simplest thing to do (paperwork wise) is to subcontract a piece of the work to another company. And they in their turn etc etc. The beauty of this is that profit is allowed at each stage in the pyramid of outsourcing. So I contract Fred to make something. He gets it made by Dave, who puts 20% on top. Dave gets Arnold to make it and puts 20% on top.....
Awesome fun.
But it gets better. This structure is awesome for distributing work politically. So you don't donate to Congressman Turd. No Sir. But all the companies in the pyramid, in his district do.... So you align the pyramid with those who vote to pour money in at the top.
It's a bit like those stack of champagne goblets they use in the movies to express conspicuous consumption by rich people. A flunky pours champagne in at the top and it fills all the glasses in the pyramid.
And even better. What happens, if you accidentally own shares in companies that own shares in companies that are part of the pyramid? Well, you collect far more than your profit..... It's enough to make you cry with joy, isn't it?
And it's all legal and In The Best Possible Taste! (as Kenny Everett used to say)
The contract corruption is much more difficult to unpick though, much easier to start with the silly line items in the international aid budget and the absurdity of the social security database, things that don’t need any more explaining to the average man in the street.
This gives them political cover, for when they come for the really dodgy but complex contracts where the serious money laundering happens.
The really interesting thing to watch is when the pushback starts from the politicians and their campaign funds, that are right in the middle of all this web and making serious bank.
I suspect the inflexion moment is probably going to be RFK’s proposal to get the pharma ads off TV, to which the entire mainstream media and political ecosystem is going to go totally ballistic against the idea.
Then the fun is going to be the public reaction to the political reaction. Are they going to accept the politicians voting to keep greasing their own palms, or will there actually be a serious backlash that leads to primary challenges?
There is not the slightest possibility that they will touch FAR and the pyramids.
Every single person in Washington, in politics, and the permanent apparatus of government feeds off the system.
The only possibility of reform is slowly edging non-FAR, fixed price contracts into more areas. But Congress has carefully and specifically banned that.
Oh indeed, which is what’s going to make it so much fun to watch - from a distance of about 7,000 miles!
Can the oranage man and the autistic genius manage to articulate to the general public just how badly the system works and how furious they should be with the politicians in Washington - or will the Congresscritters manage to get away with protecting the status quo against a bunch of outsiders with no interest in protecting anything.
There’s 12m entries aged over 120, and they’re not all exactly the same age.
Suspect there’s a lot of dates of birth that are 100 years away from what they should be, and 1,000 people seemingly born in 1,800.
(Snip)
What amazes me is that you believe what Musk and his pimply nerds come out with. Why?
It's also looking in the wrong place. The Real Steal happens inside FAR contracts. And is completely legal.
The US government contracts most stuff under the Federal Acquisition Regulations. These came about by, every time there was fraud or profiteering, adding more regulation.
So a company working on a FAR contract can often only make a certain amount of profit. Yes, being too profitable is an offence (see War Profiteering and WWI).
An intense system of paperwork and supervision is put in place inside the companies to enforce all this. This is all paid for by the government via increased cost. Better yet, this forms a massive barrier to entrants - only companies setup to generate the tidal wave of paperwork can get involved.
The fun really starts at outsourcing. The simplest thing to do (paperwork wise) is to subcontract a piece of the work to another company. And they in their turn etc etc. The beauty of this is that profit is allowed at each stage in the pyramid of outsourcing. So I contract Fred to make something. He gets it made by Dave, who puts 20% on top. Dave gets Arnold to make it and puts 20% on top.....
Awesome fun.
But it gets better. This structure is awesome for distributing work politically. So you don't donate to Congressman Turd. No Sir. But all the companies in the pyramid, in his district do.... So you align the pyramid with those who vote to pour money in at the top.
It's a bit like those stack of champagne goblets they use in the movies to express conspicuous consumption by rich people. A flunky pours champagne in at the top and it fills all the glasses in the pyramid.
And even better. What happens, if you accidentally own shares in companies that own shares in companies that are part of the pyramid? Well, you collect far more than your profit..... It's enough to make you cry with joy, isn't it?
And it's all legal and In The Best Possible Taste! (as Kenny Everett used to say)
The contract corruption is much more difficult to unpick though, much easier to start with the silly line items in the international aid budget and the absurdity of the social security database, things that don’t need any more explaining to the average man in the street.
This gives them political cover, for when they come for the really dodgy but complex contracts where the serious money laundering happens.
The really interesting thing to watch is when the pushback starts from the politicians and their campaign funds, that are right in the middle of all this web and making serious bank.
I suspect the inflexion moment is probably going to be RFK’s proposal to get the pharma ads off TV, to which the entire mainstream media and political ecosystem is going to go totally ballistic against the idea.
Then the fun is going to be the public reaction to the political reaction. Are they going to accept the politicians voting to keep greasing their own palms, or will there actually be a serious backlash that leads to primary challenges?
There is not the slightest possibility that they will touch FAR and the pyramids.
Every single person in Washington, in politics, and the permanent apparatus of government feeds off the system.
The only possibility of reform is slowly edging non-FAR, fixed price contracts into more areas. But Congress has carefully and specifically banned that.
Oh indeed, which is what’s going to make it so much fun to watch - from a distance of about 7,000 miles!
Can the oranage man and the autistic genius manage to articulate to the general public just how badly the system works and how furious they should be with the politicians in Washington - or will the Congresscritters manage to get away with protecting the status quo against a bunch of outsiders with no interest in protecting anything.
Ummm...just a point, but you do know the main beneficiaries of the corruption of the US government system are Trump and Musk, don't you?
The last civil war widow didn't actually receive her pension - she didn't claim it because her son-in-law threatened her if she did.
A disabled daughter of a veteran was still receiving a pension until 2020, however.
Ah so the last widow actually receiving a pension died only 144 years after the war ended!
Apparently the thinking within US social security is that their primary aim is to minimise complaints, which means minimising false negative flags in the database. No-one receiving money they’re not expecting is making a complaint, and for various reasons this has been happening for decades with no auditing.
The working estimate for Musk’s team is several hundred billion dollars a year paid out incorrectly.
When added to the story from last week of the federal employee retirement process still being done on paper and taking months to complete, It’s quite the insight into just how antequated are all of the systems they’re using. One can imagine that the UK government will also have a number of equally silly stories about systems that hang together by the barest of threads.
US gov't spend is/was ~ 23% of gdp, whereas we're at ~45%. If you allow 11% for health it's still 23/34 as comparable figures to my mind. I think this is a large part of why they've got so much richer than us since 2008. We need to cut a heck of a lot. Some good news on the NHS numbers this morning. If Starmer goes before the election Streeting might be the one to fight 2029.
The reason they’ve got so much richer than us since 2008, in 3 charts and one paragraph:
Exports The top exports of United States are Crude Petroleum ($125B), Refined Petroleum ($107B), Petroleum Gas ($83.2B), Gas Turbines ($69.3B), and Cars ($65.3B), exporting mostly to Canada ($269B), Mexico ($243B), China ($154B), Germany ($94.8B), and Japan ($80.2B).
USA = petrostate. A giant Saudi, but with alcohol.
Meanwhile in the UK we have Ed Miliband.
Even if we squeezed every last drop out of the North Sea and dug up the whole of Lincolnshire for fracking it wouldn’t touch the sides. The US has vast reserves.
Of course another cause of recent US GDP growth has been the investment boom triggered by Biden’s IRA. The UK could learn a thing or two about how to encourage green energy growth from the (pre-Trump) USA.
And the UK offers 91% tax relief for oil/gas development. It would be interesting to see how much would be economically viable if it wasn't for that subsidy - other businesses only get 25%.
The last civil war widow didn't actually receive her pension - she didn't claim it because her son-in-law threatened her if she did.
A disabled daughter of a veteran was still receiving a pension until 2020, however.
Ah so the last widow actually receiving a pension died only 144 years after the war ended!
Apparently the thinking within US social security is that their primary aim is to minimise complaints, which means minimising false negative flags in the database. No-one receiving money they’re not expecting is making a complaint, and for various reasons this has been happening for decades with no auditing.
The working estimate for Musk’s team is several hundred billion dollars a year paid out incorrectly.
When added to the story from last week of the federal employee retirement process still being done on paper and taking months to complete, It’s quite the insight into just how antequated are all of the systems they’re using. One can imagine that the UK government will also have a number of equally silly stories about systems that hang together by the barest of threads.
US gov't spend is/was ~ 23% of gdp, whereas we're at ~45%. If you allow 11% for health it's still 23/34 as comparable figures to my mind. I think this is a large part of why they've got so much richer than us since 2008. We need to cut a heck of a lot. Some good news on the NHS numbers this morning. If Starmer goes before the election Streeting might be the one to fight 2029.
You can't compare UK government spending with US federal spending because the US is highly decentralized with a large share of government spending funded and spent at the state and local level. If you compare general government spending (which combines central and local government spending) the UK is at 44% with the US at 36%, and if you then allow for the different ways healthcare is funded then the numbers are not so different at all.
I believe the American healthcare system is so corrupt and broken that the Americans actually spend as much per capital on healthcare as we do? Via the taxpayer alone, not even counting their private expenditure.
So you can't erase the difference by saying "but healthcare".
There’s 12m entries aged over 120, and they’re not all exactly the same age.
Suspect there’s a lot of dates of birth that are 100 years away from what they should be, and 1,000 people seemingly born in 1,800.
(Snip)
What amazes me is that you believe what Musk and his pimply nerds come out with. Why?
It's also looking in the wrong place. The Real Steal happens inside FAR contracts. And is completely legal.
The US government contracts most stuff under the Federal Acquisition Regulations. These came about by, every time there was fraud or profiteering, adding more regulation.
So a company working on a FAR contract can often only make a certain amount of profit. Yes, being too profitable is an offence (see War Profiteering and WWI).
An intense system of paperwork and supervision is put in place inside the companies to enforce all this. This is all paid for by the government via increased cost. Better yet, this forms a massive barrier to entrants - only companies setup to generate the tidal wave of paperwork can get involved.
The fun really starts at outsourcing. The simplest thing to do (paperwork wise) is to subcontract a piece of the work to another company. And they in their turn etc etc. The beauty of this is that profit is allowed at each stage in the pyramid of outsourcing. So I contract Fred to make something. He gets it made by Dave, who puts 20% on top. Dave gets Arnold to make it and puts 20% on top.....
Awesome fun.
But it gets better. This structure is awesome for distributing work politically. So you don't donate to Congressman Turd. No Sir. But all the companies in the pyramid, in his district do.... So you align the pyramid with those who vote to pour money in at the top.
It's a bit like those stack of champagne goblets they use in the movies to express conspicuous consumption by rich people. A flunky pours champagne in at the top and it fills all the glasses in the pyramid.
And even better. What happens, if you accidentally own shares in companies that own shares in companies that are part of the pyramid? Well, you collect far more than your profit..... It's enough to make you cry with joy, isn't it?
And it's all legal and In The Best Possible Taste! (as Kenny Everett used to say)
The contract corruption is much more difficult to unpick though, much easier to start with the silly line items in the international aid budget and the absurdity of the social security database, things that don’t need any more explaining to the average man in the street.
This gives them political cover, for when they come for the really dodgy but complex contracts where the serious money laundering happens.
The really interesting thing to watch is when the pushback starts from the politicians and their campaign funds, that are right in the middle of all this web and making serious bank.
I suspect the inflexion moment is probably going to be RFK’s proposal to get the pharma ads off TV, to which the entire mainstream media and political ecosystem is going to go totally ballistic against the idea.
Then the fun is going to be the public reaction to the political reaction. Are they going to accept the politicians voting to keep greasing their own palms, or will there actually be a serious backlash that leads to primary challenges?
There is not the slightest possibility that they will touch FAR and the pyramids.
Every single person in Washington, in politics, and the permanent apparatus of government feeds off the system.
The only possibility of reform is slowly edging non-FAR, fixed price contracts into more areas. But Congress has carefully and specifically banned that.
Oh indeed, which is what’s going to make it so much fun to watch - from a distance of about 7,000 miles!
Can the oranage man and the autistic genius manage to articulate to the general public just how badly the system works and how furious they should be with the politicians in Washington - or will the Congresscritters manage to get away with protecting the status quo against a bunch of outsiders with no interest in protecting anything.
There's no evidence Musk is autistic, and if he's a genius in some areas then he's an utter dumb@ss in every other area he touches. Which is troubling, as he's trying to touch every area.
IMV his 'autistic' traits are probably a symptom of too much reliance on drugs...
Ukrainian President Zelensky says more than 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, with "tens of thousands more missing in action or in captivity".
Those missing in action could be dead or in captivity, Zelensky told NBC News on Sunday.
Ten days earlier, on 6 February, Zelensky said 45,100 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and around 390,000 had been wounded. Military experts in Ukraine and the West believe the number could be far higher.
Russia hasn't released an equivalent figure, but UK Defence Intelligence estimated in December that an average of 1,523 Russian soldiers were being killed and wounded every day.
Zelensky says up to 350,000 Russian soldiers have been killed - other reports suggest that number could be much higher.
That's an extraordinary figure.
To put it in context, 265,000 British combat personnel were killed in the whole of the Second World War.
That's the problem with Russia - Putin doesn't seem to regard it's population as anything other than expendable.
The fact that Russia’s least cruel ruler was probably Catherine the Great, 250 years ago, says everything about the place.
It’s like a massive version of Sparta, with violence cascading from top to bottom.
Catherine was famously brutal
Arguably the least cruel period in modern Russian history (ie since Ivan the Terrible) was during the last Romanovs. You could do pretty drastic things in Romanov Russia, around 1900-1914, and all that happened to you was exile, maybe even somewhere nice-ish in the south
All change after 1917
Of course it was this relative weakness which probably doomed the regime. If the Romanovs had made sure to exterminate all enemies - a la Stalin - I doubt the Reds would have succeeded
There’s 12m entries aged over 120, and they’re not all exactly the same age.
Suspect there’s a lot of dates of birth that are 100 years away from what they should be, and 1,000 people seemingly born in 1,800.
(Snip)
What amazes me is that you believe what Musk and his pimply nerds come out with. Why?
It's also looking in the wrong place. The Real Steal happens inside FAR contracts. And is completely legal.
The US government contracts most stuff under the Federal Acquisition Regulations. These came about by, every time there was fraud or profiteering, adding more regulation.
So a company working on a FAR contract can often only make a certain amount of profit. Yes, being too profitable is an offence (see War Profiteering and WWI).
An intense system of paperwork and supervision is put in place inside the companies to enforce all this. This is all paid for by the government via increased cost. Better yet, this forms a massive barrier to entrants - only companies setup to generate the tidal wave of paperwork can get involved.
The fun really starts at outsourcing. The simplest thing to do (paperwork wise) is to subcontract a piece of the work to another company. And they in their turn etc etc. The beauty of this is that profit is allowed at each stage in the pyramid of outsourcing. So I contract Fred to make something. He gets it made by Dave, who puts 20% on top. Dave gets Arnold to make it and puts 20% on top.....
Awesome fun.
But it gets better. This structure is awesome for distributing work politically. So you don't donate to Congressman Turd. No Sir. But all the companies in the pyramid, in his district do.... So you align the pyramid with those who vote to pour money in at the top.
It's a bit like those stack of champagne goblets they use in the movies to express conspicuous consumption by rich people. A flunky pours champagne in at the top and it fills all the glasses in the pyramid.
And even better. What happens, if you accidentally own shares in companies that own shares in companies that are part of the pyramid? Well, you collect far more than your profit..... It's enough to make you cry with joy, isn't it?
And it's all legal and In The Best Possible Taste! (as Kenny Everett used to say)
The contract corruption is much more difficult to unpick though, much easier to start with the silly line items in the international aid budget and the absurdity of the social security database, things that don’t need any more explaining to the average man in the street.
This gives them political cover, for when they come for the really dodgy but complex contracts where the serious money laundering happens.
The really interesting thing to watch is when the pushback starts from the politicians and their campaign funds, that are right in the middle of all this web and making serious bank.
I suspect the inflexion moment is probably going to be RFK’s proposal to get the pharma ads off TV, to which the entire mainstream media and political ecosystem is going to go totally ballistic against the idea.
Then the fun is going to be the public reaction to the political reaction. Are they going to accept the politicians voting to keep greasing their own palms, or will there actually be a serious backlash that leads to primary challenges?
There is not the slightest possibility that they will touch FAR and the pyramids.
Every single person in Washington, in politics, and the permanent apparatus of government feeds off the system.
The only possibility of reform is slowly edging non-FAR, fixed price contracts into more areas. But Congress has carefully and specifically banned that.
Oh indeed, which is what’s going to make it so much fun to watch - from a distance of about 7,000 miles!
Can the oranage man and the autistic genius manage to articulate to the general public just how badly the system works and how furious they should be with the politicians in Washington - or will the Congresscritters manage to get away with protecting the status quo against a bunch of outsiders with no interest in protecting anything.
Ummm...just a point, but you do know the main beneficiaries of the corruption of the US government system are Trump and Musk, don't you?
There’s 12m entries aged over 120, and they’re not all exactly the same age.
Suspect there’s a lot of dates of birth that are 100 years away from what they should be, and 1,000 people seemingly born in 1,800.
(Snip)
What amazes me is that you believe what Musk and his pimply nerds come out with. Why?
It's also looking in the wrong place. The Real Steal happens inside FAR contracts. And is completely legal.
The US government contracts most stuff under the Federal Acquisition Regulations. These came about by, every time there was fraud or profiteering, adding more regulation.
So a company working on a FAR contract can often only make a certain amount of profit. Yes, being too profitable is an offence (see War Profiteering and WWI).
An intense system of paperwork and supervision is put in place inside the companies to enforce all this. This is all paid for by the government via increased cost. Better yet, this forms a massive barrier to entrants - only companies setup to generate the tidal wave of paperwork can get involved.
The fun really starts at outsourcing. The simplest thing to do (paperwork wise) is to subcontract a piece of the work to another company. And they in their turn etc etc. The beauty of this is that profit is allowed at each stage in the pyramid of outsourcing. So I contract Fred to make something. He gets it made by Dave, who puts 20% on top. Dave gets Arnold to make it and puts 20% on top.....
Awesome fun.
But it gets better. This structure is awesome for distributing work politically. So you don't donate to Congressman Turd. No Sir. But all the companies in the pyramid, in his district do.... So you align the pyramid with those who vote to pour money in at the top.
It's a bit like those stack of champagne goblets they use in the movies to express conspicuous consumption by rich people. A flunky pours champagne in at the top and it fills all the glasses in the pyramid.
And even better. What happens, if you accidentally own shares in companies that own shares in companies that are part of the pyramid? Well, you collect far more than your profit..... It's enough to make you cry with joy, isn't it?
And it's all legal and In The Best Possible Taste! (as Kenny Everett used to say)
The contract corruption is much more difficult to unpick though, much easier to start with the silly line items in the international aid budget and the absurdity of the social security database, things that don’t need any more explaining to the average man in the street.
This gives them political cover, for when they come for the really dodgy but complex contracts where the serious money laundering happens.
The really interesting thing to watch is when the pushback starts from the politicians and their campaign funds, that are right in the middle of all this web and making serious bank.
I suspect the inflexion moment is probably going to be RFK’s proposal to get the pharma ads off TV, to which the entire mainstream media and political ecosystem is going to go totally ballistic against the idea.
Then the fun is going to be the public reaction to the political reaction. Are they going to accept the politicians voting to keep greasing their own palms, or will there actually be a serious backlash that leads to primary challenges?
There is not the slightest possibility that they will touch FAR and the pyramids.
Every single person in Washington, in politics, and the permanent apparatus of government feeds off the system.
The only possibility of reform is slowly edging non-FAR, fixed price contracts into more areas. But Congress has carefully and specifically banned that.
Oh indeed, which is what’s going to make it so much fun to watch - from a distance of about 7,000 miles!
Can the oranage man and the autistic genius manage to articulate to the general public just how badly the system works and how furious they should be with the politicians in Washington - or will the Congresscritters manage to get away with protecting the status quo against a bunch of outsiders with no interest in protecting anything.
Trump has an interest in not being fined or jailed for his crimes, and in making money. Musk has an interest in making more money. Trump is proposing a huge tax cut for the richest (like him and Musk). Neither of them has the slightest care for the general public.
The last civil war widow didn't actually receive her pension - she didn't claim it because her son-in-law threatened her if she did.
A disabled daughter of a veteran was still receiving a pension until 2020, however.
Ah so the last widow actually receiving a pension died only 144 years after the war ended!
Apparently the thinking within US social security is that their primary aim is to minimise complaints, which means minimising false negative flags in the database. No-one receiving money they’re not expecting is making a complaint, and for various reasons this has been happening for decades with no auditing.
The working estimate for Musk’s team is several hundred billion dollars a year paid out incorrectly.
When added to the story from last week of the federal employee retirement process still being done on paper and taking months to complete, It’s quite the insight into just how antequated are all of the systems they’re using. One can imagine that the UK government will also have a number of equally silly stories about systems that hang together by the barest of threads.
US gov't spend is/was ~ 23% of gdp, whereas we're at ~45%. If you allow 11% for health it's still 23/34 as comparable figures to my mind. I think this is a large part of why they've got so much richer than us since 2008. We need to cut a heck of a lot. Some good news on the NHS numbers this morning. If Starmer goes before the election Streeting might be the one to fight 2029.
You can't compare UK government spending with US federal spending because the US is highly decentralized with a large share of government spending funded and spent at the state and local level. If you compare general government spending (which combines central and local government spending) the UK is at 44% with the US at 36%, and if you then allow for the different ways healthcare is funded then the numbers are not so different at all.
I believe the American healthcare system is so corrupt and broken that the Americans actually spend as much per capital on healthcare as we do? Via the taxpayer alone, not even counting their private expenditure.
So you can't erase the difference by saying "but healthcare".
There was no other memorial, nothing but the cross, it was otherwise just a patch of waste ground in the thin Siberian summer sun (this was one year after the end of communism)
Yekaterinburg is not in Siberia. It's in the Ural Federal District.
Doesn't 'Siberia' extend to the Urals ?
No, @Dura_Ace is right. Yekaterinberg is technically and politically quite a distance from "Siberia" proper
However psychologically and emotionally for a lot of Russians and others, "Siberia" begins east of the Urals, and Yekaterinberg is that
There’s 12m entries aged over 120, and they’re not all exactly the same age.
Suspect there’s a lot of dates of birth that are 100 years away from what they should be, and 1,000 people seemingly born in 1,800.
(Snip)
What amazes me is that you believe what Musk and his pimply nerds come out with. Why?
It's also looking in the wrong place. The Real Steal happens inside FAR contracts. And is completely legal.
The US government contracts most stuff under the Federal Acquisition Regulations. These came about by, every time there was fraud or profiteering, adding more regulation.
So a company working on a FAR contract can often only make a certain amount of profit. Yes, being too profitable is an offence (see War Profiteering and WWI).
An intense system of paperwork and supervision is put in place inside the companies to enforce all this. This is all paid for by the government via increased cost. Better yet, this forms a massive barrier to entrants - only companies setup to generate the tidal wave of paperwork can get involved.
The fun really starts at outsourcing. The simplest thing to do (paperwork wise) is to subcontract a piece of the work to another company. And they in their turn etc etc. The beauty of this is that profit is allowed at each stage in the pyramid of outsourcing. So I contract Fred to make something. He gets it made by Dave, who puts 20% on top. Dave gets Arnold to make it and puts 20% on top.....
Awesome fun.
But it gets better. This structure is awesome for distributing work politically. So you don't donate to Congressman Turd. No Sir. But all the companies in the pyramid, in his district do.... So you align the pyramid with those who vote to pour money in at the top.
It's a bit like those stack of champagne goblets they use in the movies to express conspicuous consumption by rich people. A flunky pours champagne in at the top and it fills all the glasses in the pyramid.
And even better. What happens, if you accidentally own shares in companies that own shares in companies that are part of the pyramid? Well, you collect far more than your profit..... It's enough to make you cry with joy, isn't it?
And it's all legal and In The Best Possible Taste! (as Kenny Everett used to say)
The contract corruption is much more difficult to unpick though, much easier to start with the silly line items in the international aid budget and the absurdity of the social security database, things that don’t need any more explaining to the average man in the street.
This gives them political cover, for when they come for the really dodgy but complex contracts where the serious money laundering happens.
The really interesting thing to watch is when the pushback starts from the politicians and their campaign funds, that are right in the middle of all this web and making serious bank.
I suspect the inflexion moment is probably going to be RFK’s proposal to get the pharma ads off TV, to which the entire mainstream media and political ecosystem is going to go totally ballistic against the idea.
Then the fun is going to be the public reaction to the political reaction. Are they going to accept the politicians voting to keep greasing their own palms, or will there actually be a serious backlash that leads to primary challenges?
There is not the slightest possibility that they will touch FAR and the pyramids.
Every single person in Washington, in politics, and the permanent apparatus of government feeds off the system.
The only possibility of reform is slowly edging non-FAR, fixed price contracts into more areas. But Congress has carefully and specifically banned that.
Oh indeed, which is what’s going to make it so much fun to watch - from a distance of about 7,000 miles!
Can the oranage man and the autistic genius manage to articulate to the general public just how badly the system works and how furious they should be with the politicians in Washington - or will the Congresscritters manage to get away with protecting the status quo against a bunch of outsiders with no interest in protecting anything.
Ummm...just a point, but you do know the main beneficiaries of the corruption of the US government system are Trump and Musk, don't you?
In the case of the FAR system, Musk's companies don't do FAR contracts. Which was why his relationship with Senator Shelby (a leading exponent of the system) was so bad.
In fact, SpaceX set the cat among the pigeons by creating a working example of non-FAR vs FAR. Which is why Congress moved to block more use of such contracts,
There’s 12m entries aged over 120, and they’re not all exactly the same age.
Suspect there’s a lot of dates of birth that are 100 years away from what they should be, and 1,000 people seemingly born in 1,800.
(Snip)
What amazes me is that you believe what Musk and his pimply nerds come out with. Why?
It's also looking in the wrong place. The Real Steal happens inside FAR contracts. And is completely legal.
The US government contracts most stuff under the Federal Acquisition Regulations. These came about by, every time there was fraud or profiteering, adding more regulation.
So a company working on a FAR contract can often only make a certain amount of profit. Yes, being too profitable is an offence (see War Profiteering and WWI).
An intense system of paperwork and supervision is put in place inside the companies to enforce all this. This is all paid for by the government via increased cost. Better yet, this forms a massive barrier to entrants - only companies setup to generate the tidal wave of paperwork can get involved.
The fun really starts at outsourcing. The simplest thing to do (paperwork wise) is to subcontract a piece of the work to another company. And they in their turn etc etc. The beauty of this is that profit is allowed at each stage in the pyramid of outsourcing. So I contract Fred to make something. He gets it made by Dave, who puts 20% on top. Dave gets Arnold to make it and puts 20% on top.....
Awesome fun.
But it gets better. This structure is awesome for distributing work politically. So you don't donate to Congressman Turd. No Sir. But all the companies in the pyramid, in his district do.... So you align the pyramid with those who vote to pour money in at the top.
It's a bit like those stack of champagne goblets they use in the movies to express conspicuous consumption by rich people. A flunky pours champagne in at the top and it fills all the glasses in the pyramid.
And even better. What happens, if you accidentally own shares in companies that own shares in companies that are part of the pyramid? Well, you collect far more than your profit..... It's enough to make you cry with joy, isn't it?
And it's all legal and In The Best Possible Taste! (as Kenny Everett used to say)
The contract corruption is much more difficult to unpick though, much easier to start with the silly line items in the international aid budget and the absurdity of the social security database, things that don’t need any more explaining to the average man in the street.
This gives them political cover, for when they come for the really dodgy but complex contracts where the serious money laundering happens.
The really interesting thing to watch is when the pushback starts from the politicians and their campaign funds, that are right in the middle of all this web and making serious bank.
I suspect the inflexion moment is probably going to be RFK’s proposal to get the pharma ads off TV, to which the entire mainstream media and political ecosystem is going to go totally ballistic against the idea.
Then the fun is going to be the public reaction to the political reaction. Are they going to accept the politicians voting to keep greasing their own palms, or will there actually be a serious backlash that leads to primary challenges?
There is not the slightest possibility that they will touch FAR and the pyramids.
Every single person in Washington, in politics, and the permanent apparatus of government feeds off the system.
The only possibility of reform is slowly edging non-FAR, fixed price contracts into more areas. But Congress has carefully and specifically banned that.
Oh indeed, which is what’s going to make it so much fun to watch - from a distance of about 7,000 miles!
Can the oranage man and the autistic genius manage to articulate to the general public just how badly the system works and how furious they should be with the politicians in Washington - or will the Congresscritters manage to get away with protecting the status quo against a bunch of outsiders with no interest in protecting anything.
Ummm...just a point, but you do know the main beneficiaries of the corruption of the US government system are Trump and Musk, don't you?
In the case of the FAR system, Musk's companies don't do FAR contracts. Which was why his relationship with Senator Shelby (a leading exponent of the system) was so bad.
In fact, SpaceX set the cat among the pigeons by creating a working example of non-FAR vs FAR. Which is why Congress moved to block more use of such contracts,
"As of 15 February 2025, rockets from the Falcon 9 family have been launched 452 times, with 449 full mission successes, three failures, and one partial failure."
Musk has revolutionised and put the USA No 1 A++++ for space. A model of efficiency and value for money.
I do prefer Bezos' long term vision but there's no denying his accomplishments there.
The last civil war widow didn't actually receive her pension - she didn't claim it because her son-in-law threatened her if she did.
A disabled daughter of a veteran was still receiving a pension until 2020, however.
Ah so the last widow actually receiving a pension died only 144 years after the war ended!
Apparently the thinking within US social security is that their primary aim is to minimise complaints, which means minimising false negative flags in the database. No-one receiving money they’re not expecting is making a complaint, and for various reasons this has been happening for decades with no auditing.
The working estimate for Musk’s team is several hundred billion dollars a year paid out incorrectly.
When added to the story from last week of the federal employee retirement process still being done on paper and taking months to complete, It’s quite the insight into just how antequated are all of the systems they’re using. One can imagine that the UK government will also have a number of equally silly stories about systems that hang together by the barest of threads.
US gov't spend is/was ~ 23% of gdp, whereas we're at ~45%. If you allow 11% for health it's still 23/34 as comparable figures to my mind. I think this is a large part of why they've got so much richer than us since 2008. We need to cut a heck of a lot. Some good news on the NHS numbers this morning. If Starmer goes before the election Streeting might be the one to fight 2029.
You can't compare UK government spending with US federal spending because the US is highly decentralized with a large share of government spending funded and spent at the state and local level. If you compare general government spending (which combines central and local government spending) the UK is at 44% with the US at 36%, and if you then allow for the different ways healthcare is funded then the numbers are not so different at all.
I believe the American healthcare system is so corrupt and broken that the Americans actually spend as much per capital on healthcare as we do? Via the taxpayer alone, not even counting their private expenditure.
So you can't erase the difference by saying "but healthcare".
That’s correct on healthcare, one might argue that both systems are utterly broken for entirely opposite reasons.
The difference is mostly found in things devolved to the States in the US but funded centrally in the UK, such as education. There’s not the same transfer of federal funds to states as there is in the UK, so states, counties, and cities need to raise the vast majority of their own tax revenue from income, sales, and property taxes.
Total governmental spending in the two countries is closer than most statistics would suggest.
The last civil war widow didn't actually receive her pension - she didn't claim it because her son-in-law threatened her if she did.
A disabled daughter of a veteran was still receiving a pension until 2020, however.
Ah so the last widow actually receiving a pension died only 144 years after the war ended!
Apparently the thinking within US social security is that their primary aim is to minimise complaints, which means minimising false negative flags in the database. No-one receiving money they’re not expecting is making a complaint, and for various reasons this has been happening for decades with no auditing.
The working estimate for Musk’s team is several hundred billion dollars a year paid out incorrectly.
When added to the story from last week of the federal employee retirement process still being done on paper and taking months to complete, It’s quite the insight into just how antequated are all of the systems they’re using. One can imagine that the UK government will also have a number of equally silly stories about systems that hang together by the barest of threads.
The biggest problem with the incompetent and ham fisted way this is being done, is that it will be a disaster and block attempts at genuine reform for a generation.
Musk and his "pimple faced teenagers" are doing fine, some stuff will inevitably be cut too far but shouting in the media about particular hobby horses doesn't mean what he's doing isn't working.
The live stream of savings is on: https://doge.gov/ If it's going to be stopped it'll either be because of the courts or congress people's vested interests.
Next stop the US military, and err "emphasising" the need for Europe to deal with it's own issues will allow an absolute chainsaw to that budget. Seems like Cooper is going to copy aspects of DOGE anyway to try and find savings.
I am not sure about that. In my area, the DOGE boys have decided that the US Patent and Trademark Office costs the US taxpayer $2 billion a year in wages. In reality, it is a self-funding agency that costs the US taxpayer nothing and, in fact, often generates a surplus that is redistributed to other parts of the federal government. If they are wrong about that, it does make you wonder what else they are missing.
Of course, more generally: when everything is viewed as a cost then nothing has value. It's not a sustainable way to run either a business or a country.
There are also tensions starting to bubble up in the USA amongst Trump's core base.
We already have Trump supporters having their workforces, families and spouses deported. And monies being cut off abruptly in the USA as they were cut off across the world when USAID was shuttered. For example I saw one where a farmer had had his federally funded fencing and drainage project stopped in its tracks when half-built.
But if for example if the Department of Education gets shuttered, that will impact Red States which get the most money effectively cross-subsidised from Blue States.
Any of that could blow up unpredictably. And when tariffs start impacting or retaliaton comes in ... eg Canada supplies the overwhelming majority of heavy crude refined in Texas, with few alternatives (aiui Venezuela, Russia). For example, what happens if Canada does a reverse tariff and puts 10% on the price?
..And people complaining that their illegal immigrant workforce has been deported aren't going to get much sympathy.
Of course not - they probably voted for Trump. Which is... the point you're ignoring.
The last civil war widow didn't actually receive her pension - she didn't claim it because her son-in-law threatened her if she did.
A disabled daughter of a veteran was still receiving a pension until 2020, however.
Ah so the last widow actually receiving a pension died only 144 years after the war ended!
Apparently the thinking within US social security is that their primary aim is to minimise complaints, which means minimising false negative flags in the database. No-one receiving money they’re not expecting is making a complaint, and for various reasons this has been happening for decades with no auditing.
The working estimate for Musk’s team is several hundred billion dollars a year paid out incorrectly.
When added to the story from last week of the federal employee retirement process still being done on paper and taking months to complete, It’s quite the insight into just how antequated are all of the systems they’re using. One can imagine that the UK government will also have a number of equally silly stories about systems that hang together by the barest of threads.
US gov't spend is/was ~ 23% of gdp, whereas we're at ~45%. If you allow 11% for health it's still 23/34 as comparable figures to my mind. I think this is a large part of why they've got so much richer than us since 2008. We need to cut a heck of a lot. Some good news on the NHS numbers this morning. If Starmer goes before the election Streeting might be the one to fight 2029.
You can't compare UK government spending with US federal spending because the US is highly decentralized with a large share of government spending funded and spent at the state and local level. If you compare general government spending (which combines central and local government spending) the UK is at 44% with the US at 36%, and if you then allow for the different ways healthcare is funded then the numbers are not so different at all.
I believe the American healthcare system is so corrupt and broken that the Americans actually spend as much per capital on healthcare as we do? Via the taxpayer alone, not even counting their private expenditure.
So you can't erase the difference by saying "but healthcare".
That's not true. They spend more than we do.
And have much worse outcomes. Look at life expectancy.
The last civil war widow didn't actually receive her pension - she didn't claim it because her son-in-law threatened her if she did.
A disabled daughter of a veteran was still receiving a pension until 2020, however.
Ah so the last widow actually receiving a pension died only 144 years after the war ended!
Apparently the thinking within US social security is that their primary aim is to minimise complaints, which means minimising false negative flags in the database. No-one receiving money they’re not expecting is making a complaint, and for various reasons this has been happening for decades with no auditing.
The working estimate for Musk’s team is several hundred billion dollars a year paid out incorrectly.
When added to the story from last week of the federal employee retirement process still being done on paper and taking months to complete, It’s quite the insight into just how antequated are all of the systems they’re using. One can imagine that the UK government will also have a number of equally silly stories about systems that hang together by the barest of threads.
US gov't spend is/was ~ 23% of gdp, whereas we're at ~45%. If you allow 11% for health it's still 23/34 as comparable figures to my mind. I think this is a large part of why they've got so much richer than us since 2008. We need to cut a heck of a lot. Some good news on the NHS numbers this morning. If Starmer goes before the election Streeting might be the one to fight 2029.
You can't compare UK government spending with US federal spending because the US is highly decentralized with a large share of government spending funded and spent at the state and local level. If you compare general government spending (which combines central and local government spending) the UK is at 44% with the US at 36%, and if you then allow for the different ways healthcare is funded then the numbers are not so different at all.
I believe the American healthcare system is so corrupt and broken that the Americans actually spend as much per capital on healthcare as we do? Via the taxpayer alone, not even counting their private expenditure.
So you can't erase the difference by saying "but healthcare".
Doesn't that reduce the gap even further? Maybe even mean we spend less overall, if equalised?
For example, I'm meeting a US friend in Brazil soon, we both got our jabs. Mine cost me £75, hers $700, and she is also paying $lots for health insurance that didn't cover it.
There’s 12m entries aged over 120, and they’re not all exactly the same age.
Suspect there’s a lot of dates of birth that are 100 years away from what they should be, and 1,000 people seemingly born in 1,800.
(Snip)
What amazes me is that you believe what Musk and his pimply nerds come out with. Why?
It's also looking in the wrong place. The Real Steal happens inside FAR contracts. And is completely legal.
The US government contracts most stuff under the Federal Acquisition Regulations. These came about by, every time there was fraud or profiteering, adding more regulation.
So a company working on a FAR contract can often only make a certain amount of profit. Yes, being too profitable is an offence (see War Profiteering and WWI).
An intense system of paperwork and supervision is put in place inside the companies to enforce all this. This is all paid for by the government via increased cost. Better yet, this forms a massive barrier to entrants - only companies setup to generate the tidal wave of paperwork can get involved.
The fun really starts at outsourcing. The simplest thing to do (paperwork wise) is to subcontract a piece of the work to another company. And they in their turn etc etc. The beauty of this is that profit is allowed at each stage in the pyramid of outsourcing. So I contract Fred to make something. He gets it made by Dave, who puts 20% on top. Dave gets Arnold to make it and puts 20% on top.....
Awesome fun.
But it gets better. This structure is awesome for distributing work politically. So you don't donate to Congressman Turd. No Sir. But all the companies in the pyramid, in his district do.... So you align the pyramid with those who vote to pour money in at the top.
It's a bit like those stack of champagne goblets they use in the movies to express conspicuous consumption by rich people. A flunky pours champagne in at the top and it fills all the glasses in the pyramid.
And even better. What happens, if you accidentally own shares in companies that own shares in companies that are part of the pyramid? Well, you collect far more than your profit..... It's enough to make you cry with joy, isn't it?
And it's all legal and In The Best Possible Taste! (as Kenny Everett used to say)
The contract corruption is much more difficult to unpick though, much easier to start with the silly line items in the international aid budget and the absurdity of the social security database, things that don’t need any more explaining to the average man in the street.
This gives them political cover, for when they come for the really dodgy but complex contracts where the serious money laundering happens.
The really interesting thing to watch is when the pushback starts from the politicians and their campaign funds, that are right in the middle of all this web and making serious bank.
I suspect the inflexion moment is probably going to be RFK’s proposal to get the pharma ads off TV, to which the entire mainstream media and political ecosystem is going to go totally ballistic against the idea.
Then the fun is going to be the public reaction to the political reaction. Are they going to accept the politicians voting to keep greasing their own palms, or will there actually be a serious backlash that leads to primary challenges?
There is not the slightest possibility that they will touch FAR and the pyramids.
Every single person in Washington, in politics, and the permanent apparatus of government feeds off the system.
The only possibility of reform is slowly edging non-FAR, fixed price contracts into more areas. But Congress has carefully and specifically banned that.
Oh indeed, which is what’s going to make it so much fun to watch - from a distance of about 7,000 miles!
Can the oranage man and the autistic genius manage to articulate to the general public just how badly the system works and how furious they should be with the politicians in Washington - or will the Congresscritters manage to get away with protecting the status quo against a bunch of outsiders with no interest in protecting anything.
There's no evidence Musk is autistic, and if he's a genius in some areas then he's an utter dumb@ss in every other area he touches. Which is troubling, as he's trying to touch every area.
IMV his 'autistic' traits are probably a symptom of too much reliance on drugs...
A complete misunderstanding of Musk to claim he's a "genius".
He's a businessman of extreme drive and considerable daring with an engineering background. There's nothing to suggest he himself is a paricularly outstanding ENGINEER.
It's those qualities of personality that underlie his success.
Talking of four years being a long time, in Guardianista economics, fifteen months is apparently even longer. 108 lefty economists prophesied disaster for Javier Milei in the Guardian in November 2023:
Milei is so far showing himself to be the greatest politician in the democratic world since, and possibly including, Margaret Thatcher, from whom he learned so much. He did this without a majority in Congress, and in the face of Argentina's disastrous corporatist/socialist Peronist tradition. He has made some mistakes, in particular by not liberalising the exchange rate fast enough, but the lefty economists have proved yet again that knowing some economics and being good at economic policy are very different (something Starmer should have realised when he chose Reeves). Needless to say, they have not asked themselves why they got Milei so badly wrong.
And the comparison between him and Starmer/Reeves, or for that matter Macron, Scholz or Trump, is just embarrassing.
Starmer and Reeves would never try an approach like this. Imagine the howls from the special interest groups, lobbyists, quangos and charities and other burdens on the taxpayer as well as economic geniuses like Richard Murphy.
The solution here is always more taxes and more regulation.
The last civil war widow didn't actually receive her pension - she didn't claim it because her son-in-law threatened her if she did.
A disabled daughter of a veteran was still receiving a pension until 2020, however.
Ah so the last widow actually receiving a pension died only 144 years after the war ended!
Apparently the thinking within US social security is that their primary aim is to minimise complaints, which means minimising false negative flags in the database. No-one receiving money they’re not expecting is making a complaint, and for various reasons this has been happening for decades with no auditing.
The working estimate for Musk’s team is several hundred billion dollars a year paid out incorrectly.
When added to the story from last week of the federal employee retirement process still being done on paper and taking months to complete, It’s quite the insight into just how antequated are all of the systems they’re using. One can imagine that the UK government will also have a number of equally silly stories about systems that hang together by the barest of threads.
The biggest problem with the incompetent and ham fisted way this is being done, is that it will be a disaster and block attempts at genuine reform for a generation.
Musk and his "pimple faced teenagers" are doing fine, some stuff will inevitably be cut too far but shouting in the media about particular hobby horses doesn't mean what he's doing isn't working.
The live stream of savings is on: https://doge.gov/ If it's going to be stopped it'll either be because of the courts or congress people's vested interests.
Next stop the US military, and err "emphasising" the need for Europe to deal with it's own issues will allow an absolute chainsaw to that budget. Seems like Cooper is going to copy aspects of DOGE anyway to try and find savings.
I am not sure about that. In my area, the DOGE boys have decided that the US Patent and Trademark Office costs the US taxpayer $2 billion a year in wages. In reality, it is a self-funding agency that costs the US taxpayer nothing and, in fact, often generates a surplus that is redistributed to other parts of the federal government. If they are wrong about that, it does make you wonder what else they are missing.
Of course, more generally: when everything is viewed as a cost then nothing has value. It's not a sustainable way to run either a business or a country.
Not an expert, but I'd guess that undermining the patent system isn't great for innovation and investment.
The last civil war widow didn't actually receive her pension - she didn't claim it because her son-in-law threatened her if she did.
A disabled daughter of a veteran was still receiving a pension until 2020, however.
Ah so the last widow actually receiving a pension died only 144 years after the war ended!
Apparently the thinking within US social security is that their primary aim is to minimise complaints, which means minimising false negative flags in the database. No-one receiving money they’re not expecting is making a complaint, and for various reasons this has been happening for decades with no auditing.
The working estimate for Musk’s team is several hundred billion dollars a year paid out incorrectly.
When added to the story from last week of the federal employee retirement process still being done on paper and taking months to complete, It’s quite the insight into just how antequated are all of the systems they’re using. One can imagine that the UK government will also have a number of equally silly stories about systems that hang together by the barest of threads.
The biggest problem with the incompetent and ham fisted way this is being done, is that it will be a disaster and block attempts at genuine reform for a generation.
Musk and his "pimple faced teenagers" are doing fine, some stuff will inevitably be cut too far but shouting in the media about particular hobby horses doesn't mean what he's doing isn't working.
The live stream of savings is on: https://doge.gov/ If it's going to be stopped it'll either be because of the courts or congress people's vested interests.
Next stop the US military, and err "emphasising" the need for Europe to deal with it's own issues will allow an absolute chainsaw to that budget. Seems like Cooper is going to copy aspects of DOGE anyway to try and find savings.
I am not sure about that. In my area, the DOGE boys have decided that the US Patent and Trademark Office costs the US taxpayer $2 billion a year in wages. In reality, it is a self-funding agency that costs the US taxpayer nothing and, in fact, often generates a surplus that is redistributed to other parts of the federal government. If they are wrong about that, it does make you wonder what else they are missing.
Of course, more generally: when everything is viewed as a cost then nothing has value. It's not a sustainable way to run either a business or a country.
Not an expert, but I'd guess that undermining the patent system isn't great for innovation and investment.
It's very good for Elon Musk. It means he gets to steal other people's inventions consequence free.
It could of course change to get a lot worse for Labour. They may come third. I just can't see anyone voting Labour with any enthusiasm unless they're a public sector worker who's had a very, very good payrise.
There’s 12m entries aged over 120, and they’re not all exactly the same age.
Suspect there’s a lot of dates of birth that are 100 years away from what they should be, and 1,000 people seemingly born in 1,800.
(Snip)
What amazes me is that you believe what Musk and his pimply nerds come out with. Why?
It's also looking in the wrong place. The Real Steal happens inside FAR contracts. And is completely legal.
The US government contracts most stuff under the Federal Acquisition Regulations. These came about by, every time there was fraud or profiteering, adding more regulation.
So a company working on a FAR contract can often only make a certain amount of profit. Yes, being too profitable is an offence (see War Profiteering and WWI).
An intense system of paperwork and supervision is put in place inside the companies to enforce all this. This is all paid for by the government via increased cost. Better yet, this forms a massive barrier to entrants - only companies setup to generate the tidal wave of paperwork can get involved.
The fun really starts at outsourcing. The simplest thing to do (paperwork wise) is to subcontract a piece of the work to another company. And they in their turn etc etc. The beauty of this is that profit is allowed at each stage in the pyramid of outsourcing. So I contract Fred to make something. He gets it made by Dave, who puts 20% on top. Dave gets Arnold to make it and puts 20% on top.....
Awesome fun.
But it gets better. This structure is awesome for distributing work politically. So you don't donate to Congressman Turd. No Sir. But all the companies in the pyramid, in his district do.... So you align the pyramid with those who vote to pour money in at the top.
It's a bit like those stack of champagne goblets they use in the movies to express conspicuous consumption by rich people. A flunky pours champagne in at the top and it fills all the glasses in the pyramid.
And even better. What happens, if you accidentally own shares in companies that own shares in companies that are part of the pyramid? Well, you collect far more than your profit..... It's enough to make you cry with joy, isn't it?
And it's all legal and In The Best Possible Taste! (as Kenny Everett used to say)
The contract corruption is much more difficult to unpick though, much easier to start with the silly line items in the international aid budget and the absurdity of the social security database, things that don’t need any more explaining to the average man in the street.
This gives them political cover, for when they come for the really dodgy but complex contracts where the serious money laundering happens.
The really interesting thing to watch is when the pushback starts from the politicians and their campaign funds, that are right in the middle of all this web and making serious bank.
I suspect the inflexion moment is probably going to be RFK’s proposal to get the pharma ads off TV, to which the entire mainstream media and political ecosystem is going to go totally ballistic against the idea.
Then the fun is going to be the public reaction to the political reaction. Are they going to accept the politicians voting to keep greasing their own palms, or will there actually be a serious backlash that leads to primary challenges?
There is not the slightest possibility that they will touch FAR and the pyramids.
Every single person in Washington, in politics, and the permanent apparatus of government feeds off the system.
The only possibility of reform is slowly edging non-FAR, fixed price contracts into more areas. But Congress has carefully and specifically banned that.
Oh indeed, which is what’s going to make it so much fun to watch - from a distance of about 7,000 miles!
Can the oranage man and the autistic genius manage to articulate to the general public just how badly the system works and how furious they should be with the politicians in Washington - or will the Congresscritters manage to get away with protecting the status quo against a bunch of outsiders with no interest in protecting anything.
There's no evidence Musk is autistic, and if he's a genius in some areas then he's an utter dumb@ss in every other area he touches. Which is troubling, as he's trying to touch every area.
IMV his 'autistic' traits are probably a symptom of too much reliance on drugs...
A complete misunderstanding of Musk to claim he's a "genius".
He's a businessman of extreme drive and considerable daring with an engineering background. There's nothing to suggest he himself is a paricularly outstanding ENGINEER.
It's those qualities of personality that underlie his success.
You say 'businessman,' but wouldn't he more accurately be described as a venture capitalist?
There’s 12m entries aged over 120, and they’re not all exactly the same age.
Suspect there’s a lot of dates of birth that are 100 years away from what they should be, and 1,000 people seemingly born in 1,800.
(Snip)
What amazes me is that you believe what Musk and his pimply nerds come out with. Why?
It's also looking in the wrong place. The Real Steal happens inside FAR contracts. And is completely legal.
The US government contracts most stuff under the Federal Acquisition Regulations. These came about by, every time there was fraud or profiteering, adding more regulation.
So a company working on a FAR contract can often only make a certain amount of profit. Yes, being too profitable is an offence (see War Profiteering and WWI).
An intense system of paperwork and supervision is put in place inside the companies to enforce all this. This is all paid for by the government via increased cost. Better yet, this forms a massive barrier to entrants - only companies setup to generate the tidal wave of paperwork can get involved.
The fun really starts at outsourcing. The simplest thing to do (paperwork wise) is to subcontract a piece of the work to another company. And they in their turn etc etc. The beauty of this is that profit is allowed at each stage in the pyramid of outsourcing. So I contract Fred to make something. He gets it made by Dave, who puts 20% on top. Dave gets Arnold to make it and puts 20% on top.....
Awesome fun.
But it gets better. This structure is awesome for distributing work politically. So you don't donate to Congressman Turd. No Sir. But all the companies in the pyramid, in his district do.... So you align the pyramid with those who vote to pour money in at the top.
It's a bit like those stack of champagne goblets they use in the movies to express conspicuous consumption by rich people. A flunky pours champagne in at the top and it fills all the glasses in the pyramid.
And even better. What happens, if you accidentally own shares in companies that own shares in companies that are part of the pyramid? Well, you collect far more than your profit..... It's enough to make you cry with joy, isn't it?
And it's all legal and In The Best Possible Taste! (as Kenny Everett used to say)
The contract corruption is much more difficult to unpick though, much easier to start with the silly line items in the international aid budget and the absurdity of the social security database, things that don’t need any more explaining to the average man in the street.
This gives them political cover, for when they come for the really dodgy but complex contracts where the serious money laundering happens.
The really interesting thing to watch is when the pushback starts from the politicians and their campaign funds, that are right in the middle of all this web and making serious bank.
I suspect the inflexion moment is probably going to be RFK’s proposal to get the pharma ads off TV, to which the entire mainstream media and political ecosystem is going to go totally ballistic against the idea.
Then the fun is going to be the public reaction to the political reaction. Are they going to accept the politicians voting to keep greasing their own palms, or will there actually be a serious backlash that leads to primary challenges?
There is not the slightest possibility that they will touch FAR and the pyramids.
Every single person in Washington, in politics, and the permanent apparatus of government feeds off the system.
The only possibility of reform is slowly edging non-FAR, fixed price contracts into more areas. But Congress has carefully and specifically banned that.
Oh indeed, which is what’s going to make it so much fun to watch - from a distance of about 7,000 miles!
Can the oranage man and the autistic genius manage to articulate to the general public just how badly the system works and how furious they should be with the politicians in Washington - or will the Congresscritters manage to get away with protecting the status quo against a bunch of outsiders with no interest in protecting anything.
Trump has an interest in not being fined or jailed for his crimes, and in making money. Musk has an interest in making more money. Trump is proposing a huge tax cut for the richest (like him and Musk). Neither of them has the slightest care for the general public.
Fairly pointless arguing about this stuff, for now. Let's just sit back and watch.
I suspect william & Sandpit will be less than thrilled with the eventual outcome. Though the former seems to take everything in stride, however absurd.
The last civil war widow didn't actually receive her pension - she didn't claim it because her son-in-law threatened her if she did.
A disabled daughter of a veteran was still receiving a pension until 2020, however.
Ah so the last widow actually receiving a pension died only 144 years after the war ended!
Apparently the thinking within US social security is that their primary aim is to minimise complaints, which means minimising false negative flags in the database. No-one receiving money they’re not expecting is making a complaint, and for various reasons this has been happening for decades with no auditing.
The working estimate for Musk’s team is several hundred billion dollars a year paid out incorrectly.
When added to the story from last week of the federal employee retirement process still being done on paper and taking months to complete, It’s quite the insight into just how antequated are all of the systems they’re using. One can imagine that the UK government will also have a number of equally silly stories about systems that hang together by the barest of threads.
US gov't spend is/was ~ 23% of gdp, whereas we're at ~45%. If you allow 11% for health it's still 23/34 as comparable figures to my mind. I think this is a large part of why they've got so much richer than us since 2008. We need to cut a heck of a lot. Some good news on the NHS numbers this morning. If Starmer goes before the election Streeting might be the one to fight 2029.
The reason they’ve got so much richer than us since 2008, in 3 charts and one paragraph:
Exports The top exports of United States are Crude Petroleum ($125B), Refined Petroleum ($107B), Petroleum Gas ($83.2B), Gas Turbines ($69.3B), and Cars ($65.3B), exporting mostly to Canada ($269B), Mexico ($243B), China ($154B), Germany ($94.8B), and Japan ($80.2B).
USA = petrostate. A giant Saudi, but with alcohol.
Meanwhile in the UK we have Ed Miliband.
Even if we squeezed every last drop out of the North Sea and dug up the whole of Lincolnshire for fracking it wouldn’t touch the sides. The US has vast reserves.
Of course another cause of recent US GDP growth has been the investment boom triggered by Biden’s IRA. The UK could learn a thing or two about how to encourage green energy growth from the (pre-Trump) USA.
Not developing UK fields won't stop us using gas, we'll just import it from Qatar instead.
Indeed, the same DESNZ that is blocking new exploration and development has also backed the new build NZT CCGT CCS project, and will likely back further CCGT CCS and Blue Hydrogen projects, locking in demand for imported natural gas for decades to come.
There’s 12m entries aged over 120, and they’re not all exactly the same age.
Suspect there’s a lot of dates of birth that are 100 years away from what they should be, and 1,000 people seemingly born in 1,800.
(Snip)
What amazes me is that you believe what Musk and his pimply nerds come out with. Why?
It's also looking in the wrong place. The Real Steal happens inside FAR contracts. And is completely legal.
The US government contracts most stuff under the Federal Acquisition Regulations. These came about by, every time there was fraud or profiteering, adding more regulation.
So a company working on a FAR contract can often only make a certain amount of profit. Yes, being too profitable is an offence (see War Profiteering and WWI).
An intense system of paperwork and supervision is put in place inside the companies to enforce all this. This is all paid for by the government via increased cost. Better yet, this forms a massive barrier to entrants - only companies setup to generate the tidal wave of paperwork can get involved.
The fun really starts at outsourcing. The simplest thing to do (paperwork wise) is to subcontract a piece of the work to another company. And they in their turn etc etc. The beauty of this is that profit is allowed at each stage in the pyramid of outsourcing. So I contract Fred to make something. He gets it made by Dave, who puts 20% on top. Dave gets Arnold to make it and puts 20% on top.....
Awesome fun.
But it gets better. This structure is awesome for distributing work politically. So you don't donate to Congressman Turd. No Sir. But all the companies in the pyramid, in his district do.... So you align the pyramid with those who vote to pour money in at the top.
It's a bit like those stack of champagne goblets they use in the movies to express conspicuous consumption by rich people. A flunky pours champagne in at the top and it fills all the glasses in the pyramid.
And even better. What happens, if you accidentally own shares in companies that own shares in companies that are part of the pyramid? Well, you collect far more than your profit..... It's enough to make you cry with joy, isn't it?
And it's all legal and In The Best Possible Taste! (as Kenny Everett used to say)
The contract corruption is much more difficult to unpick though, much easier to start with the silly line items in the international aid budget and the absurdity of the social security database, things that don’t need any more explaining to the average man in the street.
This gives them political cover, for when they come for the really dodgy but complex contracts where the serious money laundering happens.
The really interesting thing to watch is when the pushback starts from the politicians and their campaign funds, that are right in the middle of all this web and making serious bank.
I suspect the inflexion moment is probably going to be RFK’s proposal to get the pharma ads off TV, to which the entire mainstream media and political ecosystem is going to go totally ballistic against the idea.
Then the fun is going to be the public reaction to the political reaction. Are they going to accept the politicians voting to keep greasing their own palms, or will there actually be a serious backlash that leads to primary challenges?
There is not the slightest possibility that they will touch FAR and the pyramids.
Every single person in Washington, in politics, and the permanent apparatus of government feeds off the system.
The only possibility of reform is slowly edging non-FAR, fixed price contracts into more areas. But Congress has carefully and specifically banned that.
Oh indeed, which is what’s going to make it so much fun to watch - from a distance of about 7,000 miles!
Can the oranage man and the autistic genius manage to articulate to the general public just how badly the system works and how furious they should be with the politicians in Washington - or will the Congresscritters manage to get away with protecting the status quo against a bunch of outsiders with no interest in protecting anything.
Ummm...just a point, but you do know the main beneficiaries of the corruption of the US government system are Trump and Musk, don't you?
In the case of the FAR system, Musk's companies don't do FAR contracts. Which was why his relationship with Senator Shelby (a leading exponent of the system) was so bad.
In fact, SpaceX set the cat among the pigeons by creating a working example of non-FAR vs FAR. Which is why Congress moved to block more use of such contracts,
If it wasn't for the processes and systems set up to slow everything down and control it, plus their own willingness to just ignore it, Trump would be in jail and Musk would be in South Africa.
Jail would be a good place for Trump. I will admit South Africa has done nothing to deserve Musk.
The last civil war widow didn't actually receive her pension - she didn't claim it because her son-in-law threatened her if she did.
A disabled daughter of a veteran was still receiving a pension until 2020, however.
Ah so the last widow actually receiving a pension died only 144 years after the war ended!
Apparently the thinking within US social security is that their primary aim is to minimise complaints, which means minimising false negative flags in the database. No-one receiving money they’re not expecting is making a complaint, and for various reasons this has been happening for decades with no auditing.
The working estimate for Musk’s team is several hundred billion dollars a year paid out incorrectly.
When added to the story from last week of the federal employee retirement process still being done on paper and taking months to complete, It’s quite the insight into just how antequated are all of the systems they’re using. One can imagine that the UK government will also have a number of equally silly stories about systems that hang together by the barest of threads.
The biggest problem with the incompetent and ham fisted way this is being done, is that it will be a disaster and block attempts at genuine reform for a generation.
Musk and his "pimple faced teenagers" are doing fine, some stuff will inevitably be cut too far but shouting in the media about particular hobby horses doesn't mean what he's doing isn't working.
The live stream of savings is on: https://doge.gov/ If it's going to be stopped it'll either be because of the courts or congress people's vested interests.
Next stop the US military, and err "emphasising" the need for Europe to deal with it's own issues will allow an absolute chainsaw to that budget. Seems like Cooper is going to copy aspects of DOGE anyway to try and find savings.
I am not sure about that. In my area, the DOGE boys have decided that the US Patent and Trademark Office costs the US taxpayer $2 billion a year in wages. In reality, it is a self-funding agency that costs the US taxpayer nothing and, in fact, often generates a surplus that is redistributed to other parts of the federal government. If they are wrong about that, it does make you wonder what else they are missing.
Of course, more generally: when everything is viewed as a cost then nothing has value. It's not a sustainable way to run either a business or a country.
Something like the Consumer Protection Bureau is pure cost for the billionaires, though. The more it save consumers, the more it costs them.
One to watch is the NIH/FDA funding, which Kennedy seems to be about to take an axe to. That will not have positive outcomes for anyone (apart, possibly, from non US pharma industries).
There was no other memorial, nothing but the cross, it was otherwise just a patch of waste ground in the thin Siberian summer sun (this was one year after the end of communism)
Yekaterinburg is not in Siberia. It's in the Ural Federal District.
Doesn't 'Siberia' extend to the Urals ?
No, @Dura_Ace is right. Yekaterinberg is technically and politically quite a distance from "Siberia" proper
However psychologically and emotionally for a lot of Russians and others, "Siberia" begins east of the Urals, and Yekaterinberg is that
"Because Siberia is a geographic and historic concept and not a political entity, there is no single precise definition of its territorial borders. Traditionally, Siberia spans the entire expanse of land from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, with the Ural River usually forming the southernmost portion of its western boundary, and includes most of the drainage basin of the Arctic Ocean. It is further defined as stretching from the territories within the Arctic Circle in the north to the northern borders of Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and China in the south, although the hills of north-central Kazakhstan are also commonly included.[3][5] The Russian government divides the region into three federal districts (groupings of Russian federal subjects), of which only the central one is officially referred to as "Siberian"; the other two are the Ural and Far Eastern federal districts, named for the Ural and Russian Far East regions that correspond respectively to the western and eastern thirds of Siberia in the broader sense."
The last civil war widow didn't actually receive her pension - she didn't claim it because her son-in-law threatened her if she did.
A disabled daughter of a veteran was still receiving a pension until 2020, however.
Ah so the last widow actually receiving a pension died only 144 years after the war ended!
Apparently the thinking within US social security is that their primary aim is to minimise complaints, which means minimising false negative flags in the database. No-one receiving money they’re not expecting is making a complaint, and for various reasons this has been happening for decades with no auditing.
The working estimate for Musk’s team is several hundred billion dollars a year paid out incorrectly.
When added to the story from last week of the federal employee retirement process still being done on paper and taking months to complete, It’s quite the insight into just how antequated are all of the systems they’re using. One can imagine that the UK government will also have a number of equally silly stories about systems that hang together by the barest of threads.
The biggest problem with the incompetent and ham fisted way this is being done, is that it will be a disaster and block attempts at genuine reform for a generation.
Musk and his "pimple faced teenagers" are doing fine, some stuff will inevitably be cut too far but shouting in the media about particular hobby horses doesn't mean what he's doing isn't working.
The live stream of savings is on: https://doge.gov/ If it's going to be stopped it'll either be because of the courts or congress people's vested interests.
Talking of four years being a long time, in Guardianista economics, fifteen months is apparently even longer. 108 lefty economists prophesied disaster for Javier Milei in the Guardian in November 2023:
Milei is so far showing himself to be the greatest politician in the democratic world since, and possibly including, Margaret Thatcher, from whom he learned so much. He did this without a majority in Congress, and in the face of Argentina's disastrous corporatist/socialist Peronist tradition. He has made some mistakes, in particular by not liberalising the exchange rate fast enough, but the lefty economists have proved yet again that knowing some economics and being good at economic policy are very different (something Starmer should have realised when he chose Reeves). Needless to say, they have not asked themselves why they got Milei so badly wrong.
And the comparison between him and Starmer/Reeves, or for that matter Macron, Scholz or Trump, is just embarrassing.
Argentine Prez Javier Milei accused of fraud over $LIBRA crypto promotion
There was no other memorial, nothing but the cross, it was otherwise just a patch of waste ground in the thin Siberian summer sun (this was one year after the end of communism)
Yekaterinburg is not in Siberia. It's in the Ural Federal District.
Doesn't 'Siberia' extend to the Urals ?
No, @Dura_Ace is right. Yekaterinberg is technically and politically quite a distance from "Siberia" proper
However psychologically and emotionally for a lot of Russians and others, "Siberia" begins east of the Urals, and Yekaterinberg is that
"Because Siberia is a geographic and historic concept and not a political entity, there is no single precise definition of its territorial borders. Traditionally, Siberia spans the entire expanse of land from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, with the Ural River usually forming the southernmost portion of its western boundary, and includes most of the drainage basin of the Arctic Ocean. It is further defined as stretching from the territories within the Arctic Circle in the north to the northern borders of Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and China in the south, although the hills of north-central Kazakhstan are also commonly included.[3][5] The Russian government divides the region into three federal districts (groupings of Russian federal subjects), of which only the central one is officially referred to as "Siberian"; the other two are the Ural and Far Eastern federal districts, named for the Ural and Russian Far East regions that correspond respectively to the western and eastern thirds of Siberia in the broader sense."
Well indeed
Also Yekaterinburg “feels” Siberian. As soon as you get off the plane, having overflown the urals from Moscow, it feels…. Siberian. Asian. Different. Wilder
There was no other memorial, nothing but the cross, it was otherwise just a patch of waste ground in the thin Siberian summer sun (this was one year after the end of communism)
Yekaterinburg is not in Siberia. It's in the Ural Federal District.
Doesn't 'Siberia' extend to the Urals ?
No, @Dura_Ace is right. Yekaterinberg is technically and politically quite a distance from "Siberia" proper
However psychologically and emotionally for a lot of Russians and others, "Siberia" begins east of the Urals, and Yekaterinberg is that
'Geographic Siberia' includes the Urals. The Russian administrative district is much smaller.
It's semantics, but I'm happy to defer to our resident expert.
The last civil war widow didn't actually receive her pension - she didn't claim it because her son-in-law threatened her if she did.
A disabled daughter of a veteran was still receiving a pension until 2020, however.
Ah so the last widow actually receiving a pension died only 144 years after the war ended!
Apparently the thinking within US social security is that their primary aim is to minimise complaints, which means minimising false negative flags in the database. No-one receiving money they’re not expecting is making a complaint, and for various reasons this has been happening for decades with no auditing.
The working estimate for Musk’s team is several hundred billion dollars a year paid out incorrectly.
When added to the story from last week of the federal employee retirement process still being done on paper and taking months to complete, It’s quite the insight into just how antequated are all of the systems they’re using. One can imagine that the UK government will also have a number of equally silly stories about systems that hang together by the barest of threads.
US gov't spend is/was ~ 23% of gdp, whereas we're at ~45%. If you allow 11% for health it's still 23/34 as comparable figures to my mind. I think this is a large part of why they've got so much richer than us since 2008. We need to cut a heck of a lot. Some good news on the NHS numbers this morning. If Starmer goes before the election Streeting might be the one to fight 2029.
The reason they’ve got so much richer than us since 2008, in 3 charts and one paragraph:
Exports The top exports of United States are Crude Petroleum ($125B), Refined Petroleum ($107B), Petroleum Gas ($83.2B), Gas Turbines ($69.3B), and Cars ($65.3B), exporting mostly to Canada ($269B), Mexico ($243B), China ($154B), Germany ($94.8B), and Japan ($80.2B).
USA = petrostate. A giant Saudi, but with alcohol.
Meanwhile in the UK we have Ed Miliband.
Even if we squeezed every last drop out of the North Sea and dug up the whole of Lincolnshire for fracking it wouldn’t touch the sides. The US has vast reserves.
Of course another cause of recent US GDP growth has been the investment boom triggered by Biden’s IRA. The UK could learn a thing or two about how to encourage green energy growth from the (pre-Trump) USA.
Not developing UK fields won't stop us using gas, we'll just import it from Qatar instead.
Indeed, the same DESNZ that is blocking new exploration and development has also backed the new build NZT CCGT CCS project, and will likely back further CCGT CCS and Blue Hydrogen projects, locking in demand for imported natural gas for decades to come.
WTAF?
New fields, even with massive tax relief and unlimited new licenses, won't make any material difference to our gas production in the medium term. If you're fussed about us importing gas, the only option is to rapidly increase our transition to renewables.
Ukrainian President Zelensky says more than 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, with "tens of thousands more missing in action or in captivity".
Those missing in action could be dead or in captivity, Zelensky told NBC News on Sunday.
Ten days earlier, on 6 February, Zelensky said 45,100 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and around 390,000 had been wounded. Military experts in Ukraine and the West believe the number could be far higher.
Russia hasn't released an equivalent figure, but UK Defence Intelligence estimated in December that an average of 1,523 Russian soldiers were being killed and wounded every day.
Zelensky says up to 350,000 Russian soldiers have been killed - other reports suggest that number could be much higher.
That's an extraordinary figure.
To put it in context, 265,000 British combat personnel were killed in the whole of the Second World War.
The 2021 census suggests about 50m Russians between 18 and 44. Assume half male and knock a few off at each end and, based on the U.S. estimate of 700k dead or wounded, that’s devastating.
Further context: UK casualty figures in WW1 were around 2.5 million from the "UK and colonies", but not including major colonies such as Canada, Oz, SAfrica etc.
That is 1/3 killed, 2/3 wounded, at a run rate of 1750 per day average from a population which was 45 million.
Or pro-rata, around 3x more than Russia is suffering currently - as the Russian population is around 140 million.
And we know the impact that had here through most of our family histories, and through eg the numbers of single women eg teachers, and the surge in spiritualism, amongst others.
I think my known tally from my dad's side is one who was killed or committed suicide later, and one who got shell-shock and not proper treatment which in my view came out in him later being something of a wife-beater, which then fed through to my dad being sent away to boarding school to be safe, and (speculating) him being emotionally distant with his own children.
The last civil war widow didn't actually receive her pension - she didn't claim it because her son-in-law threatened her if she did.
A disabled daughter of a veteran was still receiving a pension until 2020, however.
Ah so the last widow actually receiving a pension died only 144 years after the war ended!
Apparently the thinking within US social security is that their primary aim is to minimise complaints, which means minimising false negative flags in the database. No-one receiving money they’re not expecting is making a complaint, and for various reasons this has been happening for decades with no auditing.
The working estimate for Musk’s team is several hundred billion dollars a year paid out incorrectly.
When added to the story from last week of the federal employee retirement process still being done on paper and taking months to complete, It’s quite the insight into just how antequated are all of the systems they’re using. One can imagine that the UK government will also have a number of equally silly stories about systems that hang together by the barest of threads.
The biggest problem with the incompetent and ham fisted way this is being done, is that it will be a disaster and block attempts at genuine reform for a generation.
Musk and his "pimple faced teenagers" are doing fine, some stuff will inevitably be cut too far but shouting in the media about particular hobby horses doesn't mean what he's doing isn't working.
The live stream of savings is on: https://doge.gov/ If it's going to be stopped it'll either be because of the courts or congress people's vested interests.
Next stop the US military, and err "emphasising" the need for Europe to deal with it's own issues will allow an absolute chainsaw to that budget. Seems like Cooper is going to copy aspects of DOGE anyway to try and find savings.
I am not sure about that. In my area, the DOGE boys have decided that the US Patent and Trademark Office costs the US taxpayer $2 billion a year in wages. In reality, it is a self-funding agency that costs the US taxpayer nothing and, in fact, often generates a surplus that is redistributed to other parts of the federal government. If they are wrong about that, it does make you wonder what else they are missing.
Of course, more generally: when everything is viewed as a cost then nothing has value. It's not a sustainable way to run either a business or a country.
Not an expert, but I'd guess that undermining the patent system isn't great for innovation and investment.
There are lots of arguments about the value of the patient system among economists.
It's probably very good indeed for biotech innovation; less so for stuff like software.
Just letting it rot is probably worse than other alternatives.
Ukrainian President Zelensky says more than 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, with "tens of thousands more missing in action or in captivity".
Those missing in action could be dead or in captivity, Zelensky told NBC News on Sunday.
Ten days earlier, on 6 February, Zelensky said 45,100 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and around 390,000 had been wounded. Military experts in Ukraine and the West believe the number could be far higher.
Russia hasn't released an equivalent figure, but UK Defence Intelligence estimated in December that an average of 1,523 Russian soldiers were being killed and wounded every day.
Zelensky says up to 350,000 Russian soldiers have been killed - other reports suggest that number could be much higher.
That's an extraordinary figure.
To put it in context, 265,000 British combat personnel were killed in the whole of the Second World War.
That's the problem with Russia - Putin doesn't seem to regard it's population as anything other than expendable.
Plus ça change. If a nation continues to fetishise a war that happened 80+ years ago with deaths in the tens of millions, I imagine sacrifice is very much a cultural part of its psyche. Just as they can't comprehend societies that value (up to a point) their citizens and troops, we can't really understand that level of dogged acceptance.
Rejection of life is a revolutionary act. I.S. Turgenev created the character of Bazarov as a parody of the Men of the Sixties but actually become an unironic role model for young Russians. This nihilism then became violent through agency of the New Men like Zaitsev and Nechayev (the basis for Shigalev and Verkhovensky in F. M. Dostoyevsky's Demons).
Life denying fanaticism is deeply embedded in Russian culture and unless one is able to grasp, in totality, and politically contextualise the Nechayev Affair then it's impossible to make any serious comment on the SMO.
Start with Bakunin and Nechayev's Revolutionary Catechism. Nechayev also recommended sleeping on a hard wooden board.
¡Viva la Muerte!
"Muera la intelegencia! Viva la muerte!"
is the full quote.
Various sources suggest a high likelihood that these words WERE shouted in the face-off between General Millan-Astray, Franco's one-eyed propaganda-chief and Unamuno, philosopher, novelist, cultural critic and erstwhile tepid supporter of Francoism.
Though sources are
The short version sums it up perfectly though. Death Love.
Big Piles Of Dead People Is Awesome.
You find even not especially tankie Lefties in the UK, in between anti-war activism, summoning the Glorious Dead of The Great Patriotic War. They get very upset when you point out that vast numbers of those deaths were a complete waste.
Simple example - It took the Nazis 35 days to conquer half of Poland, while the Soviet Union was stealing the other half. So, if they had still had Poland in between The Soviet Union and Germany, it would have taken the Germans *weeks* to get to the front door. Especially is the Soviet Union wasn't attacking from the other side.
Instead, they had the Germans at the front door.....
"Long live death!" is the best translation.
"Death Love" doesn't quite get there. Was that a typo on your part?
There was no other memorial, nothing but the cross, it was otherwise just a patch of waste ground in the thin Siberian summer sun (this was one year after the end of communism)
Yekaterinburg is not in Siberia. It's in the Ural Federal District.
Doesn't 'Siberia' extend to the Urals ?
No, @Dura_Ace is right. Yekaterinberg is technically and politically quite a distance from "Siberia" proper
However psychologically and emotionally for a lot of Russians and others, "Siberia" begins east of the Urals, and Yekaterinberg is that
'Geographic Siberia' includes the Urals. The Russian administrative district is much smaller.
It's semantics, but I'm happy to defer to our resident expert.
The last civil war widow didn't actually receive her pension - she didn't claim it because her son-in-law threatened her if she did.
A disabled daughter of a veteran was still receiving a pension until 2020, however.
Ah so the last widow actually receiving a pension died only 144 years after the war ended!
Apparently the thinking within US social security is that their primary aim is to minimise complaints, which means minimising false negative flags in the database. No-one receiving money they’re not expecting is making a complaint, and for various reasons this has been happening for decades with no auditing.
The working estimate for Musk’s team is several hundred billion dollars a year paid out incorrectly.
When added to the story from last week of the federal employee retirement process still being done on paper and taking months to complete, It’s quite the insight into just how antequated are all of the systems they’re using. One can imagine that the UK government will also have a number of equally silly stories about systems that hang together by the barest of threads.
US gov't spend is/was ~ 23% of gdp, whereas we're at ~45%. If you allow 11% for health it's still 23/34 as comparable figures to my mind. I think this is a large part of why they've got so much richer than us since 2008. We need to cut a heck of a lot. Some good news on the NHS numbers this morning. If Starmer goes before the election Streeting might be the one to fight 2029.
The reason they’ve got so much richer than us since 2008, in 3 charts and one paragraph:
Exports The top exports of United States are Crude Petroleum ($125B), Refined Petroleum ($107B), Petroleum Gas ($83.2B), Gas Turbines ($69.3B), and Cars ($65.3B), exporting mostly to Canada ($269B), Mexico ($243B), China ($154B), Germany ($94.8B), and Japan ($80.2B).
USA = petrostate. A giant Saudi, but with alcohol.
Meanwhile in the UK we have Ed Miliband.
Even if we squeezed every last drop out of the North Sea and dug up the whole of Lincolnshire for fracking it wouldn’t touch the sides. The US has vast reserves.
Of course another cause of recent US GDP growth has been the investment boom triggered by Biden’s IRA. The UK could learn a thing or two about how to encourage green energy growth from the (pre-Trump) USA.
Not developing UK fields won't stop us using gas, we'll just import it from Qatar instead.
Indeed, the same DESNZ that is blocking new exploration and development has also backed the new build NZT CCGT CCS project, and will likely back further CCGT CCS and Blue Hydrogen projects, locking in demand for imported natural gas for decades to come.
WTAF?
Most of us say WTAF about CCS and "blue hydrogen". Both costly boondoggles, IMO.
Our perennial reminder, elections are zero sum events. If the Conservatives and Labour are unpopular it benefits Reform even if many people don't like Farage either
Ukrainian President Zelensky says more than 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, with "tens of thousands more missing in action or in captivity".
Those missing in action could be dead or in captivity, Zelensky told NBC News on Sunday.
Ten days earlier, on 6 February, Zelensky said 45,100 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and around 390,000 had been wounded. Military experts in Ukraine and the West believe the number could be far higher.
Russia hasn't released an equivalent figure, but UK Defence Intelligence estimated in December that an average of 1,523 Russian soldiers were being killed and wounded every day.
Zelensky says up to 350,000 Russian soldiers have been killed - other reports suggest that number could be much higher.
That's an extraordinary figure.
To put it in context, 265,000 British combat personnel were killed in the whole of the Second World War.
That's the problem with Russia - Putin doesn't seem to regard it's population as anything other than expendable.
Plus ça change. If a nation continues to fetishise a war that happened 80+ years ago with deaths in the tens of millions, I imagine sacrifice is very much a cultural part of its psyche. Just as they can't comprehend societies that value (up to a point) their citizens and troops, we can't really understand that level of dogged acceptance.
Except for Hitler and Napoleon has anyone actually cared about Russia to the point of invading it..
Edit and the Mongols but they were a unique case..
Napoleon.
And the Poles in 1609 and 1920.
And the Swedes in 1708.
This is the reason the colours of Ukraine are blue and yellow like Sweden (and Boca Juniors). The Hetman of the Zaporizhian Host and Left Bank Ukraine switched sides, abandoning Tsar Peter I and chucking his lot in with Charles XII of Sweden. Then, as now, it didn't really work out.
Does Putin the historian, think Russia includes the Left Bank?
So basically Reform voters are Cheddar-eating (none of that foreign stuff)surrender monkeys. Either that or they are sympathetic to the fascist leader of our main adversary.
There are also tensions starting to bubble up in the USA amongst Trump's core base.
We already have Trump supporters having their workforces, families and spouses deported. And monies being cut off abruptly in the USA as they were cut off across the world when USAID was shuttered. For example I saw one where a farmer had had his federally funded fencing and drainage project stopped in its tracks when half-built.
But if for example if the Department of Education gets shuttered, that will impact Red States which get the most money effectively cross-subsidised from Blue States.
Any of that could blow up unpredictably. And when tariffs start impacting or retaliaton comes in ... eg Canada supplies the overwhelming majority of heavy crude refined in Texas, with few alternatives (aiui Venezuela, Russia). For example, what happens if Canada does a reverse tariff and puts 10% on the price?
..And people complaining that their illegal immigrant workforce has been deported aren't going to get much sympathy.
Of course not - they probably voted for Trump. Which is... the point you're ignoring.
Ignoring what ?
For every person complaining that their illegal immigrant workforce has been deported there's likely to be a thousand who cheer at the news and laugh at the complaining illegal immigrant exploiter.
And there will be both Dem and GOP supporters among the exploiters and among those cheering at the deportations.
So basically Reform voters are Cheddar-eating (none of that foreign stuff)surrender monkeys. Either that or they are sympathetic to the fascist leader of our main adversary.
Well, they are very keen on expanding the armed services. It's just their perceived enemies are quite different to those of the rest of the country.
Ukrainian President Zelensky says more than 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, with "tens of thousands more missing in action or in captivity".
Those missing in action could be dead or in captivity, Zelensky told NBC News on Sunday.
Ten days earlier, on 6 February, Zelensky said 45,100 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and around 390,000 had been wounded. Military experts in Ukraine and the West believe the number could be far higher.
Russia hasn't released an equivalent figure, but UK Defence Intelligence estimated in December that an average of 1,523 Russian soldiers were being killed and wounded every day.
Zelensky says up to 350,000 Russian soldiers have been killed - other reports suggest that number could be much higher.
That's an extraordinary figure.
To put it in context, 265,000 British combat personnel were killed in the whole of the Second World War.
That's the problem with Russia - Putin doesn't seem to regard it's population as anything other than expendable.
The fact that Russia’s least cruel ruler was probably Catherine the Great, 250 years ago, says everything about the place.
It’s like a massive version of Sparta, with violence cascading from top to bottom.
Catherine was famously brutal
Arguably the least cruel period in modern Russian history (ie since Ivan the Terrible) was during the last Romanovs. You could do pretty drastic things in Romanov Russia, around 1900-1914, and all that happened to you was exile, maybe even somewhere nice-ish in the south
All change after 1917
Of course it was this relative weakness which probably doomed the regime. If the Romanovs had made sure to exterminate all enemies - a la Stalin - I doubt the Reds would have succeeded
But, that still makes her lenient, compared to other rulers. Somewhat surprisingly, the Russian penal code in the second half of the 18th century was less harsh than our own "bloody code."
So basically Reform voters are Cheddar-eating (none of that foreign stuff)surrender monkeys. Either that or they are sympathetic to the fascist leader of our main adversary.
They're Little Englanders. Though, of course, the original Little Englander view of the Empire is now pretty much the mainstream position.
Ukrainian President Zelensky says more than 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, with "tens of thousands more missing in action or in captivity".
Those missing in action could be dead or in captivity, Zelensky told NBC News on Sunday.
Ten days earlier, on 6 February, Zelensky said 45,100 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and around 390,000 had been wounded. Military experts in Ukraine and the West believe the number could be far higher.
Russia hasn't released an equivalent figure, but UK Defence Intelligence estimated in December that an average of 1,523 Russian soldiers were being killed and wounded every day.
Zelensky says up to 350,000 Russian soldiers have been killed - other reports suggest that number could be much higher.
That's an extraordinary figure.
To put it in context, 265,000 British combat personnel were killed in the whole of the Second World War.
That's the problem with Russia - Putin doesn't seem to regard it's population as anything other than expendable.
Plus ça change. If a nation continues to fetishise a war that happened 80+ years ago with deaths in the tens of millions, I imagine sacrifice is very much a cultural part of its psyche. Just as they can't comprehend societies that value (up to a point) their citizens and troops, we can't really understand that level of dogged acceptance.
Rejection of life is a revolutionary act. I.S. Turgenev created the character of Bazarov as a parody of the Men of the Sixties but actually become an unironic role model for young Russians. This nihilism then became violent through agency of the New Men like Zaitsev and Nechayev (the basis for Shigalev and Verkhovensky in F. M. Dostoyevsky's Demons).
Life denying fanaticism is deeply embedded in Russian culture and unless one is able to grasp, in totality, and politically contextualise the Nechayev Affair then it's impossible to make any serious comment on the SMO.
Start with Bakunin and Nechayev's Revolutionary Catechism. Nechayev also recommended sleeping on a hard wooden board.
¡Viva la Muerte!
"Muera la intelegencia! Viva la muerte!"
is the full quote.
Various sources suggest a high likelihood that these words WERE shouted in the face-off between General Millan-Astray, Franco's one-eyed propaganda-chief and Unamuno, philosopher, novelist, cultural critic and erstwhile tepid supporter of Francoism.
Though sources are
The short version sums it up perfectly though. Death Love.
Big Piles Of Dead People Is Awesome.
You find even not especially tankie Lefties in the UK, in between anti-war activism, summoning the Glorious Dead of The Great Patriotic War. They get very upset when you point out that vast numbers of those deaths were a complete waste.
Simple example - It took the Nazis 35 days to conquer half of Poland, while the Soviet Union was stealing the other half. So, if they had still had Poland in between The Soviet Union and Germany, it would have taken the Germans *weeks* to get to the front door. Especially is the Soviet Union wasn't attacking from the other side.
Instead, they had the Germans at the front door.....
"Long live death!" is the best translation.
"Death Love" doesn't quite get there. Was that a typo on your part?
No - not a translation. It's about the sentiment behind it. The love of war and death more than actual human love.
"the new movements which appeared in the middle years of the century, Ingsoc in Oceania, New-Bolshevism in Eurasia, Death-Worship, as it is commonly called, in Eastasia, had the conscious aim of perpetuating unfreedom and inequality. "
Ukrainian President Zelensky says more than 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, with "tens of thousands more missing in action or in captivity".
Those missing in action could be dead or in captivity, Zelensky told NBC News on Sunday.
Ten days earlier, on 6 February, Zelensky said 45,100 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and around 390,000 had been wounded. Military experts in Ukraine and the West believe the number could be far higher.
Russia hasn't released an equivalent figure, but UK Defence Intelligence estimated in December that an average of 1,523 Russian soldiers were being killed and wounded every day.
Zelensky says up to 350,000 Russian soldiers have been killed - other reports suggest that number could be much higher.
That's an extraordinary figure.
To put it in context, 265,000 British combat personnel were killed in the whole of the Second World War.
The 2021 census suggests about 50m Russians between 18 and 44. Assume half male and knock a few off at each end and, based on the U.S. estimate of 700k dead or wounded, that’s devastating.
Further context: UK casualty figures in WW1 were around 2.5 million from the "UK and colonies", but not including major colonies such as Canada, Oz, SAfrica etc.
That is 1/3 killed, 2/3 wounded, at a run rate of 1750 per day average from a population which was 45 million.
Or pro-rata, around 3x more than Russia is suffering currently - as the Russian population is around 140 million.
And we know the impact that had here through most of our family histories, and through eg the numbers of single women eg teachers, and the surge in spiritualism, amongst others.
I think my known tally from my dad's side is one who was killed or committed suicide later, and one who got shell-shock and not proper treatment which in my view came out in him later being something of a wife-beater, which then fed through to my dad being sent away to boarding school to be safe, and (speculating) him being emotionally distant with his own children.
The big difference between then and now was that high birthrates meant that countries could bounce back swiftly, from war losses.
"As prominent anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed to the nation's top health position Thursday, Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph Abraham sent a memo to the state's health department saying that the state "will no longer promote mass vaccination" and barred staff from running seasonal vaccine campaigns, according to a report by the Times-Picayune of New Orleans."
We're probably holding it up, while we take a couple of years to decide not to fund the RR effort.
Hold on, I think I know the answer to this. I've been learning from the world of Trump and Musk. Is the answer: fire everyone who works for the Office for Nuclear Regulation?
Have either Badenoch or Farage commented on Starmer's announcement the UK is willing to put troops on the ground in Ukraine to help guarantee any peace deal that is agreed? That seems to be pretty consequential and worthy of some remark.
Ukrainian President Zelensky says more than 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, with "tens of thousands more missing in action or in captivity".
Those missing in action could be dead or in captivity, Zelensky told NBC News on Sunday.
Ten days earlier, on 6 February, Zelensky said 45,100 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and around 390,000 had been wounded. Military experts in Ukraine and the West believe the number could be far higher.
Russia hasn't released an equivalent figure, but UK Defence Intelligence estimated in December that an average of 1,523 Russian soldiers were being killed and wounded every day.
Zelensky says up to 350,000 Russian soldiers have been killed - other reports suggest that number could be much higher.
That's an extraordinary figure.
To put it in context, 265,000 British combat personnel were killed in the whole of the Second World War.
That's the problem with Russia - Putin doesn't seem to regard it's population as anything other than expendable.
Plus ça change. If a nation continues to fetishise a war that happened 80+ years ago with deaths in the tens of millions, I imagine sacrifice is very much a cultural part of its psyche. Just as they can't comprehend societies that value (up to a point) their citizens and troops, we can't really understand that level of dogged acceptance.
Except for Hitler and Napoleon has anyone actually cared about Russia to the point of invading it..
Edit and the Mongols but they were a unique case..
Napoleon.
And the Poles in 1609 and 1920.
And the Swedes in 1708.
This is the reason the colours of Ukraine are blue and yellow like Sweden (and Boca Juniors). The Hetman of the Zaporizhian Host and Left Bank Ukraine switched sides, abandoning Tsar Peter I and chucking his lot in with Charles XII of Sweden. Then, as now, it didn't really work out.
Does Putin the historian, think Russia includes the Left Bank?
No, especially after the French deployed the 344mm Lepage Creme Brûlée gun in Ukraine.
One hit would turn an entire battalion of Slavic Noble Warriors into Left Bank Existentialists - wearing rollneck black sweaters, drinking very small cups of coffee and arguing against the existence of existence.
"As prominent anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed to the nation's top health position Thursday, Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph Abraham sent a memo to the state's health department saying that the state "will no longer promote mass vaccination" and barred staff from running seasonal vaccine campaigns, according to a report by the Times-Picayune of New Orleans."
New poll has the FDP on 5%, for the first time in a while (been stuck on 4). This is the big question in the German elections - which of the 3 parties around 5% will make the cut.
I don't think the public pro-AfD interventions by Musk and Vance are going to make any difference either way.
Some people are concerned that the polls might understate the AfD, but this seems to be based on polls underestimating Trump, which doesn't seem very relevant to me. In the last federal elections the polls were fairly accurate on the AfD - if anything they slightly overstated the AfD.
Of course there could be a bigger miss this time, but I don't see any convincing reasons to argue for any particular miss with any particular party in any particular direction.
So basically Reform voters are Cheddar-eating (none of that foreign stuff)surrender monkeys. Either that or they are sympathetic to the fascist leader of our main adversary.
They're Little Englanders. Though, of course, the original Little Englander view of the Empire is now pretty much the mainstream position.
Or are they anymore? I suspect what we’re seeing is a portion of Reform voters (not all, as the poll shows, but a significant part) who are now in lockstep with the Trump/Musk world view. We see a bit of that here, and we see the big chasm between that and the world view of other right wing supporters.
Britain has lacked a pro-Putin political wing of the sort represented by the likes of Orban, Fico and the AfD but that might now be starting to form.
We're probably holding it up, while we take a couple of years to decide not to fund the RR effort.
Hold on, I think I know the answer to this. I've been learning from the world of Trump and Musk. Is the answer: fire everyone who works for the Office for Nuclear Regulation?
No.
The answer is to prioritise it.
As in. "I suggest you prioritise it. Otherwise we have a number of openings in checking nuclear waste storage that might suit you."
"As prominent anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed to the nation's top health position Thursday, Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph Abraham sent a memo to the state's health department saying that the state "will no longer promote mass vaccination" and barred staff from running seasonal vaccine campaigns, according to a report by the Times-Picayune of New Orleans."
What happens without any promotion? Hard to know, but a conservative estimate would be for deaths to increase by 5%. So, hundreds will die from this, at least.
"As prominent anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed to the nation's top health position Thursday, Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph Abraham sent a memo to the state's health department saying that the state "will no longer promote mass vaccination" and barred staff from running seasonal vaccine campaigns, according to a report by the Times-Picayune of New Orleans."
There are also tensions starting to bubble up in the USA amongst Trump's core base.
We already have Trump supporters having their workforces, families and spouses deported. And monies being cut off abruptly in the USA as they were cut off across the world when USAID was shuttered. For example I saw one where a farmer had had his federally funded fencing and drainage project stopped in its tracks when half-built.
But if for example if the Department of Education gets shuttered, that will impact Red States which get the most money effectively cross-subsidised from Blue States.
Any of that could blow up unpredictably. And when tariffs start impacting or retaliaton comes in ... eg Canada supplies the overwhelming majority of heavy crude refined in Texas, with few alternatives (aiui Venezuela, Russia). For example, what happens if Canada does a reverse tariff and puts 10% on the price?
..And people complaining that their illegal immigrant workforce has been deported aren't going to get much sympathy.
And what happens to when food production falls and non-harvested fruit rots in the field, prices go up, and that is on top of the impact of tariffs?
(I'll leave aside the price of eggs, when Trump is closing down setups like Federal Regulators.)
On the fruit imports Mexico -> USA is quite like Spain -> here.
By 2021, Mexico supplied almost two-thirds of U.S. vegetable imports and about half of U.S. fruit and tree nut imports.
I think that Kemi is safe for at least another year or so. In part, because there is just no-one left in the parliamentary party who convinces they would do much better. And, in any event, who would want to take over now with so much time to elapse before an election?
I think we should keep an eye on Penny Mordaunt. She has confirmed that she intends to stand again but if a winnable by-election comes along she could be in the Commons sooner. She is working the media. And she is working the party faithful - for instance will be in the North of Scotland at party events next month, I believe. You don't do that unless you're deadly serious. There is not an insignificant chance she could be next PM.
The last civil war widow didn't actually receive her pension - she didn't claim it because her son-in-law threatened her if she did.
A disabled daughter of a veteran was still receiving a pension until 2020, however.
Ah so the last widow actually receiving a pension died only 144 years after the war ended!
Apparently the thinking within US social security is that their primary aim is to minimise complaints, which means minimising false negative flags in the database. No-one receiving money they’re not expecting is making a complaint, and for various reasons this has been happening for decades with no auditing.
The working estimate for Musk’s team is several hundred billion dollars a year paid out incorrectly.
When added to the story from last week of the federal employee retirement process still being done on paper and taking months to complete, It’s quite the insight into just how antequated are all of the systems they’re using. One can imagine that the UK government will also have a number of equally silly stories about systems that hang together by the barest of threads.
US gov't spend is/was ~ 23% of gdp, whereas we're at ~45%. If you allow 11% for health it's still 23/34 as comparable figures to my mind. I think this is a large part of why they've got so much richer than us since 2008. We need to cut a heck of a lot. Some good news on the NHS numbers this morning. If Starmer goes before the election Streeting might be the one to fight 2029.
The reason they’ve got so much richer than us since 2008, in 3 charts and one paragraph:
Exports The top exports of United States are Crude Petroleum ($125B), Refined Petroleum ($107B), Petroleum Gas ($83.2B), Gas Turbines ($69.3B), and Cars ($65.3B), exporting mostly to Canada ($269B), Mexico ($243B), China ($154B), Germany ($94.8B), and Japan ($80.2B).
USA = petrostate. A giant Saudi, but with alcohol.
Rubbish.
Oil and gas now makes up about 8% of America's GDP, compared with about 40-50% of Saudi Arabia's, depending on the oil price. That's up from about 4% ten years ago - a decent contribution to growth, but there's much more to it.
Sorry to bring boring things like facts into a discussion on economics.
Have either Badenoch or Farage commented on Starmer's announcement the UK is willing to put troops on the ground in Ukraine to help guarantee any peace deal that is agreed? That seems to be pretty consequential and worthy of some remark.
Former PM Sunak has tweeted favourably this morning.
So basically Reform voters are Cheddar-eating (none of that foreign stuff)surrender monkeys. Either that or they are sympathetic to the fascist leader of our main adversary.
They're Little Englanders. Though, of course, the original Little Englander view of the Empire is now pretty much the mainstream position.
Or are they anymore? I suspect what we’re seeing is a portion of Reform voters (not all, as the poll shows, but a significant part) who are now in lockstep with the Trump/Musk world view. We see a bit of that here, and we see the big chasm between that and the world view of other right wing supporters.
Britain has lacked a pro-Putin political wing of the sort represented by the likes of Orban, Fico and the AfD but that might now be starting to form.
Reform is split 50:50 I think. Look at the support for renewables, for example.
If Farage manages to hold that coalition together, while continuing to attract Tories, I'll be very impressed. I think he's done a decent job of that so far, pushing back on Musk, not going in with Yaxley-Lennon.
"As prominent anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed to the nation's top health position Thursday, Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph Abraham sent a memo to the state's health department saying that the state "will no longer promote mass vaccination" and barred staff from running seasonal vaccine campaigns, according to a report by the Times-Picayune of New Orleans."
"As prominent anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed to the nation's top health position Thursday, Louisiana Surgeon General Ralph Abraham sent a memo to the state's health department saying that the state "will no longer promote mass vaccination" and barred staff from running seasonal vaccine campaigns, according to a report by the Times-Picayune of New Orleans."
So basically Reform voters are Cheddar-eating (none of that foreign stuff)surrender monkeys. Either that or they are sympathetic to the fascist leader of our main adversary.
They're Little Englanders. Though, of course, the original Little Englander view of the Empire is now pretty much the mainstream position.
Or are they anymore? I suspect what we’re seeing is a portion of Reform voters (not all, as the poll shows, but a significant part) who are now in lockstep with the Trump/Musk world view. We see a bit of that here, and we see the big chasm between that and the world view of other right wing supporters.
Britain has lacked a pro-Putin political wing of the sort represented by the likes of Orban, Fico and the AfD but that might now be starting to form.
We are still living in the shadow of the pointless, damaging 00s Middle East adventures that cost so much for what appears to have been so little. Is there likely a Putinist wing on the right of this country? I’d suggest yes - but they’re the ones who oppose any assistance rather than just troops.
If there is a Russian sympathetic/Russian run insurgency then I’d expect those numbers to drop rapidly across the board.
The last civil war widow didn't actually receive her pension - she didn't claim it because her son-in-law threatened her if she did.
A disabled daughter of a veteran was still receiving a pension until 2020, however.
Ah so the last widow actually receiving a pension died only 144 years after the war ended!
Apparently the thinking within US social security is that their primary aim is to minimise complaints, which means minimising false negative flags in the database. No-one receiving money they’re not expecting is making a complaint, and for various reasons this has been happening for decades with no auditing.
The working estimate for Musk’s team is several hundred billion dollars a year paid out incorrectly.
When added to the story from last week of the federal employee retirement process still being done on paper and taking months to complete, It’s quite the insight into just how antequated are all of the systems they’re using. One can imagine that the UK government will also have a number of equally silly stories about systems that hang together by the barest of threads.
US gov't spend is/was ~ 23% of gdp, whereas we're at ~45%. If you allow 11% for health it's still 23/34 as comparable figures to my mind. I think this is a large part of why they've got so much richer than us since 2008. We need to cut a heck of a lot. Some good news on the NHS numbers this morning. If Starmer goes before the election Streeting might be the one to fight 2029.
The reason they’ve got so much richer than us since 2008, in 3 charts and one paragraph:
Exports The top exports of United States are Crude Petroleum ($125B), Refined Petroleum ($107B), Petroleum Gas ($83.2B), Gas Turbines ($69.3B), and Cars ($65.3B), exporting mostly to Canada ($269B), Mexico ($243B), China ($154B), Germany ($94.8B), and Japan ($80.2B).
USA = petrostate. A giant Saudi, but with alcohol.
Rubbish.
Oil and gas now makes up about 8% of America's GDP, compared with about 40-50% of Saudi Arabia's, depending on the oil price. That's up from about 4% ten years ago - a decent contribution to growth, but there's much more to it.
Sorry to bring boring things like facts into a discussion on economics.
No need to be so abrasive. It’s a very significant rise, particularly when you look at its contribution to cross border trade, but on its own it also doesn’t factor in the impact cheap domestic fracked gas has had on manufacturing profitability and investment in the US in the last decade and a half. I’ve seen first hand its direct effect on location decisions in the chemicals industry.
The US’ hydrocarbons output is rarely commented on as a factor in growth - people choose their favourite hobbyhorses: the entrepreneurial spirit, the tech giants, taxes and regulation, immigration, whatever. But the US is the world’s biggest oil producer.
Have either Badenoch or Farage commented on Starmer's announcement the UK is willing to put troops on the ground in Ukraine to help guarantee any peace deal that is agreed? That seems to be pretty consequential and worthy of some remark.
Have either Badenoch or Farage commented on Starmer's announcement the UK is willing to put troops on the ground in Ukraine to help guarantee any peace deal that is agreed? That seems to be pretty consequential and worthy of some remark.
It's interesting that Starmer has done this via an article in the Telegraph. Quite a deliberately direct challenge to Farage, and to a lesser extent Badenoch, I suspect.
Have either Badenoch or Farage commented on Starmer's announcement the UK is willing to put troops on the ground in Ukraine to help guarantee any peace deal that is agreed? That seems to be pretty consequential and worthy of some remark.
Have either Badenoch or Farage commented on Starmer's announcement the UK is willing to put troops on the ground in Ukraine to help guarantee any peace deal that is agreed? That seems to be pretty consequential and worthy of some remark.
Former PM Sunak has tweeted favourably this morning.
UK has some of the best cross-party support for Ukraine, well done to Mr Sunak and presumably Mrs Badenoch to follow.
I suspect even Farage will be in favour, when it’s explained to him that peace in Ukraine leads to several hundred thousand refugees leaving the UK to return home.
Kemi Badenoch this morning: "A country cannot be successful if its people and intellectual elite don’t believe in it. This means dealing with the poisoning of minds through higher education."
Comments
This gives them political cover, for when they come for the really dodgy but complex contracts where the serious money laundering happens.
The really interesting thing to watch is when the pushback starts from the politicians and their campaign funds, that are right in the middle of all this web and making serious bank.
I suspect the inflexion moment is probably going to be RFK’s proposal to get the pharma ads off TV, to which the entire mainstream media and political ecosystem is going to go totally ballistic against the idea.
Then the fun is going to be the public reaction to the political reaction. Are they going to accept the politicians voting to keep greasing their own palms, or will there actually be a serious backlash that leads to primary challenges?
https://www.rte.ie/video/id/23208/
He was previously part of the delegation that laughed at Trump’s UN speech last time when he criticised Germany’s dependence on Russian energy.
Every single person in Washington, in politics, and the permanent apparatus of government feeds off the system.
The only possibility of reform is slowly edging non-FAR, fixed price contracts into more areas. But Congress has carefully and specifically banned that.
https://www.msn.com/en-ae/news/other/doge-leaks-top-secret-information-about-intelligence-agencies/ar-AA1z5tTZ
https://www.wired.com/story/the-official-doge-website-launch-was-a-security-mess/
If this is "doing fine", I'd hate to see what doing badly looks like.
hahahahahahah
Essentially, there are packages and letters being delivered both ways, and an awful lot of missing UKR POWs and undeclared RU detention sites. So there are *some* ICRC visits, but only *some*. And UKR are also complaining that casualties are not being properly assessed and prioritised for repatriation.
Of course another cause of recent US GDP growth has been the investment boom triggered by Biden’s IRA. The UK could learn a thing or two about how to encourage green energy growth from the (pre-Trump) USA.
Jesus fucking Christ
Show me where the bad orange man touched you?
It’s like a massive version of Sparta, with violence cascading from top to bottom.
If Reform actually seemed to be poised to win that would change, at least somewhat. But that's a couple of years off. Canvassing in the local elections, I'm finding lots of evasive people who I assume are at least partly planning to vote Reform.
"Is Russia still the danger?”
“We are all very worried about her.”
“We always were in my day, and in Dizzy’s before me. Is there still a Tsar?”
“Yes, but he is not a Romanoff. It’s another family. He is much more powerful, and much more despotic.”
Can the oranage man and the autistic genius manage to articulate to the general public just how badly the system works and how furious they should be with the politicians in Washington - or will the Congresscritters manage to get away with protecting the status quo against a bunch of outsiders with no interest in protecting anything.
So you can't erase the difference by saying "but healthcare".
IMV his 'autistic' traits are probably a symptom of too much reliance on drugs...
Arguably the least cruel period in modern Russian history (ie since Ivan the Terrible) was during the last Romanovs. You could do pretty drastic things in Romanov Russia, around 1900-1914, and all that happened to you was exile, maybe even somewhere nice-ish in the south
All change after 1917
Of course it was this relative weakness which probably doomed the regime. If the Romanovs had made sure to exterminate all enemies - a la Stalin - I doubt the Reds would have succeeded
However psychologically and emotionally for a lot of Russians and others, "Siberia" begins east of the Urals, and Yekaterinberg is that
In fact, SpaceX set the cat among the pigeons by creating a working example of non-FAR vs FAR. Which is why Congress moved to block more use of such contracts,
Musk has revolutionised and put the USA No 1 A++++ for space. A model of efficiency and value for money.
I do prefer Bezos' long term vision but there's no denying his accomplishments there.
The difference is mostly found in things devolved to the States in the US but funded centrally in the UK, such as education. There’s not the same transfer of federal funds to states as there is in the UK, so states, counties, and cities need to raise the vast majority of their own tax revenue from income, sales, and property taxes.
Total governmental spending in the two countries is closer than most statistics would suggest.
Of course, more generally: when everything is viewed as a cost then nothing has value. It's not a sustainable way to run either a business or a country.
Which is... the point you're ignoring.
https://www.realclearpolling.com/stories/analysis/four-weeks-in-trump-and-doge-approval-ratings-remain-high
(You’ll guess the headline from the url).
For example, I'm meeting a US friend in Brazil soon, we both got our jabs. Mine cost me £75, hers $700, and she is also paying $lots for health insurance that didn't cover it.
He's a businessman of extreme drive and considerable daring with an engineering background. There's nothing to suggest he himself is a paricularly outstanding ENGINEER.
It's those qualities of personality that underlie
his success.
The solution here is always more taxes and more regulation.
Let's just sit back and watch.
I suspect william & Sandpit will be less than thrilled with the eventual outcome.
Though the former seems to take everything in stride, however absurd.
Indeed, the same DESNZ that is blocking new exploration and development has also backed the new build NZT CCGT CCS project, and will likely back further CCGT CCS and Blue Hydrogen projects, locking in demand for imported natural gas for decades to come.
WTAF?
Jail would be a good place for Trump. I will admit South Africa has done nothing to deserve Musk.
The more it save consumers, the more it costs them.
One to watch is the NIH/FDA funding, which Kennedy seems to be about to take an axe to. That will not have positive outcomes for anyone (apart, possibly, from non US pharma industries).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberia
"Because Siberia is a geographic and historic concept and not a political entity, there is no single precise definition of its territorial borders. Traditionally, Siberia spans the entire expanse of land from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, with the Ural River usually forming the southernmost portion of its western boundary, and includes most of the drainage basin of the Arctic Ocean. It is further defined as stretching from the territories within the Arctic Circle in the north to the northern borders of Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and China in the south, although the hills of north-central Kazakhstan are also commonly included.[3][5] The Russian government divides the region into three federal districts (groupings of Russian federal subjects), of which only the central one is officially referred to as "Siberian"; the other two are the Ural and Far Eastern federal districts, named for the Ural and Russian Far East regions that correspond respectively to the western and eastern thirds of Siberia in the broader sense."
https://x.com/YouGov/status/1891437352163143690?t=pXFpJzCdEvGP6dMCPsnzoA&s=19
https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/argentina-president-javier-milei-fraud-crypto-libra-lawsuit-impeachment-125021700485_1.html#goog_rewarded
Also Yekaterinburg “feels” Siberian. As soon as you get off the plane, having overflown the urals from Moscow, it feels…. Siberian. Asian. Different. Wilder
The Russian administrative district is much smaller.
It's semantics, but I'm happy to defer to our resident expert.
UK casualty figures in WW1 were around 2.5 million from the "UK and colonies", but not including major colonies such as Canada, Oz, SAfrica etc.
That is 1/3 killed, 2/3 wounded, at a run rate of 1750 per day average from a population which was 45 million.
Or pro-rata, around 3x more than Russia is suffering currently - as the Russian population is around 140 million.
And we know the impact that had here through most of our family histories, and through eg the numbers of single women eg teachers, and the surge in spiritualism, amongst others.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties
I think my known tally from my dad's side is one who was killed or committed suicide later, and one who got shell-shock and not proper treatment which in my view came out in him later being something of a wife-beater, which then fed through to my dad being sent away to boarding school to be safe, and (speculating) him being emotionally distant with his own children.
It's probably very good indeed for biotech innovation; less so for stuff like software.
Just letting it rot is probably worse than other alternatives.
"Death Love" doesn't quite get there. Was that a typo on your part?
Both costly boondoggles, IMO.
Our perennial reminder, elections are zero sum events. If the Conservatives and Labour are unpopular it benefits Reform even if many people don't like Farage either
Does Putin the historian, think Russia includes the Left Bank?
- Wants to build 20+ microreactors in Britain
- Needs no taxpayer money
- Has new sites lined up for deploying them
- Can deliver them in two years
BUT
- Is in limbo because the Office for Nuclear Regulation hasn’t prioritised it
What would you say the govt should do?
https://x.com/s8mb/status/1891401635173138912
We're probably holding it up, while we take a couple of years to decide not to fund the RR effort.
For every person complaining that their illegal immigrant workforce has been deported there's likely to be a thousand who cheer at the news and laugh at the complaining illegal immigrant exploiter.
And there will be both Dem and GOP supporters among the exploiters and among those cheering at the deportations.
"the new movements which appeared in the middle years of the century, Ingsoc in Oceania, New-Bolshevism in Eurasia, Death-Worship, as it is commonly called, in Eastasia, had the conscious aim of perpetuating unfreedom and inequality. "
https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/02/louisiana-officially-ends-mass-vaccinations-as-rfk-jr-comes-to-power/
One hit would turn an entire battalion of Slavic Noble Warriors into Left Bank Existentialists - wearing rollneck black sweaters, drinking very small cups of coffee and arguing against the existence of existence.
I don't think the public pro-AfD interventions by Musk and Vance are going to make any difference either way.
Some people are concerned that the polls might understate the AfD, but this seems to be based on polls underestimating Trump, which doesn't seem very relevant to me. In the last federal elections the polls were fairly accurate on the AfD - if anything they slightly overstated the AfD.
Of course there could be a bigger miss this time, but I don't see any convincing reasons to argue for any particular miss with any particular party in any particular direction.
Britain has lacked a pro-Putin political wing of the sort represented by the likes of Orban, Fico and the AfD but that might now be starting to form.
The answer is to prioritise it.
As in. "I suggest you prioritise it. Otherwise we have a number of openings in checking nuclear waste storage that might suit you."
2013-2014: 474,000 cases, 5,500 hospitalizations, 600 deaths
2014-2015: 624,000 cases, 12,200 hospitalizations, 1,100 deaths
2015-2016: 442,000 cases, 5,200 hospitalizations, 400 deaths
2016-2017: 634,000 cases, 10,900 hospitalizations, 830 deaths
2017-2018: 984,000 cases, 18,000 hospitalizations, 1,300 deaths
2018-2019: 1,000,000 cases, 14,000 hospitalizations, 1,000 deaths
2019-2020: 755,000 cases, 8,000 hospitalizations, 4500 deaths
What happens without any promotion? Hard to know, but a conservative estimate would be for deaths to increase by 5%. So, hundreds will die from this, at least.
(I'll leave aside the price of eggs, when Trump is closing down setups like Federal Regulators.)
On the fruit imports Mexico -> USA is quite like Spain -> here.
By 2021, Mexico supplied almost two-thirds of U.S. vegetable imports and about half of U.S. fruit and tree nut imports.
(The number is around $20 billion pa by now).
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/chart-detail?chartId=108128#:~:text=By 2021, Mexico supplied almost,fruit and tree nut imports.
I think that Kemi is safe for at least another year or so. In part, because there is just no-one left in the parliamentary party who convinces they would do much better. And, in any event, who would want to take over now with so much time to elapse before an election?
I think we should keep an eye on Penny Mordaunt. She has confirmed that she intends to stand again but if a winnable by-election comes along she could be in the Commons sooner. She is working the media. And she is working the party faithful - for instance will be in the North of Scotland at party events next month, I believe. You don't do that unless you're deadly serious. There is not an insignificant chance she could be next PM.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/2014796/penny-mordaunt-poised-dramatic-political
Oil and gas now makes up about 8% of America's GDP, compared with about 40-50% of Saudi Arabia's, depending on the oil price. That's up from about 4% ten years ago - a decent contribution to growth, but there's much more to it.
Sorry to bring boring things like facts into a discussion on economics.
https://x.com/rishisunak/status/1891401184331620513?s=46
If Farage manages to hold that coalition together, while continuing to attract Tories, I'll be very impressed. I think he's done a decent job of that so far, pushing back on Musk, not going in with Yaxley-Lennon.
These fkkrs are in charge now, all to own the libs.
If there is a Russian sympathetic/Russian run insurgency then I’d expect those numbers to drop rapidly across the board.
The US’ hydrocarbons output is rarely commented on as a factor in growth - people choose their favourite hobbyhorses: the entrepreneurial spirit, the tech giants, taxes and regulation, immigration, whatever. But the US is the world’s biggest oil producer.
🚨 NEW: Badenoch praises Trump and ‘populism’ in speech warning of civilisational threats
In her ARC speech, Badenoch took aim at DEI, mass migration, “taking the knee” and claimed “some cultures are better than others”
Keir Starmer announcing Labour has hit NHS targets 9 months early, following an announcement we are ready to put boots on the ground in Ukraine.
Kemi Badenoch giving a speech at a think tank saying western culture is under attack by woke.
Richard Tice sending tweets doubting global warming.
If I were Tory leader I’d be banging on daily about Reeves, WFA, employer NICs, Reeves, inflation, Reeves.
I suspect even Farage will be in favour, when it’s explained to him that peace in Ukraine leads to several hundred thousand refugees leaving the UK to return home.
@GeorgeWParker
Kemi Badenoch this morning: "A country cannot be successful if its people and intellectual elite don’t believe in it. This means dealing with the poisoning of minds through higher education."