From my soul brother Elon:
“We find it sort of rather odd that there are quite a few people in the bureaucracy who who have a salary of a few hundred thousand dollars, but somehow manage to accrue tens of millions of dollars in net worth.” [beat] “We’re just curious as to where it came from…”
Yeah, me too. Investigate all of them — Democrats and Republicans.
One might think at first that this was heartening news:
More than 65,000 federal workers have reportedly accepted the Trump administration’s buyout offer.
However:
“If you resign under this program, you will retain all pay and benefits regardless of your daily workload and will be exempted from all applicable in-person work requirements until September 30, 2025 (or earlier if you choose to accelerate your resignation for any reason),” the memo sent in January to roughly 2 million federal employees reads.
So: 65,000 down, leaving 1,935,000 still to go. And:
A federal judge is expected to weigh in on the matter Monday.
A federal judge in Massachusetts. The People’s Soviet of Massachusetts. Any prizes for guessing how that will turn out?
Gah. Still, I guess we should take heart in the 65,000 number — it’s better than nothing.
As long as Trump and Musk keep applying the screws…
“USAID was established by an act of Congress, and it can only be disbanded by an act of Congress.” — some Socialist politician
Challenge accepted.
Here’s some good news:
Drugs used to treat cancer, diabetes and other chronic conditions are among 15 picked for negotiations that could result in lower prices for patients, the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed Friday.
The 15 drugs selected by HHS are all covered under Medicare Part D and represent the second round of negotiations between drug companies and the department, with a goal of lowering costs for Medicare patients.
And the good news:
Popular diabetes drugs Ozempic, Rybelsus and Wegovy, which are also used for weight loss are among the 15 announced Friday.
Hooray! Let me tell you, as one who has to take Ozempic for diabetes (at $60 per shot per week), this is welcome.
But wait! There’s more!
Negotiations between the government agency and drug companies will take place this year with any agreed upon price changes taking effect in 2027.
…by which time I could be dead. How nice. Even better:
Drug manufacturers can choose whether or not to enter negotiations with the government for a collective price for Medicare patients.
Any bets as to who will decline the offer?
Here are some very constructive ideas about how to unlock and/or break the raft of stupid eco-fascist laws and regulations. I especially like this one:
Obama joined Paris Climate Agreement by executive action. Trump exited by the same method. And Biden rejoined, again by executive action, right on January 20, 2021.
Trump could follow the previous method and just quit again. But my preferred suggestion would be to submit the Agreement to the Senate as a treaty. There is zero chance that the Senate would ratify. That would kill this thing much more securely than the other method.
And this would be the time to submit it, while the Stupid Party controls the Senate.
I know, the Paris Climate whatever is pretty much a paper tiger and waste of time. Don’t care about it? Then try this one:
“Regulations” are different from mere Executive Orders and actions, in that in order to be adopted they have gone through some complex and time-consuming processes prescribed by the Administrative Procedure Act. The processes are designed to give these “regulations” some purported legitimacy and heft, to make them hard to undo, and to distract the gullible public from the fact that they have not gone through the only process that counts under the Constitution for valid legislative action, namely passage by both houses of Congress and signature by the President. The result of all the procedural rigamarole is that — if you buy the legitimacy of enactment of massive substantive regulations by administrative agencies in the first place — then the processes to eliminate the regulations are the same complex and time-consuming mess that it previously took to adopt them.
Do the Trump people really need to go through the same labyrinth to rescind these Rules? Here’s an approach I would take: First, announce that the legal opinion of the administration is that the Rules are invalid under Supreme Court precedent (i.e., the “major questions doctrine” of West Virginia v. EPA), and therefore they will not be enforced. Next, announce that permitting on power plant and other fossil fuel projects will take place as if these Rules did not exist. Finally, switch sides in the litigation, and join the red states and other plaintiffs seeking to have the Rules invalidated.
Here’s what I really, really like about this initiative: it would also nullify, ipso facto, all the horrible regulations foisted on us by other Gummint agencies — such as the fucking ATF, for starters, and [add your favorite agency’s name here].
So when you follow the link above to see all the other Good Ideas, don’t just look at those suggestions as part of the destruction of the “climate change” myth, good as they are; apply those principles to all areas of our life that the bureaucracy have (un-Constitutionally and illegally) affected over the years.
Roll on January 2025.
In his latest video, Harry Metcalfe takes aim at supercars — or to be more specific, their manufacturers — and their ballooning love affair with technology.
Now Harry lives in a different world from pretty much 99.99% of the rest of the world, because the market for the insanely-priced supercars is absolutely minuscule; and his point is that the market is shrinking still more.
I don’t care about any of that, and I’d bet good money that pretty much none of my Readers could give a rat’s ass about it either, for all sorts of reasons:
I’m not even going to talk about how fugly all these new super/hypercars look, because that’s also a frequent target for my rants on these pages.
Lest you couldn’t be bothered to spend half an hour in Harry’s company, let me illustrate his point about car depreciation by looking at a car we all know about: the Bentley Continental GT convertible (GTC, for the cognoscenti ). Here is the 2024 model, with its 4.0L V8:
I have to say, by the way, that it looks absolutely gorgeous: very definitely a worthy successor to the 1930s “Blower” “Speed Six” Bentley which won Le Mans several times. It’s price, however, does not look absolutely gorgeous: $340,000 with only a few adornments.
Which is bad enough. Now let’s look at its second-hand value. Here’s a 2015 GTC:
Looks more like a limo than the 2024 model, but essentially it’s the same car (same engine, same luxury interior, etc. etc.) but with… 15,000 miles on the odometer (about 1,500 miles per annum of ownership). Its price: $90,000 (!!!).
All sorts of things come to mind, most of them unprintable anywhere except perhaps on this website.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there is no justification — none — that can justify the prices of these upscale cars (and of the supercars we will not speak because Ferrari and the other thieves only make a few of them each year, thus ensuring their consistent “value proposition” — read: snob appeal for the terminally-insecure rich).
Of course, the thieves (and their sycophantic customers) will cry out that it’s all the new whizz-bang technology (“All hail Technology!!!”) that makes their cost of manufacture rocket into the stratosphere.
Unfortunately, as Metcalfe points out in his video, more and more people are looking at all that technology, what’s involved and how much money (not to mention weight) that it adds to the car, and are saying, “Eeeeehhhh I don’t think so, Luigi.”
Which, by the way, might account for this atrocity:
Looks like the More Money Than Sense crowd are taking the $340 grand they would have dropped on a new jazzed-up Bentley, and instead splurging it on a rebuilt version of Ferrari’s entry-level model of the 1970s.
At least the Dino is bereft of anything that could remotely resemble a micochip.
There is a companion piece to this post: it’ll appear next week.