Any organization as vast and complex as the federal government is ripe for fraud. There are literally millions of people managing all the ways money flows into and out of the government, and amazingly, a lot is disbursed through things like QuickBooks accounts that can be edited after checks are cut. Embezzlers do get caught, nonetheless. These systems must have some kind of audit trail, because that is how a fraudster at the State Department got caught. Fox Business anchor Elizabeth McDonald broke that story on X on Sunday. //

She wrote 5 dozen checks to herself and 3 more to an individual with whom she had a personal relationship, but then changed the listed payee in the Quickbooks system to an actual State Department vendor. No one would have caught this without an audit.

There are more than 2,000 Quickbook accounts throughout the federal government that are ripe for a Doge audit. The GAO’s Fraudnet got 4,044 fraud allegations against thousands of federal workers in just 2023 alone at 50 agencies including the Pentagon, the DOJ and the Treasury Dept. //

Think on that for a moment; 2,000 QuickBooks accounts? From which low-level bureaucrats can just write checks? That seems inexcusably loose. But this report prompts the question: If the GAO knows that between $213 billion and $521 billion is being stolen annually by federal workers, if they are getting in excess of 4,000 allegations per year, why aren't we seeing more of the fraudsters getting caught? //

The federal apparatus is great at tracking down people who owe $48 in back taxes, but they seem to be a little too easy to defraud from within.

The world’s richest man stayed mostly on the sidelines of the political battles in the country for much of his career, but then he bought Twitter when he saw that it was an anti-free speech, censorious platform, and following that, he put his weight firmly behind Donald Trump's presidential bid and campaigned for him relentlessly.

He of course went on to become the face of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and has been leading his team in finding billions upon billions of government waste, fraud, and abuse. For this, he has been vilified and threatened by the corrupt media and the progressive zealots, because how dare you attempt to trim the fat off the federal bureaucracy?

As he prepares to step aside and head back to his duties as CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX (as was always planned), the tech mogul was asked if he regrets his role in making America great again. “No,” was his answer: //

RedWave Press @RedWave_Press
·
Lara Trump: “Do you regret coming out and supporting President Trump?”

Elon Musk: “Yes joking No! I think it was essential for President Trump to win to ensure that America remained great and that we reached greater heights.”

“I think if President Trump had not won, I think the Democrat campaign to import vast numbers of illegal voters would have succeeded," adding that America would have risked becoming a "one-party state from which we could never escape."

"Some people out there may be somewhat skeptical. They may think, 'Well, there isn't some Democrat plan to subvert democracy and achieve a permanent one-party, deep blue socialist state.' I assure you, the more you research it, the more that you will see it is true."

9:27 PM · May 3, 2025 //

America @america
·
Elon Musk: “The Left is kind to the criminals and cruel to the victims… If you’re a high trust society and you bring in low trust or untrustworthy individuals, you you got a fundamental breakdown in the system.”

9:45 PM · May 3, 2025 //

Tesla Owners Silicon Valley @teslaownersSV
·
Elon Musk
"It's not been a boring year: At least, I didn't get shot. That's what happens when you go after fraud. The people doing the bad things want to keep getting the money”

12:23 AM · May 4, 2025

Once again, we have a wonderful argument for taking the federal government, or indeed any level of government, out of the financing of education altogether. Our higher education systems have become far too casual about accepting federal largesse while working at cross purposes to the American public, and we are expected to pay for it.

For decades, the federal government has been backing long lines of dump trucks full of taxpayer cash up to the Ivy League universities and dumping them out, and those universities responded by looking the other way as antisemitic agitators took over their campuses, as the curricula swelled with idiotic Ethnic Underwater Dog-Polishing Studies courses and even degree programs, and the faculty spent more time inculcating young skulls full of mush with Marxist claptrap than with instilling in those skulls knowledge and marketable skills.

Cutting that cash-green string is the right idea - in fact, it's the right idea regardless of the university's DEI policies or lack thereof, regardless of the school's curricula, regardless of the political affiliations of their faculty. Let the parents pay for their kids' education, or let the kids get part-time jobs or find some other way to pay. If they need to borrow money, let them present themselves to a private lending institution and make their case based on their academic record to date and their prospects for employment. Do all this, and the ridiculous classes and programs would disappear in a trice - as would a lot of the Marxist professors.

The family has held a federal grazing permit through the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for nearly 60 years and are permittees in good standing. The permit allows them to graze their cattle on the Buffalo Gap National Grassland and is managed by the U.S. Forest Service, which reviews the map every time the permit is renewed. There has never been a problem before.

In March 2024, the USDA notified the Maudes that a hunter complained about a fence blocking access to Buffalo Gap National Grassland, according to a letter Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., sent to then-Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, seeking help for the family.

On May 1, 2024, the Maudes met with the Forest Service and everyone in the meeting agreed to do a land survey to figure out exactly where the fence belonged.

On May 6, 2024, a U.S. Forest Service special agent escorted a survey crew onto the Maudes’ property.

Then, with no warning, on June 24, 2024 the Maudes received a visit from Forest Service special agents with indictments for each of them. Charles and Heather Maude were charged separately — they had to get separate attorneys. The charge was “Theft of national grasslands managed by the United States Department of Agriculture, namely, approximately 25 acres of National Grasslands for cultivation and approximately 25 acres of National Grasslands for grazing cattle,” the indictment said. All for a fence that was placed before either of them was born. //

The Maudes tried to work out a solution, but the Biden Administration immediately dragged them into court on a charges that come with 10 years of prison and a $250,000 fine, one for each of them — totaling a half million dollars for the family. The spouses were instructed not to speak to each other about the case.

Despite a state ban on sectarian charter schools, the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board approved St. Isidore’s request to participate in the state’s charter school program. The ban is rooted in the anti-Catholic Blaine Amendment added to Oklahoma's constitution in 1907.

This set up an interesting conflict where the governor, a Republican, and the Republican state superintendent of public instruction supported the applications, but the Republican attorney general brought the case that the Supreme Court heard Wednesday. He sued in 2023 to block the charter because it would violate state law and the US Constitution. In June 2024, the Oklahoma Supreme Court agreed with Attorney General Gentner Drummond that St. Isidore's Catholic character, despite being open to everyone and requiring attendance of no one, would violate the Constitution's establishment clause.

The crux of the questioning centered on religious neutrality versus hostility to religion. Justice Kavanaugh hit this theme hard. “You can’t treat religious people, and religious institutions, and religious speech as second-class in the United States,” Kavanaugh said to Gregory Garre, a former Bush administration solicitor general who represented Oklahoma's Attorney General Gentner Drummond. (As an aside, it is interesting to note how many prominent "conservatives" are lining up to oppose what I consider to be conservative positions once those positions have the high likelihood of becoming law. Funny, that.) “And when you have a program that’s open to all comers except religion...that seems like rank discrimination against religion,” Kavanaugh added. “They’re not asking for special treatment, they’re not asking for favoritism. They’re just saying, ‘Don’t treat us worse because we’re religious.’” //

If the Court rules the way it appears headed, it will shake up the charter school programs everywhere. First off, it will mean the thirty-eight Blaine Amendment states can no longer use that to block religious schools from applying for charter school status. The attorney for Oklahoma painted a picture of this, opening the door for the state to make personnel and curriculum decisions. "And if religious schools can qualify as public charter schools, it will raise questions about who can be admitted to such schools, whom the schools can hire as teachers, and what the curricula at those schools will be."

In reality, Oklahoma's lawyer is out of his tree. The Supreme Court has already ruled that the government has to stay out of the hiring and firing decisions of people filling "ministerial" functions in religious organizations (Supreme Court Tells Ninth Circuit to Stay Out of Personnel Decisions of Religious Organizations – RedState). And there is no controversy over admission (anyone who wishes to participate may), and St. Isidore agreed to follow the state educational standards when it applied for the charter.

Some online comments have warned that this opens the door to "Satanist" schools or Alphabet-people schools. News flash, we already have those. The real fear by the establishment, Democrat and Republican, is that religious charter schools will proliferate (they will) and that many parents will opt for them because they can be sure their kids will not be introduced to gay porn or secretly "transitioned" without their knowledge or consent. The same people invariably raise the question of Islamic madrassas as though I give a rip about how someone else educates their child. As the charter lays out specific testing and achievement goals, the fear of Middle East-style schools is simply a straw man argument designed to appeal to the worst sort of bigotry. //

The only real question is whether the Court will follow the direction of Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh and issue a full-throated defense of religion as a critical component of American history and society, or will it just nibble around the edges, causing decades of future controversy. //

Ready2Squeeze
3 hours ago
The real opposition to this is by the Teacher Unions ... if religious schools take off, union membership will likely drop off - and with it union dues payments. //

anon-tf71 Ready2Squeeze
3 hours ago
I'd say the States are even more opposed. When this happens they lose some control of education, maybe even all of it.

Not that this diminishes the (religious?) ferver with which teachers unions oppose it. //

eburke
3 hours ago edited
"it is interesting to note how many prominent "conservatives" are lining up to oppose what I consider to be conservative positions once those positions have the high likelihood of becoming law."

Of all the things Trump has accomplished (and the list is lengthy) his exposure of the faux conservative wing of the GOP is at the very top of the list. He has caused these UniParty hacks to expose themselves for whom they really are...and they hate him for it. //

PubliusCryptus
2 hours ago edited
How about the Federal and State governments stay out of schooling altogether? Make schools competitive, profit-driven organizations; that means antitrust actions against teachers(and other) unions. It also means shining a spot light on tax collections and requiring that those collections be justified by value delivered to the taxpayers. It has become very clear(Thank you DOGE) that government is, almost always, a terrible waste of resources. I would point to Medicare as corollary evidence of that claim. Governments should be the parties of last resort when solving problems.

Townhall.com
@townhallcom
·
Follow
🚨This is NUTS: Secretary Rubio just announced that he found DOZENS of files kept by Joe Biden's State Department that classified American citizens as "vectors of disinformation" — with the intention of censoring them.

That's not all.

Marco Rubio says that there's someone in President Trump's cabinet meeting RIGHT NOW that was being monitored.

"There's at least one person at THIS TABLE TODAY who had a dossier in that building..."

Joe Biden's administration was corrupt ALL THE WAY THROUGH!

1:21 PM · Apr 30, 2025. //

Well, we are going to turn over these dossiers to the individuals and they'll decide whether they want to disclose it or not.

But just think about, the Department of State of the United States had set up an office to monitor the social media posts and commentary of American citizens to identify them as "vectors of disinformation."

When we know that the best way to combat disinformation is freedom of speech and transparency, and so that's what we're going to be in the business of doing—we're not going to have an office that does that.

The media and the Democrats whine on about Trump being a dictator, a Hitler devotee, and a fascist. In reality, it was Joe Biden who showed much more of an authoritarian streak, and his use of the federal government to go after his perceived enemies was deeply sinister. He used the Department of Justice and its henchmen to go after Donald Trump and used the Department of State and other agencies to spy on and censor the people.

This family, targeted solely over what should have been a civil dispute over grazing rights over 25 acres of government land, was prosecuted, credibly threatened with jail sentences, so extreme that they were told to find alternatives to raise their young children. Charles and Maude live on a 5th-generation family farm in Pennington County, South Dakota, close to Mount Rushmore. There, they farm 400 acres. They raise about 250 head of cattle, and about 40 sows. //

The Biden administration criminally charged the Maude family for theft of government property. And for too long, for years now, they have endured a torturous legal process and suffered as victims of the Biden regime's reckless lawfare. Just imagine, a government that would be willing to de facto orphan American children over a mere dispute over 25 acres of land. The men of Lexington and Concord knew what (this) sort of government was like, and they knew what to do about it. The Maude family too, faced with destruction at the hand of the state, made their appeal to heaven, and providence answered. Thanks to the leadership and the unequivocal, bold leadership of President Trump and his directive to put Americans first, we now have the pleasure to announce that the criminal prosecution of the Maudes is now over. They will not be driven from their home. They will not be jailed. They will not be fined. And their children will grow up with a mother and a father who they love and who love them. //

This dispute - and there was, legitimately, some confusion over the status of the 25 acres and the exact boundaries between that acreage and the Maude family land - should never have come to this in the first place. In a sane world, this would have been resolved by having one or two Department of Agriculture officials come out, sit down with the Maudes, make sure everybody understood and agreed to a solution to the dispute, and arrive at a mutually agreed-upon survey of the property boundaries.

Instead, the Biden administration threatened the Maudes with jail time. The Biden administration threatened to break up the Maude family, to effectively orphan the Maude children. And all of this is over a dispute over 25 acres of grazing land. This is the same administration, mind you, that allowed millions of unscreened, unvetted, illegal immigrants to flood into the United States. //

DarthCY
an hour ago
You should go deeper into the story. The Government was even more heavy handed than you present. They were cooperating and were waiting for a survey to come back to discuss when they raided their house, arrested them and tried them separately. They also barred them from communicating with each other on their defense. This is pure evil. //

anon-259e
an hour ago
Every Federal employee involved with this abomination needs to be fired and the Maude family must be reimbursed for all legal expenses + an extra 100% as damages.

Last week, Treasury went live with its first automated payment verification system. In total, $334 million in improper payment requests were identified and rejected due to:

-Missing budget codes
-Invalid budget codes (i.e. the payment was not linked to the budget)
-Budget codes with no authorization (i.e. the budget had already been fully spent)

Unfortunately, DOGE has thus far failed to achieve significant savings because Musk has instead focused on high profile culture war targets to maximize headlines rather than the quiet, boring work of deficit reduction.

MAGA Republicans may thrill at attempts to defund DEI contracts, Politico subscriptions, government employees and foreign aid. Yet this spending is barely a rounding error in the federal budget. //

So while Musk’s target savings have fallen from $2 trillion annually, to $1 trillion and now
$150 billion, its “wall of receipts” has verified just $2 billion of savings — or 1/35 of 1 percent of federal spending. //

Three-quarters of all federal spending goes to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense, veterans and interest, and the final quarter includes priorities such as infrastructure, justice, border security, national parks, unemployment benefits, disaster aid and disability benefits.

‘Protecting’ GOP voters
Trump has already taken much of this spending off the table for cuts, and Congress is highly unlikely to gut these functions. //

A serious war on bloated federal contracts would begin in the Defense Department, where procurement contracts routinely face cost overruns in the billions of dollars. //

Yet DOGE has seemingly lacked both the expertise and patience to sufficiently prioritize the hard work of rebuilding the payment systems across hundreds of federal programs.

It is jarring to see DOGE claim success even as congressional Republicans quietly passed a budget that expands budget deficits by an additional $5.8 trillion over the decade. //

There is a responsible path forward. Stop focusing on flashy “spending cut theater” targets and dig into the hard work of reforming entitlement payment systems, defense contract overruns and program duplication. //

Such non-ideological savings reforms will have the added benefit of likely winning congressional approval, making them fully legal and sustainable.

Otherwise, Trump supporters may be surprised at the end of the year when — after all the tweets, promises and headlines — spending and deficits have sharply climbed again.

The federal government doesn’t just pass laws in Congress. Each year, many of the 438 federal agencies—nominally under the president’s control through the executive branch—publish tens of thousands of pages in regulations, red tape that increases the costs of business, transportation, and many other factors Americans often don’t consider.

This imposes a kind of hidden tax that makes everything more expensive. It also justifies the work of the Department of Government Efficiency and other efforts to streamline the federal government, according to Clyde Wayne Crews, a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and author of the annual report, “Ten Thousand Commandments.” Crews released the 2025 version of the report on Thursday.

A government-university partnership dedicated to improving the quality, usability and accessibility of data from Indiana's state agencies.

On Thursday, a new poll released by the Napoleon Institute confirms what most of us have long suspected. Results showed that 76 percent of bureaucrats who voted for Kamala Harris in November said they would “do what [they] thought was best,” in regards to following legal orders from President Trump. Of those polled, 16 percent said they would follow orders, and nine percent said they were unsure. Of the federal employees who voted for Trump, 80 percent said they would follow orders even if they disagreed with them, 18 percent said they would not, and just two percent said they were unsure. https://dailycaller.com/2025/04/24/democrat-voting-federal-bureaucrats-trump-orders-poll/

The question asked in the poll of federal employees was framed like this: "Imagine that you were the head of a federal government agency," and "President Trump gave you an order that was legal but you believed was bad policy." "Would you follow the President's order or do what you thought was best?" Over half, 56 percent, said that they would embrace their own political agendas and either "strongly resist" or "somewhat resist" Trump's America First agenda, with 16 percent saying they would “neither support nor resist." The poll surveyed 500 bureaucrats “living in the National Capitol Region and earning at least $75,000 annually," with a margin of error of four percent. //

Founder of the Napoleon Institute, pollster Scott Rasmussen, had this to say about the survey results.

"Our research confirms that the Administrative State is not composed of thoughtful, nonpartisan experts who are making neutral decisions for voters. The deep partisan divide within the federal bureaucracy and the shifting public opinion present significant challenges for the current administration. However, the silver lining is that with such high levels of chaos in this bureaucratic 'civil war', there may be an opening for the common sense voice of the American people to rise above the political noise and once again become the shaping force of the nation's dialogue."

Insurrection Barbie
@DefiyantlyFree
·
Follow
🧵🧵This thread shows how $4 Trillion in Federal Funds Were Funneled Through Leftist NGOs to Enrich Activists, Mobilize Voters, and Power Anti-Trump Protests—With Receipts

This is maybe the most important thread I have ever done. It explains how the two biggest pieces of legislation from the Biden administration filled the coffers of all of these activist groups that have been engaging in the Trump 2.0 resistance. From GOTV efforts, to Anti-Tesla protests to the legal battles against Trump.

The Center for American Progress (CAP), founded by Clinton ally John Podesta, is more than a think tank—it’s the strategic command center for the modern Left. Under Biden, CAP helped orchestrate the biggest activist cash grab in U.S. history: $4 TRILLION.
12:45 PM · Apr 24, 2025

Insurrection Barbie
@DefiyantlyFree
·
Follow
Replying to @DefiyantlyFree
Let’s be clear: these aren’t apolitical charities.

•Indivisible was built to oppose Trump.

•Sunrise led sit-ins to demand Biden go further left.

•Faith in Action and EDF advocate openly for progressive legislation.

And they’re all funded by your tax dollars—thanks to Podesta’s CAP and their policy-to-grant pipeline. This is government-funded activism, hidden behind a green mask.
12:45 PM · Apr 24, 2025

Insurrection Barbie
@DefiyantlyFree
·
Follow
Replying to @DefiyantlyFree
This is what they mean by “saving democracy”:

•Billions to leftist orgs

•Massive GOTV ops under federal cover

•Protest movements
subsidized by taxpayers

•Power concentrated in NGOs that answer to no one
12:45 PM · Apr 24, 2025

When you compare whatever you did to what happened at long-gone electronics chain Crazy Eddie, most malfeasance will likely pale into insignificance. Put another way, your infractions would likely be as noticeable as a miniature barnacle on the backside of a blue whale.

...The Antar clan emigrated from Syria, which Weiss says partly explains the grey attitude towards paying taxes. Indeed, scamming New York State of sales taxes was how the Crazy Eddie debacle started.

However, it was when Sam Antar learned the in-and-outs of Wall Street, finance and public accounting, that the fraud really ramped up. Gone was dodging sales tax. In was cooking the company’s books and going public. Sam Antar had figured out that the family could make even 1more money by falsely boosting profits to help push the stock price higher.

Once the fraud was exposed, and Eddie Antar was charged with securities fraud and insider trading, but fled the country, Sammy offered to testify as long as he had immunity. //

Since 2009, Sam Antar has been a forensic accountant, working with federal and local law enforcement agencies, teaching them what to look for in paperwork - and where to look for paperwork - as well as digging on his own time into waste, fraud, and abuse, always on the hunt for white collar crime.

He is a man on a mission.

And way back in February, while going through the records from Letitia James' 'luxury campaign spending,' as he calls it, Sam came across some wonky-looking personal finance filings. Things weren't adding up to the eagle-eyed Antar. //

After our recent investigations exposed New York Attorney General Letitia James’ pattern of luxury campaign spending and creative accounting, a deeper examination of her personal financial disclosures reveals troubling new questions about her property holdings and financial reporting.

The same pattern of obscured luxury that characterized her campaign spending now emerges in her personal financial statements, starting with a Virginia investment property that seems to defy financial logic. Purchased in August 2020, James values the single-family home at “$100,000 to under $150,000” in her 2023 financial disclosure. Yet somehow, this same property carries mortgages totaling up to $400,000 – potentially more than twice its declared value. //

Sam E. Antar @SamAntar
Memo to @NewYorkStateAG Letitia James: I know every trick in the book. Every trick that’s been left out of the book. And every trick you’re thinking about doing but haven’t done yet.
11:44 PM · Apr 21, 2025. //

When a guy's already done time for legendary crazy, there's not much he's going to worry about when he's on the right trail of wrongdoing.

This is gonna be sumpthin' to see.

The host wasn't done , though, in her crusade, bringing up the judge's stay on the district court's order that the Trump EPA "unfreeze" $20 billion in funds that Team Biden had ready to go to clean energy grants. Zeldin was off to the races in his thorough answer:

I'm glad you pointed out that the circuit court then stopped what the district court was saying. So, self-dealing and conflicts of interest, unqualified recipients, lack of sufficient EPA oversight, these were all concerns that we had. First were- had the alarm raised when a Biden EPA political appointee in December was on video saying that they were tossing gold bars off the Titanic, rushing to get billions of dollars out the door before Inauguration Day. And also said, with an eye towards getting themselves jobs at recipient NGOs. So for example, as it relates to unqualified recipients, there was one recipient NGO that only received $100 in 2023, they got $2 billion in 2024. They also have in their grant agreement requirement to complete a training in 90 days called "how to develop a budget." They were amending the account control agreements days before the inauguration, reducing EPA oversight.

Burgum said:

Again, I have to smile because, apparently... having been in the private sector for my whole life until being a governor, and then working in a state where we had to balance the budget, which is different.

I mean, if the federal government is like a ranch that, where they threw everything in the barn for 100 years, and great grandpa and grampy never threw anything away, and has accumulated everything and you never had to clean it out, that would be—that's what the federal government is. //

From administration to administration, Democrat and Republican, they have simply thrown things into the federal barn without any assessment of whether they have any purpose or use, and instead of assessing this, they hire people to manage or oversee the barn, without assessing whether its contents are even worthy of management or oversight.

Burgum continued,

And typically the federal government would send in a committee of 25 people who pick up one object, spend two weeks talking about, should we get rid of it, what did great grandpa use this for, maybe we should save it, it might be historic. What we're doing right now is emptying out the barn and deciding what should go back in. And what should go back in is what actually serves the American people. //

Take national parks for an example. There is so much overhead of people that work for the park system that don't work in a park. We could actually increase the number of people. Like this summer, we'll have more people working in Yellowstone than we had in 2020. More people working, but we could end up with fewer people across the whole park system. Because, guess what? We may not need that many people in IT, we may not need that many people in HR, there's things that we can do to streamline. And if we've got people who are in this business because they care about the environment and they care about our lands, we've got customer-facing, land-facing jobs available. We have 5,000 jobs posted to go work in the parks[..]. wildfire fighters, people that are for summer help, come work for us. But work in a job where we're serving the public as opposed to in D.C. or in a regional location, where you're just doing overhead that's part of the barn that's never been cleaned out. //

Random US Citizen
30 minutes ago
The federal government owns 640 million acres. That's almost 30% of the land in the U.S. Fully 80% of Nevada is owned by the feds. In Utah, it's 65%. While that's a lot of land to manage, that management shouldn't require 50% of its 80,000 employees to live in Washington D.C. Probably 800 of them should be in D.C. and the other 79,200 should be on or near the land that's being managed.

President Donald J. Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum aimed at stopping illegal aliens and other ineligible people from obtaining Social Security Act benefits.

Do you have a grievance with how the federal government is spending your tax money? A complaint over some wasteful practice or feather-bedded bureaucracy? I know I do - I could fill several volumes with complaints about government waste.

Well, now the Department of Government Efficiency - the DOGE - has an internet portal where you can take your complaint directly to them.

"Your voice in federal decision making," reads the website Regulations.gov, "Impacted by an existing rule or regulation? Share your ideas for deregulation by completing this form." https://www.regulations.gov/deregulation //

Dawgly One
4 hours ago
Somebody check me if I’m wrong, I didn’t look it up. Boil the 18 enumerated powers down to the following:
1). Protect our sovereign borders
2). Maintain armed forces
3). Maintain the currency (we don’t even do this, we leave it to the Fed, which is murky sorta government)
4). Run a post office
5). Maintain post roads (I translate this as the interstate hwy system)
6). Regulate interstate commerce.

That’s it, all of it. I figure we could cut Federal spending by about 60%. Everything else needs to handled at the state level.

Ward Clark Dawgly One
4 hours ago
Looks like a good list to me.

Legal Insurrection readers may recall my post about the recent shake-up at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Dr. Peter Marks, the top vaccine official at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), resigned, citing significant disagreements with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over vaccine policies.

Marks claimed it was because of Kennedy, and the new HHS Secretary’s viewpoints on the worthiness of vaccines.

However, there is more to the story.

Marks left after refusing to grant Kennedy team unrestricted access to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database. Marks asserted that such access could lead to manipulation or deletion of sensitive data, which includes unverified reports of vaccine-related adverse events submitted by the public. //

There are a number of reasons that this issue is troubling, especially given Marks’ profanity-infused response to the new HHS team seeking the usual level of access to government databases that the Secretary normally has. To begin with, as I have previously noted, studies have identified a rare but notable link between myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) and mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, such as Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

As a reminder, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released 148 blank pages of data in response to a FOIA request for information connecting covid vaccinations to heart inflammation. //

The agency has already released some reports, such as this one in The Lancet, which asserted that virus-caused myocarditis was worse than the one that arose post-vaccination. //

Finally, a recent study conducted by the Cleveland Clinic has raised concerns about the effectiveness of this season’s flu vaccine. Published as a preprint on MedRxiv, the research analyzed data from 53,402 healthcare workers during the 2024-2025 flu season and found that vaccinated individuals had a 27% higher risk of contracting influenza compared to their unvaccinated counterparts.

The calculated vaccine effectiveness was reported as -26.9%, indicating that the vaccine may have increased the risk of infection rather than reducing it. //

BobM | April 11, 2025 at 11:39 pm
As someone with IT experience, especially in DataBase design and admin, I have to advise the reader that there are multiple non-nefarious reasons to allow both raw data access & edit access to a DB. Especially if you suspect the current key holders have been “cooking the books” to make a DB support wanted conclusions. Edit access allows you to look for groupings in the data that may not be obvious because of the way the raw data is currently organized and categorized. Or to look for improper groupings that make conclusions based on them garbage.

As an example, the “sky-is-falling” Covid panic was at least in part supported by “death by Covid” numbers that often assumed if you died and had Covid at the time that it was a Covid death. Washington State DOH, for instance, has since admitted “DOH includes deaths of all persons who tested positive for COVID-19 in its totals, even if the victims died from other causes, such as gunshot wounds.”.

Other examples include crime statistics databases where politicians and law enforcement have played games with crime categories to be able to tout imaginary “decrease in crime X” or “increase in arrests for crime Y” for their own reasons. Most recently, the Biden administration database of border enforcement stats famously was used to tout that Biden was “tough on illegal entries” when in actuality the raw data showed they were touting catch-and-release interceptions the same as actual prevention of illegal entries.

If folks have lost respect for scientific experts, it’s because all too many have taken to treating access to the raw data and descriptions of the data manipulation used to reach their “expert” conclusions as closely held proprietary secrets not be disclosed to the hoi polloi. That is NOT good scientific practice and is a huge red flag. You see it all over in climate “science”, and it’s spread like a cancer thru science in general lately.

On Thursday, the Department of Government Efficiency revealed that three deep-blue states—California, New York, and Massachusetts—were responsible for $305 million, or 80%, of the $382 million in fraudulent unemployment payments issued since 2020.

DOGE also reported that 68% of unemployment benefits paid to parolees flagged by Customs and Border Protection as being on the terrorist watchlist or having criminal records were issued in California.

The DOGE team found that $59 million in unemployment benefits was paid to 24,500 people listed as over 115 years old. Another $254 million went to 28,000 people between the ages of 1 and 5, while $69 million was distributed to 9,700 people with birthdates more than 15 years in the future.

The report highlights one case in particular: an individual born in the year 2154—not a typo—received $41,000 in benefits.