Ask Me Help Desk - Priority one Drain the swamp

Priority one Drain the swamp

This type of regulatory over reach and power is just unacceptable.

The FDA forced Costco to recall 80,000 lbs of butter . Why ? e coli or listeria ? No Because unsanitary conditions in processing ? No

The recall is because the labels on the butter did not disclose that butter has milk. The FDA says milk is an allergen and needs to be disclosed .

Costco butter recall issued for missing 'Contains Milk statement': FDA

Butter has been made by churning milk since humans discovered it can be done. The assumption is that we are stupid and thus need the protection of the leviathan nanny state . Now there is a case to be made that Americans are becoming more stupid. But it is more likely that some desk jockey bureaucrat with an ego was flexing muscle

We saw that type of power recently abused by a senior FEMA official that hated Trump supporters
FEMA employee fired after telling relief team to skip houses with Trump signs following Florida hurricane | CNN Politics

Costco recalling butter will not save a single life. What is will do is contribute to the cost of food inflation that greatly exceeds other inflation in the country.
The only thing it benefits is an army of federal employees who look around for something to justify their weekly check.
Trump is tasking Elon Musk to do an efficiency evaluation of the executive branch. There is a lot of fat (milk fat ? ) to trim.

Well it's not assumed stupidity, but they wonderful litigious nature of your countryfolk.
Didn't turn out to well for McDonalds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebec...7s_Restaurants

When Trump drains the swamp, hopefully he'll cut ties with Elon Musk who isn't even a U.S. citizen.

Wrong He became a naturalized citizen in 2002 . He can't run for President . But neither could Henry Kissinger .

Ben yeah that hot coffee . Me I just assume that when I order coffee it will be hot .

A lawsuit between 2 private parties is one issue. In the Mickey D's case .if the nanny state mandated that coffee be served between 50-60 degree C then that is nanny state overreach.

However ;if the temperature was close to 85 degree C then it was too hot and they deserved to have to pay up medical expenses and have their a$$es sued.

As for me ;I think Mickey D's coffee taste like used dish water and would not purchase that swill.

Marn'i Washington is the FEMA official who told staff to avoid homes in Florida with Trump signs that had been impacted by hurricanes. She went public and said this was not isolated and that FEMA workers got the same instructions in the North/South Carolina. Basically she threw FEMA leadership under the bus . They have some 'splainin' to do

FEMA worker accused of telling staff to skip hurricane-ravaged Trump homes claims it was common practice: 'This is not isolated'

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Originally Posted by tomder55

Wrong He became a naturalized citizen in 2002 . He can't run for President . But neither could Henry Kissinger .

Ha! I made you look that up, didn't I!!!

The compliant press is still ignoring this FEMA scandal like they ignored the IRS scandal during the emperor's reign.
The game plan is the same. Deny it and claim conspiracy theory first . Then when it is found to be true isolated it and blame a rogue operative.(Lois Lerner)

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It seems unlikely that some random supervisor would just come up with this on their own and direct their people to do this, that it didn’t come from higher up.

RealClearPolitics: Is FEMA Apology the End of the Story That Disaster Relief Teams Avoided Trump Supporters? | Video | RealClearPolitics

Marn'i Washington was not going to take the fall. Lois Lerner was allowed to retire with full pension for her silence. Washington is talking.

The next step is the compliant press will bury it and fill the space with stories of how terrified the federal workforce is of the coming Trump purge.

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She went public and said this was not isolated and that FEMA workers got the same instructions in the North/South Carolina. Basically she threw FEMA leadership under the bus . They have some 'splainin' to do

I'd like to see the Trump DOJ investigate this as well as a few other things such as the terribly poor performance of the Secret Service in protecting Trump. Apologies are not enough. People should lose their jobs if these allegations are true.

Clueless Joe's team is working overtime to kneecap Trump's reform of the leviathan state . The latest example is they rushed through a new agreement with the American Federation of Government Employees allowing them to work from home through Trump's 2nd term ending in 2029 .
The AFGE represents over 40,000 SSA workers .
Part of the plans by DOGE is to end remote work. They reason that alone will lead to attrition of the Federal work force because they will resign rather than return to the office.

Trump's Plan to End Working From Home Faces Roadblock - Newsweek

You know my take . Public service workers should not be permitted to unionize. They negotiate for wages and benefits that taxpayers pay for . The early labor movement and progressive libs used to agree with this .

The founders of the labor movement viewed unions as a vehicle to get workers more of the profits they help create. Government workers, however, don’t generate profits. They merely negotiate for more tax money. When government unions strike, they strike against taxpayers. F.D.R. considered this “unthinkable and intolerable.”

F.D.R. Warned Us About Public Sector Unions - NYTimes.com

Stunning report from Senator Joni Ernst . Only 6% of the Federal work force report to their jobs at the office .

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Bureaucrats have been found in a bubble bath, on the golf course, running their own business, and even getting busted doing crime while on taxpayers’ time. Members of President Biden’s own cabinet claimed to be on the clock while being out of office and unreachable. Just three percent of the federal workforce teleworked daily prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, six percent of workers report in-person on a full-time basis, while nearly one-third are entirely remote. Most federal employees are eligible to telework and 90 percent of those are. Some come to the office as infrequently as once a week

Final Telework Report

We so need DOGE !!! And Musk is the guy to do it. He canned 90% of the workforce when he purchased Twitter ....now X . Not only did it survive . It has thrived under his leadership to become the go to social media site for the news.

Much of the goals of eliminating waste in government will be achieved just by culling the herd of the slackers. The American people suffer as the services they are paying for is denied while they are put on hold .

According to the report it has cost American lives.

More than 100 days passed before the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took action on whistleblower complaints about the unsanitary conditions at a baby formula factory67 linked to the deaths of nine children and illness of dozens of others.68 Desperate parents struggled for months to feed their children when an FDA recall then caused a nationwide shortage of formula.69 The whistleblower complaint detailing safety concerns at an infant formula plant was delivered to the FDA in October 2021. But “mailroom staffing issues due to COVID-19,” namely employees working remotely,70 “prevented the hardcopies from reaching FDA senior leaders” until February, when the plant was then shut down.71 While there were numerous causes for the baby formula crisis, the FDA’s curtailing of “required food facility inspections” during the pandemic impacted its ability to ensure food safety.72 A former senior government official with firsthand knowledge of the FDA’s response shared these insights: “When critical FDA safety officials don’t show up to work, people die. The FDA’s remote work policy allowed problems at infant formula plants to fester into catastrophes by failing to catch issues before they harmed infants and families. By working remotely, FDA officials failed to catch problems before they grew worse, failed to keep tabs on industry, and failed to protect infants and their families who rely on the FDA’s gold seal of approval to mean something. There’s no excuse for FDA’s failure to send safety inspectors out into the field, there’s no excuse for FDA inspectors to not be in the plants, working with industry, to keep Americans safe. Were it not for the failed policies of the FDA, shortages would have been mitigated and lives would have been saved.”

I worked at plants that were subject to routine FDA inspection. It is just a fact that plant management is more attentive to levels of compliance when inspectors are watching.

During covid at our company many office staff worked remotely . But due to the nature of the products we made, we in the plant were deemed to be essential and were required to work.
But evidently that was not the case at HHS."Up to 30 percent of HHS employees “did not appear to be working” on any given day at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.77 This analysis is based on HHS employees’ login activity used to access the agency’s email and file systems remotely collected by the HHS Office of the Chief Information Officer and disclosed by a whistleblower.78 Apparently, the government doesn’t consider health department employees to be essential workers, even during a once-in-a-century global health emergency"

Starting on page 38 ,the report makes 5 key recommendations .Legislation to require them should be part of Congress' priorities in the next session.

Va . Dem Sen Tim Kaine tried to push through a law called 'Saving the Civil Service Act ' that would protect swamp critters from Trump's goal of dismantling the leviathan state.

H.R.1002 - 118th Congress (2023-2024): Saving the Civil Service Act | Congress.gov | Library of Congress

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Kaine told reporters that while his effort Tuesday may have been unsuccessful, he believes support for his legislation will grow on a bipartisan basis in the months to come.

Repub Mo Senator Eric Schmit blocked a Dem motion to move the legislation forward by unanimous consent .

Last-ditch effort to block Schedule F’s return thwarted by Senate Republicans - Government Executive

This is not over . The Repubs need to make sure this does not pass in this lame duck session .

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'Saving the Civil Service Act '

Maybe the repubs can introduce a "save the taxpayers" act. At any rate, it sure makes it clear who butters the dem party's bread.

They just voted on a very watered down version . Trump endorsed it . Still it failed because about 3 dozen Repubs voted no. Time for Trump to twist Repub arms . His agenda for the 1st 3 months is on the line.

The US taxpayers are now the proud employer of a record 23,516 million government employees . That is up over 3 million in the last 4 years . This totals all Federal State and local governments.

The new jobs report showed an increase in new job (which rattled the stock markets yesterday) . Unsaid is the fact that in 2024 ,more than half the jobs created were government jobs .

The BLS in October said that we were adding 45,000 new government jobs a month .
Current Employment Statistics Highlights September 2024
(page 17)

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23,516 million government employees

Huh? Pretty sure we don't employ that many since there aren't that many people alive on earth. At any rate, job 1 of Trump's first year must be to reverse that trend of every increasing govt. employees. Another of your very good posts.

23,516,000

All Employees, Government (USGOVT) | FRED | St. Louis Fed

Here is the tally for 2024
Congress passed 175 laws . The deep state unelected branch made 3,248 rules .

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While many laws address routine matters like post office renamings. recent major legislation—such as the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act—fuels expansive and expansive rulemakings. This dynamic enables agencies to subsequently implement substantial policy changes without direct congressional oversight, often bypassing notice-and-comment rules with informal guidance, policy statements, memoranda and other forms of regulatory dark matter.

Is Congress even trying? 3,248 new rules vs. 175 laws - Competitive Enterprise Institute

How many of them are unconstitutional ? We won't know until they are challenged in court .
The good news I guess is that SCOTUS ended the "Chevron deference " that assumed that what the regulatory agencies dictated was constitutional .
But that is just a start .

So what are the odds, in your view, of this swamp draining happening on anything even approaching a meaningful level? I am not just filled with hope.

With everything Trump ; I watch what he does ;not what he says . My hope is that in his first term he relied on Repubs in the swamp to make personnel decisions and to advance policy. He got burned too often.

I am impressed for the most part with his appointments to lead these agencies . My hope is that they do what they say.
But this won't happen in a single term;and we need to vote in more reformists at all levels .