Notices by Steve Randy Waldman (interfluidity@zirk.us)

"When reporters called this out, the DOGE team made a fascinating choice. Instead of fixing their error, they actually removed the correct document from their website and replaced it with the old, incorrect one. They are now deliberately posting false information to support the narrative." @mmasnick https://www.techdirt.com/2025/02/19/its-easy-to-save-billions-in-taxpayer-funds-when-everything-is-made-up/

i find it a bit weird how little we hear from Kamala Harris or Joe Biden. Biden is old, i guess. but Harris could be at the rhetorical ramparts.

i think it would help. the quiet of the people we supposed our leaders is devastating.

thank you aoc, pritzker, bernie. more, more, more.

not long 'til blue states start making an official holiday of the ides of march.

moral of the Musk administration gonna be it’s hard to unscramble an egg.

if the US shirks on flu surveillance and annual flu vaccines, for the rest of the world, are there alternative providers?

every centimillionaire is a policy failure.

without comment. https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/russia-elon-musk-list-names-dissidents-usaid-s798gktd7

under this definition, hasn't Congress — the most important branch of the Federal government — been under "competitive authoritarianism" for decades?

see e.g. https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/reelection-rates

from #StevenLevitsky #LucanAhmendWay https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/path-american-authoritarianism-trump

ht @williamcb.bsky.social @casmudde.bsky.social

the part of the Federal government that is most dysfunctional and in need of radical change is Congress. it has been optimized for job security and internal stability at the expense of effective governance.

but the only take on electoral reform from this administration is Trump should have a 3rd term.

"When history is written, the first few months of Trump 2.0 will go down as the most craven and prostrate in the history of the Republican Party. We are living in a country ruled by fantastic conspiracy theories and personal revenge, and not a single Republican is willing to stand against it. Not one." #KevinDrum https://jabberwocking.com/this-is-the-republican-partys-most-spineless-hour/

@Phil @dcc @p the cheapest part of the innovation, which even every pharma person will concede is essential, is grant funded basic research. the government buys at least half of the innovation. the commercializers get rich reducing that state-financed research to practice.

@Phil @dcc @p i've saved money for retirement as well, relying upon the government to regulate brokers and fund sponsors to ensure the bankruptcy remoteness of my assets from dangerous financial institutions. if you invest in the stock market, you've benefited from extraordinary stabilization and acceleration of those assets by policy, from a Fed that drops rates to stimulate the economy to a Trump that drops tariffs at first hint of a fall.

@Phil @dcc @p as i've said before, i think you wouldn't like what you think you're asking for. you're investments might flee as fast as a memecoin dump without an SEC, or you'd have to guard your gold at home. and you'd have no social security to fall back on. if you think you are too clever for this, what about the millions of others also trying to save for retirement who might not be.

@Phil @p @j (you know what they say, if you want more of a thing, subsidize it, if you want less of a thing…)

@p @Phil Liechtenstein’s full population is 40K and it’s a tax haven. If you think Norway is a special case… I guess by most standards it’d be villages that in practice have the right to secede. I don’t think Liechtenstein can serve as a persuasive governance model for anywhere else.

Good point that the UK has its own nukes.

Whether Finns are grateful or not for the nuke umbrella, free-riding off it doesn’t explain their success.

Finns are not cattle.

@dcc @Phil @p spending money badly is not "socialist policy".

The US spends as much public money as most social democracies do on healthcare, and spends as much again privately. That's not the fault of "socialist policy". Universal health care works great many places. It's the fault of private sector incumbents blocking any sane arrangement of the health care system so they can continue to suck at the teat.

@dcc @Phil @p I think we have established that we see these things quite differently!

@dcc @Phil @p The New Deal is the main thing that ever made America great. Our letting it, and the spirit behind it, wither has been our national catastrophe.

@p @Phil Yes, but Finland, Denmark, Sweden do not have oil.

The US nuclear umbrella is globally important big government. Whatever free riding is in that hadn't translated to Nordic levels of well-being in Greece or the UK. The Nordics are obviously doing some things right.

@Phil You my friend are completely snowed and completely brainwashed.

Which countries provide the highest quality of life, including material prosperity, to the broadest group of people? The Nordics, by a long mile. Small government is not the key. Argentina has been a basket case for decades, and I don't know what the result of its current experiments will be, but whatever happens the mechanism will not be "small government universally good".