Tag: Government

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We really dodged a bullet in the 2024 election.

As the scandal continues to explode around the Minnesota Somalis I can’t help thinking that this would be so much worse if Tim Walz was the Vice President.

I suspect that D.C. The Harris/Walz administration, and the media would be tying themselves up in knots trying to brush it off as a conspiracy theory, misinformation, or they’d be censoring the hell out of it. In any event, not much actual work of government would be getting done because they’d be fighting fires.

Whistleblowers are coming out of the woodwork saying that Walz and others in Minnesota literally ignored irregularities that they were reporting. Some of those whistleblowers are saying that they suffered threats, intimidation, and retaliation for doing their jobs to protect taxpayer money.

Last I heard we’re talking 1 billion dollars in fraud. Some reports suggest that the amount could be higher. 

Like other Americans, I’m asking how the hell that kind of fraud could be ignored. It begs another more concerning question though…

How much fraud is there in other states is connected with the influx of illegal immigrants or more generalized state fraud.

The government shutdown shined a light on EBT/SNAP fraud. It also scratched at the surface of the festering scab of Medicare/Medicaid, and insurance fraud.

Which leads me to ask, “How much of our horribly unbalanced national budget is fraudulent to begin with?“

The IRS comes after average citizens for $600. I guess that makes sense, if you’ve got billions in fraud, then you’ve got to find more money somewhere.

The thing is, it looks like this kind of fraud has been going on for years, possibly decades and we don’t really know how far it goes. 

That continuing resolution Congress just passed is probably still funding this kind of thing. I expect the next budget fight will be contentious and will shut the government down for another extended period. Perhaps it should. With these revelations, I hope that Congress actually does its job and manages the purse strings instead of kicking the can further down the damn road.

It also adds fuel to the fire regarding illegal immigrants. Given what we’ve seen with the Somali fraud, it seems reasonable to look very closely at every immigrant “service” to figure out exactly how much of our annual budget is being sucked up by supporting illegal immigration via NGO’s.

I think It also galvanizes a more nationalistic view on the part of the American people.

We’ve asked for years, “Why are there veterans homeless? Why are the elderly having to choose between their medication and food? Why is it better to be an illegal immigrant in the United States than being a citizen in terms of monthly stipends? How is it possible that Social Security is going broke?“

Now we have at least some inkling of what may have been going on.

If I were an illegal immigrant, I’d be packing my bags.

I think as this scandal expands, so will the ICE mandate. Whereas now ICE clams they’re targeting criminal illegals, I’m betting that soon it will be ALL illegals whether or not they’ve committed subsequent crimes after their first infraction, (crossing the border without permission).

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And the government is in shutdown…

Well, the power is still on, the water is still coming from the tap. It looks like the internet is still up.

The laws of physics still apply. Cities aren’t in flames, (yet). The world spins on.

I’m honestly waiting with anticipation to hear how many useless departments, and sub departments get done away with. The wailing and gnashing of teeth from the left should be epic.

I’m hoping that Trump is true to his word and instead of furloughs, he really does fire a shit ton of parasites from various government offices.

Six weeks from now the left media will be trying to flex by saying that the government is having to rehire some of those people. So what? The lesson will be that just because you’re a government employee it doesn’t mean that you can’t be fired. Maybe that will translate into the lesson government workers need to learn. Do your job! It’s not a free ride.

In the near term, the media will no doubt rend their clothing and complain that “Trump forcing a shutdown” which he didn’t do, (This is on Schumer all the way,) added to the national unemployment numbers.

Not to worry… When ICE gets done deporting people, for example the folks in Minnesota that committed immigration fraud like Ilhan Omar apparently did, there will be openings. Oh wait… turns out the folks in Minnesota didn’t actually work at the non-existent businesses they claimed to work at. Big surprise!!!

Well, at the very least sending the H1B and F1 visa workers back to their countries of origin will open up call center jobs for the displaced government workers. Not that it will matter much to folks like me that have been kicked to the curb for being older, white and male.

I’m planning to have a big bowl of popcorn when ICE gets to the fake “Employment” companies that favor only H1B employees and waste American Job Seekers time for non-existent jobs.

Who knows? Maybe the displaced government workers, upon having a taste of the real job market will learn something and kick the old out of touch politicians out of office.

The H1B and other visa programs have been abused for years. I’m looking forward to seeing them cleaned up. I’d probably be happier seeing them discontinued altogether. Not that it will make much difference to me personally at this late stage in my life, but it will make a big difference to the youngsters in my family & other families who are the wrong ethnicity when they try to join the job market.

Joy Reid actually said something that was mostly true on one of the chat shows. She pointed out that what MAGA wants is for us to return to a time when there were no taxes, and people could earn as much as they wanted to, and people could pass their wealth and houses down to their children without paying taxes.

Yep! That’s exactly what most of America wants. You could see her brain reboot when she actually heard the words coming out of her mouth. She must have realized that actually didn’t sound so bad, and that she was on the verge of admitting that the welfare state was totally dependent on taxation. So all those people getting free rides were doing so on the backs of people that were tired of being taxed.

Well, we see what happens. Trump has sent out some more memes with Jefferies & Schumer in sombreros. The left is apoplectic. JD Vance was obviously having fun at a press conference and honestly, he’s sooo my next President.

Pete Hegseth told the top brass to get their shit together and to incentivize them, he made it a mandate that they have to pass physical fitness tests every 6 months. No more fat assed REMFs in the Pentagon! He didn’t say women couldn’t be in the military, he said they had to be fit enough to be in the military. Then he topped it off by doing aways with all the B.S. trans & gay crap. He didn’t say gays couldn’t be in the military but essentially said the military doesn’t give a shit who you sleep with, you’re supposed to be a hard assed weapon, a killer in the cause of defending your country. To all of this, I say… FANFUCKINGTASTIC!

I guess that makes me an existential threat to democracy. No worries! We live in a Constitutional Republic.

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So the conspiracy theorists were right again…

Big surprise!

An article appeared on Breitbart today reporting that;

The Obama administration’s top officials committed a “treasonous conspiracy” by manufacturing and politicizing intelligence to create the false narrative that led to the years-long Trump-Russia collusion probe, according to newly-declassified documents released by Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard.

Apparently Gabbard has referred the matter tot he DOJ and is demanding that everyone involved be investigated. Yawn!

I’m at the point of “fuck the investigations”, I want prosecutions and since this smells a lot like outright treason I’m for gallows being built on the capital lawn. I’m to the point of seeing corrupt officials dancing at the end of a rope.

Oh I know there will be some who read this and think, “He’s such a Trumper.”

Nope, you’d be wrong.

Trump is irrelevant to me in stuff like this.

What pisses me off is the waste, and corruption. These people caused hundreds of millions to be wasted in probes, hearings, and investigations. Their actions undermined the faith of the American people in their government. The cloud that hung over The President impaired the office.

This bullshit tied up Congressional committees for years, producing nothing of any use. Even after each probe determined that there was nothing, no wrongdoing, no Russian collusion, Congress still wasted time waving their hands, making accusations & starting other pointless investigations.

This is perhaps the epitome of weaponized law fare and misuse of the government’s power and resources.

Moreover, I firmly believe that not one of the fuckers will ever be held accountable. Which begs the question, why the fuck should I, as an individual, obey any laws that I don’t agree with? Don’t come at me with the IRS, the FBI, the Justice Department or any other government agency.

If these people aren’t going to be held accountable, then government can’t hold me accountable for anything. They can fuck all the way off.

Honestly, in my opinion the constant investigations and obvious media collusion rises to the level of election interference. Both in the midterm 2018 and in the 2020 election. The people were lied to, they voted based on the lies, and ultimately, (rigged 2020 election or not,) we got four years of Biden as a medically compromised figurehead while others, behind the scenes, apparently misused Presidential authority via autopen signatures.

Now there’s going to be more waste and more bullshit investigations that go nowhere. The DOJ will never bring any of these individuals from the Obama Administration or the Biden Administration to any form of Justice.

The real question is why? What the hell is the end game? This shit can’t all be coincidence. There’s some kind of overarching plan at work here.

1) Keep everyone pissed off and divided
2) Instill mistrust in the government 
3) Demonstrate obvious two tiered justice
4) Make people fearful of everything and anything
5) Make sure that the main stream media speaks only the approved propaganda 
6) Stay involved in expensive proxy wars
7) Import more people than can be absorbed into our culture, there are immigration limits for a reason.
8) ????

This right here is how I imagine you destabilize and ultimately topple a government. This is how Revolutions, Civil Wars, and Coup d’etats, happen.

Why vote? Why participate in a system that is so corrupt? Why even try anymore?

Those may be legitimate questions now. Once they were questions only “Crazy Conspiracy, or Right wing extremists,” asked. 

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So I’ve had the Digital Driver’s License for about a year…

Thus far I’ve not been anywhere that had the facilities for me to use my mobile driver’s license.

I’d kind of forgotten it was even on my phone. It’s there in the Apple Wallet, and I’ve gone “familiarity blind to it,” I see it, but don’t see it. Maybe that’s a guy thing?

Anyhoo, I recently got the DL license renewal form. (2 pages) which encouraged me to  use the DMV renewal web portal.

I didn’t. 

I’ve got a little problem with the DMV charging me an extra (and in my opinion excessive,) “convenience fee”. Convenient for who? Me, or California?

I don’t mind writing a check. I know that my choosing to handle stuff like this via paper, and checks is more difficult, and labor intensive a.k.a. inconvenient for California. As an aside, I deal with the Feds, the same way.

It is no more or less convenient for me to write a check and put a stamp on an envelope. 

Maybe they should discount renewals and the like on the DMV website to encourage folks like me to give them our debit card numbers and allow California to collect their cash instantly.

I’m not overly concerned about using technology but I’ll be damned if they’re going to hit me with another fee for making their job easier.

I digress. 

I woke up this morning to the usual notifications from my bank about transactions that had cleared. However this morning, there was an additional notification. This one was from the digital / mobile driver’s license. 

The notification said my license had been updated. “That’s new,” I thought. I tapped on the notification and was informed that the expiration date had changed and my license had a new expiration date.

I logged into the DMV website and confirmed that yes, my license has been renewed and all I’m waiting for now is the hard copy.

Hmmm. That’s kind of neat. 

From what I understand, you’ll get similar notices when you’ve used the digital license at the TSA or other venues for identification. I’m curious to understand more about the digital IDs, much of what I’ve read seems a lot like vapor ware. The use cases and specifications sound a little “over the top”.

As I’ve stated elsewhere, I think digital ID’s have great potential. I also think they have a really dark potential downside.

The upside is that they could be used in places like Doctor’s offices. It would be nice to only transmit the necessary information instead of everything. We’ve all had the office administrator photocopy our license for insurance purposes, then attach it to our file. Going digital would make things a tad more secure, especially since we’ve all received notices or seen on the news that hardcopies of our medical files have been found in dumpsters. 

That’s scary since those files contain our ID, Social Security Number, address, date of birth, and a ton of other personal information.

If the data was only in computers and those computers had a field like “ID verified Yes/No” then in theory, it would close off a pathway for identity theft. As the records stand right now, with either the hard copy or the digital copies, medical records are valuable to criminals because they have everything someone would need to commit ID theft.

I could see using digital IDs for voting. Wave your phone at a reader and get your ballot. That would help cut down on fraudulent votes, and also raise a red flag if someone had used a stolen ID to vote in your place. It probably wouldn’t help in that election, but it would allow you to report the problem to authorities.

The biometric aspect of digital IDs means that in theory only you can use your ID, so there’s better security built in. At least that’s the theory.

If all stores that sold items like liquor, and cigarettes, used digital ID, then you could have a lot of convenience making those purchases. The register could ping the ID for age verification as part of the transaction process and not allow the sale to complete if someone were underage.

Even with in-person banking transactions or at an ATM it’s theoretically possible to do away with the physical debit card, and just use the phone to access the account and verify ID so PIN numbers could be a thing of the past.

I personally prefer using my phone at gas pumps and convenience stores. Why? Because those places are notorious for having card skimmers and the phone option with biometrics cuts that shit right off. At least for the time being. 

If every sales transaction was linked to biometric ID verification on a personal device then theft and fraud could be a thing of the past.

All of this is of course, predicated on a government that can be trusted, and highly secure data.

Unfortunately, neither is true.

Data breaches happen every day all day. Trusting the government? Uh, NOPE!

The dark side of all of this would be the government being able to turn off your digital ID. They wouldn’t have to touch bank accounts, they’d be able to simply not verify your ID. The bank and ATM would then cease to function. As would every other transaction that verified your ID.

In a cashless society that means you have no access to money, food, fuel, or anything else. If the government wanted you they’d know exactly where you are and they’d know you probably weren’t going to get very far away from the last transaction terminal you accessed.

Purchasing guns or ammunition for example suddenly becomes a matter of record and the government could, at a whim make it impossible. PayPal and other Credit processors have already implemented blocks on sales of firearms, firearm accessories, gambling and some items of a sexual nature. It’s written into the agreements.

The government turning off a Digital ID makes verbiage in the credit agreements redundant.

Talk about the ultimate gun control and passive gun registration. An overbearing government could in theory, disarm the entire populace in very short order.

Even if members of the populace had guns, the government could stop sales of ammunition, then all that’s left is stopping the sales of precursor materials.

Think about not being able to buy lead, brass, primers, or gunpowder. (No more reloading.) Then since people are creative and clever, the government could stop sales of materials like carbon, sulfur, potassium, and nitrate materials. Meaning people couldn’t even begin to make gunpowder.

Large quantities of fertilizer are already monitored in the US, after the Oklahoma City bombing.

In the aftermath of January 6 2020 The Bank of America released transaction records to the United States Government on suspects. The FBI knew exactly what those people had for breakfast.

So it’s not much of a stretch.

A bad government could, by turning off an individual’s digital ID prevent them from voting, buying or selling cars, homes, or renting an apartment. That same bad government could turn off access to public assistance and retirement funds. A bad government could control literally anything they didn’t want people to have.

Down that path lies dystopian nightmares.

It’s already happening in China, and honestly the UK isn’t far behind.

Last week, Apple announced that they were going to allow addition of passports to Apple Wallet. 

Hmmm. That might be really cool, especially if the passport in Apple Wallet acts like the Passport card. The Passport Card now allows travel between Canada, Mexico, and some of the Caribbean islands. Imagine the possibilities. Breezing through TSA and later Customs just by waving your phone at a reader.

Sounds neat, or does it?

I’m not sure that I’m comfortable with an all digital ID or cashless future. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love the convenience.

That being said, I’m increasingly concerned about the potential misuse. Especially after COVID, the vaccine passports, COVID digital contact tracing, seeing how quickly people complied, and worse how quickly those in power began to abuse their power.

In an idealized perfect world, I’d love digital IDs and a cashless society.

We don’t live in that world.

My California mobile ID will continue to live in my Apple Wallet. I’ll probably not notice it by next week. Knowing me, If I’m asked for my ID I’ll hand over my new drivers license even if the party asking for ID can read the digital version.

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I just watched Mayor Bass’s press conference

Frankly I’m confused.

On the one hand she kept stressing that if people do something illegal, they’ll be arrested. Okay…

In the same breath she’s telling ICE to stop arresting people. Which is it lady?

ICE is arresting people who supposedly are here illegally. So I really don’t understand. 

Today, there are scattered reports of Marines from 29 Palms being sent to Los Angeles. I have questions about this too.

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prevents the use of military personnel in domestic law enforcement unless authorized by law. I don’t know who makes that authorization, I presume Congress. So I’m concerned on two fronts:

1) Has Trump violated his boundaries as defined by Congressional oversight? 2) If the Marines are being deployed I’m concerned that Marines will be standing around with big assed targets on their backs.

Mayor Bass was trying to pull heart strings taking about how fearful the immigrants are in Los Angeles. Duh! If you’re here illegally, whether it’s a day or a decade you have broken the law.

You should be afraid, if you’re smart, you should be planning to pack up your shit, and go home. If you’re self deporting heading for Tijuana I doubt seriously ICE is going to stop you.

Mayor Bass said, “Stop the raids, they’re causing fear and chaos in our city.”

So what the fuck does she propose? Obviously the raids will be ongoing. She’s asking for the US to continue to accept illegal immigrants. They’re blaming Trump. In my opinion they should be blaming Biden.

If you think about it, had Biden not thrown the borders wide open, then everything would have continued on status quo. But Biden’s actions pissed off a rather large swath of the American populace and this is the inevitable backlash.

As my mother used to say, “All it takes is a few bad apples and everyone loses the ability to do something.”

In this case, there were too many illegal crossings, most of them barely vetted, and then they disappeared into the interior of the country with the help of federally funded relocation via buses, planes, trains, and automobiles.

Hell, the illegals were allowed to get onto planes with virtually zero documentation while American Citizens were almost being strip searched to get on a plane.

While our elders, were squeaking by on an average of $1500 a month, the illegals were having housing provided, getting stipends of 3 or 4 thousand dollars per month, getting free medical care, and getting free phone service.

Surely someone in the Biden administration, at some point had to think, “Maybe this isn’t a good idea.”

Granted, It had probably been going on for years, but with so many people surging the border the fact that illegals were being treated better than Americans who’d worked their whole lives paying into a system that congress has raided innumerable times and who effectively betrayed them, couldn’t be hidden anymore.

Of course there was going to be a backlash, well this is it.

As I watched Mayor Bass’s conference, I couldn’t help thinking that this was a Mayor who was clueless and flailing. Newsom is no better.