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Maryland has awarded $6 million to We Our Us, a nonprofit led by Antoine Burton, who owes more than $200,000 in federal and state tax liens dating back to 2017, according to investigative reporting by Fox 45 Baltimore. The situation has renewed concerns about how officials vet organizations receiving major public funding.

Gov. Wes Moore approved the $6.1 million Department of Juvenile Services contract to “engage justice-involved youth in Baltimore City.” The award came shortly after Moore praised Baltimore’s community partnerships, saying, “We know that partnership produces progress, and there’s no better case study than Baltimore.”

Burton, who owes $176,000 to the IRS and $32,000 to Maryland, told Spotlight on Maryland he has a plan to resolve his liens: “Right now, that’s something that’s being disputed… there’s a team that’s in place to make sure that funds are facilitated properly.” He did not provide any documents.

DJS said the nonprofit is in good standing with the state and has received $815,398 since 2023 through the Thrive Academy. It has not yet billed the state for the new $6 million contract. Gov. Moore’s office and DJS did not say whether they were aware of Burton’s liens before granting the award.

I suspect that he’s a black Democrat had a lot to do with it.

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If you were told a business increased their staff headcount by 5% over four years but its payroll rose 24% over that time, all the while withholding the names of 39% of their staff, would you invest in that company?

Depends. What’s the dividend rate of return?

Unlikely. But that’s just what the United State government does, funded by taxpayer dollars and operating as if accountable to no one.

Open the Books analyzed the FY 2024 payroll records of executive agencies and found that 2.9 million federal employees were paid $270 billion, compared to 2.8 million employees paid $217 billion in FY 2020. While the civilian employee ranks grew 5%, pay grew nearly 5 times as much, 24%.

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The secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said in a recent interview that the department found that 500,000 people are registered twice for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, while more than 5,000 deceased people have also been receiving the benefits.

Read it.

The U.S. Postal Service said on Friday it was seeking new administrative and legislative reforms as it reported a $9 billion yearly loss, slightly wider than the loss in the prior fiscal year.

New Postmaster General David Steiner said USPS must be more efficient and that it still has a “significant systemic annual revenue and cost imbalance.” He added: “To correct our financial imbalances, we must explore new revenue opportunities and public policy changes to improve our business model.”

USPS, which lost $9.5 billion in the prior year, has lost more than $100 billion since 2007 despite significant restructuring and legislative reforms. The U.S. Congress in 2022 provided the Postal Service with about $50 billion in financial relief over a decade.

Send something via the USPS. Then send something via UPS or FedEx. The latter is a far more pleasant experience. Yet UPS and FedEx make money, and the USPS sinks deeper into debt.

I wond why that is.

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Below, we’ll look at how the 1914-18 conflict reshaped America’s system of national finance, and laid foundations that eventually brought us to the current situation of $38 trillion in national debt and $4,000 gold.

It’s not pretty.

The Other McCain.

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like when you’re considering who should and should not be allowed to immigrate to the United States, perhaps you should say “no” to a guy with a “666” tattoo on his face….

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For decades, the U.S. government has worked relentlessly to smooth out the business cycle — determined to prevent recessions at almost any cost.

Through massive fiscal spending, easy credit, and sweeping guarantees, Washington props up the economy whenever trouble looms. This interventionist reflex has turned downturns — once a natural part of capitalism’s rhythm — into rare, almost extinct events.

Behind that stability, however, lies a staggering financial risk. The federal government now carries over $130 trillion in contingent liabilities — future promises and guarantees that don’t appear on the official balance sheet.

Epoch Times.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as SNAP, unexpectedly took center stage in debates over the federal government shutdown.

As funding for the program, formerly known as Food Stamps, ran out in October, Congress, President Donald Trump, and the federal courts have wrestled with what to do about feeding millions of Americans who depend on this benefit each month.

SNAP has grown in size and cost since its inception in 1964, as have many other social welfare programs.

Here’s a closer look at the program, what it costs, the participation rates in different states, and how it has come to top $100 billion per year.

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The chief executive officer of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), Kari Lake, informed lawmakers in a letter that Washington will terminate the Hungarian-language service of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), known as Szabad Európa.

In the letter, Lake wrote that USAGM will no longer use American taxpayer dollars to produce or distribute content to audiences of NATO allies, and will instead dedicate resources to other purposes determined by the administration.

Read it.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has reported its lowest number of encounters with illegal immigrants on record for October, while achieving six months of zero releases under current enforcement policies.

Apparently President Stork can get stuff done for which President Log was entirely incompetent.

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A federal judge ruled that the White House must restore real-time American Sign Language interpretation to all press briefings held by President Donald Trump or press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali in Washington said the decision to end the interpretation illegally excluded deaf Americans from important updates on issues like the economy, public health, and matters of war.

“Given the nature of the programming at issue here — regularly scheduled briefings on critical topics implicating markets, medicine, militaries, and myriads of other issues — the court finds that denying deaf Americans access to and the benefit of it presents a clear, present, and imminent harm,” Ali wrote.

This is proglodyte bullshit. There are no deaf Americans present at these briefings, which are not open to the public, and deaf people must depend for their information on what the news media report.

What I would do if Trump, and what I hopes he considers doing, is not holding any public briefings at all. He is under no requirement to do so. Have the press secretary hold private briefings for members of the press corps, and tell the judge to go piss up a rope. Hell, start a YouTube channel.

Read it.

Most government-collected ‘economic’ data is incomplete, biased, and suffers from the Aggregation Fallacy.  Unfortunately, this trash is the Junk Science used to support stupid government policies, especially under Democrats.

The Antiplanner.

Congress sporadically handed out transit capital funds in the 1970s and 1980s, but in 1991 it made it systematic with creation of the transit capital investment grants program, also known as New Starts. Since then, federal, state, and local taxpayers have spent more than half a trillion dollars on transit capital improvements. Transit agencies have also spent nearly $1.2 trillion on transit operations, only $355 billion of which was covered by passenger fares.

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U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins joined Fox News on Sunday and addressed the American people about the USDA’s massive effort to combat fraud in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Rollins said that the Trump administration sent letters to all governors prohibiting illegal aliens from accessing benefits, with a historic request for state data to be audited alongside the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). She said only 29 states cooperated, primarily red and some blue states.

She said her team and DOGE found some of the most shocking fraud ever, resulting in the purging of 700,000 ineligible recipients since the president’s inauguration, and arrested 118 individuals.

Read it.

Amid the furious debate over the government shutdown and the incoming freeze of SNAP food benefits, one important factor is often overlooked – Why are 42 million Americans, a number larger than the entire population of Canada, dependent on government subsidized groceries? Isn’t this a time bomb waiting to explode regardless of a federal shutdown?

There have been a few temporary food stamp programs from the Great Depression through the 1950s, but they were limited in scale and funding was minimal. It wasn’t until LBJ’s “Great Society” project in 1964 that food stamps slowly became a permanent mainstay of American life. By 1969, food benefits were in full swing, yet, only 1.4% of the population used them. Strict eligibility requirements kept the participation rate down until 1977.

Candidates had to have a gross income below the poverty line. Their liquid assets (including vehicles) had to have limited value. They had to put some of their own money into a portion of the stamps in order to get the “bonus” stamps. Able bodied adults without children were largely excluded. College students and immigrants were barred from the program. Able bodied adults had to work or be in training. Monthly income and expense verification was required. Food stamps were paper, creating a “shame factor”. Just because someone was under the poverty line did not mean they could qualify.

Most of these barriers have been absent from SNAP in the past few decades, which is why the percentage of users spiked from 1.4% to as high as 15% of the population. Today, the rate stands at 12.5%, which is still extraordinarily high. Approximately 19 million SNAP users have been on the program for longer than a year, and over 80% of people on the program are able bodied and below retirement age.

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Back in the distant past of 2010, Ben Bernanke sat before Congress and lied his ass off assured everyone that quantitative easing was “temporary” and would be “reversed” once the emergency had passed.

It was supposed to be a short-lived anomaly, a controlled detour from monetary orthodoxy. The balance sheet would shrink, markets would normalize, and the Fed would quietly step back into the shadows.

Here we are fourteen years later. The detour has become the highway.

Read it.

Now that the United States no longer makes pennies, there is a scramble among gas stations, fast-food chains and big-box stores to adjust prices and round cash transactions, and it could potentially eat into their profits.

Pennies are drying up faster than retailers anticipated following President Donald Trump’s decision earlier this year to halt production of the one-cent coin. Retail groups recently told Reuters that they are frustrated by the lack of guidance from the Trump administration and lawmakers, forcing them to round down to avoid angering customers and violating laws in some states — potentially costing high-volume businesses significant money.

The National Retail Federation said the dearth of pennies has hit retailers in urban and rural areas, with no clear geographic pattern. Members of some state restaurant associations have voiced concerns about penny shortages.

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Topline: The City of Baltimore gave $62,500 to a nonprofit that employs the mayor’s wife, according to tax filings reviewed by the Baltimore Sun. Six members of City Council have introduced a bill that would make similar payments illegal — which the mayor opposes.

Mayor Brandon Scott

Key facts: The grant was paid in 2023 from the Baltimore Children and Youth Fund to the nonprofit Bmore Empowered, where Hana Scott is the director of operations. She is also Mayor Brandon Scott’s wife. The mayor’s office has a representative on the Youth Fund board who votes on which nonprofits receive grants.

It’s unknown whether Bmore Empowered received city funding in 2024 or 2025 because it did not file a Form 990 tax form. Britt Mittendorf, accounting school chair at Ohio State University, told the Baltimore Sun, “Regular filing of a 990 is essentially the bare minimum in terms of compliance.”

The Baltimore Sun asked the charity if they received more recent public funding, but there was no response. Hana Scott blocked reporters on LinkedIn after they messaged her with questions.

Read it.

It was less than 20 years ago that the U.S. economy was flattened by the mortgage and banking crisis. Anyone remember?

The experts said that the odds were tiny that the housing market could crash; that the federal housing agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would never need a bailout; that mortgage-backed securities were as good as gold.

Then they crashed overnight spectacularly and devastatingly. Banks made riskier and riskier housing loans to subprime borrowers—and the government covered the bets with essentially 100 percent loan guarantees. The book “The Big Short” famously tells the story of strippers in Las Vegas playing the market and flipping houses by taking out three or four mortgages.

One reason depositors and investors were paying no attention to the big banks’ high-risk lending strategy is that everything was guaranteed.

By you and me.

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Let’s put one more log on the sacrificial fire of California’s “green” crusade, this time using someone else’s tax money as kindling. The California Public Employees’ Retirement System—CalPERS, the genius shop that manages pensions for the state’s lifers—took $468 million of other people’s money and, with the zeal of a true believer, plowed it into “clean energy and technology.”

The bottom line: they lost 71% of it.

Yes, you read that right. More than $330 million, vanished.

You want to see a cautionary tale? Here it is—with taxpayers set up as the deep pockets of last resort.

The Foundry.

Within the first two weeks of the ongoing government shutdown, agency heads reportedly sent permanent layoff notices to about 4,000 federal employees under the guidance of Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russ Vought. But compared to the private sector, this is a proverbial drop in the bucket.

The partial lapse in government funding has dragged on for 27 days now as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and 44 other senators continue to block the “clean” government funding measure that the House passed in September.

As a result of the funding lapse, Vought says that 10,000 federal employees could ultimately face permanent layoffs.

For context, a reduction in force of 10,000 would only amount to about 0.3% of the roughly 3-million-person federal civilian workforce.

For further context, about 0.3% of the private sector workforce faces layoffs and discharges every week.

The Foundry.

funding, but the “Homeless Industrial Complex” uses this money for political activism that actually demonizes the policies more likely to solve the crisis, according to a new report.

“Fringe groups in the Homeless Industrial Complex like to characterize homelessness as a symptom of societal injustices, such as systemic racism, police violence, or capitalism,” Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center, which released the report, told The Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday. “Anyone who disagrees with their tried-and-not-true policy recommendations is called uncompassionate or greedy.”

The report, “Infiltrated: The Ideological Capture of Homelessness Advocacy,” focuses on the 759 organizations that filed amicus briefs in the Supreme Court case Grants Pass v. Johnson (2024), arguing that laws against camping on the sidewalk violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment.” The Supreme Court disagreed, but the nonprofit support for this claim illustrates how organizations founded to help solve the homelessness crisis engage in activism that arguably exacerbates it.

The Capital Research Center report finds that the nonprofits collectively have $9.1 billion in total revenues, and received at least $2.9 billion in government grants (32% of their revenues), according to IRS filings.

Read it.

Donald Trump has been criticized heavily for cutting federal funding of science. Opponents claim that his decision threatens to undermine American innovation, weaken the nation’s economy, and diminish its global influence. Yet the assumption behind these complaints is rarely examined. It is taken for granted that the government must play a central role in supporting science if society is to progress. A closer inspection of historical experience, economic reasoning, and the actual dynamics of research reveals that this assumption is false.

Innovation has flourished without state patronage, and government support often politicizes science, crowds out private initiative, and undermines the very progress it is supposed to promote.

The conventional argument for public support rests on the idea that science is a public good. Because knowledge is said to spread widely, with benefits that cannot be fully captured by one individual or company, economists and policymakers have long argued that private actors will underinvest. In the twentieth century, this reasoning took a more formal shape in the so-called linear model: government funds basic research, which then produces applied technologies, which in turn drives economic growth. This model justified the expansion of government patronage after the Second World War and has been invoked ever since to defend public spending on science.

Yet the historical record undermines this theory. During the Industrial Revolution, Britain devoted little public money to civil science, yet it became the most inventive society on earth. The United States, likewise, relied on private initiative and by the early twentieth century had overtaken Europe as the world’s most technologically advanced nation. By contrast, France and Germany—both of which systematically funded research through their governments—failed to converge with the leading economies. Their per capita incomes and levels of industrialization remained lower, despite their extensive state programs. If government support were truly indispensable for innovation, these results would not have occurred.

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Federal agents have arrested 11 violent criminal illegal aliens in Memphis — including gang members, child predators, and drug traffickers — just days after President Donald Trump launched a sweeping federal crackdown to “Make Memphis Safe Again,” the Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday.

The arrests are part of a broader operation Trump launched last month, when he signed a presidential memorandum deploying federal law enforcement and National Guard troops to the Tennessee city.

The move followed his anti-crime initiative in Washington, D.C., which the administration said transformed the capital from a “nightmare of murder and crime” into one of the safest cities in America.

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Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, filed articles of impeachment against the federal judge who sentenced the would-be assassin of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to eight years in prison, eschewing federal sentencing guidelines of life in prison, The Daily Wire reported Monday.

Roy said U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman “deserves to be impeached for her absurd” sentence of Nicholas Roske, a 29-year-old who identifies as a woman named Sophie, earlier this month.

Federal prosecutors had sought 30 years for Roske over the June 2022 incident.

New Atlas.

The US Air Force has released video of a ship being ripped in half to demonstrate its new Quicksink weapon, which turns an inexpensive dumb bomb into a precision anti-ship missile – and which lives up to its name in spectacular fashion.

Modern weapon systems are amazingly effective, with the ability for a single small warhead to take out a small target that one time would have required a carpet bombing raid or a heavy artillery barrage. Unfortunately, they’re also expensive and with the current geopolitical situation suggesting a return to large-scale peer-to-near-peer conflicts, cheaper alternatives that are easier to stockpile have become more attractive.

One example of this is anti-ship weapons. The go-to weapon for this is a torpedo like the US Type 46 torpedo that can deliver 96.8 lb (43.9 kg) of high-explosive PBXN-103 to the target and destroy it by exploding under its keel, breaking the ship’s back.

The AntiPlanner.

In 2004, Denver’s Regional Transit District promised voters that by 2015 it could build six new rail transit lines and complete three extensions to existing lines for $4.7 billion. Today, it has spent $5.5 billion to complete five of the six lines and still has three extensions to build. Now a new report from RTD estimates it will cost at least another $1.2 billion to “complete the system.”

The report estimates the cost of finishing these lines to be $1.6 billion and says the agency only has $0.4 billion available to do it. Amazingly, the report admits that both of these numbers are optimistic: the actual cost of construction, it says, “will be much higher” while the funding estimate “assumes a larger share of statewide funds will be allocated to FasTracks than is likely.” Back in 2004, when RTD was thumping for voter approval of FasTracks, it steadfastly refused to admit that either its cost estimates were low or its revenue estimates were high, both of which proved to be the case.

Soon after voters approved FasTracks, RTD realized that its costs would be higher and tax revenues lower than it had projected. An analysis of the six major rail lines found that the line to Longmont would cost more than $60 per rider, while most of the other lines would cost less than $10 per rider. As a result, RTD decided that the Longmont line was “no longer viable” and dropped it so it could afford to complete the other lines.

Read it.

n air traffic controller told lawmakers that he’s been delivering food for DoorDash to make ends meet amid the ongoing government shutdown, which has paralyzed Washington since Oct. 1.

Jack Chris of Dallas told a panel of lawmakers on NewsNation’s “Cuomo” Wednesday that he has worked for the Federal Aviation Administration for 16 years and has “been through the Obama shutdown and also the Trump shutdown.”

“And my question is: Under the current political climate, do you think that this shutdown could actually be longer than the previous shutdowns due to the external pressures, political pressures that we’re having effect right now?” he asked the bipartisan group, which included Reps. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa.; Jim Jordan, R-Ohio; and Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and former Sen. Joe Manchin, I-W.Va.

Ask yourself why all of the air traffic controllers in the U.S. work for the Federal government, with their jobs subject to political pissing contests such as the present one.

Ask yourself why they don’t work for individual airports, as the employees of other institutions would.

Remember this when the Common Fringe bitch and moan about “capitalism” and its “oppressions”, never mind that “capitalism” doesn’t exist and hasn’t since FDR.

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Too bad that how much money they spend has no connection to how much money they bring in.

The War Zone.

Days after a photo went viral showing damage that the aircraft carrier USS Truman incurred during a February collision with a freighter was apparently painted over, the Navy released an explanation.

“The exterior cosmetic damage to USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) sustained from the collision will get repaired during the ship’s upcoming Refueling Complex Overhaul (RCOH) at Newport News Shipbuilding as planned,” a Navy official said. “Immediately following the collision, while in Souda Bay, Greece, new bulkheads were installed inside each of the damaged spaces to establish weathertight integrity.”

The carrier is expected to begin RCOH in the next twelve months. We have reached out to the Navy for a firmer date.

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With left-leaning news outlets in serious decline thanks to a decade of TDS-fueled propaganda, Seattle Mayoral frontrunner Katie Wilson wants to use taxpayer money to fund vouchers that can be used for “local news outlets” of choice.

The plan to pass out the $100 vouchers would be funded through “a small property tax levy, a capital gains tax, or a digital ad tax,” journalist Jason Rantz reports.

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• Ratings of FEMA, CIA, CDC, FDA, EPA, IRS have declined significantly

Gee, just the agencies most affected by partisan politicization. That might have something to do with it.

• Democrats’ positive ratings of most agencies have fallen; Republicans’ have improved

Democrats are no longer driving the truck. Republicans are in the driver’s seat. That might have something to so with it.

Read it.

It’s easy to tell urban and suburban settings apart: suburbs are just a part of the city that’s dominated by single-family homes and manicured lawns. Rural living, in contrast, isn’t about construction style; it’s about access to services. In a rural place, you’re not getting municipal water or sewer, you have no local police department, and fire or EMT services might be a long way away.

Rural jurisdiction is funny too: you no longer have to deal with city planning departments or HOAs, but it’s not the bargain you might be hoping for. You probably need a permission straight from the state capital to build a septic system or dig a well — and if you’re unlucky, you might get a visit from the feds, too. The much-politicized Sackett v. EPA decision involved a family who bought an unassuming rural plot to build a single-family home, and ended up getting pulled into a decade-long fight with the federal government. The fight was about regulatory power, not the (near-zero) impact of what the Sacketts wanted to do. When the family finally prevailed, half the country gave them cross looks.

The need to interact with such distant and incomprehensible bureaucracies is probably to blame for the siege mentality among some rural populations. When a regulator in Sacramento decides it’s time to ban gas-powered chainsaws or leaf blowers, it’s good for the suburbs, where such equipment is a nuisance, and where batteries are usually enough. At the same time, it’s preposterous to those who own a forest and need to keep tree diseases and fire risks in check. We bought a top-of-the-line battery-powered Husqvarna saw; it’s great for small projects, but woefully inadequate for more serious forestry work.

Government employees have long noses and just love to stick them into YOUR business.

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Three years ago, RealClearInvestigations reported that the FBI was undercounting the number of armed civilians who had thwarted active shooters by a factor of three.

Even though the FBI acknowledged the issue at the time, it never corrected the error involving the politically fraught issue. In the years since, the problem has only gotten worse. Since RCI’s 2022 article, the FBI has acknowledged just three additional incidents of armed good Samaritans stopping active shooters from 2022 to 2024, and none in the last two years. In contrast, the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), which I head, has documented 78 such cases over that same period – a 26-fold difference.

The discrepancy highlights systemic problems in the nation’s record-keeping regarding the politically potent issue of crime and safety. The refusal of many local jurisdictions, including Chicago, Maricopa County, Arizona, and New Orleans, to provide accurate crime data to the FBI has long made comparisons with many cities unreliable. The ongoing Justice Department investigation into whether Washington D.C. police falsified crime rates to create a “false illusion of safety” may provide more evidence to distrust the numbers that local authorities submit.

Navy Matters.

The last Avenger class mine countermeasures (MCM) vessel, USS Devastator (MCM 6), has now been retired.[1] Our surface MCM capability is now entirely in the hands of the Independence class LCS. Yes, that LCS. The ship and MCM module that has suffered years of delay, failure after failure, and no realistic operational testing. That one. That disaster. No, this isn’t a Halloween horror story, although it should scare you to death. This is our current naval MCM reality.

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The superintendent of Iowa’s Des Moines Public Schools, Ian Roberts, resigned Monday after being arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement last Friday on a federal deportation order.

Roberts, 54, a native of Guyana, was already suspended without pay and said through his attorney that he did not want to distract from the education of the district’s 30,000 students while he fights the case.

Attorney Alfredo Parrish said Roberts’ legal team is seeking to reopen the case and obtain a stay of deportation, but federal officials have noted Roberts lacked authorization to live or work in the U.S.

Read it.

The swamp never wastes time protecting its own, and James Comey is no exception. The disgraced former FBI director, who has finally been indicted for lying to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding, is already benefiting from the familiar playbook: put the right judge in place, create an appearance of fairness, and then quietly shield him from any real accountability.

Read it.

On Sunday, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth officially deployed the National Guard to Portland, Oregon, to counter far-left groups targeting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and facilities. The state of Oregon immediately filed a lawsuit seeking to block the deployment. This move comes as dark-money-funded leftist NGOs, far-left groups, and radicalized leftist lone wolves resort to violence this year, with some of this mayhem referred to as “civil terrorism” … and attacks have intensified this month.

Hegseth wrote in a memo, “This memorandum further implements the President’s directive. 200 members of the Oregon National Guard will be called into Federal service immediately as part of the previously authorized call.”

Read it.

After back-to-back hurricanes devastated Florida’s Gulf Coast last year, residents of this artsy waterfront city are facing wrenching choices: demolish, rebuild to costly flood-resistant codes, or walk away from homes that defined their community’s charm, The New York Times reported.

Hurricanes Helene and Milton, which struck within weeks of each other, left a trail of destruction across the state. In Gulfport, a city of about 12,000 near Tampa Bay, nearly 100 homes were deemed “substantially damaged” under federal flood insurance rules. That triggered requirements to either elevate houses to modern standards or tear them down. For many, the cost was overwhelming.

“The locals are disappearing,” said Nancy Poucher, 70, an artist whose mustard-colored bungalow was flooded beyond repair. Unable to afford the six-figure cost of elevating her home, she and her husband sold the property at a loss to a developer.

Navy Matters.

ComNavOps has expressed both hope in SecDef Hegseth and an ominously growing sense of disappointment about the Secretary. Hegseth talked the talk but has, thus far, failed to walk the walk.

He had the opportunity to come in and clean house throughout the services and, with a couple of welcome exceptions, has failed to do so. The same service leadership is still, largely, in place. All the incompetent and politically motivated flag officers are still there and still running things.

Who has he fired over the disastrous Afghan pull out? No one.

Who has he fired over the Chinese spy balloons? No one.

Who has he fired for the military’s multi-year failure to pass an audit? No one.

Who has he fired for allowing the Navy’s fleet to look like a bunch of rusted out garbage scows? No one.

Who has he fired over the lowering of physical fitness and qualification standards? No one.

Who has he fired over the burning of the USS Bonhomme Richard? No one.

Who has he fired over the decades long debacle of the USS Boise (SSN)? No one.

I can pose these questions all night and the answer is the same for all of them: no one! Hegseth is holding no one accountable.

But ComNavOps, you whine say, we can’t afford to fire every flag officer. That would cause insurmountable problems! Bad as they might be, we need flag officer leadership. Really? You’re saying that we’d have problems if we fired all the people who have, over the last several years, hollowed our military, driven readiness into the toilet, allowed maintenance to become an afterthought, and wasted obscene amounts of money on failed programs?

It’s a shame. Based on his pre-nomination public statements, I had high hopes for Mr. Hegseth. Unfortunately, his actions to date, or lack thereof, suggest he’s yet another failed SecDef who lacks the courage to take sweeping and decisive action. All talk, no walk.

Read it.

President Donald Trump’s threat to lay off federal employees during a potential shutdown is deepening divisions among Senate Democrats, who face mounting pressure over whether to hold firm against a House-passed short-term funding bill, The Hill reported.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York has insisted his caucus oppose the measure, signaling he will not back down even as some centrists seek a way out. Schumer, who faces the prospect of a primary challenge from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2028, dismissed Trump’s threat as an overreach that courts would likely strike down.

“This is nothing new and has nothing to do with funding the government. Their unnecessary firings will either be overturned in court or the administration will end up hiring the workers back, just like they did as recently as today,” Schumer said Wednesday.

The traditional kabuki-dance that is played out in these shutdowns is that most ‘essential services’ are exempted, so nobody is going to feel any serious pain from such a shutdown, and government bureaucracies focus on shutting down things like national parks that will provide the worst possible ‘optics’ for whoever the Narrative Media decide is the responsible actor, in this case obviously Trump. And when it’s all over everybody who didn’t get paid gets paid what they would have gotten paid, so no bureaucrat is harmed in the making of this picture.

Trump has signaled that, no, if we can’t pay people, they will lose their jobs. That’s not what the Democrats signed up for. Once again, Trump isn’t following the Deep State playbook, which is why Democrats are feeling a bit of agita.

ATQUE: Shutdown hostage taking (Don Moynihan/Can We Still Govern?)

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The Census Bureau plans to use U.S. Postal Service workers as census-takers in at least two locations in field tests next year for the 2030 census, which will determine political power and federal funding.

The statistical agency said Friday in a notice to be published next week that it will test and assess the feasibility of using postal carriers to knock on doors and collect information about households for the once-a-decade head count of every U.S. resident.

The field tests will be conducted next year in western Texas; tribal areas in Arizona; Colorado Springs, Colorado; western North Carolina; Spartanburg, South Carolina; and Huntsville, Alabama.

Yeah, that’ll make everybody trust the census even more….

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President Reagan famously said that the closest thing to eternal life on this earth is a government agency. Surely that aphorism applies to the Federal RESERVE. And most especially when you put a Trumpian ALL CAPS focus on the “reserve” part of its title.

That is to say, the purpose of the 1913 act had nothing to do with the Fed’s present-day “goals” with respect to inflation, unemployment, economic growth, housing starts, business capex, or any other aspect of the ebb and flow of commerce on Main Street. Instead, the Federal Reserve Act’s far more modest remit was to fix the badly flawed “reserve” arrangements of the National Banking Act that good old Abe Lincoln and his Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase had put into place to finance the civil war.

What the latter actually did was to nearly tax out of existence the honest free enterprise state banks that had prevailed during America’s growth explosion prior to the Civil War in favor of a system of federally regulated “national banks”. But the latter were just thinly disguised servants of the US Treasury. In that capacity, they were required to hold US Treasury bonds as collateral to back the issuance of their own bank notes—the latter being the essence of the 19th-century banking business.

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Documents declassified by FBI Director Kash Patel directly link former FBI chief James Comey to false statements he made before Congress, independent journalist Catherine Herridge reported Thursday.

Further, Herridge reported that the indictment against Comey had been “ready to go,” but that former U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert had been “blocking” or “slow-walking” the charges.

Lindsey Halligan, whom President Donald Trump named interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, removed the blocks.

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This week I landed myself smack dab in the middle of a real-life example of just how piss-poor of a capital allocator the government is compared to the free, for-profit market.

Usually, when I want to mail something, I walk a block or two to either the UPS Store or the FedEx store. Both are pretty similar: fairly busy (especially around the holidays), offering print and copy services, and staffed with employees who—while not saints—are at least competent enough to get your package labeled, shipped, and tracked with as little fuss or bullshit as possible.

The price is slightly costly, but at least the service gets the job done.

Cut to this week, however, when I had to mail something to a PO Box. Turns out you can’t do that through UPS or FedEx, which meant I was grudgingly forced to venture into the local post office. Always crowded. Always understaffed. Always a line out the door.

Within minutes of going in, I was reminded exactly why I avoid the place.

Politico, a Voice of the Crust.

House centrists are discussing the outlines of a possible compromise to extend Affordable Care Act insurance subsidies in hopes of jump-starting stalled talks over the soon-to-expire tax credits that have also emerged as a key fault line in the brewing government shutdown battle.

The bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus has privately broached whether an income cap should be imposed on who can benefit from the subsidies. Several Republicans in the group have floated a $200,000 cap, according to three people granted anonymity to describe the talks.

More than 20 million Americans currently benefit from the enhanced subsidies, which were enacted by Democrats under President Joe Biden in 2021. Some Republicans are now open to extending them, though many are pushing for new curbs to bring down the cost. The income cap is a bare minimum demand for many Republicans.

Democrats, meanwhile, are pushing for a permanent extension as part of government funding talks ahead of the Sept. 30 shutdown deadline. Some centrist Democrats have been willing to discuss concessions, though they are wary of publicly supporting any new limitations at this point.

Apparently subsidized compulsory government-directed health insurance is now ‘centrist’. The attempts by the Narrative Media to drag the Overton Window hard left sometimes has comical effect.

The Antiplanner.

Andrew Thomas, an assistant professor at Helena’s Carroll College, asked the Montana Department of Commerce, which distributes affordable housing credits and grants to developers, for all of the successful applications for low-income housing tax credits since 2000. The department graciously responded by providing information about nearly 190 housing projects.

Thomas had some of his students transcribe the data from the applications into a spreadsheet that he gave me to analyze. The applications tell how many units and how many livable square feet would be built in each project and break down costs into such categories as property acquisition, construction, professional fees, developer fees, and project reserves. The applications don’t say how tall each project would be but Thomas also asked his student to look up each project on Google street view to determine how many stories tall they were.

…

Comparing costs from projects built in 2000 through 2004 with those of projects built in 2019 through 2023 revealed that the cost per square foot had risen by 83 percent or $154 (in 2023 dollars) per square foot. The costs of just “construction” (including such things as relocation expenses, contractor overhead and profits, and permits as well as construction itself) grew by 44 percent or $49 per square foot, so other costs were responsible for most of the $154 increase.

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The UN has announced it will need to cut $500m from their 2026 budget and will lay off 20% of its staff as it struggles to cope with a massive reduction in funding by the Trump administration. Trump has eliminated at least $1 billion in total funding from the UN.

The plan is likely to involve an initial minimum 3,000 job cuts out of a 35,000-strong main workforce, with eventual job losses at around 7,000. The overall UN core or regular budget would be cut from $3.7bn to about $3.2bn next year. It means reductions of 15.1% in resources and 18.8% in posts in the regular budget compared with the 2025 budget.

Despite the funding losses, UN Secretary General António Guterres continues to press ahead with his new “pact for the future” focusing on artificial intelligence and policies for sustainable development. The UN is now looking for alternative funding for their operations, though, it is unlikely they will be able to fill the void left by US cuts. Most countries have no interest in paying more; the reliance has been entirely on Americans for generations.

The U.N. has been a mechanism for sucking U.S. taxpayer dollars to Turd World bureaucrats for at least sixty years.