Category: Government

Do public health considerations prevent Minneapolitans from bringing toy poodles with them to the bathhouse?

by philg

I hope that everyone enjoyed the Iran v. Egypt Pride Day soccer match yesterday in Seattle.

“Minneapolis City Council votes to repeal ban on adult bathhouses, sex venues” (state-sponsored public NPR):

Adult bathhouses are community spaces that were historically frequented by gay men in the 1970s and ‘80s where people could engage in sexual activity or relax after going out to bars. They were banned in Minneapolis in 1988 during the AIDS epidemic.

The ban was for public health reasons due to a mistaken association between men having sex with 50 new male friends and contracting HIV/coming down with AIDS. Thanks to Science, the ban has been repealed.

In order to protect public health, a member of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community cannot legally bring a poodle-in-a-bag into a restaurant.

What does Science say about whether a toy-poodle-in-a-bag can be brought into a bathhouse? Is that a risk to public health?

Let’s ask AI to tell us what the financial stakes have been. Asked “What has been the total cost of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, over all of the years since it started, to the U.S. taxpayer in 2026 dollars?” ChatGPT answers:

A reasonable order-of-magnitude answer is about $1.25–$1.3 trillion in 2026 dollars in federal taxpayer spending from FY1981 through FY2026. … A rough allowance for state Medicaid shares and other nonfederal public spending would likely push the total to around $1.35–$1.45 trillion in 2026 dollars

Grok:

Roughly $1 trillion or more in nominal (unadjusted) dollars through ~2025/2026, likely $1.2–1.5+ trillion when adjusted to 2026 dollars. … This is direct government spending; it excludes private insurance, out-of-pocket, lost productivity, or indirect economic impacts (some older studies estimated broader burdens in the tens to hundreds of billions for specific periods). … Exact figures require summing detailed yearly tables from KFF/CRS/HHS (available in their reports), but the scale is clearly in the trillions when fully adjusted and projected.

I don’t see how the inflation adjustment can be correct. If $1 trillion nominal has been spent starting in the 1980s then the 2026 dollar figure should be higher. Spending $1 in 1981 is equivalent to spending $3.85 today (offiial CPI).

Loosely related…

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Sitka, Alaska Public Library

by philg

What do the taxpayers of Sitka, Alaska get at their local public libary? Here’s a report from a May 2026 visit.

(Alaska has no state income, estate, or sales tax, but residents of Sitka pay property tax and also a sales tax of 6 percent (summer) or 5 percent (winter).)

It’s a beautiful waterfront building with awesome-by-pathetic-US-standards free WiFI:

A bulletin board with community announcements greets visitors:

(The Juneteeth celebration will likely resemble an Ibram Xolani Kendi (born Ibram Henry Rogers) book club because we didn’t see a single African American local or visitor during our day in Sitka. Even the Labrador Retriever who protected us from brown bears on the Totem Trail was yellow rather than Black (the Lab’s owner appeared to be white).)

Featured books by the front door:

A featured book in the kids’ section:

(So far the locals don’t seem to have followed the leader into wearing hijab.)

Here’s a book that was flagged as new in the kids’ section. It says “Inspired by the childhood of Dolores Huerta”. Ms. Huerta was recently featured in the New York Times, e.g., with “‘We’re Just Seen as Sex Objects’: Dolores Huerta’s Years in the U.F.W.” (“The co-founder of the United Farm Workers talked about her relationship with Cesar Chavez, and the night he raped her.”) and “Cesar Chavez, a Civil Rights Icon, Is Accused of Abusing Girls for Years”.

The library loans out gear and games:

The teen section reminds kids in Alaska that climate change will ruin their lives unless they follow the lead of Indian-born environmental journalist Meera Subramanian and become climate activists. (Thought experiment: Suppose that both Phoenix, Arizona and Sitka, Alaska became 10 degrees warmer. Would that make real estate in Sitka more valuable or less valuable?)

The book could perhaps use an update. Climate Change Alarmists now demand cheap oil and complain about gas prices being, in nominal dollars, nearly as high as they were in 2022, but the book praises those who obstructed the Dakota Access Pipeline. The book celebrates Tonopah-style concentrated solar power, apparently disagreeing with Popular Mechanics that “The $1 Billion Solar Plant Is an Obsolete, Expensive Flop” (2020). See also “Solar plant on I-15 near its end, shutting off in 2026, officials say” (2025) regarding the Ivanpah dream.

Teens are also reminded that “the perfect family” does not include any white people:

Circling back to the adult section, some books that the librarians chose to feature:

The book on “How Latino Immigrants Saved the American City” is interesting. The New York Times tells us that Black New Yorkers haven’t been replaced by Asians and the Latinx. It is just that New York City now has fewer Black residents and more Asian/Latinx immigrant residents (e.g., see “Why Black Families Are Leaving New York, and What It Means for the City” (2023)). The book explains that the non-replacement of Blacks by Latinx has “saved” cities.

If you’re in Sitka, don’t forget that Rainbow Storytime (pre-K through 5th grade), from the above poster of Pride events, is happening today at 10:30 am Alaska time. Storytime raises a question. The library is funded by taxpayers and, therefore, we have to assume that the majority of taxpayers support whatever the library does. Outside of San Francisco or Massachusetts, though, how many of us have heard a parent say “I am taking my child to the Rainbow Storytime at the library now”?

Speaking of Massachusetts, it seems that the Boston Public Library is hosting 19 drag queen story hours this month. Here are a couple of examples tagged for children of various ages:

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TSA employees working without pay

by philg

The Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019 guarantees 100 percent pay for federal workers who either (1) show up to work during a “shutdown”, (2) relax at home during a “shutdown” as blessed non-essentials, or (3) vacation in Europe during a “shutdown” without using any vacation days (again, limited to those who can get classified as non-essential).

How does the New York Times characterize the potentially-slightly-delayed paychecks of TSA employees (funding ran out a week ago)? “T.S.A. Workers Brace for Another Shutdown They Didn’t Cause”:

Lawmakers left town this week without a deal to fund the department over a disagreement about reining in the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration enforcement tactics. Most of the hardships faced by employees — who are working without pay — will go unnoticed by the public with a few possible exceptions, including the people who check IDs, scan baggage and complete other security tasks at U.S. airports.

Officers are frustrated that they have to pay the price for a political fight that has nothing to do with them. It’s even worse this time, because they have to work without pay while immigration officers will continue to be paid through a separate fund.

Nowhere do the journalists mention that TSA employees are guaranteed to receive 100-percent pay so long as the U.S. government is able to print money.

Here’s another fun one… “With Latest Rollback, the U.S. Essentially Has No Clean-Car Rules” NYT, February 16, 2026):

The momentous end to the federal government’s legal authority to fight climate change makes it official.

The United States will essentially have no laws on the books that enforce how efficient America’s passenger cars and trucks should be.

That’s the practical result of the Trump administration’s yearlong parade of regulatory rollbacks, capped on Thursday by its killing of the “endangerment finding,” the scientific determination that required the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases because of the threat to human health.

“The U.S. no longer has emission standards of any meaning,” said Margo T. Oge, who served as the E.P.A.’s top vehicle emissions regulator under three presidents and has since advised both automakers and environmental groups.

With no emissions standards, then, it would be legal for Toyota, GM, and Ford to stop including catalytic converters ($300-$1,500?) with their new vehicles? Here’s part of what ChatGPT said regarding the greenhouse gas limits that are potentially gone and the “no emission standards of any meaning” world described in the New York Times…

——————-

If greenhouse-gas (GHG) limits on cars were removed in the U.S., a substantial set of non-GHG emissions regulations would still remain. These target pollutants that directly harm human health and local air quality rather than global climate.

Below is a structured breakdown of what would still be regulated.

1) Criteria Air Pollutants (Clean Air Act “criteria pollutants”)

Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA regulates tailpipe emissions that contribute to smog, soot, and toxic exposure.

Key regulated pollutants from light-duty vehicles

  • Nitrogen oxides (NOₓ)
    • Major driver of ground-level ozone (smog)
    • Causes respiratory illness, asthma exacerbation
  • Non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHC) / Volatile organic compounds (VOCs)
    • React with NOₓ to form ozone
    • Includes unburned fuel vapors
  • Carbon monoxide (CO)
    • Interferes with oxygen transport in blood
    • Acute toxicity risk in urban corridors
  • Particulate matter (PM / PM₂.₅ / PM₁₀)
    • Soot from combustion (especially gasoline direct injection and diesels)
    • Linked to cardiovascular and lung disease

These limits are embedded in EPA Tier 3 standards (phased in from model years 2017–2025).

2) Air Toxics (Hazardous Air Pollutants)

Vehicles are also regulated for toxic compounds under the Clean Air Act’s Mobile Source Air Toxics (MSAT) program.

Key examples:

  • Benzene – carcinogenic fuel component
  • Formaldehyde – respiratory irritant, carcinogen
  • Acetaldehyde
  • 1,3-Butadiene
  • Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs)

Regulation occurs via:

  • Tailpipe limits
  • Fuel composition controls
  • Evaporative emissions standards

3) Evaporative Emissions

Even when parked, cars emit fuel vapors. These rules would remain:

Regulated sources

  • Fuel tank permeation
  • Hose and seal leakage
  • Refueling vapor loss

Controls required

  • Charcoal canisters (evaporative capture)
  • Onboard Refueling Vapor Recovery (ORVR)
  • Low-permeation fuel systems

These standards are especially important in hot climates (e.g., Florida, Arizona).

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The Army helicopter crash in DC revisited

by philg

As noted in Reagan National Airport Black Hawk-CRJ crash, the easiest way to have prevented the January 2025 crash would have been to implemented congestion pricing on the highways around DC so that officials didn’t need helicopter taxi service to avoid the traffic jams that have been caused by dramatic population growth induced by spectacular growth in government spending (plus open borders?).

“The Last Flight of PAT 25 Two Army helicopter pilots went on an ill-conceived training mission. Within two hours, 67 people were dead.” (New York Magazine):

Black Hawks are typically flown by two pilots. The pilot in command, or PIC, sits in the right-hand seat. Tonight, that role was filled by 39-year-old chief warrant officer Andrew Eaves. Warrant officers rank between enlisted personnel and commissioned officers; it’s the warrant officers who carry out the lion’s share of a unit’s operational flying. When not flying VIPs, Eaves served as a flight instructor and a check pilot, providing periodic evaluation of the skills of other pilots. A native of Mississippi, he had 968 hours of flight experience and was considered a solid pilot by others in the unit.

In terms of flying hours, Mr. Eaves was at the same stage as a civilian helicopter pilot beginning a second year working as an instruction in little Robinsons, mostly going in circles around a training airport.

His mission was to give a check ride to Captain Rebecca Lobach, the pilot sitting in the left-hand seat. Lobach was a staff officer, meaning that her main role in the battalion was managerial. Nevertheless, she was expected to maintain her pilot qualifications and, to do so, had to undergo a number of annual proficiency checks. Tonight’s three-hour flight was intended to get Lobach her annual sign-off for basic flying skills and for the use of night-vision goggles, or NVGs. To accommodate that, the flight was taking off an hour and 20 minutes after sunset. …

Night-vision goggles have a narrow field of view, just 40 degrees compared to the 200-degree range of normal vision, which makes it harder for pilots to maintain full situational awareness. They have to pay attention to obstacles and other aircraft outside the window, and they also have to keep track of what the gauges on the panel in front them are saying: how fast they’re going, for instance, and how high. There’s a lot to process, and time is of the essence when you’re zooming along at 120 mph while lower than the tops of nearby buildings. To help with situational awareness, Eaves and Lobach were accompanied by a crew chief, Staff Sergeant Ryan O’Hara, sitting in a seat just behind the cockpit, where he would be able to help keep an eye out for trouble.

Lobach, 28, had been a pilot for four years. She’d been an ROTC cadet at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which she graduated from in 2019. Both her parents were doctors; she’d dreamed of a medical career but eventually realized that she couldn’t pursue one in the Army. According to her roommate, “She did not have a huge, massive passion” for aviation but chose it because it was the closest she could get to practicing medicine, under the circumstances. “She badly wanted to be a Black Hawk pilot because she wanted to be a medevac unit,” he told NTSB investigators. After she completed flight training at Fort Rucker, she was stationed at Fort Belvoir, where she joined the 12th Aviation Battalion and was put in charge of the oil-and-lubricants unit.

In addition to her official duties, Lobach served as a volunteer social liaison at the White House, where she regularly represented the Army at Medal of Honor ceremonies and state dinners. … She was planning to leave the service in 2027 and had already applied for medical school at Mount Sinai. Helicopter flying was not something she intended to pursue.

Though talented as a manager, she wasn’t much of a pilot. … One instructor described her skills as “well below average,” noting that she had “lots of difficulties in the aircraft.” Three years before, she’d failed the night-vision evaluation she was taking tonight. … It’s not uncommon for pilots to struggle during the early phase of their career. But Lobach’s development had been particularly slow. In her five years in the service, she had accumulated just 454 hours of flight time, and she wasn’t clocking more very quickly.

Captain Lobach had the same number of hours as a Big Tech engineer who flies recreationally for about three years and, based on the above, far less interest in becoming proficient. The small number of hours seems to be common within the Army:

Similar problems exist throughout Army aviation; the service has been having a hard time retaining its most experienced pilots and providing adequate flight time for those currently coming up through the ranks. Since 2011, the average number of hours flown per year by crewed Army aircraft has fallen from 302 to 198.

Here’s a confusing part. Maybe the issue was with the tail rotor rather than “a tail fin”?

As they passed over the Civil War battlefield of Thoroughfare Gap, an alarm called a master caution went off, indicating that a control system for a tail fin was malfunctioning. If the situation worsened and the surface became stuck, the helicopter could crash.

(This was unrelated to the crash as it happened an hour earlier and the system was “reset”.)

The conclusion of the article is bizarre. After writing about a person who wasn’t interested in aviation, the author concludes with a quote from the pilot-brother of one of the regional airline pilots who was killed by the Army crew’s incompetence:

He thinks that Lobach could have become a good pilot if they gave her another thousand hours of flying time. Instead, the Army withheld from her the training and flight time that she needed to fly safely and then required her to go fly anyway on a mission that was as ill-conceived as it was poorly executed.

The article is heartbreaking because there are thousands of superb civilian helicopter pilots who would have sacrificed almost anything to take Captain Lobach’s place behind the controls of a Blackhawk even without receiving her Army pay and benefits ($150,000/year if we include housing allowance and the actuarial value of the pension?). It’s understandable that the military is a bureaucracy, but after all of the selection hurdles how does it end up with pilots who don’t love to fly and live to fly?

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Why won’t San Francisco Democrats provide their teachers with fair compensation?

by philg

Californians love to brag about how productive and rich they are. San Francisco should be the richest city in the world right now given that most of the AI companies have set up shop within the city limits and the founders/executives of these companies also live within city limits, e.g., Sam Altman (worth nearly $2 billion) That’s a tax base that municipal governments all around the world can only envy. We are informed that Democrats protect American workers’ interests and there are no Republicans who could potentially prevent San Francisco from taxing and spending.

Separately, we are informed that public employee unions would never use their power to exploit taxpayers by demanding above-market compensation. Our newspapers report as an established fact that unionized schoolteachers are “underpaid”.

This week, however, we learn that the elite Democrats who run San Francisco refuse to provide their public schoolteachers with the fair compensation that the union has requested, thus necessitating a strike. NYT:

On Monday morning, Cassondra Curiel, the president of the union, the United Educators of San Francisco, led a rally on the steps of Mission High School, where dozens of teachers, dressed in red, rattled tambourines and hoisted signs calling for higher wages. Some brought their children, who were out of school for the day.

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Add EBT card readers to televisions?

by philg

It’s Super Bowl Sunday, a day when tens of millions Americans with jobs will sit on their sofas instead of working and paying taxes associated with working, e.g., payroll and personal income tax.

We have been gifted by far-sighted and generous politicians whose dreams of an improved cradle-to-grave welfare state for roughly 50 percent of Americans have been spoiled by the laziness of Americans who have jobs but don’t work enough hours to fully fund progressive dreams.

Imagine the boost to tax revenue if working Americans worked all weekend instead of watching games on TV. What if we augmented televisions and streaming services with EBT card readers and only those with active SNAP/EBT/food stamps would be able to watch NFL, NBA, MLB, etc.? (It’s easier to get someone who works 50 hours per week to instead work 60 hours per week than it is to get someone who works 0 hours per week to toil for 10 tedious hours per week.)

I pointed this out yesterday, but it is worth pointing out again today: Santa Clara County just recently issued a mask order to reduce the spread of COVID-19 (below) and today they’re going to host a COVID-19 superspreader event. #Science!

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Our tax dollars at work: 500 lawyers and the Epstein files (also, Gulfstream and Bell helicopter maintenance costs)

by philg

“Department of Justice Publishes 3.5 Million Responsive Pages in Compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act” (justice.gov)

The Department of Justice today published over 3 million additional pages responsive to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was signed into law by President Trump on November 19, 2025.

More than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images are included in today’s additional publication. Combined with prior releases, this makes the total production nearly 3.5 million pages released in compliance with the Act.

More than 500 attorneys and reviewers from the Department contributed to this effort. In addition, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (USAO-SDNY) employed an additional review protocol to ensure compliance with a Court order requiring United States Attorney Jay Clayton to certify that no victim identifying information would be produced unredacted as part of the public production.

Through the process, the Department provided clear instructions to reviewers that the redactions were to be limited to the protection of victims and their families. Some pornographic images, whether commercial or not, were redacted, given the Department treated all women in those images as victims. Notable individuals and politicians were not redacted in the release of any files.

How did the Department of Justice have 500 attorneys and reviewers with nothing more pressing to do than read through 3.5 million pages?

The files are at https://www.justice.gov/epstein ; Readers: did you look into them and find anything interesting? (it will be a challenge because our $7+ trillion/year government has given us only the crudest imaginable electronic search capability; only exact string matches are returned)

What did I find after about 45 minutes of poking around? I don’t need 3.5 million pages on the subject of the extent to which young women will be willing to have sex in exchange for housing in Manhattan, private jet travel, Caribbean vacations, straight-up cash, etc. So I searched for “Gulfstream Maintenance” and found an estimate for FANS compliance scheduled maintenance on N120JE, Jeffrey Epstein’s 1988 G-IV, s/n 1085. (FANS is a digital communication system between ATC and aircraft with about 1/100th the power of an iPhone.) This is from 2019, i.e., in pre-Biden dollars:

The $343,000 number will grow after the inspection is in progress and discrepancies are identified, e.g., corrosion from being operated in the Caribbean or from frisky passengers spilling Champagne.

How about the Bell 430 helicopter? The annual on that puppy was estimated at only $92,000 (again, in pre-Biden money):

I also found this property tax bill for Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse, 9 E. 71st. In pre-Biden dollars (2019), it was supposedly worth $56 million and Epstein owed $347,000/year in tax.

Zillow says that its price has gone up in nominal dollars, but taxes owed haven’t kept up with inflation ($347k in pre-Biden dollars is about $447k today). Maybe Ayatollah Mamdani is right about rich people in NYC needing to pay their fair share?

While I appreciate this window into the lifestyles of the rich and famous that our government has provided as part of its $7+ trillion in spending annually, I can’t figure out why the Feds hung onto and catalogued the documents that I stumbled on. Does it matter to anyone other than curious me how much a rich douche had to pay for Gulfstream or twin turbine helicopter maintenance? Would the charges against Emmanuel Goldstein and associates have been different if the Manhattan property tax bill had been $300,000/year rather than $347,000/year?

Related:

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Somali day care background book: Mississippi Swindle

by philg

Mississippi Swindle: Brett Favre and the Welfare Scandal that Shocked America turns out to answer some background questions on how American taxpayers ended up funding fake day cares. The author, Shad White, is the State Auditor of Mississippi. Phil Bryant, the governor at the time, received a insider’s tip that prompted an investigation by White’s team.

The root cause of the Mississippi fraud seems to be the same as the root cause of the Minnesota fraud: state officials allowed to make decisions about how to spend federal money. The author says that Clinton administration technocrats in D.C. were concerned that they’d destroyed the Black American family. Children born to “single mothers” went from roughly the same percentage as in the white population to over 60 percent (current data: 25 percent for whites; 65 percent to Blacks) in response to the Great Society “marry the government” programs introduced under Presidents FDR and Johnson, e.g., Aid to Families with Dependent Children. The Clinton geniuses implemented Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (“TANF”) in which states would get block grants and then could do whatever they wanted to with the money. They could, for example, give cash directly to “families” that didn’t work, but could also give money to nonprofit organizations that purported to assist those who didn’t work, e.g., by helping them write resumes or delivering other nebulous services.

The Mississippi DHS folks decided to give roughly 10 percent of the TANF funds to poor people and then 90 percent to friends’ nonprofit orgs whose executives spent the money on new houses, luxury vacations, kickbacks to state bureaucrats, etc. Only about $100 million was stolen from federal taxpayers, but the mechanism seems to be the same as in the much larger Minnesota fraud. The core prerequisites are (1) letting state officials decide how to spend federal money, and (2) the ability of officials to hand over taxpayer funds to nonprofit orgs.

There are some other good insights into the bureaucratic lifestyle. Some families in Mississippi living in $1 million houses and with six-figure incomes were enjoying Medicaid (an angel/VC-investor friend in a $2 million (pre-Biden dollars) house Maskachusetts was doing this about 15 years ago; he answered all of the questions on the Mass Health Connector accurately and the system kicked out that he was entitled to superlative MassHealth (Medicaid) coverage at $3/month). When the auditors pointed this out to the Medicaid bureaucrats their response was to push back rather than admit any bureaucratic errors or shortcomings. Even the people in the welfare bureaucracies who were corrupt or personally benefitting had a powerful desire to obstruct auditing and to preserve business as usual.

I’m almost done with the book and so far there isn’t a single example of a person who lost his or her job as a consequence for incompetence. A handful of people suffered criminal convictions, but nobody lost a day of wages as punishment for taxpayers losing $100 million.

If you don’t want to read the book, Wikipedia offers a summary.

Loosely related, a thoughtful perspective from U.S. Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana:

Also, pronouns and goats in Minneapolis:

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Could the Federal Reserve gnomes work in a cruise ship moored in the Potomac?

by philg

The Federal Reserve is in the news lately for spending about $3,000 per square foot to renovate some office space in D.C. that will be used by 3,000 to 3,400 people. (source: the haters at Fox) The cost will be roughly $1 million per employee ($3.1 billion total).

I recently got off the Celebrity Ascent, a two-year-old cruise ship built by the notoriously efficient French. According to a talk that I attended by Instagram-famous Captain Tasos, she cost $1.2 billion, brand new, and can be both a home and work space for more than 5,000 people. ChatGPT estimates the square footage of the Fed’s buildings at 1.1 million and the Ascent at 2 million (cabins plus public spaces). The Ascent is fully covered with WiFi and, thus, could serve as an office building in our modern Zoom-based age (at a dock it could be hooked up to a fiber bundle instead of an apparently rather feeble Starlink subscription (throttled to 3.5 Mbps download per device; 2.5 Mbps upload).

Instead of renovating the Fed buildings, why not have our French brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters build an “office ship” to be moored in SE DC (just east of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, I guess, due to the 75′ vertical limit)? As a bonus, any time that Fed employees need to visit colleagues in Boston, Philadelphia, New York, or Miami (the latter isn’t home to a regional Fed, but maybe it should be?), the “office ship” can set sail up or down the east coast (not a Jones Act violation because the government can do whatever it wants?).

What’s the flaw with this proposal to save taxpayers at least $2 billion (maybe $3 or $4 billion if the DC project goes over budget) and give each Fed employee twice the square footage (plus an awesome buffet restaurant and a wonderful theater if the Fed is as good at putting together an orchestra as Royal Caribbean/Celebrity are; hire Jessica Gabrielle to do an employee disco night once/month and her Blue Jays band to work lunch two days per week; maybe bring in Stephen Barry a few times per year for gender diversity reeducation (he liked to borrow purses from female-identifying audience members)).

Since every American will be on GLP-1 pills, the Fed could run a “chocolate shawarma” station as Celebrity did. Imagine replacing the two foreigners below with efficient enthusiastic friendly American government workers:

(Why did Celebrity put up a sign labeling these “shawarma” rather than “crêpes”? It’s true that the legacy white Christian French population contributed the underlying pancake, but they also had a chocolate wheel from which shavings were being made.)

Loosely related, Marella Discovery nursing her calf (St. Kitts):

Sanity check on ChatGPT’s numbers: Ascent is 1071×130′ in size. That’s 139,230 square feet of space if the ship were shaped like a block. She has the equivalent of about 15 full-length decks so that works out to 2.1 million square feet. Then subtract a bit because there is some tapering.

Speaking of sanity, if the Federal Reserve truly wanted to conserve taxpayer funds, it could order a ship built in China (30-40 percent cheaper, supposedly, though apparently still not competitive in the real-world cruise industry) and skip out on the fancy Azipods and bow thrusters (the office ship won’t move too often so perhaps just use tugboats to achieve precise positioning within harbors). Speaking of Azipods, how do those clever Swedes get the slip rings to work? Enormous amounts of power are transferred and the pods can rotate continuously (i.e., a power cord won’t work). ChatGPT:

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Is Minnesota the new Purdue Pharma/Sackler Family?

by philg

During the time when Americans cared about opioids (see Who funded America’s opiate epidemic? You did.), the scapegoats for the mostly taxpayer-funded problem were Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family that owned Purdue Pharma (also scapegoated: members of the Sackler family who had no ownership or management role in Purdue Pharma!). Seldom vilified in the press:

  • Medicaid bureaucrats who enabled the addictions by paying for opioids in spectacular numbers
  • FDA bureaucrats who approved additional uses for opioid pills
  • Johnson & Johnson, which grew and imported the raw materials for opioid pills (and also sold some of its own pills to compete with Purdue Pharma)
  • DEA bureaucrats who approved the importation of opium raw materials in growing and spectacular quantities
  • Pill distributors and pharmacies

Taxpayers who followed the headlines would learn that the U.S. had a near-perfect system, but that there was one bad apple within the perfect system. Once Purdue and the evil Sacklers were shut down we could get back to business as usual at Medicaid, FDA, DEA, J&J, CVS, etc.

I wonder if Tim Walz and his merry band of check-writers in Minnesota are the new Purdue Pharma/Sacklers. The U.S. welfare system is perfectly engineered for fraud, it seems, with state bureaucrats having the authority to spend federal money. Any system without a massive fraud incentive would start with state bureaucrats spending only state taxpayer money and local government employees spending only local taxes. (Imagine a bureaucrat in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He/she/ze/they would reasonably approve 100 percent of residents for SNAP/EBT because the money is coming from the federal treasury and will grow the Cambridge economy. The same bureaucrat would have an incentive to approve 100 percent of residents for state-funded programs since only a small fraction of state taxpayers live in Cambridge.)

What if fraud levels are nearly as high in some other states, but people who benefit from the U.S. running the world’s second largest welfare state (percentage of GDP; maybe we are #1 now after the coronapanic enhancements?) don’t want peasant taxpayers to look into the situation? It would then be ideal to scapegoat the Minnesotans and their Somali brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters. Once a handful of Somalis in Minnesota have been sent off to Club Fed (they’ll live at taxpayer expense for a few years as punishment for previously living at taxpayer expense), everyone can assume that the problem is solved because the bad apples (bad guavas?) have been removed from the welfare state barrel.

Vaguely related…

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