GUARD HARD!

Example: dozens of people and dozens of labor hours and thousands of dollars are expended to give someone a hundred dollar bonus, or a low level award that is virtually free. Bureaucratic requirements to make any decision is why the government is inefficient.

The idea of DOGE is sound. The application of DOGE has been stupid. Ask mid level career feds what to fix. Any of us can come up with dozens of cost saving measures in our agencies that would be free to implement and have no downsides.

@NavyStrang This is less a failure of RFK and more a failure of the medical community. The massive increase in autism is because doctors are overdiagnosing and "what is autism" keeps expanding. Autism when he was a kid was the worst cases. Now everyone is autistic.

My son is autistic. He paid taxes last year. He has a job. He is going to college. He’s is an Eagle Scout.

@Scott_Az @Walt_worek @RobinMelz @olivia_p_walker @factpostnews It was written by both parties - Jerry Moran did a bunch of work on it. congress.gov/bill/117th-con…

@KeithanRogers @Walt_worek @RobinMelz @olivia_p_walker @factpostnews The pact act was written and introduced by democrats. It passed with bipartisan votes.

Trump's Joint Address by topic: 0 mentions of health care affordability 0 mentions of housing affordability 0 mentions of veterans 0 mentions of prescription drug costs 2 mentions of the Gulf of “America” 3 mentions of annexing Greenland 3 mentions of Elon Musk 5 mentions of tax handouts for the ultra-wealthy and mega corporations 6 mentions of the Panama Canal 13 mentions of Joe Biden

@MayNotBeJoking @SenFettermanPA You may also recall the vast majority of the funding in that bill was going to things unrelated to the border. The bill was $118B. $60B to Ukraine $14B to Israel $17B to other international aid $20B to improvements to border security. It was a foreign aid bill.

It was out of control. No denying that. But you may recall, there was a bipartisan bill that supplied significantly more resources to the border patrol. That was scuttled by Trump and his MAGA minions. Didn't want impact before election. You cannot deny that would have made an impact.

This is when we became the party for chaos. Telling people to invalidate their eyes or experiences and WE LOSE. Equivalent size of Pittsburgh showing up every month at our border was true chaos.

@SassWhere @ACitizensGuide @acnewsitics They also fund all the managers, all the admin staff, infrastructure projects, professional development, non-related research, travel, HR, and on and on. If you can't manage your institution with a 15% overhead you need to look at some six sigma. Grants are not for profit

@ACitizensGuide @acnewsitics You have any clue the equipment they use and the electricity needed to run them? Indirect costs fund the lab, the equipment, the UTILITY COSTS 🤦🏼‍♀️

Why are you MAGAt types okay with cutting cancer research but now pretending to give a fuck about kids with cancer? Can you make that make sense?

@acnewsitics Because the "cut" you're referring to is a proposed rule limiting indirect spending on research grants to 15%, meaning direct research must be 85%. I haven't seen anyone produce anything about lower grant funding. The indirect cost of some grants is over 50%. That sucks.

@RobertCooper58 Not at all. I would urge you to look at things with nuance and acceptance though. Most of the people I know who voted for Trump don't like him at all, but recognize something needs to change. Maybe he does fine, maybe he's the catalyst for a real leader to finally step up.

Does it make me a bad person if I admit I absolutely DESPISE both Trump and Musk with every ounce of my being?

@Jesse_Brenneman They would both need to be split - the republicans are half too right and half moderate (90s democrats basically). Democrats are like 15% as left as it gets and the rest are 90s Republicans. None of them are really liberal - though writ large R tends more liberal.

@RobinMelz @olivia_p_walker @factpostnews PACT Act. cjonline.com/story/news/pol…

Clearly many veterans "aren't smarter than that"; they continue to vote for Trump and Republicans - who consistently work against our interests, those of our family members, and the mil/vet community at large. Can you name any legislation in the last 20 years that GOP has written, sponsored, advocated for, or passed that actually benefits military members, veterans, or our family members? I'll wait

@Walt_worek @RobinMelz @olivia_p_walker @factpostnews The PACT Act was a pretty big deal for lots of us.

@RobinMelz @olivia_p_walker @factpostnews I can count the number of bills and programs for veterans that have been championed by the republicans ... oh wait there haven't been any in recent memory. Don't blame me I voted blue Signed US ARMY VETERAN

@RobinMelz @olivia_p_walker @factpostnews There's likely more nuance there. Give us some credit. I know lots of people who voted for Trump because we're just tired. I had a friend commit suicide on a peacetime deployment. Some of us are OK with less benefits if we don't need to get shot at so much to get them.

@NSwilderness Most of the famous entertainers in America are Canadians, we've already been seeing it for a long time...

The world is about to see a less friendly side of Canada, I'm sorry. 🇨🇦

@annbrison I'm not big on that either - I think a better way would be you enter into a contract to do a job you select when you enter this hypothetical program, that way you aren't surprised to know you're going to be doing medical billing in rural wyoming or a shelter cook in NYC

@KeithanRogers Not crazy about that idea, but if you're not paying for the education...

I'm thinking about doing a podcast. Long form interviews both well-known and everyday people as guests Each episode looks at solving one problem Intent is to create a solution independent of politics Audience participation for competing hypotheses Thoughts?

@annbrison Also - this is the exact sort of thing the podcast would be doing - we likely have different views and different backgrounds - you raise good counters to an idea, we hash out how it can work. Also sometimes my ideas would just be bad and need to change :D

@annbrison Well there's some amount of personal accountability that would need to happen - this wouldn't work well for families, because in my mind it wouldn't be bound geographically. During school would be an elegant solution

@ewarren I bet if democrats seriously audited the government they could find lots of money to make a lot of good things happen. Waste Fraud and Abuse isn't a partisan issue to the American people. Trying to make it one is a bad strategy.

Elon Musk just called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.” And his team is working to gut the agency that makes sure your grandpa gets his check on time. It doesn’t have to be this way. I’m supporting a bill to increase benefits by $2,400/year and expand the program’s solvency.

@annbrison Alternatively, you could be entered into a pool upon graduation and you have to do the first job you're assigned to. Somewhat authoritarian - but I think we've lost the idea of contributing to society over ourselves.

@annbrison A huge portion of government contracting is just to do tasks, they span all fields - a lot of that could be eliminated by building a registry of positions needed to accomplish that work - then having kids sign up to do it for a few years in exchange for free college