Posted on 02/13/2025 10:02:23 AM PST by MtnClimber
longtime gatopal™ jeffrey tucker had a terrifying and illuminating piece in the epoch times today:
apparently, the rage and indignation emanating from all manner of statists, deep and shallow alike, about DOGE penetrating the holy sanctum of “the treasury payables” so that they could see, in its entirety, where the money actually goes may (apart from all the corruption it’s exposing like blacklight on a hotel bedspread) have quite a lot to do with a truly wild fact that was not known to me:
did you know that since 1946 no president nor any of his appointed staff of secretaries up to and including the treasury secretary has had access to the US government’s payment system?
none. nada. zilch. it’s one big opaque black box to which the executive branches executives have been barred.
this is past shocking. this is surreal.
it’s also astonishingly explanatory and gives amazing insight into “how we got to here.”
payables are the record. when you due diligence a company, once you decide you might be interested, this is where you start. you look at everyhting that goes out and you match it to bank statements. it’s DD 101. any first year investment banker, auditor, or accountant knows this. it’s so obvious that the idea that someone might not do it at trillion dollar scale with a pentagon whose $2000 hammers cannot hammer out any semblance of a passing audit grade beggars belief and the fact that it has not been done by the US government for 79 years threatens to make beggars of us all.
no fewer than 5 former swamp donkey secretaries of treasury are up in arms in a pravda on the hudson opinion piece that essentially amounts to railing about “how dare someone come in and do the job that we ourselves should have done!?!”
it’s surreal to see this put in such unapologetic terms:
“The nation’s payment system has historically been operated by a very small group of nonpartisan career civil servants.”
imagine thinking that this was a hill to die on.
worse, imagine believing that this cloister of incorruptible payables monks were, in fact, non-partisan, particularly to the “uniparty” permanent state whose influence is so rapidly being revealed by a practice that would not even raise an eyebrow as “basic audit to buy a family feed store” much less anything forensic or complex.
methinks the secretaries doth protest too much.
this is what has them so big mad:
“In recent days, that norm has been upended, and the roles of these nonpartisan officials have been compromised by political actors from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. One has been appointed fiscal assistant secretary—a post that for the prior eight decades had been reserved exclusively for civil servants to ensure impartiality and public confidence in the handling and payment of federal funds.”
this is so full of doublespeak and false equivalence that it’s difficult to know where to start, but i suppose that “lawsuit over norm is not much of a legal case” is as good as any. “we have long done it this way” says nothing about whether that was was good, right, desirable, or even legal and similarly says nothing about doing it another way. they are trying to pass off “we have controlled this for 4 generations” as “this is how it should be.” but clearly it isn’t.
the dirt, fraud, self-dealing, influence operations, and circular trails of dirty money that have emerged around USAID alone would be enough to demand a forensic audit of this whole ecosystem in any sort of sane private setting or transaction.....SNIP
We are going to need more prisons.
LOL. Yeah, that's the ticket.... "nonpartisan" ... yeah... One wonders if they got paid to say it THIS time, or was it a freebie?
In DC, being “nonpartisan” means you agree with Demonrats and Mitch McConnell.
It’s the People’s money, as in “We the People.” We demand transparency at all levels.
If you have covert operations, then call it “covert operations” and move on. No need for $20,000 toilet seats.
Apparently I have been doing my household budgeting and accounts incorrectly all these years. I was never supposed to see where the money goes!
“did you know that since 1946 no president nor any of his appointed staff of secretaries up to and including the treasury secretary has had access to the US government’s payment system?”
I believe this date is more than coincidental seeing how it was in 1946 that the “Administrative Procedures Act” was passed.
“One has been appointed fiscal assistant secretary—a post that for the prior eight decades had been reserved exclusively for civil servants to ensure impartiality and public confidence in the handling and payment of federal funds.”
But they don’t like things to stay the same. They like things that are progressive. They like change, right? What is the problem? You just can’t please some people.
bkmk
Let me think — aren’t all five of the former secretaries from Democrat Presidents?
Hmmm. I wonder if that means anything? In their DNA to NOT question any expense?
I think so.
Gwjack
Not if you just kick them out the back of a C-130 50 miles off the coast at 500 feet. (After their fair, 5-min trial, of course.)
Well, ya know, elections have consequences.
Also the same year that the OSS needed to re-imagine their mission. In 1947 they became the CIA.
The general ledger is the key to the castle in corporate world.
When a check has been cut and nobody seems able to explain what it was for that is what is called a clue to dip very deeply.
The advantage DOGE has is speed. They can quickly identify millions of these questionable expenditures and start following the breadcrumbs.
“This office is in Miami and they hired a snow plow contractor?”
Lol.
bkmk
CWII would be fast and … efficient.
Let us have those comms, Elon.
Good to know. Thanks.
The Trump Administration should respond to critics with “Nothing is more “progressive” than fiscal transparency.”
I hope we can fill these prisons faster than we can build them. There is no reason why a government should be able to falsify money being taken in or given out to enrich cetrain people. If business is conducted this way,then we will naturally have huge deficits (which we do) & if a certain group is enriching themselselve while others are living in poverty, then something is badly wrong.
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