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
Brilliant.
Some here think it’s possible that after the election the DOGE crew hacked in to the system and had all the data even before the inauguration. Maybe ... If so, good luck trying to hide your sh!t, people.
Dear sweet Tester. We are the Solarian League
No clue about that—but the judge has already partially backed down and given the Treasury Secretary and staff full access.
Obviously they can give any data to DOGE folks at any time.
At this point every check/direct deposit cut will be given great scrutiny.
The DOGE folks can give the Treasury staff tips and software to make it happen—so there is no problem here.
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