Free Republic

One of the most intriguing developments following Donald Trump’s election victory has been the announcement of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. The initiative, which hopes to cut up to $2 trillion from the federal budget, has generated notable excitement, momentum, and memes. The world’s richest man and a successful biotech entrepreneur, Ramaswamy, have revitalized what seemed to be a mostly dormant libertarianism, drawing on the inspiration of Milton Friedman and promising to slash the bureaucracy to the bone. But what are its prospects for real-world success? Elon Musk is our era’s most gifted entrepreneur,...

On Monday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Way Too Early,” Rep. Jonathan Jackson (D-IL) stated that the incoming Trump administration’s agenda is “about efficiency and slash and burn and scare,” and wondered, “when are we going to hear the words of caring for people, when are we going to hear about uplifting people? That’s not on the agenda.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Department of Government Efficiency has wasted no time in identifying 535 government employees residing in the Capitol Building who haven't done any work in years. According to an internal DOGE memo, this particular block of useless lumps drawing government paychecks was surprisingly easy to identify and expose. "This group is, without a doubt, one of the most useless bunches of government excess that one can imagine," Elon Musk noted in a post to X. "Records show that they haven't done a single productive thing in decades. Totally, completely surplus — fat just begging to be trimmed...

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are tasked with cutting down the $6,750,000,000,000 that the federal government spent in 2024 under their new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The group will work outside the government to “dismantle bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies,” according to a statement from President-elect Donald Trump. John Hart, CEO of watchdog Open the Books, which monitors fiscal waste, told The Post they will curb “spending that has been on autopilot where there’s no real thought or purpose behind it.” Finding areas to cut isn’t hard — many jaw-dropping examples are revealed...

In a move set to reshape Washington as we know it, President-Elect Donald Trump announced that Elon Musk -- CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and X 00 and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy will lead a newly formed “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE). The mission of DOGE will be to tackle government waste, reduce bureaucratic bloat, and introduce a sweeping restructuring of federal agencies. “I am pleased to announce that the Great Elon Musk, working in conjunction with American Patriot Vivek Ramaswamy, will lead the Department of Government Efficiency,” Trump said in a statement. With both Musk and Ramaswamy on board, Trump...

Fantastic

One of the very best Presidents we have ever had was Calvin Coolidge. What sets him a part is that he's the only one to actually successfully reduce the size of Government.There were 5 main approaches he took to make this happen. If Trump follows his example, he has a good chance at being the only other President to do this. That would be a huge win.To his credit, some of the steps President Trump has already taken, sets him up to actually make this happen. It's going to require him to make his policy clear, and he has to...

Some say the early bird catches the worm, while some studies suggest that night owls have better cognitive function (intelligence, reasoning, and memory) compared to early risers. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of rising early. You'd think that after waking up early all my life — first as a student and then as a mum — I'd be used to it by now. But nope, I firmly belong to the sleep-in brigade. Are you an "Early to bed, early to rise" sort, or a "Stay up late and sleep in" night owl? If you're not an early bird, check...

This week, the US Supreme Court heard arguments from hedge fund manager George Jarkesy, in his appeal that the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) fining and barring him from the industry for securities fraud violated his Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial. Michael McColloch, attorney for Jarkesy, argued that "the procedure in which the SEC acts as prosecutor, judge, and jury is fundamentally unfair. The person accused by the SEC has the burden of trying to persuade people who already deem him guilty that he's not. His right to be judged by an unbiased jury of his peers has...

President Joe Biden’s proposed energy efficiency standards for water heaters, released July 21 by the Energy Department, not only would raise the cost of water heaters for consumers but take certain products off the market. One popular tankless natural gas water heater, made by Rinnai in Griffin, Georgia, would have to be discontinued. The public has until Sept. 26 to file comments. Beginning in 2029, the Energy Department’s proposed regulation would set government standards for all types of water heaters, including gas-fired, oil-fired, electric, and instantaneous tankless water heaters. The proposed rule would raise standards disproportionately for tankless, gas-fired water...

The Biden administration is cracking down on water heaters by imposing greater efficiency standards. Consumers will have to shovel out thousands of dollars more to install a heat pump water heater rather than a conventional storage water heater in order to fall in line with new standards released on Friday by the Department of Energy. If the proposal is adopted, by 2029, all new electric water heaters must deploy heat pump technology and all gas-fired ones will use condensing technology.

How close would a solar and wind-dependent power grid have come to giving us the electricity we needed during the three-week freeze in Alberta where the average temperature was -22 C from Dec. 15 to Jan. 9?... Alberta needs a supply of about 10,500 MW (megawatts) on average, said Mackay. If they are running at maximum capacity, solar can provide 736 MW and wind 2,269 MW.... If we had been reliant on far more solar and wind, how would we have done? “You’d have to start with rolling blackouts or brownouts,” Mackay said. “If we lost the bulk of our...

I mainly just want to ask the question, see what kinds of responses I may get or what other discussions flow from it. What could we do to automate conservatism? This can be both in the form of reaching new people as well as helping educate others around us of new things they may not have known. So far the most prominent answer I have found for myself is the audiobooks. I will be creating those for many years to come as the opportunities for education are immense. Over the years I have tried to get out of my comfort...

I'd like to have a frank discussion about the cost of entry for you or others who wish to discover more about the Founding Fathers, and even moreso the barrier that presents toward educating others. As we approach the completion of the audiobook version of James Madison's Notes, one of the goals for this project is cost reduction. I would like for you to consider three aspects: Time costMoney costExclusivity or efficiency I assume people will automatically think in terms of money, and it is true that the scope of what I'm looking for could have been better asked in...

There is one constant throughout the past 100 years. Professors of education came up with ever more exotic schemes and nomenclatures for how education should be organized, even as these schemes confused students and destroyed achievement. Each scheme had a catchy name (Open Classroom, Life Adjustment, Multiculturalism, Constructivism, Common Core) and a phalanx of resistance-is-futile jargon. Somehow the proposals didn’t translate into gains. One might cynically conclude that the jargon was a goal in itself (to get a grant, to build a career, to impress ordinary citizens). You may even suspect that the larger purpose of all these schemes is...

WHAT IS THE OPPOSITE OF INSPIRATIONAL? (THIS!) Wal-Mart vs. The Morons 1. Americans spend $36,000,000 at Wal-Mart Every hour of every day. 2. This works out to $20,928 profit every minute! 3. Wal-Mart will sell more from January 1 to St. Patrick's Day (March 17th) than Target sells all year. 4. Wal-Mart is bigger than Home Depot + Kroger + Target +Sears + Costco + K-Mart combined. 5. Wal-Mart employs 1.6 million people, is the world's largest private employer, and most speak English. 6. Wal-Mart is the largest company in the history of the world. 7. Wal-Mart now sells more...

Greater reliance on user fees, federal loans rather than grants, and corporatization are three keys to the Trump administration’s infrastructure initiative released as a part of its 2018 budget. The plan will “seek long-term reforms on how infrastructure projects are regulated, funded, delivered, and maintained,” says the six-page document. More federal funding “is not the solution,” the document says; instead, it is to “fix underlying incentives, procedures, and policies.”In building the Interstate Highway System, the fact sheet observes, “the Federal Government played a key role” in collecting and distributing monies to “fund a project with a Federal purpose.” Since then,...

It’s well-known among people who bother to learn the facts that U.S. manufacturing output continues to rise despite the reality that the number of Americans employed in jobs classified as being in the manufacturing sector peaked in June 1977 and has fallen, with very few interruptions, ever since.Nevertheless, some people – for example, the Economic Policy Institute’s Robert Scott – continue to insist that the loss of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. is largely due to increased American trade with non-Americans. Other studies find empirical evidence that labor-saving innovation rather than trade is overwhelmingly responsible for the loss of manufacturing...

Prematurely accelerating the implementation of fully autonomous trucking (no driver in the cab) seems like an idea that could be fraught with risk. While driverless long-haul trucks have the potential to increase economic productivity by enabling more cost-effective transport of goods, the technology is not yet ready for prime time. There is growing pressure, however, to make it a reality sooner rather than later – particularly as long-distance trucking faces a worsening driver shortage. At the same time, highway infrastructure in many parts of the country is clearly inadequate even for today’s traffic, let alone a mixed bag of driven...

There is a truism simply stated that the three most important factors in real estate are location, location, location. Maybe it is time to apply this axiom to government, specifically at the federal level. Technology has now reached the point that it is no longer necessary for a congressman or senator to reside in or near Washington, D.C., in order to carry out his constitutional duties. Imagine how much more difficult it would be for lobbyists to bribe the majority of the 435 members of the House of Representatives or the 100 senators if they had to make a circuit...