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Greg Perrett's avatar

“Cutting the scope and size of Big Government”… not so much.

From the hippies at the Wall St Journal:

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-doge-government-spending-increases-5903992d

Maybe the bill for those El Salvadorian prison camps is too high?

Or maybe it’s the extra troops for the Greenland invasion?

I wonder if the Government should cancel those SpaceX contracts to save some money?

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ReadingRainbow's avatar

The WSJ are globalist neocons like all the rest.

You’ve got to be pretty far up your own ass to trot out the WSJ as some sort of dissident publication. 2004 called.

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Greg Perrett's avatar

You’re still talking about “neocons” and then accusing others of living in 2004?

I’m sorry you didn’t get the joke about the Wall St journal. What did you think of the chart?

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ReadingRainbow's avatar

Neocons are alive and well they just wear blue ties now. And then there’s McConnell and co. still going strong.

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Greg Perrett's avatar

What did you think of the chart?

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ReadingRainbow's avatar

I thought that much like all of the hand wringing about egg prices in February, it’s completely asinine to blame budget numbers from the first 3 months of his term on him.

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Greg Perrett's avatar

But the whole idea of DOGE was to bring down spending immediately.

Don’t forget: DOGE has huge downsides. No regard for impacts of disruption, makes the US Govt look foolish and irresponsible when they have to reverse their decisions, tramples the Constitutional role of Congress, etc.

So if it’s not bringing down spending immediately, then that’s a total failure with huge unnecessary damage.

Speaking of which, do you blame him for not working with Congress to cut spending in a way that is consistent with the Constitution?

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ReadingRainbow's avatar

The premise of doge is that the president is the head of the executive branch and has jurisdiction over it. Liberal courts which went to no end to prosecute Trump with sham charges are doing what they can to stop him.

The expansion of the federal government was largely accomplished the dubious executive action and it stands to reason that that’s the only way it’s going to be reduced.

This is largely like the liberal strategy of actively facilitating the invasion of the country by 10s of millions of unknown immigrants and then clamoring about due process when anyone tries to undo it.

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Greg Perrett's avatar

The premise of DOGE is to put on a cruel authoritarian show, rather than upholding Article 1 of the Constitution and the Impoundment Control Act: https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/a-primer-on-the-impoundment-control-act

Don’t give me that ‘sham charges’ nonsense. You know as well as I do that he committed serious crimes. If you had any sense of civic responsibility you should be appalled by the corruption that means he will avoid accountability for his crimes.

But you don’t have any such sense of responsibility. Your last paragraph gives you away: you’ve swallowed the culture war bait and you’ll ignore any atrocities by Trump as long as he plays to your sense of fear and prejudice.

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ReadingRainbow's avatar

His crime was not filling out the memo line of a check correctly, for which he was charged with dozens of crimes (past the statute of limitations) by a prosecutor who literally campaigned on the promise to charge DJT with “something”. It was clearly, obviously, a sham, politically-motivated charge.

The irony of course is that that court case did more to “damage Democratic institutions” than anything Trump has done.

And how do you propose that the size of the federal government be reduced? Or do you just think it should continue to expand in perpetuity until everything becomes the government?

Everything inside the state, nothing outside the state - Barack Obama

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Greg Perrett's avatar

Let me refresh your memory:

Federal Election Interference (District of Columbia)

Conspiracy to defraud the United States

Conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding

Obstructing an official proceeding

Conspiracy against rights (i.e., conspiracy to deprive citizens of their civil rights)

Georgia State Election Interference

Violation of Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act

Solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer

Conspiracy to commit impersonating a public officer

Conspiracy to commit forgery

Conspiracy to commit false statements and writings

Filing false documents

False statements and writings

Federal Classified Documents Case (Florida)

Willful retention of national defense information

Conspiracy to obstruct justice

Withholding a document or record

Corruptly concealing a document or record

Concealing a document in a federal investigation

Scheme to conceal

False statements and representations

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