Be specific. Provide proof of my statements.
Well, to start with, your statement of your support for bipartisan politics, when the candidates you verbally support do everything but work across the isle. 2- the other delusions you dish out are about the GOP and incoming Trump administration not planning on âderegulatingâ , and the âdoing awayâ with some regulations is not deregulating, when you know good and well of the âregulationsâ they will do away with will be the regulations that were put into force because of Corporate Americas poor business practices which led us into the recession back in 2008, and this is just for startersâŠ
I am so glad that we donât discuss politics much. Itâs a mucky business.
It is that sir. Politics / religion, extremely volatile and the epitome of hypocrisy.
Agree to disagree is my motto.
No matter who you vote for the government always gets in.
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What candidates?
So you mean reducing regulations? You do know that Obama, as every other President does, cut billions of dollars in regulations as part of his administration From his website:
In January 2011, the President called for an unprecedented government-wide regulatory âlookback,â designed to revisit rules on the books to see if they really make senseâŠ
The monetized savings from just a fraction of these reforms are likely to exceed $10 billion over the next five yearsâŠ
The reforms across the government span a wide range including:
** The Department of Health and Human Services will soon propose to remove unnecessary regulatory and reporting requirements now imposed on hospitals and other healthcare providers, potentially saving an anticipated $4 billion over the next five years.*
** The Department of Labor is finalizing a rule to simplify and to improve hazard warnings for workers, likely saving employers over $2.5 billion over the next five years without compromising safety.*
** The Department of Transportation is proposing a rule that will eliminate unnecessary regulation of the railroad industry, saving up to $340 million in the near future, and avoiding the risk that regulatory costs will be passed onto consumers.*
That was just a sample.
Unless you are a bureaucrat sitting in a chair making up new regulations to justify your job, everyone is a proponent of making government more efficient - and not at the extreme costs of filling rivers with industrial waste and cutting off services to those who legitimately need it. Although, as Lincolnshire has said, this is not a panacea for the debt, but it will help with inevitable train wreck of losing major services if we donât get control of the debt and service on the debt.
Alright. I have made my case. You will disagree, but as you have said, we will see.
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Thankfully, we donât either.
The real reason we donât isnât because of the bickering or the endless, winless cycle of it, but because it is about as interesting as watching grass grow. Besides, politicians arenât worth the salt on our crackers. Iâve bored everyone enough. 
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President Obama actually issued 101 rules that reduced compliance costs. On an annualized basis, this cut $7.9 billion in costs, with $3.9 billion in accompanying benefits, and 124 million fewer paperwork burden hours.
The Trump Adminstrationâs first primary concern will be deregulation of the oil production Industry to allow more fracking , deregulation / lowering of pollution standards while at the same time discouraging the investment / development of EVs and alternative energies, He is about making money by hook / crook (as much by crook). He will impose tariffs on imports/ any outside competition, competition is what keeps prices down, and the people (like Oz) he is trying bring in mostly have investments in the fields of the departments they will be overseeing, a conflict of interest ( like Trump did in his last term profiting off the American tax payer for his security staff staying at his establishments, the rip off of the American by Corpocrisy, so yes, you will disagree with me, and find a thousand arguments to refute me, but anyone interested enough to research it will find my claims valid.
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My local MP sends me a bulletin, this is him meeting with the Southern Highlands Branch of the the Labor Party
My MP (also Finance Minister) is in the centre of the photo with all the branch members either side of him. The Liberal Party (a conservative party) would have a similar membership numbers. Perhaps now you can understand why voting is compulsory, no political party here could muster the volunteers, unlike the UK and presumably the US, to snatch old ladies off the street to take them to a polling booth.
I would guess that for the whole of his electorate you would be lucky to find 50 Labor party members in an electorate that covers 2966sq km and has approximately 110,000 voters.
Australian voters tend to vote then forget about it until the next time.
You make a fair point about excessive regulation stifling business growth. But I do not see minor tweaks to regulations (there to protect consumers, or environment, or against risk). I foresee sweeping aside of valid regulations in the name of more profit (benefiting few). The financial market changes that heralded massive growth in this sector in the 1990âs was not deregulation, it was significantly reduced regulation. Which in turn was significantly higher risks in the market. Which directly led to the 2007/8 financial crash. Reducing regulation is always risky, even if excessive regulation can be stifling.
You now accuse me of something I specifically stated the opposite. I have previously said that continuous efforts to reduce waste and inefficiency in public spending is good and needed. My point, which is simple, is that its not possible to save trillions without massive and massively deep cuts in public service. The UKâs austerity policy of the 2010âs has proven that - and this did not have any impact at all on national debt. Trumpâs plan will not work or have any effect other than to make poor people sufferâŠ
Bruce, that is a great photo and it looks like the. politics on which I was raised. My paternal grandparents chaired a group called Concerned Citizens that was a local grass-roots organization of a whopping 8-12 people in town. They studied, invited, and groomed candidates and then offered town hall meetings, inviting candidates on both sides, so the community could press local issues and get to know the people for whom they could vote.
My mom used to say that everything could be solved around the kitchen table. There seems to be evidence of that in this image!
I agree that two trillion is too high (and sound like the kind of exaggeration Trump often uses) but hundreds of millions to a trillion in all sectors is not not an unreasonable goal, although this would have to be done to in coordination stimulus actions and some will require cost outlays before the benefits will be seen.
DOGE is going about this in a very interesting way. The advisory committee will hold a weekly podcast (not quite as good as Bruceâs kitchen table politics - but almost) to keep voters updated, positions will be made up of volunteers, and unlike most endless government committees and departments, this one will dissolve on July 4th (our 250th anniversary).
I donât know closely you followed the âcareerâ and thoughts of Dominic Cummings. He was the tactician behind the Brexit vote and then went on to be Johnsonâs chief of staff when Boris was premier. During the Brexit campaign he cleverly used social media and data mining to find leave-EU wavering voters and anti-EU sympathy voters. He made sure they were fed specific online ads that were not generally broadcast. These were full of lies, false claims and wild promises of a better future. As they were not made available to everyone they were not challenged. This possibly swung the vote.
Then as principle thinker for the prime minister he wanted to really shake up the UKâs civil service. He advertised for high IQ radical thinkers - willing to think the unthinkable. Willing to break the mold. Sound familiar? That all crashed and burned, he got kicked out and nothing changed. Nor was it ever going to change. It was all rubbish, bluster and fake claims.
This dodgy DOGE is the same. A few token cuts, a lot of hurt by the most vulnerable and nothing changes. What will not happen is thought through, careful, repeatable steps to improve efficiency. trim waste and improve performance year on year. You know, like high performing businesses have learnt to do.
S, Yes indeed, the administration will be making changes in current fuel policies, but it is not so much âDrill baby, drill,â as others. The majority of voters and Proposed changes will come in the form of more domestic refining, more liquid natural gas exports, reduction of too-high bonding, and reduction non-mandated taxes. In essence, they are looking for more consumer choice and deadline by an easing (not eliminating) of the trajectory of requirements. As an aside, I am not a fan of fracking, but it tends to go down to zero as oil prices go down, so the extent of that source will not be very high If or until oil availability drops, which could be decades. As with other exaggerations, Republicans are not for wrecking the environment, eliminating EVs, reducing emissions, alternative fuels, etc.
The majority of contentious issues are not in mainstream media. The first is the unattainable deadlines, the most obvious of which has been our ever-efficient government only building seven charging stations since Biden signed the $7.5B check in 2021 (once again showing the outrageous inefficiency of government compared to the private sector). Second, more than half of the nation cannot and will not be able to afford to purchase EVs by -'30-35 even with the present tax credits, and they are reasonably concerned that they will punished with higher, punitive taxes on fuel by the '30s. Yet another is that coal which is the primary source of EV energy is projected to be depleted within the next 30-100 years, so there is valid concern in throwing all money into energy infrastructure that is also on its way out and will have to be rebuilt and may be more expensive. Everyone wants a shift to more energy-efficient vehicles, but untenable deadlines are going to send vehicle prices soaring and consumers without realistic charging options. People want choice (try driving an EV in a winter storm across 500 miles between CO and KS or running farm vehicles) instead of mandates that are reasonable and congruent with policy (donât force EVs when there arenât charging stations).
L, no one is talking about reducing regulatory changes that led to the 2008 crash. I was only peripherally aware of Cummings, but will read up. The parallels are interesting. Obviously, it is too soon to see what DOGE proposes, but one thing I can tell you is that there is absolutely and never has been âcareful, repeatable steps to improve efficiencyâ in the government sector and the potential is very promising.
Ok, I have to abandon this debate for now; I have to get productive enough around here to pay my taxes.
Here we go. Recommendations for cutting wasted federal spending:
Savings: $50B
Announced yesterday, a young Congressional intern, inspired by the mission of DOGE, decided to started following the money on potentially wasted and ill-spent funds.
On his very first effort, the intern discovered that $50M of a recent EPA grant was being spent on anti-Israel activism, claiming on its website, âThe path to climate justice travels through a free Palestine.â The funds to the Climate Justice Alliance were earmarked for âenvironmental justice projectsâ - whatever the heck that is - after the group had already started significantly organizing and demonstrating against Israel.
Savings $1.5 B
Empty and wasted office space. The government is currently occupying only 12% of leased and owned office space.
To be continuedâŠ
.
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thatâs not uncommon post-pandemic
It goes back way before the pandemic. Consideration is also underway to of federal buildings that are on some of the most expensive real estate in the country. Money saved an additional revenues - a win-win.