Trump’s Controversial Cabinet Picks & A Bloated Federal Government – Top 3 Takeaways – November 18th, 2024
- If the premise of anything is false, anything built on the false premise is too. Do you think the federal government is well run? Probably not (and if you do, holy crap – life is probably kicking your butt pretty hard unless you’re part of the bureaucracy). Do I think the federal government is well run? Ha! I think FTX was better run. Are you happy with the direction of the country? I’m guessing no since only 27% say yes. Am I happy with the direction of the country? Yes, since November 5th. Would you have nominated Matt Gaetz to be the next Attorney General of the United States? Probably not, right? Would I have nominated Matt Gaetz to be the next Attorney General of the United States? Absolutely not. Would you have nominated RFK Jr. to be the next Health & Human Services Secretary? Probably not. Would I have nominated RFK Jr. to be the Health & Human Services Secretary? No chance. But are you the president-elect of the United States? Nope. Am I president-election of the United States? No one is ever going to confuse me with that guy. Now, did you vote for Donald Trump to be the next president of the United States? (statistically in this audience there’s about an 85% chance you did). Did I? Yes, on the first day of early voting. Now, did you vote to have Donald Trump become president of the United States because you just wanted a little change? So let me ask you. Had you or I nominated the names that may come to mind for AG or HHS Secretary, you know the ones that would easily be confirmed and that wouldn’t have upset masses, how much change do you really think those types of people really might bring? Now, how much change do you think an AG in Matt Gaetz would bring? How about at Health and Human Services with RFK Jr. pulling the strings? Do you think there’s any chance that with RFK Jr. at the helm anyone who would dare to do to this country what Anthony Fauci did to this country, would be allowed to put public policy into play? Do you think there’s any chance that you’d be threatened with losing your job for not taking an experimental vaccine or to have your kids locked out of school with RFK Jr. at the top? On Friday in my top three takeaways in advocating for the elimination of the Department of Education I said this: Whoever thought that getting considerably worse results for considerably more money was ever a good idea? Unless you are supportive of that concept you too should want to eliminate The U.S. Department of Education. Entering 1980, the first full year of operations for The Department of Education, the average education outcome for Americans was 2nd in the world (with only Australians ahead of us). Religious holidays, references and prayers were acceptable. Over the next twenty years, entering the 2000’s, we experienced a 300% increase in diagnosed depression. At the same time the United States slid to 17 from 2nd in grade school education outcomes (over the next twenty years we fell to 27th). It directly coincided with the creation of the US Department of Education and the implementation of its various agendas. According to the Pew Research Center only 6% of Americans didn’t identify with any religion or faith in 1980. More recently that figure has nearly tripled. But even a three-fold increase in atheism doesn’t tell the whole story. Over 26% of those under the age of 35 don’t believe in God. The proliferation of faithlessness connects directly to the rise in mental health issues in society which connects directly to the timetable of the onset school shootings – starting with Columbine in 1999. That was the first generation raised in the current, faithless public-school system under The Department of Education. Much worse education results. A proliferation of mental health issues and subsequently more violence. It’s a damning record for the US Department of Education as students have become far less globally competitive and have experienced a rapid rise in mental health issues manifesting in worse outcomes including schools that aren’t as safe. Now, is it only the Department of Education that has been that big of a failure or is it more likely...
- That the same bureaucratic conditions that have corrupted the education establishment are at play in government agencies throughout the United States? Education outcomes are easy to measure over time. The failure of other government agencies, most of which you’ve never heard of, is much harder. The reason why the United States was founded, was due to revolutionaries who took on government corruption and government failures. The reason why the United States went from a rag tag group of colonies to the world’s leading superpower in under 150 years is because our country was founded on God-given rights, and thus freedom, as opposed to government-given rights. This country was founded with only 5 government agencies. Now we have 430. More government equals less freedom every time. Some agencies directly erode our rights, all agencies erode our personal financial freedom because we’re forced to pay for them. Our country went its first 137 years without a permanent income tax. How much are you forced to pay today? The fact is we don’t need 430 federal government agencies. How many of those 430 agencies do you think are really operating every day to make your life better? Do you think you could do better things with your money than hundreds of government agencies you couldn’t name if your life depended on it or do you think all of those government agencies are doing better things with your money than you could. As I’ve long said. I’d be willing to bet that if we locked all 535 members of congress in a room without internet for a day, gave them all a pen and a piece of paper and had them name as many government agencies as they could, many if not most government agencies wouldn’t be able to even be named by one member of congress and yet due to baseline budgeting, that no one actually reads, they’re funded at our literal expense. We don’t need all of those agencies. It’s a choice. The fact is we don’t need to be forced to pay a third or more of what we make in income tax. It’s a choice. We need an entrepreneurial mindset when it comes to government. Meaning we shouldn’t just accept the false premise that the way our bloated federal government operates is acceptable just because it’s the way things have been done for decades.
- This country became great because we didn’t have a government in our way. But the reality is that once we became great as a country, we allowed progressives to build up the bureaucracy at our literal expense. It doesn’t have to be this way, and we didn’t vote to keep it this way. We don’t need career government “experts” to manage the bloated bureaucracies perhaps a little bit better than before. We need change agents who reject the premise that we “need” many of these government agencies in the first place. Enter into the conversation the role that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will play. And within the agencies that we do need, we likewise need change agents who will hold the corrupt government actors accountable, while turning repressive agencies into responsive agencies that serve the public interest as opposed to exploiting it. So, the bottom line is that I wouldn’t have done what Trump has already done with some of his cabinet appointments. But I bet he knows what he needs and who he needs to Make America Great Again a heck of a lot better than you or I or some moderate senators do.