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April 1, 2025 - Where There's Woke - Thomas Smith
47:14
WTW81: They're Gutting the Government and Trying to Call It Savings.
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Time Text
What's so scary about the woke mob?
How often you just don't see them coming.
Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed.
Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down.
The woke monster is here, and it's coming for everything.
Instead of go-go boots, the seductress green M&M will now wear sneakers.
Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke.
This is episode 81. I'm Thomas.
That over there is Lydia.
Oh, I'm still here!
Nope, you've been fired for redundancy.
Yep. So we need to do cost savings.
So what we're doing is we're firing you, the one who's, you know, like doing all the work, and I will be here and it will be a silent podcast.
Oh, wow.
It sounds efficient.
Yeah, it's super efficient.
And as long as everybody still listens just as much or more and pledges more listening to a silent nothing podcast, Then it's efficiency.
That's just pure.
Why do we have two people doing this job?
Actually, I've now been sacked.
It's now just a file can make itself now.
You can just have AI just make a file.
Yeah, just generate an MP3 file and automate the posting.
Why are we having people doing these jobs?
This is such an inefficient thing.
I could keep going, but it's just so dumb.
It's so fucking dumb.
The fact that this is a Quote, unquote, serious effort.
This is these people are deadly serious in this interview that we've been covering.
There's a part to make sure you've listened to the last episode.
You don't want to miss it because this is dope.
This is well.
Is it?
This is the face of Doge.
Yeah, carefully selected.
Yeah, carefully selected, all white male.
One guy in the back.
One guy who they made sure to put as far away from the camera as possible, actually.
One guy is not, he looks like he might be mixed race or something.
He's also the youngest.
He's also the youngest, but they literally, like, I wish people could see the image I'm looking at now.
It's comical.
He's as far away from the camera as could be.
We need to never let this go.
Yeah. There's a lot of things like that.
But this is so fucking stupid.
What do we have in store for us in part two?
If you want to give a preview.
Yeah. On the last one, we talked a lot about the Social Security Administration.
We talked a lot about credit cards.
This time, we're going to be talking about IT systems and retirement.
Okay, IT systems.
Here's something that I will reset.
I'll try to be less mad.
Here's something that maybe they could Uh, find a way to do something good with their IT people.
Like maybe there's enough like barriers to change in the government.
I'll believe that.
I mean, we've worked in government and like, it is tough.
Oftentimes you're using antiquated systems and it's annoying and it's like, maybe they can through sheer force of their audacity of the caucasity, maybe they could get one win in that they'll like replace a system that will actually, you know, they'll do it badly and it'll cause a bunch of chaos and all that.
But like maybe at the end of the day, These workers will end up with like a slightly better system or something, maybe?
I'll open my mind.
I've had time to meditate and relax from the last episode.
I will open my mind to the possibility that they could be right about a thing, maybe.
We'll see.
You'll have to wait to find out.
After the break, yeah.
All right.
Well, we'll take our usual break.
Please support the show.
Hey, all the cost cutting is really getting to us here.
We need, in order to make these cost cuts work, we need to increase revenue.
Please go to patreon.com slash where there's woke and sign on.
There's a new bonus.
It's blank podcast.
That's a, it's just a podcast that nobody does, AI made, and you need to get your hands on it.
It's the only way I can make these numbers work, please.
Patreon.com slash where there's woke.
Okay, here we go.
Where are we starting?
We're going to start with retirement.
So the claim is that there is a nine-month wait to retire via paperwork filed underground.
So I've heard this enough that it probably refers to something, but already It feels a little weird.
Why would our retirement system need to be underground?
Is it manned by the old dead ghosts of the previously retired and they have to go down into the crypt to like communicate with the ghosts?
Well, we'll get a little bit into the history, but first I want to hear what the Doge folks have to say about this.
Or are they radioactive?
And they said they needed somebody to help out to fix retirement in the government.
I loved the challenge, so I jumped on board.
And it turns out there is actually mine in Pennsylvania.
That houses every paper document for the retirement process in the government.
Now picture this.
This giant cave has 22,000 filing cabinets stacked 10 high to house 400 million pieces of paper.
It's a process that started in the 1950s.
Do they pay rent on the paper itself?
In the last 70 years.
And so as you dug into it, we found retirement cases that had so much paper, they had to fit it on a shipping pallet.
So, uh, the process takes many months.
There's a lot of paper.
Just many days.
Now, okay, here's the thing.
Already just pausing.
There were days before this one.
So, I don't know if I should explain it to this guy.
Like, time didn't start the minute you became aware of something going on.
Like, time predates us, actually.
Time goes back a ways, weirdly.
And I could imagine that there's a lot of paper.
When do we think we digitized anything in the federal government?
Knowing how slow the federal government is, knowing how important these systems are, by the way.
Weirdly, the more important a system, the older it's going to be because it's like, well, we can't fuck with that.
It's really hard to change anything.
It's scary.
Yeah. And so when would we have even started trying to do that?
2010? When would we have started?
Maybe a little earlier.
And so, yeah, there's going to be a lot of still relevant Pieces of paper that the government is dealing with.
And once again, large numbers don't equal bad.
All right, I'll keep going.
Absolutely. So this will be an online digital process that will take just a few days at most.
Fine. And I really think, you know, it's an injustice to civil servants who are subjected to these processes that are older than the age of half the people watching your show tonight.
So we really believe that the government can have an Apple Store-like experience.
So you want the federal worker to wander into the mine, not know who actually works there because you can barely tell.
Eventually someone in the mine comes and is like, oh, hey, what are you doing here?
And they're like, oh, I assumed if I came into this mine that there'd be somebody who would help me.
Oh, did you already like make an appointment?
Oh, did I have to make an appointment to be at a store?
I thought I could just go to a store.
This is very confusing.
I'll go find someone in the back of the mind to come out and help you in like 20 minutes.
Okay, I guess?
So that's how we want it to work.
Got it.
Much better.
Apple store-like experience.
Yes, the retirement process is all by paper, literally with people carrying paper in manila envelopes.
Literally? Okay, now I'm on his side.
The paper's in envelopes?!
That's double the paper!
Almost triple if you think about it!
Almost triple, yeah.
That's a sandwich.
I was okay with one to two layers of paper, but three is out.
Now I'm a full-on MAGA.
I'm Dark MAGA.
Can't retire more than a certain number every month.
Yes. About 8,000 a month.
That's how we...
The reason we discovered it was we were saying like, well, let's encourage voluntary retirement.
They said, well, the most they could do is 8,000 a month.
And even under normal circumstances, it can take six to nine months just to have your retirement paperwork processed.
And they often get the calculations wrong.
So they're like, well, why would it take so long to retire?
Okay, question already.
Does that mean you literally can't retire?
No. I think what this would mean is the government is being slow in some part of the paperwork process.
Now, maybe, I don't know, the government Can suck.
So maybe that means you're not getting paid for that time, your retirement benefits, which would be really, really bad.
It doesn't mean literally.
Nope. Sorry, Bob.
I know you're 105, but just we can't get you on that.
We can't get you on that pallet today.
There's like one guy who's like, oh man, I've been wanting to retire for so long.
Yeah. Let me, let me debunk really fast.
Some of the statistics regarding retirement and then what we're going to get into this cave mine thing.
I would love to actually.
Yeah. It sounds like it would be very cool.
I like, I always like, yes.
Yeah. Like a good seller.
Yeah, exactly.
So the six to nine month wait to retire is not exactly true.
There is potentially a three to five month wait, according to the Office of Personnel Management's guide that they have online regarding retirement.
But the wait is not to retire.
It's to receive your full benefits.
Yeah. Which sucks.
Not good.
But it's also not waiting on retirement.
But they have adjusted this.
So you get 80% of your retirement while they are processing it, and then you receive the back pay, the 20% while they were processing it once they're done.
So they cannot begin processing.
That's a great question.
This is a known issue that, yeah, it can take a long time for them to process your paperwork.
And there's a lot of things involved with that.
There are complicated retirement packages and there are not so complicated retirement packages.
So keep that in mind, too, that when we're talking about how long it might take, that depends on, like, did you receive, you know, disability benefits during your time working for the federal government, you know, calculating your service time, all of those things.
It can get really, really complicated, especially if, like, you've moved a lot of A lot of jobs, a lot of departments.
I guess, but I'm not saying Doge is right or anything, but that all stuff, like when I went in to work for the state government, it's like, yeah, okay, I'll make either a program or an Excel formula that will do this instantly.
And people were like, you are a wizard.
No one here.
And I will say, there is a sense in which there's a lot of room for improvement in the government.
There just is.
This is not it.
This shouldn't be even taken seriously.
As an attempt at it.
This is not that.
This is just lying.
This is ways to lie.
And sure, like, yeah, all that, no matter how complicated it is, it's a set of rules that you could formulate into computer logic and it could all do that instantly.
Like, that's not hard.
Yeah. But I will say the reason why I'm saying that is OPM publishes their backlog, like the cases that they've processed, the cases that they've received, how long it's taken to process it, their goals regarding processing times, their carryover caseload, which they call their inventory, month to month.
And the average processing time for packages, for retirement packages, in February 2025, so just last month, was 44 days.
That's significantly less than that three to five month.
Now, also keep in mind that I said that there were packages, cases that were more complicated than others.
If you look at retirement packages where...
By type or something?
Yeah, by type.
So you have the ones that were produced in less than 60 days.
The average is 29 days to complete those packages.
If you look at the cases that were produced in more than 60 days, on average, it took 126 days to complete.
So it's like a bimodal distribution where it's like, it's not like the average Has a whole lot that are literally the average.
It's more like there's a bunch that are high and a bunch that are low.
You have the easy ones and the harder ones.
Okay, okay.
And the harder ones I mentioned can be complicated because of various things that happen during your time working for the federal government, but it also can be contributed by making mistakes on your paperwork.
And Megyn Kelly like really demonizes this and says like, you have to take a training in order to retire.
Well, the training is literally to help the employee fill out their paperwork correctly from the get-go.
So, sorry, who's the problem there?
Just already, oh, you have to take a training to retire.
Okay, what's the alternative?
People do the paperwork wrong and then other people have to correct it.
It takes longer.
And you lose efficiency.
Again, if you get into this mode of hypercriticism that they get into where everything is the worst and the government is the worst, you just say things with a negative tone and then it's like, oh, training to retire.
Like, okay, is that bad?
Well, I mean, public sector workers can retire whenever they're ready, too.
However, public sector retirement is a heck of a lot different than private sector retirement.
We're talking pensions, right?
We're talking about lifetime benefits.
And that is something that private sector is not going to get.
Like, that's a huge cost to the government.
They need to make sure they get that right.
Also, my other point, we kind of talked about this already, but Obviously, any normal person, any person at all, would see Hey, we'd like this to go as quickly as possible.
So people aren't without their 20%.
No, they're the first people to think of the concept of speed.
They're the first people to think of, we should modernize the system.
More! That's the level of complex thought it took to, faster!
Anyone can think of that.
There's not, you're not geniuses.
Yeah, exactly.
You're not super fucking geniuses.
Exactly. So Washington Post published a piece on this back in 2014.
And I'm going to, I'm going to share Quite a lot that I learned from this whole process via the Washington Post, but I want to start with a comment that they shared here.
Quote, the need for automation was clear in 1981, said James W. Morrison, Jr., who oversaw the retirement processing system under President Reagan.
There's a lot that still relies on paper files.
But then the state archivist of Pennsylvania said that he talks with people at this facility and he told Wired recently that It's a mistake to view OPM's process as, quote, woefully outdated.
He said, much of the work that goes on at Boyers, as I understand it, is digital.
So the idea of people trundling piles of paper through dark mine shafts is absurd.
In fact, these facilities are meant to protect you and me by protecting the records that safeguard our legal rights, our public benefits.
So what is this mine?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, to say nothing of the fact that, again, Think back to a time before now and the people you're talking about, the people who are involved in this transaction are retirees.
Yeah. You know how hard it was to get anyone old to do something digital in like the 90s?
Oh, I know.
It was fucking impossible.
They grew up with horse and buggy.
Like they don't, they fucking, again, and like it's better now, but like just think back to the 90s or to the like 80s, 2000s.
We're dealing with the oldest people.
They're not going to like, oh, jump on your iPad and do like, it's like, they like paper.
Yeah. They're still getting their checks, you know, now that they're 150.
I know the tax records that they, that they keep holding onto at their homes too.
It's a lot.
In the Washington Post article, they asked, but why is it in a cave at all?
Yeah. Okay.
Interesting question.
And again, you're saying this is a long time.
This is 2014.
So yeah.
Why is it in a cave?
All right.
Back in 1958.
The US government needed storage space.
It needed 30,000 square feet to hold personnel files that were being relocated from a building in Washington.
They were looking at buildings in various places like Syracuse, New York, Richmond, Virginia, and then they decided to do this place, which is an underground complex where they had previously cut limestone.
from these caves to feed the steel mills in Pennsylvania.
They eat limestone?
Wow. And a private company had taken over this cave, and they had turned it into basically like a huge safe deposit box.
Oh, okay.
And the thought was it's safe from fire, flood, yeah.
Well, and this is during the Cold War, too.
Yeah, it was really cold, so yeah, safe from that.
They want to keep it safe from the Russians, the communists, right?
Russians don't know about underground yet.
It's really cool.
We're the only ones who know.
Don't tell them.
And then it was naturally cool as a cave, so for document retention, you know, it made a lot of sense.
Yeah. So the complex is now owned by a company called Iron Mountain, and they lease out other caverns in this entire mine, this old mine, to store old Hollywood movie reels.
Oh, reels!
I was gonna say that, yeah.
Yeah, photo archives, things like that that need really...
Special conditions.
Special conditions, exactly.
The federal government should have a wine cellar.
Like, it's like the federal wine cellar.
Oh, that'd be so cool.
Yeah. And it's like, I don't know what they use it for.
Can we work there?
Yeah. Just for fun.
Like, hey, we have a giant ass wine cellar.
We keep, it's sort of like, you know, the Library of Congress.
Yeah, it should be that, but like for wine, you know, like we'll keep, they do that with certain, with movies, I think.
Don't they save a certain number of movies or they say that this has become part of the national whatever, you know what I'm talking about?
You do that with wine where they're like, all right, 10 wines a year, you know.
Not the Criterion Collection with that Armageddon.
No, not that.
Not that, exactly.
But it's like that where they recognize certain works of art and they, whatever, it becomes part of the national...
I don't know what that word is.
But they do that and then just a nice badass wine cellar.
You have the space, you know, you got the cave space.
Yeah. So the government started moving its records there in 1960.
Initially, it was just a file room, so they would ship records from Washington.
Idiots. Why wasn't it all in PDF back in 1960?
Morons. God, so inefficient.
But then the government started to hire more people to work in the mine itself.
And now this is in a very rural part of Pennsylvania.
Who mines the miners?
So now we're talking about federal government positions in a place where there's not a lot of jobs.
Otherwise. Although it would be a good bit to be like, yeah, I work in the mines.
Wow. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Paperwork mines.
I had to mine several HR files the other day.
The Washington Post interviewed someone who recently retired after working 38 years in the mine processing this paper.
She said that nobody up there goes on to another job.
You can work Monday through Friday, eight to five.
There's mostly overtime if you want it.
They're flexible.
So it's a really good job.
It's a great job.
Sounds like it.
It's nice and cool.
That's all, literally all I think about is like, yeah, nice and cool down there.
Yeah. Yeah.
But I mean, it's also like, it's hard too, like you're down in a mine, so like you don't see sun, I guess, while you're working the mine.
And so, you know, and there's, there's a whole process that happens there.
And I don't have information about like how the process is done.
Today, but I will say in 2014, after the Washington Post shared this article and detailed kind of the steps for how the retirement processing is happening, they provided an update and they said, nine months later, not much has changed in the federal government's underground paperwork mine.
Until that one journal entry that said they delve too greedily and too deeply.
They've awoken something in the dark.
Yeah, but.
The old rug of muck.
It's like an HR paperwork balrog though.
It's like made out of like personnel files.
I do think though that it would be interesting and I just, you know, like digging through OPM's budget requests over the last 10 years was not something that was on my to-do list today, but I would think it's interesting to see You know, everybody who works in government wants things to be more modernized.
Everyone does.
Like, as an employee, rank and file, like, you're like, why are we doing it this way?
Why can't we do it this way?
Yeah, I kind of forgot to say, like, that is what I did in the state of California for the CCR.
Yeah, like, that is what I did.
It is really annoying.
It's also true at every company, too.
Yeah. You ever go to get your car fixed?
And they enter your car information into a green...
The legacy mainframe system.
They'll be like, the text is green.
That's how you know it's fucking from the 70s or some shit.
Exactly. Yeah, this is not just a government problem.
Well, yeah, I mean, this is a government example, but when I was with Department of State Hospitals, we had a massive system that like every single one of our state hospitals, you know, we're talking about helping people with psychiatric illnesses and also the intersection of corrections there as well.
And This was a very, very, very important system for all of our hospitals.
Connected pharmacy information, admission information, legal information.
It had a lot of data.
People's social security numbers.
And we did move to modernize it, but it was a long, long time to make that transition.
And it was not without bumps.
Everyone fights it all parts of the way.
This is just how humans...
Has no one worked at anywhere?
Have you ever worked at anywhere that's an office?
It's impossible.
And some of the complaints and concerns are very legitimate.
Like, you don't want to fuck around with a system that important.
Like, you can't just be like, oh, let's just try.
Yeah. We're
good to go.
Oh, I see what you're saying.
Yeah, but I'm saying there have been reforms of these systems from time to time.
Right. And it's not that easy.
Now, if you wanted to make the argument, if someone wanted to make a good faith argument that like, hey, let's pass a bill or something that authorizes like, you know, let's go limited use fascism, which is just like, hey, this committee or this agency that's full of experts is going to be in charge of modernization and what they say goes and they have to fucking do it.
But they also have to answer to, you know, if they fuck something up.
And if you wanted to do something crazy in that direction where, hey, what's going on There's too many barriers to innovation in the government with some of these things.
OK, I could buy that if it's a good faith effort to like, hey, we really just need an overhaul.
You still need to make sure it's done right and that there's accountability and real people on it, not big balls and fucking whoever else.
But like, I could believe that.
But again, this isn't that.
This is always the other direction where you're starting from a premise that there's all this waste and fraud and abuse, and then you're just trying to justify it later.
Yeah. So I just have to know before we move on.
Yes. Is the elevator limit even a thing?
Like, is that like, so the mind's real.
Sure. And the time limit they're talking about is obviously it's not the time before you can retire.
It's the time, by the way, that the government is paying out less money than it would.
So in terms of Doge, like.
I mean, it all evens out in the end, I'm sure, but, like, that's not a savings.
You know what I mean?
Like, if we pay people faster, it's good.
It's not a savings.
So, is there this elevator limit thing?
Like, what is that referring to?
So Iron Mountain, the company that owns the mine, they have not directly addressed the elevator claims, but they have just reiterated that the facility is a highly secure and resilient location for data centers, records management, media archives, and digital transformation services.
Iron Mountain didn't address the elevator claim, but several employees with OPM who asked to remain anonymous did address it, and they said that Musk's comments are inaccurate and the facility doesn't have an elevator.
So. Yeah.
Yeah, I doubt it.
It's probably not like a fucking super insanely, it's not at the core of the earth.
Yeah, I know.
It's just like kind of underground.
You might just walk into it.
Yeah. It might just be like in the side of a mountain.
Yeah. Essentially.
So dumb.
It is very, very, very dumb.
Yeah. So, we're going to keep talking about some IT systems.
This next claim is that there are 700 different IT systems at just one federal agency.
Okay. 700 IT systems?
Uh-huh.
How do you define—I'm already calling bullshit.
How do you define that?
What's an IT—like, at what granularity are you defining IT system?
Like, what even would that be?
Yep. Great.
Okay. Great question.
Another example at NIH is today they have 27 different centers.
They got created over time by Congress and they're typically by disease state or body system.
There's 700 different IT systems today at NIH.
700 different IT systems.
IT software systems.
They can't speak to each other.
So they don't talk to one another.
They have 27 different CIOs.
And so when you think about making great medical discoveries, you have to connect the data.
Time out.
You said 27 different chief information officers?
Correct. Most of them are non-technical.
So there's a lot there.
There's a lot of opportunity.
It will make science better, not worse.
When I say that our job is tech support, I really mean it.
We have to fix the computers.
If the computers can't talk to each other, you can't get research done.
If the computers can't stay online, people won't receive their social security.
So what we have here are a bunch of failing computer systems that are preventing people from receiving their benefits, that are preventing research from happening, that are extremely vulnerable to fraud, and we're fixing it.
The best I could do to try and track down this 700 number, I think this is what it is.
There are 700 networked devices in the NIH Clinical Data Center.
It's not IT software systems.
It's specifically computers.
Computers. Yeah.
Yeah. Like and they have, you know, multiple for each activity to kind of help prevent like if there's a failure on one, they have a backup, you know, kind of ready to go or whatever in this clinical data center.
It's not an IT system.
Right. That's the only reference to 700 I can find.
And also, like, you don't necessarily need stuff to talk to each other.
You know, we've talked about this before with Dr. Rick on SIO when we were talking about Health and Human Services, how vast that agency is.
And it's made up of 27 institutes and centers, or ICs.
You don't necessarily need software for, say, dental and craniofacial research.
To communicate with the butthole people.
Allergy and infectious diseases.
There might not necessarily be a lot of crossover there.
Some software systems, yes, potentially.
If you're talking about names, maybe they'll pop up in both systems or something like that.
But you're focused on specific things.
What are these things?
This is so vague.
What are they doing?
Who's doing what?
I think it's intentionally vague.
I don't know what these are used for, who's using them for what purpose.
Right. Like, it seems like they're talking about research.
It's a big number.
Like, they make it sound like, okay, we have different people researching different areas of the body and they don't even talk to each other.
So we got like a left arm research center and a right arm research center.
They're probably duplicating their work, but they don't even know it because the computers can't talk.
That sounds ridiculous.
So that's probably not it.
Yeah, I mean, like when you when you look at the institutes and centers, so you have institutes from like the National Cancer Institute, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, National Institute of Mental Health.
So if you're talking research, I mean, that really isn't done by computers talking to each other.
Like if you look at academia, if you look at any.
Yeah. You're doing research together.
Am I crazy that you don't need computers talking to each other?
And that's my point, is that like there may be some overlap if they're looking into particular Yeah, I think so.
notifies you.
Hey, no, there's gonna be like a white paper someone publishes and then you see it and then you're like, hey, maybe we can work together on this.
And then there's plenty of institutes and centers that probably don't have intersection Intersectionality, very often, like I mentioned, like dental and craniofacial research, which is an institute with allergy and infectious diseases.
There's probably not a lot of opportunity for, you know, collaboration of data there.
They also talk about this idea that how in the world could you have 27 chief information officers?
You're supposed to be the chief, right?
There's supposed to be one.
It's because there are 27 institutes and centers, right?
And this is a huge agency with incredibly varied interests.
Would they say the same thing about the Department of Defense, that they need one CIO or one coms office?
How many do they have?
They have a lot.
So there is the Secretary of the Army has a CIO directly reporting to them.
It's not a CIO reporting to the Secretary of Defense.
They have CIOs reporting at these department levels, at these defense agencies levels, at the command levels.
They also have public affairs offices that are not just for the entity itself, but also like based on location.
So you'll have a public affairs office for For this particular base in this particular area of, you know, the Army or the Marines or whatever.
And so I think it's this idea that we can reduce the complexity of the United States government We're
good to go.
a singular person.
It just can't.
Some other stuff that they talk about when they're tearing apart kind of the NIH and the NIH approach.
I don't know if you had seen a lot of concerns about the NIH funding.
When that was getting changed up and they were attacking the indirect costs part of the grants.
Did you see that at all?
Oh, yeah.
What was that?
So it was basically saying we're restructuring our grants.
We're capping indirect costs to be 15 percent.
Let me give you a timestamp, actually, because I think the way that they tried to sell this in the interview is really interesting.
Well, today, if you're an NIH researcher and you get a hundred dollar grant at your university, today you get to spend 60 of that and your university spends 40 of that.
The policy that we're proposing to make is that you get to spend 85 of that and your university spends 15. So that's more money going directly to the scientists who are discovering new cures.
Another example at NIH is today they have...
Alright, so what we just heard, that sounds plausible enough.
Like, okay, for one, we know, like, just take, for example, in higher education, we know there's a lot, like, costs keep going up and up.
There's a lot of bloat.
There's a lot of administrative costs.
So I guess, I mean, this sounds plausible that it's like, hey, instead of letting the university spend 40% of whatever this grant is on a new fucking football stadium or something, let the researcher spend the 60. So is that anything like what's going on?
Absolutely not.
So what this is...
Actually referring to, and they're just kind of changing the naming convention here, I think, in a very manipulative way, is we're talking about direct costs for grants versus indirect costs for grants.
And the split tended to be 60-40.
I was just going to ask, is that some rule?
Is it like, oh, because they make it sound like, well, before the university was taking 40% off the top, you know, they take their cut.
And, you know, or is it just like, On average, there's a breakdown of where this money goes and, you know?
Yeah, I think it's more like that.
It probably depends on the specific research and the specific, you know, like grant and stuff that you're doing.
But the things that they're trying to allude to there are like your university is making money off of you getting grants for your research and you only get a portion of it.
But What they're not talking about is the money that's going to, quote, the university.
Those indirect costs are things like maintaining the lab facilities, paying for utilities related to the research, purchasing any specialized equipment.
So wait, are you telling me that the way they do research isn't just one guy sits in a chair in his mind palace and goes like, nah, and then thinks of something?
Yeah. And there's no other cost associated?
Yeah, I would say that.
Also, I have to imagine there's like, you know, grad students and stuff, but that would be part of it.
Is that part of the direct cost?
Yeah, I think usually the direct cost for any sort of salary is coming from that.
But yeah, you need facilities, you need a building, you need instruments, you need all kinds of stuff.
Data storage.
Software. Yeah, exactly.
All of those things are indirect costs related to conducting research for these various grants that folks are applying for.
It's not a way for the university to squeeze money out of the federal government to fund a new football stadium.
Yeah, it's not a shakedown.
Right, right.
And if you want to look at stuff like that, maybe you should look at New College of Florida.
And Richard Corcoran and how he's been squeezing money out of the Florida state government to fund that.
To do that, you'd have to listen to Where There's Woke.
Oh, you're here.
Thanks. So that, I think, is a really sketchy, shady way of trying to present what that 15 percent cap that they're trying to implement is.
And anyone who's been involved with NIH grants has been really concerned about this because they say like this could also impact universities from pursuing like long-term planning and investment because they don't know if they'll be able to afford it.
It could result in more reliance on non-profit or like local funding sources which are going to be extremely tapped by You know, this outsized need now to make up for what the federal government is trying to change there.
In this claim, there's also a piece regarding the IRS and how there are 1,400 people whose entire job.
is to supply IRS hires with a laptop and a phone.
But let's hear how they present this.
It's just that they're duplicating the effort of 40 offices.
So you've got that, you've got overstaffing.
A good example of overstaffing would be the IRS has got 1,400 people who are dedicated to provisioning laptops and cell phones.
So if you join the IRS, you get a laptop and a cell phone, you're provisioned.
So if each of those IRS officers or employees provisioned two employees per day, Yeah.
a laptop and a phone.
Right. The whole IRS could be handled once a month.
So that doesn't make any sense.
And President Trump's been very clear.
It's scalpel, not hatchet.
Scalpel, not hatchet, yeah.
When I heard this claim, I was like, this is just ridiculous.
First of all, like, I mean, yeah, should I even spend time debunking this?
But I think, again, like having worked in state government, Not federal government.
There is no way in hell that your only job is to issue a laptop and a phone for employees.
There's no way!
There's no way.
Yeah, usually it's one guy does all that and somehow maintains like a bunch of the tech and has no time to give you your shit.
And is tech support for everyone who's like, I don't understand why this isn't printing anymore.
Come on!
We missed the flight because it took you too long to return your ship to your state job before.
Yeah, so that was like one of the first things that caught my eye.
It's like so incredibly dismissive to the people who are working these jobs.
But then also, they are presenting it as if there are 1,400 people in one office.
Yeah, they hand you...
1,400 people come and like, they roll out the red carpet.
They're like, here, sir, here's your laptop.
Yeah. There are IRS offices all across the country, because people are not going to be just talking with the folks in Washington, D.C. when it comes to handling their taxes and issues regarding that.
No way.
Yeah. So, say there's, you know, 350 offices nationwide.
I think there's more like 326 or something like that.
You can just say that.
But I did 350 just for easy math.
1,400 folks serving in that capacity, 350 offices nationwide.
That would be four people per office that are in charge of not just issuing telephones and laptops, but also probably providing a host of other services for however many employees are at their office Two, which is going to be more than four.
Sounds. Yeah, that sounds right.
Yeah. So this last claim that's in this article specifically is that 600 million dollars in federal loans were issued to children and dead people.
Specifically, what they say in this claim is that people under the age of 11 received $300 million in small business loans.
Nice. That's true.
I'm just proud of them.
Good job.
Hey, Phoebe and Arlo, get on there.
And then people older than 120 received more than $300 million in small business loans.
Damn, good for them.
Yeah. Musk said, we should not be giving out loans to babies.
I don't think we're doing that!
Gonna go out on a limb before you debunk it.
I don't think we're loaning millions of dollars to babies.
Their position is that scammers are stealing children's social security numbers to obtain love.
Why wouldn't they steal older people's then?
Yeah. Why would you?
If you were like, okay, my goal It's Yeah,
so I spent That would make more sense.
But there's no there's no corroboration for that specifically.
And the Small Business Administration has, you know, granted, it's under Kelly Loeffler and this Trump appointee and everything like that.
But they have come out and kind of.
I kind of corroborated this.
Not a hundred percent.
So I have struggled to debunk this particular claim, but I think it's because a lot of the material is not publicly available.
At least immediately.
How much would this line item in our budget be anyway?
And it's a loan, so like, it's already not something that, like, we make money on loans, usually.
And had on its books, how long?
How many loans are we talking about over what period of time that's captured here?
And so I kind of hit a dead end with that one.
I know it's kind of like a bummer to close out our last claim there, but I do have a lot of other thoughts about things that happened during this interview.
Repair, you're not a serious person.
That's a good thought.
Yeah, that's my first thought.
Okay, I started.
THE DECISIONS ARE MADE.
YOU GO NEXT.
IT DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE.
PRESIDENT TRUMP IS VERY CLEAR.
IT'S SCELP WILL NOT HATCH IT. AND THAT'S THE WAY IT'S GETTING DONE.
AND THEN ONCE THOSE DECISIONS ARE MADE, THERE'S A VERY HEAVY FOCUS ON BEING GENEROUS, BEING CARING, BEING COMPASSIONATE, AND TREATING EVERYONE WITH DIGNITY AND RESPECT.
AND IF YOU LOOK AT HOW PEOPLE through voluntary means.
There's voluntary early retirement.
There's voluntary separation payments.
We put in place deferred resignation, the eight-month severance program.
So there's a very heavy bias towards programs that are long-dated, that are generous, that allow people to exit and go and get a new job in the private sector.
And you've heard a lot of news about rifts, about people getting fired.
At this moment in time, less than 0.15, not 1.5, less than 0.15 of the federal workforce has actually been given a RIF notice.
So they're selected.
This is crazy.
The New York Times is actually capturing this in a really effective way.
There's no official record of the cuts to the federal workforce.
So they are compiling their data through sources that they have within the federal agencies, court filings, any statements to the press or any public statements that have been issued.
And what they are capturing is that about 75,000 employees took buyouts.
49,110 were fired, though many are temporarily reinstated and on paid leave due to the court orders.
But there are also over 170,000 planned reductions.
There was an internal White House document that was given to The Washington Post for some reporting that they did.
And they said they reported that agencies are preparing to cut between 8 and 50 percent of their staff.
And that covered about 22 agencies.
So this is I think they're very scared.
About this particular line of inquiry from the public.
I think people are very, very upset because reduction in force notices.
Absolutely have been happening.
Otherwise, they wouldn't have ended up in court and being told that all the firings that they were doing were illegal.
So this is just a flat out lie.
Another note I wanted to make is just regarding math.
So at one point in this interview, Elon Musk says that their plan is to cut one trillion dollars in 130 days.
Now, he's a special government employee, so his term is 130 days and then he's supposed to be gone.
Now, note, this is half of what he said in the Madison Square Garden, you know, Nazi gathering that they were going to cut two trillion dollars.
So one trillion dollars.
OK. And then he says we're going to do four billion dollars per day, every day, seven days a week.
That, if you do the math, five hundred and twenty billion dollars in one hundred and thirty days.
So they're not even going to hit their own target because math has to math.
Now, the last thing that I want to share here is regarding transgressions.
Transparency. And this is something that, you know, they will reiterate over and over again.
And so let's just hear from from the folks themselves from DOJ.
We actually believe there's a chance to succeed, that there's an administration that's supportive and a great cabinet and just a great group that will actually make success a possible outcome.
And I think that's given the inspiring mission and given the I just like to sort of reemphasize that point.
The success of those is only possible with President Trump and with the outstanding cabinet that he's selected.
It would be impossible without the support of the President and the Cabinet.
But you're finding the money.
I mean, it's big numbers, right?
Yeah, like Elon said, the minimum impulse bid is often a billion dollars.
So for example, the $830 million, which was the online survey, that's an enormous amount of money that wouldn't have been found if the Doge team wasn't working with it, in that case the Department of Interior, but then taking it one step further, Wow.
Yeah. Transparency, right?
Like that is something that's very important to them.
When they started posting their receipts on this website, they were all wrong.
They were all wrong.
News agencies were, you know, calling it out and stuff.
They were deleting things and then reposting things, renaming things.
Just all sorts of movement was happening with no transparency.
You know, if there was transparency, it would be like, we issued the following changes for the following reasons.
And recently...
They reformatted their website.
So now it's more difficult for the general public to confirm savings and cancellations.
So if you go on the page, there is a list of contracts, but it's spread across multiple web pages.
You can't, like, export all of them or anything like that.
You have to manually navigate 711 pages to see the entire list of contracts, 923 pages to see all the grants, and another 68 pages for canceled or expired leases.
There's no way to download that data.
You can sort based off of savings.
You can, you know, a handful of things.
But it's not accessible.
It's not transparent.
And it's being done purposefully to obfuscate.
Yeah. Yes.
Fucking clowns.
Yeah. Yeah.
That's, uh, that was my little journey through Doja's little North Korea propaganda efforts last week.
Well, what are we going to do?
I hate it.
Yeah. I mean, it's just try to get the word out as good as best as possible.
I mean, these people are clowns.
What they're doing is a joke.
And, uh, I think.
They've actually managed to spend more money, haven't they?
We'll see what it all shakes out, but...
Oh yeah, I mean, they keep getting more...
It's really inefficient to fuck with things this much.
It's not efficient.
It's not actually smart business.
It's not.
How's the boring company doing?
Alright, well, thanks everyone for listening.
Thanks for the breakdown, hun, and I'll go have my usual mental breakdown.
We'll see everyone next time.
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