While not apparent to us, it's probably not a new occurrence for so many of our elected and hopefuls to use division to gain an edge or embellishment to champion a cause. We like to think we are information-competent in a wide variety of subjects. It's one of the reasons it's so easy to generate a groundswell in support of questionable activities.
Realizing that we each understand only a small portion of a subject, especially a contentious one, and that subject-champions use that to their advantage, will go a long way toward generating more rational and balanced responses. It might even help us with very necessary compromise.
Professor, the post was thoughtful and I appreciated your posting it. The Levin/Klien quote, "My biggest fear is the administration deciding not to abide by court orders. What they’re doing so far is legitimate. Whether you agree with it or not, it’s operating within the system.", expresses my problem. The post is one huge modal verb. The Administration has done things crazily abnormal, clearly within the framework of the Constitution, debatably within that framework and that debate will be had before the court, but to my knowledge they have not gone over the line to illegal. If they do, I know that will be widely reported, as it should be. I believe the Administration is baiting the courts with an optimism of a rendered opinion that codifies their POV.
It seems like a free press is what used to keep our government accountable by investigating corruption and fraud. But somewhere along the way, we saw a noticeable deterioration of journalistic integrity, where our media appears to be bought and paid for by the government and special interests. I think everyone sees the biased approach that our mainstream media takes, and it has become more magnified in the Trump era. There's a reason why the first amendment is the first amendment. I honestly don't believe we would be in this mess if we had an ethical media who actually investigated our government in an unbiased manner.
Thanks for your article. It is one of the most rational discussions on the consequences of the current President’s actions.
My question is, given the rabid hatred expressed by those on the left during the past four years, and continuing to this day, do you think that any form of reasonable discussion or compromise could have been achieved?
Perhaps once the wrecking ball stops, some of the more reasonable Democrats and Academics will step up and make themselves known. At this point in time, they appear to be doubling down on trying to equate Trump to Hitler while playing the role of Churchill - “we will never surrender.”
I generally agree with the consensus below that this article missed the mark, but nice try.
For me, it would have been more convincing focusing on things like (1) his pardoning of violent protesters, (2) dropping corruption charges on Adams as leverage, and (3) dropping security protection on his former appointees Bolton and Pompeo.
Every leader needs honest and competent feedback, but Trump seems to go out of his way to signal loyalty matters more. There's your nexus, Roger, with the argument made by political scientist E.E. Schattschneider. Society needs "specialized experts" but they, in turn, need to be able to speak honestly, without fear their losing their life, livelihood or integrity.
Lets review the track record of public health expertise:
1. The most damaging failure was the promotion of removing fat from the diet and foods, all based on a transparently biased study done by Ancil Keyes who had food company contracts. Food companies responding with a flood of fat free products that usually contained a lot of sugar. This disastrous lie promoted by the CDC is probably partly responsible for the obesity and diabetes epidemics which in turn caused perhaps half of our covid deaths.
2. School closures were promoted by Biden at the behest of the teacher’s unions despite zero evidence they were needed. A German study could only substantiate a few instances of students giving covid to teachers and in fact the learning loss amounted on average to 6 months to a year at a time when our children’s test scores are declining rapidly.
3. Mask mandates were pseudo-scientific. WHO guidance in 2019 was that mask mandates did not work with respiratory viruses. Masks also have serious side effects such as decreases in blood oxygen. The CDC kept up on its web site two studies that were wrong. The Kansas study had a cherry picked end data to cut off the data record to produce a realist that vanished with the entire data set.
4. Vaccine mandates. Biden did these even though it was pretty obvious that they were unconstitutional. But millions were forced to take an experimental treatment or quite their jobs. In fact it is unethical to require healthy young people to take these vaccines as the harm is 7 times bigger than the benefit according to Makary et al. Tens of thousands of young people suffered serious side effects that in some cases permanently affected their health. The trials for these vaccines were flawed because only young healthy people were allowed to participate and the trial was terminated after 90 days. The large Swedish study showed that effectiveness against symptomatic covid was 85% the first month but fell rapidly to -15% after 9 months. Yes the vaccinated were more likely to catch covid.
5. Lockdowns and other “mitigations.” Besides being unconstitutional to lock people in their houses, these had no effect in the end. Florida had a lower age adjusted covid death rate than California despite the regime media demonization of De Santis. Sweden had a population fatality rate of about 0.16% while the US had a rate of 0.36%. These worthless mitigation cost us $10 trillion we borrowed.
6. In fact, I’ve seen a close correlation between covid death rates and obesity rates. Thus, perhaps half our covid deaths can be attributed to my first bullet point, I.e., CDC recommendation that worked to make us more obese.
7. The lie propagated by Fauci and other scientists that the lab leak hypothesis was a conspiracy theory. This was an active propaganda campaign that involved not just scientists (with Fauci playing the lead role) but science organizations and even journals that would not publish papers questioning the natural origins theory.
8. The campaign of fear and censorship and sometimes job loss typical of Medieval witch hunts. This climate of fear cannot be underestimated especially for scientists who were censored for very benign statements that were absolutely true because they contradicted the mob’s lies. Chief among the witch hunters were so-called health experts on regime media including Peter Hotez whose lies about the vaccines were notorious. Each of his statements seemed to be contradicted by the next one urging furthers boosters.
So experts cannot be trusted and are often wrong especially because in the 21st Century so many are on the take and have conflicts of interest. In fact during covid the skeptics were usually right and the official experts were wrong, in many cases their mistakes cost lives and harmed people’s well being. What is so shameful and disgusting is that our best scientists know this and have said so openly and been rewarded by relentless witch hunts.
Roger has spent time tilting at the alarmist climate narrative and also faced a cancellation campaign. But this alarmist machine is wrong about the most important issues such as whether more CO2 actually helps ecosystems to thrive. It’s a nice vision of the honest broker mediating between “experts” and policy makers but it’s a borderline authoritarian idea that in the recent past has led to disastrous consequences. There is no such thing as an “honest broker” only professional mediators. Usually it takes strong personalities like Teddy Roosevelt of Donald Trump to achieve a successful deal or reform institutions. I’ve been a little surprised that Roger has limited his criticism of climate science to mostly scenarios and overlooked the much bigger logs in their eyes.
Now I want to relate this crisis of elites to freedom of speech. As John Ioannidis pointed out in Tablet, arriving at truth can only happen in a free environment that is free of censorship and the witch hunters. That is what in fact caused Musk and Kennedy to cross into Trump’s camp, the realization that the deep state and elites had become too powerful and authoritarian. In fact the deep state is a mammoth violation of the Bill of Rights with massive spying on Americans and censorship demands. The Russia hoaxes were a giant disinformation and election interference campaign designed by the Clinton and liars such as the heads of most deep state agencies to nullify the will of the American people. I’m glad Trump is firing these scum and I hope many of them are prosecuted for their lies. Conspiracy to violate our Constitutional rights is itself a crime.
Sorry Roger, but I trust Ioannidis, Battacharia, Makary, Kuhldorff, and even RFKJ more than I trust you. We have a crisis of confidence and you are not a part of the solution.it
There are two main assumptions underlying Roger's whole Honest Broker construct. Below I will explain why they are both wrong. First there is the assumption that expert consensus is almost always right. The second is that the government and democracy is best served by policies based on that consensus. I think at bottom Roger is concerned about cutting the bloated Federal government because he still harbors a false sense that these institutions are still basically honest. This is also really really wrong as a host of reporting has shown such as from Taibbi, Schellenberger, Benz, and Jocob Seigel and even Megyn Kelly has show. Seigel has a great long and thoughtful article tracing the history of the way these institutions were corrupted over the last 25 years and now are weaponized the same way they are in Russia against half the country and their elected leaders. Reading the New York Times is the first sign of trouble. I wager Roger has not read Bari Weiss' resignation letter or read the letter from their fired editor. The regime media are really in every like the Russian media in terms of their total subservience to the very elites that Roger also seems to like. In fact regime media is the chief way the deep state shapes narratives using leaks that are credulously printed. Glenn Greenwald points out the in fact this happens many times every day and yet no one is prosecuted. Instead, they go after Snowdon or Assange for doing what thousands of reporters and deep staters do every day. The difference is that what Snowdon leaked and what Assange was printing was all true and in fact showed that the CIA was illegally spying on Americans.
Here's one reason why your argument doesn't hold up: Just because the New York Times and other legacy media sources either didn't cover news stories or engaged in biased reporting, doesn't mean that all expert sources are corrupt.
Example: The New York Times, and most legacy media sources, didn't properly cover the story on the origin of SARS-CoV-2. But that didn't mean that all expert sources got it wrong. Some of the earliest unbiased reporting of experts on this was from US Right to Know, MIT Technology Review, Jeffrey Sachs (economist at Columbia), this substack, The DisInformation Chronicle Substack and Alina Chan and Matt Ridley. In other words, good reporting on this came from a variety of experts with varying political perspectives. Mostly, these experts didn't have an ax to grind and had the ability and will to dig into the details.
Another problem with your argument is that it requires that we believe that DOGE is completely honest and completely infallible. There's already lots of evidence that they are in some cases lying. They are not experts. In fact, in some cases, it is clear that they are very amateurish in what they are doing. Even if experts were irretrievably corrupt and biased, there is no evidence that DOGE is less corrupt or less biased.
So regardless of the sources of various kinds of information, we have to rely on due process to vet that information. Any process that bypasses due process, and requires secrecy, is not a legitimate process. It will very likely yield an unacceptable result.
Your example is irrelevant because there are always "experts" on all sides of an issue. I think Roger's idea is that the concensus of experts should be implemented. Over the last decade, the concensus of the experts was mostly wrong and I gave a lot of examples. Can you give a similar list of where the "concensus" was right about covid, vaccine mandates, covid origins, etc?
Can you give me a list of examples of where DOGE has misrepresented anything? vague generalities are not convincing.
There are several other of his colleagues who also spoke up. I believe at least three of them testified before Congress.
On the origin of SARS-CoV-2, here are three prominent scientists that spoke up:
-Dr. Robert Redfield, head of the CDC at the beginning of the pandemic
-Dr. Luc Montagnier, French virologist and joint recipient of the Nobel Prize of Physiology or Medicine (2008)
-U.S. Marine Corp Major Joseph Murphy, DARPA Fellow at the time that the Defuse proposal was awarded to the Ecohealth Alliance
There is also a group of Indian scientists that noticed early on that the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus looked engineered. Here is a link to their paper, published on January 31st, 2020, one month after the initial reports of SARS-CoV-2 in the US: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871V1.full
I am not an "expert", but I had worked at DARPA and knew how to research federal contracts. When Dr. Luc Montagnier made his announcement about his suspicion that the SARS-CoV-2 looked engineered, the very same day I looked to see if the US had ever funded research on the coronavirus. The Ecohealth Alliance grants from the NIH immediately came up. I tweeted those. Almost immediately, my Twitter account was shadow banned.
Don't tell me that Trump didn't know what was happening. I'm sure he was briefed almost immediately that the US had been doing research with China on SARS-COV-2. The coverup was a bipartisan effort.
Often experts do speak up. Sometimes, for one reason or another, there is a conspiracy to silence these experts. But eventually, if enough experts and credible non-experts speak up, over time, their voices are heard. We are all better for it. But this process can take a long time.
If you have a better idea about how we should have dealt with the President, CIA, FBI and NIH all trying to hide that the US had been collaborating with the WIV on SARS-CoV-2 research, and smearing experts who spoke up, lets hear it.
“First there is the assumption that expert consensus is almost always right. The second is that the government and democracy is best served by policies based on that consensus.”
Good thought provoking article Roger. Much appreciated!
I'm all in favor of giving the government a thorough review and enema. This is something often discussed by new administrations but seldom, if ever, actually carried out in any meaningful way. I give the Trump team big credit for at least getting in there and doing something. However, I would like to see it done in a more careful and detailed manner. Seems, at times, slipshod and in a rush to get headlines rather than doing the careful review/analysis required before acting. There is no reason to be in such a rush as to fire and then have to rehire some of the same people when it's discovered they really do have an important function. This only lends itself to justifiable criticism.
There should also be more comprehensive and detailed information provided on the DOGE website with regard to the specific departments that have been reviewed, are currently under review, and are planned to be reviewed. Information about the number of employees in each department and what category they fall under (administrative, technical, managerial etc...). How many cuts have been made/recommended per category would allow a much better picture be drawn.
For example, the recent cuts reported in the FAA were not specified. The mainstream press reports it as though they were all air-traffic controllers and that our safety is being jeopardized. Is that really the case? I'm hoping not but without more detail it's not possible to know.
More detailed info on the contracts being cancelled (ie; USAID) would be welcome as well. We currently just get the latest day's line items but not a more detailed and comprehensive accounting of all the activity, cut recommendations, targets etc...
Lastly, the Musk factor is one that should be handled very carefully. There are very legit concerns over conflict of interest since his companies receive government contracts. He could also be gaining info that gives him a competitive advantage. Thus far, they have not done enough to quell these concerns.
I never took a specific class in COBOL, but I've seen it. It's not hard to read. A common cludge in old database programming languages without type was to fill in a field with a fixed amount. Looks like the Social Security administration was using some date back in the 1880s to indicate that someone had not entered their birthday in their social security information.
Moreover, information posted in the Seeking Alpha website shows that anyone over the age of 115 years old automatically had social security payments turned off.
Saying that these database records are for sure 150 year old dead people drawing down social security payments is flatly dishonest.
Anyone who has had to debug old programs, even if they didn't know COBOL, should have been able to pick up on this. It's a newbie mistake.
Not sure what happened with Musk's band of geniuses. Regardless, the information Musk put out on X about huge numbers of dead people drawing down Social Security benefits is a bold face lie.
What most people miss is that Trump does not tread carefully to accomplish things. He goes 100% all-in (like closing entire portions of the government). That gives him room to negotiate. It the "art of the deal". So, Roger, you shouldn't take him so literally, so soon... wait and see what happens. In the meantime, the two elephants in the room (related to each other) that have caused the debt to reach astronomical levels are (1) an attitude in government (I know, I spent decades listening to it) that what they are spending isn't real money... it's "funny money"; and (2) congresspersons who serve vested interests more than their constituents' (exactly how do so many politicians have net worth on 10's of millions of dollars on $200k salaries?). I have said for years that members of congress should get paid in proportion to how much they help to rein in spending... just like in the private sector (reduce costs for the company).
Thank you. This is "a step back and review" perspective. It has its place. Obama and Biden were fanatic and bullies. They lied about their intent. Trump was not lying and is acting on his promises. Trump is not a Clinton, Bush, Obama or Biden. He hears and listens to the people. We are tired of the perverse, immoral, corrupt government gangsters.
The proposal of Levin is wrong. The problem as he sees it is, for the first time in my lifetime, we have a President who is keeping his campaign promises. That is anathema to the elites. He is supposed to govern as all have who came before. That is what Levin proposes. Study the issue, report on it and hope it is lost in the slipstream of governance. Levin proposes betrayal again, for the voters. The position of Levin, if it is a good faith proposal, has a presumption of time. We do not have time.
Over a year ago, Michael Every warned the state of global affairs could not go on as it was for another 4-years. He was right then, and being proven right today. The Biden Administration in its last 4-months bequeathed an $838 billion budget deficit, or an annualized deficit of $2.5 trillion. Turbocharging the US on its way toward $40 trillion in debt. Eugene Ludwig writing in Politico has questioned the legitimacy of government economic data. In this, he is not the first, nor will he be the last. From his perspective the US may be in a recession that began in 2022. Add to that Donald Trump survived 2 assassination attempts in 2024 and just proposed the US, Russia and China cut defense spending by 50%. He rightly believes he is living on borrowed time.
If I read correctly, the two outliers in indirect expense reimbursement from NIH are, Salk and Scripps at 90%. If as reported, private institution reimbursement is 10-15%, then the Salk/Scripps deal is an egregious subsidy of those institutions, by the American taxpayer. This should not go on a minute more. Scripps is now synonymous with Kristian Anderson. As co-author of the proximal origins paper he committed a fraud on the world, as exposed by the Slack and email messages. Receiving an $8.9 million NIH grant post submission. ["Fraud consists of some deceitful practice or willful device, resorted to with intent to deprive another of his right, or in some manner to do him an injury." - Black's Law Dictionary] So Levin believes we should let this stand? For the rest, he believes we should reward the slow, dumb and blind, for not recognizing their grift on the American public, ignoring the campaign promises, and not taking actions to make contingency plans for it.
When wrongful conduct is unearthed, as it is being done now, it should not be allowed to continue until the timing is deemed agreeable by those in the wrong. Not one minute more.
Answering your second question first: In less than 2 years it is likely that the House will flip and we'll be mired again in impeachments and investigations whipped into a frenzy by the msm. The President is well aware of this and I've not heard of him plotting to cancel the midterms. So it looks like he is committed to governing that collaboration under the framework of the U.S. Constitution. So, in his mind and in the minds of his appointed government officials, time is of the essence.
With respect to the first question: If the house does flip (likely) we will see those same government officials falling over themselves to collaborate with the new House and crying how unfair it is that they don't want to play nice.
I my opinion, these first two years are akin to cleaning out a closet. To do it right you have to take everything out, examine it and decide whether it's worth keeping and then put it back in a proper place so that, in the end, you have the closet of your dreams. That usually lasts about 2 years at which point, unless you've been very disciplined, you'll need to do it again.
First, I am more concerned with the heart and moral standards of love, justice and mercy among decision-influencers as I am the IQ that some of these writers seem to be focused on. This doesn't answer the "Trump question", but it adds perspective to their decisions -- the good and the bad.
Second, we aren't a pure democracy and we weren't set up that way on purpose. There are rights that are set above the ability of 51% to vote them away, and the founders purposely never set up "one man one vote" (with some very major flaws in the areas of minorities and women, of course). So, the analysis of our "democracy" in these opinions starts with a flawed premise.
Third, the really stupid and deadly decisions by people like Mao and Stalin are examples of no moral compass, lack of common sense, low IQ, no fundamental rights, and no democracy -- worst case scenario.
Trump has a lot of work to do that needs to be done quickly and he’s basically doing what he was elected to do. The DOJ, USAID, CIA, FBI etc have been weaponised against Trump and democracy by ‘Democrats.’ The USA has a national debt of $343,000 per taxpayer thanks to the Biden administration’s crazy spending, hence DOGE. Unfortunately Trump can’t rely on swamp Republicans in Congress or the Senate.
There’s bound to be much wailing and gnashing of teeth when someone’s rice bowl is threatened. When you hear we must protect “democracy “ simply insert the word “bureaucracy”.
While not apparent to us, it's probably not a new occurrence for so many of our elected and hopefuls to use division to gain an edge or embellishment to champion a cause. We like to think we are information-competent in a wide variety of subjects. It's one of the reasons it's so easy to generate a groundswell in support of questionable activities.
Realizing that we each understand only a small portion of a subject, especially a contentious one, and that subject-champions use that to their advantage, will go a long way toward generating more rational and balanced responses. It might even help us with very necessary compromise.
Professor, the post was thoughtful and I appreciated your posting it. The Levin/Klien quote, "My biggest fear is the administration deciding not to abide by court orders. What they’re doing so far is legitimate. Whether you agree with it or not, it’s operating within the system.", expresses my problem. The post is one huge modal verb. The Administration has done things crazily abnormal, clearly within the framework of the Constitution, debatably within that framework and that debate will be had before the court, but to my knowledge they have not gone over the line to illegal. If they do, I know that will be widely reported, as it should be. I believe the Administration is baiting the courts with an optimism of a rendered opinion that codifies their POV.
It seems like a free press is what used to keep our government accountable by investigating corruption and fraud. But somewhere along the way, we saw a noticeable deterioration of journalistic integrity, where our media appears to be bought and paid for by the government and special interests. I think everyone sees the biased approach that our mainstream media takes, and it has become more magnified in the Trump era. There's a reason why the first amendment is the first amendment. I honestly don't believe we would be in this mess if we had an ethical media who actually investigated our government in an unbiased manner.
Thanks for your article. It is one of the most rational discussions on the consequences of the current President’s actions.
My question is, given the rabid hatred expressed by those on the left during the past four years, and continuing to this day, do you think that any form of reasonable discussion or compromise could have been achieved?
Perhaps once the wrecking ball stops, some of the more reasonable Democrats and Academics will step up and make themselves known. At this point in time, they appear to be doubling down on trying to equate Trump to Hitler while playing the role of Churchill - “we will never surrender.”
I generally agree with the consensus below that this article missed the mark, but nice try.
For me, it would have been more convincing focusing on things like (1) his pardoning of violent protesters, (2) dropping corruption charges on Adams as leverage, and (3) dropping security protection on his former appointees Bolton and Pompeo.
Every leader needs honest and competent feedback, but Trump seems to go out of his way to signal loyalty matters more. There's your nexus, Roger, with the argument made by political scientist E.E. Schattschneider. Society needs "specialized experts" but they, in turn, need to be able to speak honestly, without fear their losing their life, livelihood or integrity.
Now to the two assumptions:
Lets review the track record of public health expertise:
1. The most damaging failure was the promotion of removing fat from the diet and foods, all based on a transparently biased study done by Ancil Keyes who had food company contracts. Food companies responding with a flood of fat free products that usually contained a lot of sugar. This disastrous lie promoted by the CDC is probably partly responsible for the obesity and diabetes epidemics which in turn caused perhaps half of our covid deaths.
2. School closures were promoted by Biden at the behest of the teacher’s unions despite zero evidence they were needed. A German study could only substantiate a few instances of students giving covid to teachers and in fact the learning loss amounted on average to 6 months to a year at a time when our children’s test scores are declining rapidly.
3. Mask mandates were pseudo-scientific. WHO guidance in 2019 was that mask mandates did not work with respiratory viruses. Masks also have serious side effects such as decreases in blood oxygen. The CDC kept up on its web site two studies that were wrong. The Kansas study had a cherry picked end data to cut off the data record to produce a realist that vanished with the entire data set.
4. Vaccine mandates. Biden did these even though it was pretty obvious that they were unconstitutional. But millions were forced to take an experimental treatment or quite their jobs. In fact it is unethical to require healthy young people to take these vaccines as the harm is 7 times bigger than the benefit according to Makary et al. Tens of thousands of young people suffered serious side effects that in some cases permanently affected their health. The trials for these vaccines were flawed because only young healthy people were allowed to participate and the trial was terminated after 90 days. The large Swedish study showed that effectiveness against symptomatic covid was 85% the first month but fell rapidly to -15% after 9 months. Yes the vaccinated were more likely to catch covid.
5. Lockdowns and other “mitigations.” Besides being unconstitutional to lock people in their houses, these had no effect in the end. Florida had a lower age adjusted covid death rate than California despite the regime media demonization of De Santis. Sweden had a population fatality rate of about 0.16% while the US had a rate of 0.36%. These worthless mitigation cost us $10 trillion we borrowed.
6. In fact, I’ve seen a close correlation between covid death rates and obesity rates. Thus, perhaps half our covid deaths can be attributed to my first bullet point, I.e., CDC recommendation that worked to make us more obese.
7. The lie propagated by Fauci and other scientists that the lab leak hypothesis was a conspiracy theory. This was an active propaganda campaign that involved not just scientists (with Fauci playing the lead role) but science organizations and even journals that would not publish papers questioning the natural origins theory.
8. The campaign of fear and censorship and sometimes job loss typical of Medieval witch hunts. This climate of fear cannot be underestimated especially for scientists who were censored for very benign statements that were absolutely true because they contradicted the mob’s lies. Chief among the witch hunters were so-called health experts on regime media including Peter Hotez whose lies about the vaccines were notorious. Each of his statements seemed to be contradicted by the next one urging furthers boosters.
So experts cannot be trusted and are often wrong especially because in the 21st Century so many are on the take and have conflicts of interest. In fact during covid the skeptics were usually right and the official experts were wrong, in many cases their mistakes cost lives and harmed people’s well being. What is so shameful and disgusting is that our best scientists know this and have said so openly and been rewarded by relentless witch hunts.
Roger has spent time tilting at the alarmist climate narrative and also faced a cancellation campaign. But this alarmist machine is wrong about the most important issues such as whether more CO2 actually helps ecosystems to thrive. It’s a nice vision of the honest broker mediating between “experts” and policy makers but it’s a borderline authoritarian idea that in the recent past has led to disastrous consequences. There is no such thing as an “honest broker” only professional mediators. Usually it takes strong personalities like Teddy Roosevelt of Donald Trump to achieve a successful deal or reform institutions. I’ve been a little surprised that Roger has limited his criticism of climate science to mostly scenarios and overlooked the much bigger logs in their eyes.
Now I want to relate this crisis of elites to freedom of speech. As John Ioannidis pointed out in Tablet, arriving at truth can only happen in a free environment that is free of censorship and the witch hunters. That is what in fact caused Musk and Kennedy to cross into Trump’s camp, the realization that the deep state and elites had become too powerful and authoritarian. In fact the deep state is a mammoth violation of the Bill of Rights with massive spying on Americans and censorship demands. The Russia hoaxes were a giant disinformation and election interference campaign designed by the Clinton and liars such as the heads of most deep state agencies to nullify the will of the American people. I’m glad Trump is firing these scum and I hope many of them are prosecuted for their lies. Conspiracy to violate our Constitutional rights is itself a crime.
Sorry Roger, but I trust Ioannidis, Battacharia, Makary, Kuhldorff, and even RFKJ more than I trust you. We have a crisis of confidence and you are not a part of the solution.it
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/saving-democracy-from-pandemic
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/pandemic-science
https://www.statnews.com/2021/09/13/how-a-fatally-tragically-flawed-paradigm-has-derailed-the-science-of-obesity/?variation=E&utm_source=180%20day%20engaged&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=November%202021%20Abstract%20%28YbrBZU%29&bxid=01F8ATDQFSV4A8XV9SSBC6THNZ&_kx=b4aIVfyidMmvVkQvlmGC1vLazf17PG00McSKnTE_bxc%3D.R8xQK
There are two main assumptions underlying Roger's whole Honest Broker construct. Below I will explain why they are both wrong. First there is the assumption that expert consensus is almost always right. The second is that the government and democracy is best served by policies based on that consensus. I think at bottom Roger is concerned about cutting the bloated Federal government because he still harbors a false sense that these institutions are still basically honest. This is also really really wrong as a host of reporting has shown such as from Taibbi, Schellenberger, Benz, and Jocob Seigel and even Megyn Kelly has show. Seigel has a great long and thoughtful article tracing the history of the way these institutions were corrupted over the last 25 years and now are weaponized the same way they are in Russia against half the country and their elected leaders. Reading the New York Times is the first sign of trouble. I wager Roger has not read Bari Weiss' resignation letter or read the letter from their fired editor. The regime media are really in every like the Russian media in terms of their total subservience to the very elites that Roger also seems to like. In fact regime media is the chief way the deep state shapes narratives using leaks that are credulously printed. Glenn Greenwald points out the in fact this happens many times every day and yet no one is prosecuted. Instead, they go after Snowdon or Assange for doing what thousands of reporters and deep staters do every day. The difference is that what Snowdon leaked and what Assange was printing was all true and in fact showed that the CIA was illegally spying on Americans.
Here's one reason why your argument doesn't hold up: Just because the New York Times and other legacy media sources either didn't cover news stories or engaged in biased reporting, doesn't mean that all expert sources are corrupt.
Example: The New York Times, and most legacy media sources, didn't properly cover the story on the origin of SARS-CoV-2. But that didn't mean that all expert sources got it wrong. Some of the earliest unbiased reporting of experts on this was from US Right to Know, MIT Technology Review, Jeffrey Sachs (economist at Columbia), this substack, The DisInformation Chronicle Substack and Alina Chan and Matt Ridley. In other words, good reporting on this came from a variety of experts with varying political perspectives. Mostly, these experts didn't have an ax to grind and had the ability and will to dig into the details.
Another problem with your argument is that it requires that we believe that DOGE is completely honest and completely infallible. There's already lots of evidence that they are in some cases lying. They are not experts. In fact, in some cases, it is clear that they are very amateurish in what they are doing. Even if experts were irretrievably corrupt and biased, there is no evidence that DOGE is less corrupt or less biased.
So regardless of the sources of various kinds of information, we have to rely on due process to vet that information. Any process that bypasses due process, and requires secrecy, is not a legitimate process. It will very likely yield an unacceptable result.
Your example is irrelevant because there are always "experts" on all sides of an issue. I think Roger's idea is that the concensus of experts should be implemented. Over the last decade, the concensus of the experts was mostly wrong and I gave a lot of examples. Can you give a similar list of where the "concensus" was right about covid, vaccine mandates, covid origins, etc?
Can you give me a list of examples of where DOGE has misrepresented anything? vague generalities are not convincing.
There were experts who spoke up on vaccine mandates and SARS-CoV-2 origins.
On vaccine mandates, Jay Bhattacharya was one scientist who spoke up:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Bhattacharya
There are several other of his colleagues who also spoke up. I believe at least three of them testified before Congress.
On the origin of SARS-CoV-2, here are three prominent scientists that spoke up:
-Dr. Robert Redfield, head of the CDC at the beginning of the pandemic
-Dr. Luc Montagnier, French virologist and joint recipient of the Nobel Prize of Physiology or Medicine (2008)
-U.S. Marine Corp Major Joseph Murphy, DARPA Fellow at the time that the Defuse proposal was awarded to the Ecohealth Alliance
There is also a group of Indian scientists that noticed early on that the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus looked engineered. Here is a link to their paper, published on January 31st, 2020, one month after the initial reports of SARS-CoV-2 in the US: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871V1.full
I am not an "expert", but I had worked at DARPA and knew how to research federal contracts. When Dr. Luc Montagnier made his announcement about his suspicion that the SARS-CoV-2 looked engineered, the very same day I looked to see if the US had ever funded research on the coronavirus. The Ecohealth Alliance grants from the NIH immediately came up. I tweeted those. Almost immediately, my Twitter account was shadow banned.
Don't tell me that Trump didn't know what was happening. I'm sure he was briefed almost immediately that the US had been doing research with China on SARS-COV-2. The coverup was a bipartisan effort.
Often experts do speak up. Sometimes, for one reason or another, there is a conspiracy to silence these experts. But eventually, if enough experts and credible non-experts speak up, over time, their voices are heard. We are all better for it. But this process can take a long time.
If you have a better idea about how we should have dealt with the President, CIA, FBI and NIH all trying to hide that the US had been collaborating with the WIV on SARS-CoV-2 research, and smearing experts who spoke up, lets hear it.
These assumptions are both false
“First there is the assumption that expert consensus is almost always right. The second is that the government and democracy is best served by policies based on that consensus.”
Happy to discuss details.
Good thought provoking article Roger. Much appreciated!
I'm all in favor of giving the government a thorough review and enema. This is something often discussed by new administrations but seldom, if ever, actually carried out in any meaningful way. I give the Trump team big credit for at least getting in there and doing something. However, I would like to see it done in a more careful and detailed manner. Seems, at times, slipshod and in a rush to get headlines rather than doing the careful review/analysis required before acting. There is no reason to be in such a rush as to fire and then have to rehire some of the same people when it's discovered they really do have an important function. This only lends itself to justifiable criticism.
There should also be more comprehensive and detailed information provided on the DOGE website with regard to the specific departments that have been reviewed, are currently under review, and are planned to be reviewed. Information about the number of employees in each department and what category they fall under (administrative, technical, managerial etc...). How many cuts have been made/recommended per category would allow a much better picture be drawn.
For example, the recent cuts reported in the FAA were not specified. The mainstream press reports it as though they were all air-traffic controllers and that our safety is being jeopardized. Is that really the case? I'm hoping not but without more detail it's not possible to know.
More detailed info on the contracts being cancelled (ie; USAID) would be welcome as well. We currently just get the latest day's line items but not a more detailed and comprehensive accounting of all the activity, cut recommendations, targets etc...
Lastly, the Musk factor is one that should be handled very carefully. There are very legit concerns over conflict of interest since his companies receive government contracts. He could also be gaining info that gives him a competitive advantage. Thus far, they have not done enough to quell these concerns.
I never took a specific class in COBOL, but I've seen it. It's not hard to read. A common cludge in old database programming languages without type was to fill in a field with a fixed amount. Looks like the Social Security administration was using some date back in the 1880s to indicate that someone had not entered their birthday in their social security information.
Moreover, information posted in the Seeking Alpha website shows that anyone over the age of 115 years old automatically had social security payments turned off.
Saying that these database records are for sure 150 year old dead people drawing down social security payments is flatly dishonest.
Anyone who has had to debug old programs, even if they didn't know COBOL, should have been able to pick up on this. It's a newbie mistake.
Not sure what happened with Musk's band of geniuses. Regardless, the information Musk put out on X about huge numbers of dead people drawing down Social Security benefits is a bold face lie.
What most people miss is that Trump does not tread carefully to accomplish things. He goes 100% all-in (like closing entire portions of the government). That gives him room to negotiate. It the "art of the deal". So, Roger, you shouldn't take him so literally, so soon... wait and see what happens. In the meantime, the two elephants in the room (related to each other) that have caused the debt to reach astronomical levels are (1) an attitude in government (I know, I spent decades listening to it) that what they are spending isn't real money... it's "funny money"; and (2) congresspersons who serve vested interests more than their constituents' (exactly how do so many politicians have net worth on 10's of millions of dollars on $200k salaries?). I have said for years that members of congress should get paid in proportion to how much they help to rein in spending... just like in the private sector (reduce costs for the company).
Thank you. This is "a step back and review" perspective. It has its place. Obama and Biden were fanatic and bullies. They lied about their intent. Trump was not lying and is acting on his promises. Trump is not a Clinton, Bush, Obama or Biden. He hears and listens to the people. We are tired of the perverse, immoral, corrupt government gangsters.
The proposal of Levin is wrong. The problem as he sees it is, for the first time in my lifetime, we have a President who is keeping his campaign promises. That is anathema to the elites. He is supposed to govern as all have who came before. That is what Levin proposes. Study the issue, report on it and hope it is lost in the slipstream of governance. Levin proposes betrayal again, for the voters. The position of Levin, if it is a good faith proposal, has a presumption of time. We do not have time.
Over a year ago, Michael Every warned the state of global affairs could not go on as it was for another 4-years. He was right then, and being proven right today. The Biden Administration in its last 4-months bequeathed an $838 billion budget deficit, or an annualized deficit of $2.5 trillion. Turbocharging the US on its way toward $40 trillion in debt. Eugene Ludwig writing in Politico has questioned the legitimacy of government economic data. In this, he is not the first, nor will he be the last. From his perspective the US may be in a recession that began in 2022. Add to that Donald Trump survived 2 assassination attempts in 2024 and just proposed the US, Russia and China cut defense spending by 50%. He rightly believes he is living on borrowed time.
If I read correctly, the two outliers in indirect expense reimbursement from NIH are, Salk and Scripps at 90%. If as reported, private institution reimbursement is 10-15%, then the Salk/Scripps deal is an egregious subsidy of those institutions, by the American taxpayer. This should not go on a minute more. Scripps is now synonymous with Kristian Anderson. As co-author of the proximal origins paper he committed a fraud on the world, as exposed by the Slack and email messages. Receiving an $8.9 million NIH grant post submission. ["Fraud consists of some deceitful practice or willful device, resorted to with intent to deprive another of his right, or in some manner to do him an injury." - Black's Law Dictionary] So Levin believes we should let this stand? For the rest, he believes we should reward the slow, dumb and blind, for not recognizing their grift on the American public, ignoring the campaign promises, and not taking actions to make contingency plans for it.
When wrongful conduct is unearthed, as it is being done now, it should not be allowed to continue until the timing is deemed agreeable by those in the wrong. Not one minute more.
Answering your second question first: In less than 2 years it is likely that the House will flip and we'll be mired again in impeachments and investigations whipped into a frenzy by the msm. The President is well aware of this and I've not heard of him plotting to cancel the midterms. So it looks like he is committed to governing that collaboration under the framework of the U.S. Constitution. So, in his mind and in the minds of his appointed government officials, time is of the essence.
With respect to the first question: If the house does flip (likely) we will see those same government officials falling over themselves to collaborate with the new House and crying how unfair it is that they don't want to play nice.
I my opinion, these first two years are akin to cleaning out a closet. To do it right you have to take everything out, examine it and decide whether it's worth keeping and then put it back in a proper place so that, in the end, you have the closet of your dreams. That usually lasts about 2 years at which point, unless you've been very disciplined, you'll need to do it again.
First, I am more concerned with the heart and moral standards of love, justice and mercy among decision-influencers as I am the IQ that some of these writers seem to be focused on. This doesn't answer the "Trump question", but it adds perspective to their decisions -- the good and the bad.
Second, we aren't a pure democracy and we weren't set up that way on purpose. There are rights that are set above the ability of 51% to vote them away, and the founders purposely never set up "one man one vote" (with some very major flaws in the areas of minorities and women, of course). So, the analysis of our "democracy" in these opinions starts with a flawed premise.
Third, the really stupid and deadly decisions by people like Mao and Stalin are examples of no moral compass, lack of common sense, low IQ, no fundamental rights, and no democracy -- worst case scenario.
Trump has a lot of work to do that needs to be done quickly and he’s basically doing what he was elected to do. The DOJ, USAID, CIA, FBI etc have been weaponised against Trump and democracy by ‘Democrats.’ The USA has a national debt of $343,000 per taxpayer thanks to the Biden administration’s crazy spending, hence DOGE. Unfortunately Trump can’t rely on swamp Republicans in Congress or the Senate.
Trump definitely inspires passion
It’s either 100% for or 100% against.
As a canadian I wait uneasily to see where this is headed
But I will wait and see before proclaiming
There’s a lot broken that needs to be fixed, same problem with the same source here in canada
Still waiting to see if we get a chance to fix it.
But at least you HAVE institutions to fall back on.
We have none.
There’s bound to be much wailing and gnashing of teeth when someone’s rice bowl is threatened. When you hear we must protect “democracy “ simply insert the word “bureaucracy”.