Michael McCord, the Pentagon’s Under Secretary of Defense and Chief Financial Officer, said. “I believe the department has turned a corner in its understanding of the challenges, and more importantly, in addressing those challenges.”
After 7 tries.
The largest budget and in charge of defending US and it can’t balance a check book. Maybe it doesn’t want US to know who got what.
The Department of Defense’s inability to track its finances continues, as the Pentagon failed its seventh audit on Friday. The DoD has a massive budget of $820 billion and spent over $170 million on the failed audit.
Since 2018, Congress has mandated the Pentagon to undergo an audit each year, with the goal of the DoD passing the financial report by 2028. So far, the Department of Defense has been unable to pass the audit. While department officials say they are making progress, still, fewer than a third of the Pentagon’s agencies have passed.
“This result was not a surprise, and I know that on the surface it doesn’t sound like we’re making progress. However, that is not the case,” Michael McCord, the Pentagon’s Under Secretary of Defense and Chief Financial Officer, said. “I believe the department has turned a corner in its understanding of the challenges, and more importantly, in addressing those challenges.”
The 1,700 auditors spent $178 million reviewing 28 Pentagon agencies. Nine agencies passed, 15 received disclaimers, and three opinions remain pending. The auditors believe one agency gave misstatements preventing a final opinion from being reached.
The Marines are one agency that still have not completed their audit. In 2023, the Marines became the first of the six branches to pass an audit. The Pentagon has $4.1 trillion in assets and $4.3 trillion in liabilities.
Customs agents took to the ramparts to protect Americans from TV Ducks — cotton products made to sit on the arm of a couch and hold a TV remote control. Robert Capps, who owned a small company in Skyland, North Carolina, ordered a large shipment of the products from China — but the Customs Service prohibited their entry in 1995. Customs claimed that the little novelty items belonged in the same tariff category as bedspreads — and thus that Capps needed a textile import quota before he could import them. No U.S. company was making TV Ducks, but Customs officials were hellbent on protecting American consumers from the product.
Instead, we are encouraged to presume that politicians merely need to issue a few commands and federal bureaucrats will instantly apply their wisdom to remedy our economic problems. But unless politicians intend to ban all imports or inflict the same tax on all imports, then government officials will need to make distinctions between products.
In the past, Customs Service employees wrestled heroically with great questions such as “Is a popcorn popper an electrothermic appliance or an electrical article?” and “Is a jeep a truck or a car?” The United States has thousands of different tariff classifications, with tariffs ranging from zero to more than 100 percent. Naturally, tariff-classification rulings are often disputed with a passion that would have made St. Thomas Aquinas proud.
Thousands of tariff categories in the past were restricted by import quotas. When Customs Service decisions change a product’s tariff classification from unrestricted to restricted, the ruling can effectively ban imports.
The absurdity of custom classifications
Customs Service officials worked overtime in late 1989 to protect America from foreign shoelaces. Customs prohibited the import of a shipment of 30,000 tennis shoes from Indonesia because the shoe boxes contained an extra pair of shoelaces. One Customs official decided that the extra laces were a clothing product that required a separate quota license for importing, and his decision set a precedent for the entire Customs Service. None of the tennis shoe importers were thinking of the extra laces as anything but part of the tennis shoe, and thus they were caught in their tracks without textile import quotas for shoelaces. (Some new tennis shoes have eyelets for more than one set of laces.)
Customs proceeded to establish intricate rules for shoelace imports. In a judicious ruling, the U.S. government announced that an extra pair of shoelaces would be permitted in a box of tennis shoes as long as the extra shoelaces were laced into the shoes and were color-coordinated with the shoes. But Customs warned importers, “We note that where multiple pairs of laces of like colors and/or designs are imported … a presumption is raised” that the shoelaces are not actually part of the shoe. Customs acted in the nick of time to prevent 250 million Americans from acquiring too many shoelaces of the same color.
Customs agents took to the ramparts to protect Americans from TV Ducks — cotton products made to sit on the arm of a couch and hold a TV remote control. Robert Capps, who owned a small company in Skyland, North Carolina, ordered a large shipment of the products from China — but the Customs Service prohibited their entry in 1995. Customs claimed that the little novelty items belonged in the same tariff category as bedspreads — and thus that Capps needed a textile import quota before he could import them. No U.S. company was making TV Ducks, but Customs officials were hellbent on protecting American consumers from the product. Capps hired a lawyer, who quickly convinced a federal judge to overturn the edict. However, the Justice Department appealed the decision and dragged the case out for a year and half, costing Capps millions of dollars in lost sales before a higher panel of federal judges again trounced the agency.
Good question. We aren’t supposed to know. Some of US have been asking a similar question for several years.
“It’s so fun how the Biden administration is using its lame duck months to skyrocket hostilities between nuclear superpowers and we don’t even know who’s really making these decisions because the president’s brain is cottage cheese.“
Ukraine has already begun using US-supplied long-range missiles in Russia, despite Putin’s warning that this exact sort of escalation will place NATO at war with Russia. This happens as Russia officially changes its nuclear doctrine to lower the threshold for when it’s permissible to use nuclear weapons in retaliation for attacks on its territory.
So far the attacks appear to have been mostly repelled without having done any significant damage.
This is frightening, but I have a hard time imagining that Russia makes any extreme moves against the US before Trump takes office. It seems like they’d want to wait and see what Trump does once he gets in before taking any horrifying risks like that. It is much more likely that Russia will instead respond to this escalation by escalating its attacks on Ukraine, like it normally does.
Who knows, though? If these attacks on Russia continue, there’s literally no limit to how bad this could get.
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It’s so fun how the Biden administration is using its lame duck months to skyrocket hostilities between nuclear superpowers and we don’t even know who’s really making these decisions because the president’s brain is cottage cheese.
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These escalations happen as Ukrainians begin moving into a majority consensus that it is time to seek peace. A new Gallup poll has found that a majority of Ukrainians throughout the country now support peace talks to end the war with Russia, with 52 percent favoring peace and 38 percent wanting to fight on.
As usual people are more opposed to continuing the war the closer they are to the frontline, with 63 percent of the respondents in eastern Ukraine supporting peace talks and only 27 percent wanting to continue fighting. The further you are from the effects of this horrific proxy war the more likely you are to support it; it’s just as true inside Ukraine’s borders as it is when you include all the western armchair warriors who want to continue fighting to the last Ukrainian.
“Listen to the Ukrainians,” we were told when all this started. Well, here they are. This proxy war has been waged in the name of defending Ukrainian democracy, and yet it continues to dangerously escalate against the will of the majority, at the direction of a president in Kyiv whose elected term ended months ago.
But key among Germany’s economic challenges is the hammering Germany’s energy intensive industrial sector has taken by the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine. German industry has struggled to adjust to the higher price of energy caused by U.S.-led sanctions on Russian oil and by the blowing up of the Nord Stream pipeline. Being the largest economic supporter of Ukraine has further strained the economy.
The concept of “the West” is a complex and difficult one. At times it excludes countries in the geographical west, like Cuba and Venezuela and sometimes Brazil. At times it includes countries not in the geographical west, like Japan and Australia. As Richard Sakwa has explained, the West can refer to a 500 year old civilizational West or to a cultural or historical West of which Russia considers itself to be a core member.
The twin ticket admission into the political West is membership in the U.S.-led, post-Cold War security community built around NATO and in a cultural community allegedly built around free trade, freedom and democracy. The political West, by definition, excludes Russia and, now, China.
But recently, there seems to be a political price being paid by governments in the political West. It is being exacted at the polls by their citizens.
On November 6, the government of Germany, Europe’s most populous country and its largest economy, collapsed when Chancellor Olaf Scholz fired his finance minister, the leader of one of his two coalition partners, dissolving the coalition government. The government will limp along until a confidence vote is held in parliament in January. If Scholz’s Social Democrat Party does not survive the confidence vote, that would trigger early elections in March.
The catalyst of the collapse is disagreement by the coalition partners over a weakening economy and budgetary struggles. There are multiple reasons for Germany’s economic decline, including competition from China in the automotive industry. But key among Germany’s economic challenges is the hammering Germany’s energy intensive industrial sector has taken by the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine. German industry has struggled to adjust to the higher price of energy caused by U.S.-led sanctions on Russian oil and by the blowing up of the Nord Stream pipeline. Being the largest economic supporter of Ukraine has further strained the economy.
All three members of Scholz’s already unpopular coalition have been losing support. Scholz’ Social Democrats are polling only around 16% and the combined support of their coalition hovers around 30%, while the opposition Christian Democrats by themselves have 32.5% support. Two fringe parties, the far right populist Alternative für Deutschland and the populist leftwing Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance are both gaining support in part because they oppose further support for Ukraine.
Though not the only cause of the price the German government is paying at the polls, the war in Ukraine, and their policies on it, are contributing to the cost. Molly O’Neal, a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, has pointed out that opponents of governments’ stances on Ukraine have fared well, not only in Germany, but in France and elsewhere in Europe.
Several members of the political West have been punished in elections recently, including Italy, Austria, Finland, Portugal, Slovakia, Australia and Japan. While many members in good standing among the political West have fallen, governments outside of the political West, including all the original members of BRICS, who have taken alternative policy approaches to the war in Ukraine have fared better. Some have done worse than they traditionally have, and though not all meet the West’s criterion for democracy, Russia, China, India, and South Africa have all re-elected their governments. Brazil returned Lula da Silva to power, a man strongly supportive of BRICS and, along with China, has played a leading role, unlike the political West, in advocating for a diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine.
For those of us unwilling or unable to spend a hundred thousand dollars and four years of our life at university only to be turned into a race-baiting, economically illiterate Bolshevik, Michael Huemer gives us the economic and philosophical education I wish I would have had in school.
In a blog post last month, Dr. Tyler Cowen listed a number of books he is currently reading, and specifically mentioned a book which I think is one of the greatest intellectual achievements of all time. Here is what Cowen said:
“Michael Huemer, Progressive Myths. Michael is a very smart philosopher, but this book seemed like a waste of time to me. Will it persuade anyone? Do we need Michael writing seven-page essays rebutting various claims of the BLM movement and the like?”
I invited Dr. Tyler Cowen on the Libertarian Institute podcast to discuss his objections to Huemer’s Progressive Myths; he politely declined. I’d like to address Dr. Cowen who has an open invitation onto my podcast to defend himself anytime.
I don’t know what metric Cowen uses to differentiate productive books from unproductive books. Let’s assume productivity can be categorized as “Increased efficiency attempting to peruse a given end accounting for (opportunity) costs and benefits.” The book costs $12 on Amazon, is 245 pages, and is a complete refutation of the progressive ideology on economic, philosophical, empirical, and historical grounds.
Huemer provides readers with the very low cost education progressives pretend to offer us!
Progressive ideas are widely embrace by both Democrats and Republicans since it allows politicians to increase their power and social status under the guise of helping society while using involuntary investors (taxpayers) to bear the cost of their programs.
This is why presidents such as Republican Teddy Roosevelt and Democrat Woodrow Wilson can historically be categorized as progressives, along with George W. Bush and Barack Obama today. All four presidents drastically increased the size and scope of government under the guise of helping the vulnerable masses.
Every basic tenet of Progressivism has been fully embrace by both parties for more than a century. If Republicans or moderate democrats were not progressive, we’d see the following:
Drastic decreases in government spending year after year (we of course see the opposite regardless of which party is in power)
No Dr. Cowen, your time is not being wasted when for a monetary cost of $12 and an opportunity cost of roughly 8 hours (1.5 days of school), you get to see through a century of lies being promoted by the most powerful people on earth.
My time is not wasted when decades of Huemer’s research is summarized for readers like me.
Huemer’s ability to save people time is astounding. You could spend a thousand hours watching mainstream news and never learn about the important empirical evidence Huemer brings to light. On page 189, Huemer addresses a claim few if any are familiar with:
“How could masking possibly increase the spread of disease?…Most people also wear the same mask repeatedly for many days, so pathogens may accumulate in the mask. This is a particular problem with cloth masks, which many people wore during the pandemic; indeed, one study found that cloth masks caused a nearly sevenfold increase in the risk of influenza-like illness, compared to wearing no mask.”
He mentions this after quoting Dr. Anthony Fauci on 60 Minutes in March 2020:
“Right now in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks…There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.”
Consider Huemer’s refutation of the entire concept that ‘billionaires” are people with bank accounts hoarding billions of stationary dollars:
“Jeff Bezos, for example, does not have $200 billion sitting in a bank account. Rather, he owns a large stake in Amazon. When you read that Bezos is worth $200 billion, that is based on the current Amazon stock price and the portion of the company that he owns.”
Having the opportunity to clearly see the world around you at a microscopic cost is not a “waste of time.”
Ever since I lost my crystal ball I’ve been unable to see the future and determine what will persuade who and to what degree.
I can say with a high degree of confidence that the chance of humanity being debamboozeled from the wealth destructing, divisive death cult of Progressivism is higher than it otherwise would be when we have professors with Ph.d.’s debunking progressive conspiracy theories regarding the economy, race, American history, and gender.
MCViewPoint 