Is There Any Fraud In The Medicaid Program? Here's A Place To Start Looking

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  • Elon Musk, of the Department of Government Efficiency, has asserted that his goal is to cut some $1 trillion of “waste and fraud” from annual federal spending.

  • Skeptics of the effort say that that’s just not possible, mainly because almost half of federal spending constitutes the “entitlements” — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and some smaller health insurance programs — and President Trump has pledged not to cut those. Add something close to $1 trillion for defense, and another close to $1 trillion for interest on the national debt, and the remainder (less than $2 trillion) doesn’t leave nearly enough room for a trillion of cuts.

  • But here’s the missing piece: What if there are large amounts of fraud in the entitlement programs? Trump hasn’t pledged not to go after that. Could the amounts of such fraud be significant in the context of the huge numbers at issue?

  • I don’t fully know the answer to that question; but today I’ll look at one example involving very big numbers where obvious fraud is hiding in plain sight.

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Trump's Tariff Gambit: Lots Of Problems

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Trump's Tariff Gambit: Lots Of Problems

  • While I have spent the past couple of weeks writing about conspiracy theories and the Kennedy assassination, the rest of the world has been consumed by the news of President Trump and his big tariff gambit.

  • After talking at length during the campaign about imposing a new and expansive tariff regime, Trump announced the details of his big move on April 2 — tariffs on everything, from all countries, of at least 10%, ranging up to 50% or more on some countries (e.g., China) and certain products. All of this is to be done by Executive Order, said to be based on a declaration of “emergency” under a collection of pre-existing statutes (the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977; the National Emergencies Act; and the Trade Act of 1974).

  • The stock markets have reacted with turmoil. Various indices were down 10% or more over the past week, and, after initially gaining, have fallen further today. Liberal media outlets, including the New York Times gleefully foresee impending economic damage. (From today: “Investors overwhelmingly believe that Mr. Trump’s tariffs, and retaliation from U.S. trading partners, will lead to higher prices, slower growth and possibly a global recession.”).

  • Regular readers here will not be surprised to learn that I am not a fan of what Trump is doing on the tariff front.

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The Process Of Rescinding The Endangerment Finding Has Begun

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  • As discussed in a couple of recent posts here and here, the so-called Endangerment Finding (EF) was an EPA regulatory action early in the Obama Administration (December 2009) that now provides the foundation for all government efforts to restrict and suppress the use of hydrocarbons in our economy.

  • In one of his first day Executive Orders (“Unleashing American Energy”), President Trump directed the incoming EPA Administrator to submit, within 30 days, “recommendations to the Director of OMB on the legality and continuing applicability of the Administrator’s findings.” Lee Zeldin was then confirmed and sworn in as EPA Administrator on January 29; but the 30th day after the EO, February 19, passed without any public news about a recommendation on the EF.

  • Today there is news.

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On The Sudden End Of The Eric Adams Prosecution

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  • Back in September, DOJ prosecutors in the Southern District of New York indicted Mayor Eric Adams on corruption charges.

  • The indictment came shortly before the election, and at a time when Adams was making noises that he would cooperate with a new President Trump’s efforts to step up enforcement of the immigration laws. At the time I had two posts on the subject, one on September 26 titled “Who Is More Corrupt, Eric Adams or the Biden/Harris DOJ/FBI?”, and the second on September 27 titled “More On The Adams Indictment.” My general comment then was that the indictment was “shockingly thin,” and I concluded (in the September 26 post):

  • At this point, it is a safe bet that anything the DOJ/FBI is doing in the political sphere is corrupt. Adams may well also be a little corrupt, but nothing remotely at their level.

  • A few days ago, on February 11, Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove instructed the SDNY to dismiss the Adams indictment. The next day, February 12, the Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, one Danielle Sassoon, responded with a rather extraordinary 8 page single-spaced letter of resignation, addressed to new Attorney General Pam Bondi.

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Kindergarten Konstitutional Law Comes To The Southern District Of New York

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Kindergarten Konstitutional Law Comes To The Southern District Of New York

  • In yesterday’s post, reviewing a Washington Post op-ed by Ruth Marcus that called efforts by the duly-elected President to direct the bureaucracy to implement his policies a “power grab” and an “onslaught against the government itself,” I described the piece as reflecting “kindergarten-level constitutional analysis.”

  • After all, my 6 year old first-grader grandson is fully capable of reading the first sentence of Article II of the Constitution (“The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America”) and figuring out that this guy is given the sole and full power to direct the executive branch of the federal government. Nothing about the elected President exercising such powers is or can be a “power grab.”

  • If you are somehow unable to grasp that simple proposition, you therefore must be at sub-first grade level of comprehension, and thus kindergarten level, at the highest.

  • Well, today Kindergarten Konstitutional Law came to the Southern District of New York.

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Democracy: What You Think It Means Versus What The Establishment Thinks

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  • “Democracy.” What does that term mean? The single biggest theme of the recent campaign of Democrats and of Kamala Harris was that we had to vote for them to save “Our Democracy.”

  • If I get to summarize the meaning of “Democracy” in 25 words or less, here is my effort: “The people periodically get the opportunity to vote the current authorities out, and replace them with new authorities who will implement new policies.” (That’s 23 words.)

  • Here in the U.S. we admittedly do not have a pure Democracy, but instead a constitutional Republic, with various limitations on government powers and also power sharing among the government’s branches. However, the element of Democracy — that is, the ability of the people to demand a change of direction by exercising their power at the ballot box — is a very big part of the system, at least in theory.

  • And yet, during my post World War II lifetime, despite the theoretical promise of Democracy, the ability of the people to get some change in direction of the government through exercise of the franchise has been extremely limited. Maybe the majority approved of what they were getting, but most often when there seemed to be a vote for change, little changed. The biggest change agent by far in this period was Ronald Reagan; but to be honest the Washington establishment fought him mostly to a draw. Nixon and the two Bushes largely continued the status quo. Trump in his first term was far less effective at “draining the swamp” than I would have hoped.

  • But now we have Trump in his second term suddenly showing us what Democracy can mean in our system.

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