brabus
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Everything posted by brabus
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I meant exactly what I said. Are you also on the tantrum train because you don’t like your team not being the ones doing something? You guys aren’t getting let off the hook ,sorry bros.
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The only thing this type of statement says is you’re against improving financial transparency, cutting FWA, improving financial systems operation, increasing accountability, reducing bloated federal spending, and reducing the deficit. Or if you tell me you’re not against those things, then you’re simply being a partisan hack throwing a tantrum because your team isn’t the one doing the work. The good news is you can choose to stop being a partisan hack and acknowledge when something good is done, regardless of who did it. A good example of this is me throwing Clinton props where props are due, even though I don’t align with him on many other things. Now you try…
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Clinton did a good job with reducing the federal bureaucracy and getting finances under control. I hope Trump can accomplish the same feats regarding these topics.
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Here’s a good, quick explanation for why Trump is doing what he is WRT taking out the bureaucrat garbage, and why it’s legitimate.
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Therein lies the prime issue. We’ve fucked up for too long, time to rip the bandaid off and start fresh, which means there will be short term pain in a lot of ways, but as a society we’ve been way too focused on the now and barely even aware of what does 5, 10, 20 years down the road look like? As Tree said in another thread, we’ve already fucked unborn generations - it has to stop now. If we do, maybe 3-4 generations from now will be free of the financial impacts of their predecessors idiotic decisions.
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Fair response, I’m not opposed to that (the second part). Is there a signal that Putin would only agree to terms that included no western mil sales to UKR? Curious because you mentioned that topic. Supplying them - maybe some (and only mil/medical…I’m not paying for your teachers’ salary, etc.), but I don’t support the continued rate we’ve been executing for years. We’ve accomplished a lot, let’s scale it way back and support minimally until the ink dries.
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Agreed. But let them do it without us sending more billions (which Z man says he didn’t even receive a large portion of…hmm). What does that look like? And what is that “just end” worth in time, money and lives?
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Ha, that’s valid. But it is another of many examples where industry does whatever it wants (3 years behind schedule, GTFO!) and the gov is supposed to just smile and take it up the shorts. This kind of bullshit has to end immediately.
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Dumb move, I agree with you. File this in the category of “WTF were you thinking?!”
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You’re trying to compare the GS-X who sits on his ass all day producing nothing (except roadblocks to mission) to mil members who deploy, fight, directly support warfighters, etc? Completely invalid. I know you’ve worked with civs, not saying you haven’t, but your breath of experience is extremely shallow on this subject, or you just DGAF about all the waste, one of the two. I agree with you on Sua’s situation. That’s primarily bullshit because Maj dipshit is at fault, but it’s not bullshit he was asked for justification. @Sua Sponte Highlighting the Maj’s fuck up to leadership won’t buy at least a review of what you provided? Which has been shouted about and tried for our entire careers. Brick wall after brick wall. You act like nobody has thought of that. Shit is so wildly out of control, big action must be done now, not “let’s just keep trying/talking about it and maybe doing the same thing will yield different results in 10 or 15 years!” The problem has become so massive and widespread that we are way past scalpel territory. That is very unfortunate and I wish it wasn’t, but “we” created this monster and let it get out of control - the shit show wasn’t going to last forever (thank God) and now there will be some good people caught up in it. This applies to the entire fed gov, not just DoD.
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@Sua Sponte Yep, all makes sense. The hard thing, as you’ve probably seen, is firing those shitty workers. It is a mountain to climb to build the requisite documentation for poor performance history, make the improvement plan, document them not meeting the plan, etc. A shitload of work to fire horrible workers - very frustrating.
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Yes, unfortunately that will happen. But the fed civ corps is so insanely out of control that scalpel surgery isn’t feasible - I’ve seen that tried and failed for 19 years. Unfortunately full blown chemo is necessary and that’ll have some undesired side effects, but it will ultimately save the body in the end. And to all those crying about the poor gubmint workers and how will they feed their children! Welcome to everyone else’s life who doesn’t have a gov job. Time to stop sucking on the gov tit and do something useful in the civ sector. The good ones that we unfortunately lose will do just fine on the civ side. It’s the useless sacks of shit that’ll wine incessantly because they know the gov is the only place they can suck so bad and stay employed (up until now at least).
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Cut 50% of DoD civilians and you’ll save $40B/yr (have to simul destroy the bureaucratic processes that “require” them). Burn the acquisition process to ashes and start over - will save a metric shit ton of billions over time. Those are two good places to start.
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How is firing/laying off probationary people illegal? Serious question.
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A couple snippets re: the EO that I just looked at (I have not read the actual EO): Therefore, because all executive power is vested in the President, all agencies must: (1) submit draft regulations for White House review—with no carve-out for so-called independent agencies, except for the monetary policy functions of the Federal Reserve; and (2) consult with the White House on their priorities and strategic plans, and the White House will set their performance standards. The Office of Management and Budget will adjust so-called independent agencies’ apportionments to ensure tax dollars are spent wisely. The President and the Attorney General (subject to the President’s supervision and control) will interpret the law for the executive branch, instead of having separate agencies adopt conflicting interpretations. I read this to mean intent is to rein in unelected bureaucrats, who have enjoyed zero accountability, from making regulations that are based on their personal interpretation. These bureaucrats are not elected and do not represent the people. The president is elected by the people to represent their interests via his running of the executive branch. Therefore, he should have final say on how the executive branch defines/implements regulations, which ultimately are what directly impact all of our daily lives. There could be more to this as I haven’t read the actual text, but what I posted above is absolutely a great thing. I’m sick of people who weren’t elected doing whatever the fuck they want to impact my family’s life. I demand accountability through elections.
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He has to realize he has lost big time from a long term perspective (population make up, extremely diminished capacity for future power projection, etc.) He may be an evil POS, but he can’t be that stupid. He may have won some short term land gains and stopped NATO expansion on the border, but overall I don’t think it’ll have been worth the blood and treasure spent. If he recognizes this, he will negotiate, but we will have to give him something he can save face on (such as stating UKR will never be admitted to NATO, we’re not going back to pre-2014 borders, etc.) If we don’t the “forever war” continues, which only means more waste of resources and humanitarian crisis.
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Zero mention of FWA or implication of it (though you obviously inferred it because you’re driven by political bias). Directly says they increased insight into where money is going. If one doesn’t support transparency and basic tracking of money, they’re simply an idiot. Stop grasping at straws, it’s a bad look.
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Nah, I’m happy to share far and wide the gross negligence, incompetence, and in many cases, FWA, the gov has been conducting using our money. The mask is pulled off, and it’s very ugly. People need to know. We’ve been played hard in many ways, better to acknowledge that and start working on solutions. Or gaslight yourself and don’t believe what’s 6 inches in front of your face, but I don’t recommend anyone take that approach. Ok…but how were we able to build a super power without income taxes prior to 1913? This argument is kind of like, “well everyone else is doing X, so we’d be dumb not to!” If you’re going to argue income tax is the best option, then at least put some substance behind it. So to that point, why would a sales tax or flat tax (or a combo) not be able to properly fund our gov, but our income tax system can? I think a reasonable flat tax or sales tax only would likely reduce our fed revenue compared to the current system, but I see that as a good thing. The evidence for why is on display right now…billions spent on shit that does not advance American values and interests (but may advance some very politicized interests of certain demographics…which is not good on either end of the spectrum).
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Maybe. It would delete all of the bullshit loopholes, but also there probably needs to be some incentive to industry to develop X because the gov needs it. So I don’t think it’s effective to truly kill every deduction, but we could kill a lot of them, assuming the flat tax rate is much lower than our current structure. I do interact pretty regularly with them and I have seen the opposite of you. They more often than not are unmotivated to work hard and will do the bare min to buy the booze and smokes they want for the week. Yeah they’re working a job, but they are choosing to min run it and DGAF because they’d rather just blame the invisible “rich guy” than admit they’re simply not self-motivated and not success-minded. I will help where I can, but I also shouldn’t be forced to give my hard earned money to them (I do donate money and time because I believe in helping people who need it, but I do it FREELY, not forced by my gov - and that’s a huge difference in my book). I’m not saying there aren’t people truly experiencing hard times outside of their control, but they are not the majority in my experience. Obviously the flat tax idea is not perfect, nor would any system be perfect. How do we support the people who are truly hosed not by their own doing while minimizing the leeches? And how do we do that without complete wealth redistribution to some politician’s favorite blood suckers? I think a flat tax with well thought out deductions is a good discussion and something that, even with the inevitable cons, is way better than the bullshit we have now.
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Most mid-level officers are in the top 10% of tax payers. The top 1% is somewhere around a half mil or sightly more. I’m not saying $690K isn’t a lot of money for us normals, but seems like top 1% gets thrown out as if it only encompasses Gates, Bezos, etc. Tax the rich is a stupid and losing strategy, especially when you have half of tax payers barely providing anything, and not to mention all the people who don’t pay a dime in taxes, but suck societal resources without issue. I think both sides can agree the tax code needs improvement, but simply continuing to increase punishing successful people is a ridiculous proposition. How about we just go flat tax, no breaks/deductions (or very little at least). Something like everyone pays 10% fed, whatever that totals to is what the fed budget is. Oh that’s not enough to fund all your bullshit pet projects? Too bad, draw the cut line like the rest of us who understand basic finances do.
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Are you able to actively read, or do you just see a few trigger words and hit reply? I clearly said it was not an indicator of a bunch of FWA, but it is accounting ineptitude at the most basic level, which is very concerning.
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Maybe LLWS, the approach doesn’t look unstable (but who knows at this point). Incredible everyone got out.
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$4.7T in federal untracked payouts. Doesn’t mean that’s all FWA, but it does at least demo the complete incompetence of the federal gov. The gov is managing our money like children, some of them with sinister intent.
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The top 1% pay nearly 50% of federal taxes, top 10% pay over 75%, and the bottom 50% (I say again, HALF of tax payers) pay less than 3% of total federal taxes. The top 50% pay over 97% of the taxes. It is pure insanity and completely illogical to argue “the rich don’t pay their fare share.” But it’s a nice progressive talking point to be absorbed and repeated by ignorant, intellectually dishonest, and/or unintelligent people. Other related points… - We need to rein in spending on a historic scale. Should Medicare/SS be shuttered? Well I do believe we need a social safety net (we agree on that), but these are horribly ran programs, and as of now all of my SS witholdings across adult life are literal theft because the program will be completely insolvent and defunct by the time I’m of age…unless they fix it. We need a new system along with a SS sunset - I’m OK with taxes staying flat for a short time while we solve spending problems and reduce the deficit. But reality is we the people are currently being taxed 100s of billions that are paying for utter bullshit. Thats 100s of billions that need to be back in taxpayer pockets via cuts as soon as feasible. We can’t right the wrong of the past (because we need to reduce deficit), but we should at least start righting it ASAP (e.g. start with a clean slate) - General point: conservatives aren’t anti-tax, but we are anti-tax to fund bullshit the federal gov has no business funding, let alone managing/controlling. For example, Dept of Ed had a $238B budget in 2024…that dept shouldn’t exist at all and $238B is either not required by the gov (and therefore tax reduced) or I could see still collecting it to pay down deficit (again, for a short timeframe, not forever). That’s one example from a large sea of examples.
