Politics

My mentor was a federal employee. He, and his team, worked odd hours. I would put in my 8 hours as a contractor and then go to his lab and work with him and his team until midnight or later.

Somewhere along the way, people noticed that his team didn’t have set hours and raised a fuss. They complained to the IG that he and his team were mis-reporting their hours.

This led to the IG sending people to investigate.

Now, this was in a secured area. During normal hours, you could just walk in after you should your badge. After hours, you had to sign in and out.

What this meant was that his team had security logs showing when they left for the night. And with a bit of work, they also had the time when people got to work.

After a thorough investigation, they found that yes, the team was misreporting their hours.

They were underreporting by 10 to 15 hours per week.

For me, it didn’t make any difference. I was on salary to the contractor. The time I spent with my mentor, working on projects for the government, were not billable hours. I didn’t care. I learned astonishing things.

Our system administrators were a pair of very sharp ladies. They arrived on time and they left on time. During their 8 hours, they worked constantly. I never felt like they gave less than 100%. When they needed to work late, they did.

Others I worked with were the same way. They gave their 8 hours and left. We got what we were paying for.

Some scientists over worked too.

Then there were the “slackers”. They arrived at work exactly on time. They went to their desks, were seen, then went to the restroom for their morning dump. This lasted anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes.

Subsequently, they went and did a bit of work before it was time for morning break. After the morning break, they had a pee smoke break. Then lunch, then a bit of work, then home, exactly on time.

Total time working, maybe an hour and a half.

A former friend worked for the state government. He was proud of the fact that he got paid for 8 hours of work per day, but on a normal day, he only spent about 2 hours working. The rest of the time he was doing own time projects/stuff.

Now, sometimes people look like they are cheating, but they aren’t really.

We had a group of scientists that looked lazy. They would get to work and sit around talking, reading the paper, for anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour or two. Then they would get busy pouring over results for a couple of hours. Then they would have another long gab session.

After that, they would spend a bit of time putzing with their program before telling the program to “run”.

They would twiddle their thumbs doing nothing until quitting time.

They were incredibly productive. They submitted a run before they left for the day. That would run overnight. If they had the parameters right, the run would complete shortly after they got to work. They would then analyze the results and submit the next run.

On Fridays, they would submit jobs that would run all weekend long. That made Mondays look like they were goofing off for an extended time as they waited for the runs to complete.

Their work was so important that it justified a major computer upgrade. The new computer was 4 times as fast. What used to take them 16 hours of run time now only took 4 hours. They should now be able to get two or three runs per day done.

Nope. With the faster computer, they were able to get more detailed results in the same 16-hour run time. They adjusted to the increased speed by answering more of the question more accurately.

All of this is to say, when I see former federal employees screaming about being fired, my heart gives a little thump of happiness. If they are good or needed, they will be rehired. In the meantime, learn to code. I hear COBOL is a good choice.

Whenever I see a motion for a TRO, Preliminary Injunction or a Stay, the opinion of the court always includes a reference to —Winter V. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 172 L. Ed. 2d 249 (2008).

These are known as the “Winter Factors”. They must be addressed in order by the court before granting any of the above.

The first factor is the likelihood of success on the merits. Is the person requesting the TRO, PI or Stay going to win the case in the end? If it is more likely than not, then the first factor has been met.

The second factor is the question of the amount and type of harm being done. The key phrase is irreparable harm. In short, this means that the harm cannot be redressed by throwing money at it. All violations of Constitutionally protected rights are considered irreparable harm. You will never again have that opportunity at that moment of time with those people listening back again.

The third factor is the balance of equities. Who will be most harmed whether the motion is granted or not granted. If the motion being granted will force a business to close, while not granting it will impose an eyesore, the balance of equities’ favorers not granting the motion.

The final factor is what is in the best interest of the public. The public has no interest in enforcing unconstitutional laws. This always favors The People. The state will often argue that “keeping the public safe” is the correct scale to use for determining what is in the publics best interests.

The court did not use the Winter Factors.

And this is why she is using the Nken instead of Winter To be able to discount the likelihood of success because of the amount of harm. In other words, instead of having to prove they are likely to win on the merits, the plaintiffs have chosen to prove that they might be horribly harmed if some hypothetical comes true.

Yeah, that doesn’t make much sense to me.

IANAL. My opinion is that the first question to be resolved is if the APA law(s) passed by congress limiting the power of the President are constitutional. If they are not constitutional, then they must be vacated and there is no cause for the case.

Instead, the court assumes the APA overrides the authority granted to the President under the Constitution. She then turns the Winter standard on its head.

Even though the text reads To establish a likelihood of success on the merits, a plaintiff need not show that success is an absolute certainty. It need only make a showing that the probability of … prevailing is better than fifty percent.

The plaintiff bears the burden. Not the defendant. This judge says it is the States that bear the burden.

The gist of this is that the courts are planning to ignore the Constitutional issues as much as possible and instead base their opinions on laws that are unconstitutional.

A hearing was held on Friday. I expect the judge to issue an order regarding the Preliminary Injunction on Monday.

The TRO expired on Friday, so the judge will either issue an order regarding the case. If she is going to go rogue, she will want to have that done on Monday to stop the President from doing his duty. If she wants to respect the constitution, she will issue an order denying the preliminary injunction.

In my businesses, I sometimes had a bookkeeper. She would receive the bills, make entries in the books, then bring me checks to sign to pay those bills.

I could also tell her to issue a check to somebody or some business. It was never her job to tell me not to pay that person, nor to verify if that entity was supposed to get the money. It was my job to make sure that when I told her to pay an entity, that entity should be paid, and how much.

She was supposed to tell me “no”, only if it would run afoul of the law or if we didn’t have the cash for it. If it meant we would be short later, she still did it.

The Bureau of Fiscal Service (BFS) is that bookkeeper for the Federal Government. They are tasked with making payments. They are not tasked with verifying that the payment should be made.

The decision to make a payment comes from other entities within the bureaucracy.

These payment files are checked against a list of “don’t pay”. If the recipient of the payment is on any of those lists, the payment is held. The agency that sent the payment file is responsible for determining if the payment is proper.

In the best of worlds, this would mean that no payments went to bad actors.

Now consider the case of the President issuing an Executive Order stopping payments to purple people eaters. There are dozens of agencies that send money to purple people eaters. All of those agencies are responsible for stopping payment files from going through to pay purple people eaters.

The BFS receives a payment file to send a payment to a PPE. If that PPE is not on the do not pay list, they will send the payment to that PPE. If the PPE is on a no pay list, the payment is held and the agency is informed.

If that agency sends back “pay it”, the BFS pays it. And the PPE gets money, regardless of what the President ordered.

When the bureaucracy is working with the President, every agency would have heard the “stop payments to PPEs” and would have done so. Any payment files that were already sent might be called back or stopped. If the BFS flags a payment as going to a PPE, everybody says “good job”.

If the bureaucracy is at odds with the President, they ignore the EO and do whatever the hell they want. If BFS flags any payments, they just order them paid.

If some agencies are attempting to obey the President, there can still be others that are not.

Worse, in many cases, contracts are let and budgeted. Some low level GS-2 with TDS can order a payment on a contract they control, and it just gets paid. Even if all of his bosses have told him “no”.

The President has ordered that no more payments to PPEs be made. To make this happen, he can either send people who are willing to obey him to every agency and every desk where somebody can send a payment to a PPE.

Or, he can send a few people to the BFS, and they can analyze each payment file as it comes in, check to see if it is a PPE payment.

Watching the bookkeepers doesn’t mean that the bookkeepers are doing something “wrong”, it is just the proper chock point in the flow of money.

The argument being made by these former treasury officials is that “career officials” are non-partisan and can be trusted to do the right thing.

For decades, BFS has been staffed by nonpartisan career employees led by nonpartisan career official…

There appears to be a claim without evidence that these workers are nonpartisan. At least they left off the “nonpartisan” when describing the fiscal assistant secretary, their boss.

They claim that all these nonpartisan career employees have undergone a security screening. Screening is one of those weasel words we see people use when they want the reader to think one thing when it isn’t true.

When I purchase a firearm, I fill out a 4473 and a “background check” is performed. This is a type of “security screening”. Having undergone a “thorough security screening” does not mean that this person has a clearance. If they had clearances, the brief would have said they have clearances.

This is intended to make it seem that the DOGE team’s actual clearances are not as thorough or complete as the BFS security screening. The reality is that any real clearance is likely better than the screenings these people got.

There is more, I’ll leave you with Grok’s explanation, it isn’t bad.

You might have heard that the DoJ is suing Hochul and James. This is not quite true. They are being sued in their official capacity. So the Governor, Attorney General, and head of the DMV of New York state are being sued.

What is the suit about?

New York will give a license to illegal aliens. I am not sure how that works, but they do.

The license indicates that the person is an illegal alien. As an illegal alien, they have extra rights under New York law.

In particular, the “Green Light” law requires the DMV to inform the illegal alien anytime the feds request information about them from the DMV.

Things are happening.

Never attribute to malice, that which can be adequately explained by stupidity, Never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake., Your enemy is not stupid.

In 2016, I was listening to Ben Shapiro, he had a hate on for Trump. He would often say something to the effect, “The people who think Trump is playing 4D chess are wrong.”

I think I liked his analysis better when he was anti-Trump. He is all in this time around.

I do think that Trump was attempting to play chess during his first term. Unfortunately, people kept taking his pieces and knocking over the board. He lost.

Trump 2.0 is moving fast. He is moving so fast that the left can’t keep up. We can’t keep up. I wake up, go on X and look for what happened in the last 8 hours. And I’m often surprised.

As Second Amendment activists, we know exactly how the game will be played. We know that states that are anti-gun are going to pass regulations to infringe on The People. We know that the rogue lower courts will rule in favor of the state. We know that any relief will be blocked. We know that it will take years to get even one case decided.

Since June 2022, we have not seen a single 2A win. Every win in the lower courts has been halted at the circuit level. Every “temporary restraining order” has been upheld against us. Every preliminary injunction has been stayed, against us.

We have not won a single battle yet.

That doesn’t mean we aren’t winning. It means that this is a war, not a battle. We have to fight. We shall go to the end. We shall fight in the Ninth, we shall fight in the Seventh and Second, we shall fight in the Forth, we shall fight to the Supreme Court. We shall never surrender. With apologies to Winston Churchill.

Trump 2.0 came into office with a bang. The left was working hard to show a “peaceful transfer of power”, so they could club the right with the events of J6th.

But Donald hit the ground running. I believe he signed over 200 Executive Orders on his first day. Held multiple press conferences and attended a ball. I’m tired just thinking about his day.

There were surprises in those Executive Orders. The biggest for me was that everything was done right. When he announced the formation of DOGE, I was skeptical.

I “knew” that it would be challenged and DOGE would be devolved because it didn’t come through Congress.

I was wrong. He out played me as I looked over his shoulder. He didn’t create DOGE out of thin air. He renamed an existing agency. He then told the new agency to go do their job, with Elon leading it.

The promises he made, I expected to take months to accomplish. He was keeping promises within minutes of taking office. And not in ceremonial ways.

He issued an Executive Order giving the US AG 30 days to report what to do about the anti-2A situation within the Federal government. Last month, I would have considered this to be a shot fired over the bow of the enemy. I would have expected results sometime in late 2026.

Today, I expect the report to hit his desk in 20 some days. I expect actions to happen the same day. This is the speed that Trump is moving at.

As I said, in the Second Amendment advocacy space, we know what is going to happen. How do we know? We’ve seen it too many times in the past.

Trump 2.0 is out playing the left in so many areas. Why should I assume he messed up with these court cases?

When the state is fighting The People, they want things to move as slowly as possible.

The case in New York was filed at 9pm on Friday. The TRO was in place by 1AM Saturday morning. The TRO was modified by 5PM Monday.

Having set out the limits, the Trump administration has provided documentation to the court by 4PM on Tuesday to make sure that DOGE people will still have access. They have taken the “loophole” opening and driven a train through it.

They are obeying the letter of the TRO while doing what needs to be done. They are preparing to take this to the next level.

I believe they will attempt to combine multiple cases from rogue courts, headed by political provocateurs. These combined cases will be taken straight to the Supreme Court.

To put a since of speed on this, the case I’m following is averaging 10 new docket entries per day. At this pace, I should be tired of this case in the next 2 days.

If you have had the misfortune of listening to the democrats rant about “constitutional crisis” or “illegal actions”, it is time to take a long hard look at what Donald Trump is actually doing.

I believe that one of the problems that Trump 1.0 had was that he came into office thinking it was another corporate takeover. Something he had done multiple times. He brought his lawyers with him.

Those lawyers were not prepared for the conflict, the war that was going to be waged against Trump.

Having spent the last few years reading court cases, listening to lawyers pontificate about cases, I have learned that there are different types of lawyers. Some are good at one thing and horrible at others.

Trump 1.0’s people were not ready to take on the swamp.

Trump 2.0 has hit the ground running. And he is trolling his opposition like the master he is.

So consider this, as a state lawyer, Trump has no power to fire Letitia James. She is not within the chain of command.

On the other hand, for her to do her job, she needs access to federal resources.

Trump revoked her security clearances. He has also banned her from all Federal buildings.

Her fangs have just been pulled.

He is yanking clearances left and right. This is a good thing. The less access these people have, the less damage they can do to our country.

Consider these two posts:

If you read the comments, you can see exactly how I feel. This is what we voted for.

Here is the same information, posted by a democrat.

Being a little short of ideas today, I went to the well again. X never fails to deliver.

I have seen so many lists of Republican wins that when this showed up in my feed, I just read it.

And what I read sounded like a win to me. I went to see which of the people I was following posted this wonderful list.

It was David Hogg. He posted this thinking it was a win. He is the gift that just keeps on giving.

Yes, the feature image is AI generated. Grok made it for me.

Somehow, they managed to talk for 30 hours straight in a 24-hour day.

It is unconstitutional to create a law targeting a person.

The acting secretary of Education will give the letter all the attention it is worth. About nothing.

They admit it is just a delay tactic.

Good, let’s find out if they should be receiving funds, if they are supposed to receive funds, let’s get the money flowing again. If they aren’t supposed to be receiving funds, great! We’re done.

We win.

Protecting Second Amendment Rights

Trump’s statement was questioning DEI.

He, and many of us on the right, believe that DEI means hiring unqualified people. If the criteria for hiring includes anything that is something about the person which is immalleable, then it is unacceptable.

Years ago, we hired a woman to do technical writing. Having read some of her non-technical work, I expected this would work out. When she started submitting her work to me, I red penned it.

This hurt her feelings.

It hurt her feelings so much that she went to HR to complain about how mean I was to her.

The answer, use a green pen.

She wasn’t getting any better. My partner and I had a lunch meeting to discuss what to do with her.

She had graduated from law school but had failed the bar.

He was terrified, rightly so, that she would sue us if we fired her. We were afraid that she would use her status as a “woman” to claim that she was fired because she was a woman, not because she couldn’t do the job.

We agreed to move her to a different part of the company, where she would not do as much harm. It didn’t really help.

There was a lot more having to do with her, up to and including hiring a new HR person to fire her without fear.

She wasn’t hired because she was female, she was kept on because she was female.

At that time, we would have loved to have hired a black, female, physically disabled, capable person. Why? Because all the highly skilled positions in our company were white males. Those were the people who applied, those were the people that had the merit. Those were the people we hired.

Affirmative Action and DEI have caused significant harm to our country. Removing it from our culture is a good thing.

Chris Murphy says the quiet part out loud, and doesn’t even realize it.

He immediately went to “stopping DEI” is an attack on women and blacks. He is admitting that he believes that women and black cannot qualify when there is a merit-based hiring policy in place.

This is why only leftists believe that minorities, PoC are to stupid or lazy or broke to be able to get a voter ID.

For the last 4+ years, I’ve been hearing about the horrible things that illegal aliens have been doing. Rape, murder, kidnapping, child rape, taking over apartment complexes.

The “eating the pets” might be true, or it might not.

The joke of “there are no stray cats near the Chinese Restaurant” has a reason.

What made me sick was the lack of response by law enforcement. There were politicians who showed up to say, “Nothing to see here.” There were politicians who showed up to beg law enforcement to do something.

What didn’t show up were the cops.

Three days into Trump 2.0 and it is obvious that ICE knew where to go and whom to pick up. Outstanding!

Listening to neighbors expressing loud gratitude to the cops is another good sign. They would not be making a sound if they thought those illegals would be back before dark.

I’m liking Trump 2.0.