Authored by James Varney via RealClearInvestigations,

As Elon Musk and his tech team urge their fellow Americans to become “domestic auditors” to help rein in federal spending, people have been encouraged to use the Treasury Department’s usaspending.gov website to identify and track government finance.

But usaspending.gov is wrong on the biggest picture, RealClearInvestigations (RCI) found.

The total amount of spending across “all agencies,” as recorded at usaspending.gov, appears to be 50 percent higher than most experts interviewed for this article think it actually was.

In Fiscal Year 2024, for instance, the website pegs total spending at $9.7 trillion, when several experts said it was probably around $6.5 trillion. No one could explain the much bigger figure. Officials with usaspending.gov conceded to RCI that their totals were wrong and said the error, which shows up in similar fashion for the last five fiscal years would be fixed soon. They offered neither an explanation for their higher total nor an estimate of what it should be. Two weeks later, the erroneous figures remain.

Budget experts say the website’s seeming multi-trillion-dollar error illustrates a core challenge Musk and his colleagues at the Department of Government Efficiency face as they try to reduce Washington’s spending. In a twist on the classic Washington line, the problem is not just following the money but finding it in the first place. The federal government has become so big and so expensive that even experts have trouble navigating the morass of contracts, awards, grants, loans, and other items that have transformed the U.S. spreadsheet into a labyrinth pitted with dead ends and rabbit holes.

“When you see the process has become so arcane even I don’t claim these are real, hard numbers, then you know the process is definitely and irreparably FUBAR,” said David Ditch, using the acronym for “fouled up beyond all repair.” 

He spent years poring over federal budgets and spending at the conservative Heritage Foundation before moving this month to the Economic Policy Innovation Center.

Musk’s job may strike everyday Americans as ordinary in the sense that he’s trying to balance accounts, but Washington is a different animal, and several experts told RCI it stays that way on purpose. The complexity and layers Musk’s team has encountered are a feature, not a bug, according to this view.

“Federal government spending is nebulous and almost designed to be that way because no one person benefits from it being straightforward,” said Lydia Mashburn Newman, a managing director at the American Institute for Economic Research. 

“No one is trying to get a holistic picture of what this or that agency is doing and the way money gets appropriated is very fragmented.”

Newman has seen the beast from two sides, as a congressional aide and federal worker, and she says the comprehensive nature of DOGE is something new under the sun for the Washington bureaucracy.

“There is no total view of the budget. Congress simply takes last year’s number and changes it, usually to a larger number,” she said.

“So the unique thing about DOGE is that it is providing a top-to-bottom audit. It’s not just asking if the books balance, but what is the money actually spent on.”

While Musk initially promised to cut some $2 trillion from the federal budget—and news accounts have focused on his efforts to reduce the federal workforce—DOGE’s real accomplishment so far has been to bring attention to the federal government’s broken accounting systems.

Despite the hue and cry raised over DOGE, previous alarms have been rung by some other agencies only to be ignored.

On Jan. 16, four days before Biden vacated the White House, the Government Accounting Office said it was “unable to provide an opinion on the reliability of the federal government’s consolidated financial statements for fiscal year 2024 and 2023.”

The Office of Management and Budget has also flunked six of the 24 departments and agencies it looked at, including Labor and Education. The Defense Department has failed seven consecutive audits, while the Department of Education hasn’t gotten a “clean” opinion for three years.

It is hard to pass an audit when you don’t follow the basic rules of accounting. Musk reported that he was having difficulty tracing $4.7 trillion in federal spending because the Treasury Access Symbol (TAS)—a code that links payments to budget items—was allowed to be optional for years and often left blank. In response, Musk tweeted, the Treasury Department now requires “all outgoing government payments have a payment categorization code, which is necessary in order to pass financial audits. … All payments must also include a rationale for the payment in the comment field, which is currently left blank. Importantly, we are not yet applying ANY judgment to this rationale, but simply requiring that SOME attempt be made to explain the payment more than NOTHING!”

At the Treasury’s usaspending.gov, which experts use regularly and consider valid despite the big topline errors, nearly $150 billion is slotted every year into an “unreported data” box.

While Musk’s team is reportedly using advanced artificial intelligence systems to comb federal records, it will face a different challenge when tackling the federal employee retirement system. DOGE will confront the “sinkhole of bureaucracy”: records still kept on paper and processed almost entirely by hand by some 700 workers who toil 230 feet below ground in an abandoned limestone mine in northwestern Pennsylvania.

The government’s use of antiquated systems helps explain some of Musk’s team’s biggest mistakes so far. This month, they claimed that millions of deceased people—some listed as more than 300 years old—are receiving social security benefits. It turns out DOGE probably misread the data sets, which includes millions of dead people not receiving benefits, in the antiquated, 1960s-era computer system Social Security still used to disperse more than $1.3 trillion to some 68 million people last year.

Musk conceded errors will be made, but experts told RCI some are impossible to avoid when trying to get a visible net around the surging ocean of federal government spending.

“Complexity isn’t an accident; it’s a consequence of a government that has grown far beyond its core functions and is tied down by a self-serving bureaucracy and public-sector union power,” said Romina Boccia, director of budget and entitlement policy at the libertarian Cato Institute.

“That complexity isn’t just an inconvenience—it shields waste, fuels inefficiency, and makes reform harder,” she said. 

“A government that has grown too big and too far-reaching makes it difficult to track what’s spent, let alone rein it in.”

Simply getting the information that Musk and some popular domestic auditors like DataRepublican have made public so far is an accomplishment. In the past, including Trump’s first term, efforts to put all the government’s financial laundry hanging on the line were met with indifference or resistance, according to Newman.

“All this seems ordinary to most Americans, but before Musk sent his teams in to get information, it was very time-consuming to get data,” she said. “In Washington, that’s just protocol: You ask for something, and it could take months to get. But DOGE, in partnership with OMB, is no longer allowing the stone-rolling that plagued the last Trump administration.”

One of the biggest challenges DOGE might face involves its effort to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse. As RCI reported last year, “Since 2003, when the government first started tracking improper payments, it is estimated that they have added up to more than $2.7 trillion, according to paymentaccuracy.gov, the public website where government agencies report their numbers.” That total is almost certainly a low-ball figure because the feds often rely on states, which also disburse money and often provide spotty accounting of their spending.

That $2.7 trillion figure does include $764 billion in improper payments paid during the first three years of the Biden administration to the wrong recipients, for the wrong reasons, or in the wrong amounts. The federal government estimates that nearly 6 percent of its total spending went to improper payments during Biden’s presidency, according to OpenTheBooks.com. During its first four-year term, the Trump administration issued an estimated $673 billion in improper payments, which were about 5 percent of government outlays, the watchdog group said.

Yet that money has proven extremely difficult to claw back.

An analysis by the Associated Press, for example, “found that fraudsters potentially stole more than $280 billion in COVID-19 relief funding; another $123 billion was wasted or misspent. Combined, the loss represents 10 percent of the $4.2 trillion the U.S. government has so far disbursed in COVID relief aid.”

All that DOGE has done so far has dominated headlines and infuriated an entrenched elite in Washington’s bureaucratic warrens. But Trump remains a steadfast supporter of Musk’s work thus far, and in typical fashion promises more to come: “In less than a single month, the Department of Government Efficiency has already saved over 55—this is just a short period of time—$55 billion, and we’re just getting started.”

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

“The notion that Europe is able to pose a military threat to Russia does not even qualify as trashy propaganda for sub-zero IQs.” 

– Pepe Escobar

“The left became hideously, ostentatiously, unapologetically corrupt (as ruling parties tend to do). They sold out bigtime and got bigtime rich. You want to know why none of them want to cut waste anymore? because they’re the ones stealing it.” 

– El Gato Malo on Substack

In my quiet backwater of the Hudson Valley, an early spring drives all creation violently. The peaceful sleep of winter ends in twitches and spasms. The ground breaks open like one big egg and all living things emerge: green shafts of the crocus, scuttling sowbugs, slithering snakes, sleek garlic shoots, ‘possums in the compost bucket, ticks are back on the cat’s face, the ice in the river cracks in frightening booms, hungry songbirds infest the bare roadside lilacs, tiny voices trill darkly in the woods, a lone early moth in its first rapture of flight meets the pitiless windshield.

You can feel it. The northern hemisphere of this planet shudders, rattles, and rolls into the most tumultuous spring in memory. Everything is in play, turning, turning, while forgotten consequence rises on vengeful wings like an aggrieved god of yore. Nothing will be as it was. A most wicked spell has been broken. What does it feel like to be able to think again?

Messrs Trump and Putin sincerely seek to end the age’s stupidest war in Europe’s dumbest country, while the European Union and its outlier Great Britain go ostentatiously more insane every week. They bethink themselves storybook conquerors out of some retrograde history written by gibbering globalists. Macron and Friedrich Merz propose a grand invasion of Russia, as if Napoleon and Hitler had never existed, and they aim to get it done on about three days’ worth of ammunition. You first, Emmanuel, Merz insists. Non, non, pas de tout, Macron demurs with a deep bow.

Keir Starmer, Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, and PM of an empire in late-stage sclerosis, does jumping jacks with pom-poms across the channel to cheer on France and Germany in their quixotic quest to conquer of Russia. “Go get’um lads!” he cries. Think of Sir Keir as a Monty Python archbishop as written by George Orwell under the direction of Franz Kafka — there’s what’s left of your jolly old England!

Meanwhile Ursula von der Leyen rehearses her part as the wannabe Joan of Arc in this political psychodrama. Her sweet grandmother’s face will smile placidly as the flames tickle her penitent’s robe. She was born for this. A million deracinated Congolese perform the twerk mazurka around her flaming pyre while the muezzins sing out the call to prayer from every minaret around Brussels. Her Hanoverian ancestors weep for Ursula through the mists of the centuries. Was Satan himself behind the contract she signed with Pfizer for as much as 4.6 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccine at a cost of €71-billion? Where did the money come from and where exactly did it go, and what did Ursula finally have to show for it? The European Court of Auditors had a look at this tangled web and blew their lunches all over the rue Alcide De Gasperi in Luxembourg City. Snails, champignon, and shards of puff pastry on the ancient stone steps. A disgrace.

You are not compelled to understand all these occult machinations roiling Europe at the moment, except to see that the continent wants to turn itself into the world’s premiere slaughterhouse once again after a seventy-year hiatus from the exciting frolics of World War Two. Almost everyone who lived through that episode is dead now. The cultural memory has faded. Europe is sick of lollygagging in the café, nibbling effete palmier and tartelette. They apparently want to wade across the chilly Vistula River and race to the east, like berserkers, hacking off Slavic limbs and heads along the way.

No, it is not true that Donald Trump’s ancestors invented the trumpet, but shrill brassy notes resound all over America these days as his enemies ululate and rend their garments. Liz Warren is yelling from streetcorners like her head’s going to blow plumb off her shoulders. Randi Weingarten was keening on MSNBC like an oboe with a broken reed. The entire two month-long spectacle has been a musical extravaganza. The President and his sidekick, Elon, keep coming at the country’s resident blob-of-evil like pit-bulls on a pack of wild hogs. Shreds of bacon have been flying all over the Beltway. I could have told you years ago that the blob was mostly lard and little meat. Now you know. It’s a sight to behold for the ages.

Yet, strange things keep happening day by day.

The Democratic Party’s main grifting engine, the USAID, was deconstructed weeks ago, yet we hear that just this week USAID workers were ordered to go back into their offices to shred all their documents. Did they have anything to hide, ya think?

Questions: 

1) federal janitors pried the nameplate off the building back in February, and we must suppose that somebody also locked the joint up, or what?.

2.) How did these former USAID workers propose to get in the building and do their dirty-work? 

3.) Why have we not heard that the FBI or the US Marshals Service was dispatched to prevent such a document shredding party?

I wouldn’t worry too much about those cheeky federal judges around the country declaring and ordering this-and-that on Mr. Trump’s campaign to fire federal workers and close down useless agencies. This is a last-gasp ultimate lawfare operation.

Let’s assume that Norm Eisen, Mary McCord, Marc Elias, and associates of theirs are the ringmasters in that circus. They will eventually be indicted for all manner of lawbreaking, possibly up to treason. And the SCOTUS will eventually put a sharp end to the judges’ monkeyshines. 

Judges do not administer executive action out of the executive branch. And Guess what: lawfare is not law. It’s just dirty-fighting dressed up in abstruse ceremonial language.

Via The Vigilant Fox,

Two decades ago, CBS aired a bombshell report on the flu shot, revealing a truth that health officials didn’t want to admit. Despite flu shot uptake among seniors skyrocketing from 15% to 65%, flu deaths continued to climb.

NIH scientists were devastated. They expected the data to confirm the vaccine’s effectiveness. But instead, their own research shattered that assumption. So they assumed other factors must be “masking the true benefits of the shots.”

However, as Sharyl Attkisson reported at the time, “No matter how they crunched the numbers, they got the same disappointing result. Flu shots have not reduced deaths among the elderly.”

WATCH:

Atkisson, the reporter in the above clip, later left mainstream news to become an independent journalist focused on exposing Big Pharma, government corruption, and mainstream media lies.

Going back to the story, the scientists looked at the flu shot data of other countries in hopes of finding more optimistic data. But what they found instead was “the same poor results in Australia, France, Canada, and the UK.”

You can read their disappointing study here.

Rather than re-evaluating their approach, health officials doubled down. The CDC refused to acknowledge the failure and instead proposed a “roundabout way” of protecting seniors. Their new strategy? Inject kids to “protect grandma.”

Sound familiar? They used the same playbook during COVID. When the pharmaceutical product didn’t work as promised, they pushed mass vaccination of children—not to protect them, but to “shield vulnerable adults.”

This strategy failed 20 years ago, yet they’re still pushing the same flawed tactic today—despite children having nothing to gain while taking all the risk.

This disturbing reality prompted Kurt Metzger of The Jimmy Dore Show to say, “If they were doing this 20 years ago, they managed to make the same mistake again. That’s a little bit hard to believe it’s a mistake.”

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

The anti-free speech movement in the United States was largely an outgrowth of higher education where viewpoint intolerance has taken hold of many schools. Indeed, intolerance and orthodoxy are often defended on the left in the name of tolerance and pluralism. Harvard Professor Timothy McCarthy is one of those voices demanding the removal of faculty with opposing views in the name of tolerance. He recently told New York University’s Washington Square News that any faculty who do not support “gender-affirming care” should be stripped of their academic titles and fired.

Many academics and citizens oppose “gender-affirming” policies on religious or other grounds. Some believe that school-enforced policies inhibit debate over gender dysphoria and the basis for various treatments and protections on both sides. McCarthy believes that no such debate should be allowed among faculty, declaring that “there’s a particular place in hell for academics who use their academic expertise and power to distort and do violence to people in the world.” He was targeting two professors at NYU who are affiliated with groups critical of surgical and chemical interventions for gender dysphoria.

Professor McCarthy offered the usual nod to free speech and academic freedom before eviscerating both in his comments. He admitted that “a level of suspicion and inquiry into medical practices is healthy,” but then dismissed such views as harmful and mere efforts to “poison the waters.”

There was a time when such intolerance was directed against the left and groups ranging from feminists to those in the LGBT community. Now, it has become a badge of honor, the expected bona fides that show the correctness and firmness of one’s views.

The irony is crushing. Harvard’s Kennedy School website states that McCarthy “was the first openly gay faculty member” at the public policy school “and still teaches the school’s only course on LGBTQ matters.” When I first went into teaching, I had friends who still remained in the closet out of fear that their sexual orientation would undermine their chances for tenure or advancement. Likewise, far-left academics associated with the critical legal studies (CLS) movement were viewed as “poisoning the waters” of higher education and rightfully blocked from teaching.

The left has now adopted the same intolerance and orthodoxy once used against it. Indeed, it has been far more successful in purging the faculty ranks of conservatives, libertarians, and dissenters. As we have previously discussed, Harvard is particularly notorious for this purging of both its faculty and student body.

This year, Harvard again found itself dead last among 251 universities and colleges in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) annual ranking.

The Harvard Crimson has documented how the school’s departments have virtually eliminated Republicans. In one study of multiple departments last year, they found that more than 75 percent of the faculty self-identified as “liberal” or “very liberal.”

Only 5 percent identified as “conservative,” and only 0.4% as “very conservative.”

According to Gallup, the U.S. population is roughly equally divided among conservatives (36%), moderates (35%), and liberals (26%).

So, Harvard has three times the number of liberals as the nation at large, and less than three percent identify as “conservative” rather than 35 percent nationally.

According to the last student survey, only 9 percent of the class identified as conservative or very conservative.

Notably, despite Harvard’s maintenance of an overwhelmingly liberal faculty and student body, even liberal students feel stifled at Harvard. Only 41 percent of liberal students reported being comfortable discussing controversial topics, and only 25 percent of moderates and 17 percent of conservatives felt comfortable in doing so.

Among law school faculty who donated more than $200 to a political party, 91 percent of the Harvard faculty gave to Democrats.

Professor McCarthy appears right at home in his public call for a further purging of faculty ranks.

This is an area that has deeply divided the country, as was evident in the last election. Higher education should play a critical role in that debate by allowing faculty and students to engage with each other in civil and substantive debate. Instead of spending so much time and effort trying to silence those with opposing views, the left could instead focus on refuting these claims. Instead, it is replicating that same pattern of cancellations, deplatformings and firings that marked the last decade. It is the same approach used against academics who questioned aspects of COVID policies including mask efficacy doubts, natural immunity theories, opposition to the closing of schools, opposition to the six-foot rule, and the lab theory on the virus’s origin. They were also removed from faculties and associations. Yet, many of these views have since been vindicated.

What was lost was not just free speech and academic freedom, but a rigorous debate that might have helped us avoid some of the costs of unsupported COVID policies. For example, some of our closest allies listened to skeptics on the need to close schools and opted to keep young children in school. They were able to avoid the massive educational and psychological costs that we incurred in this country. Much like Professor McCarthy, these skeptics were accused of “poisoning the waters” and spreading harmful ideas or disinformation.

There is no difference between the intolerance of figures like Professor McCarthy from those who once sought the same measures against liberals, homosexuals, or feminists. Now firmly in control of higher education, many on the left are using their power to win public debate through retribution, coercion, and attrition. In the process, they are destroying the very essense of higher education for not just our students but ourselves.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

Following Donald Trump’s imposition of 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, as well as retaliatory tariffs from Canada, trade across North America’s borders has suddenly become much more expensive.

This map, via Visual Capitalist’s Niccolo Conte, shows how much different U.S. states’ trade is impacted by these tariffs, by visualizing each state’s combined share of imports from Mexico and Canada in 2024.

The visualization uses data from the U.S. International Trade Administration.

Canada and Mexican Trade Partners

Canada and Mexico made up 28% of U.S. goods imports overall in 2024, but some states have a much higher or lower share of their imports coming from the country’s northern and southern neighbors.

In the table below is the data for each U.S. state’s combined share of imports from Canada and Mexico, which has the state of Montana leading the pack at 93%.

Following Montana in terms of import dependence on Canada and Mexico are Maine (72%), Vermont (71%), and North Dakota (71%), all states which share their northern border with Canada.

Montana’s high import dependence is almost entirely on Canada, which alone makes up 92% of the state’s imports. The Treasure State’s shared border with the province of Alberta and its three oil refineries makes it a perfect importer for Canadian crude oil. 76% of Montana’s imports from Canada were oil and gas.

Looking at southern states dependent on Canadian and Mexican trade, Texas (49%) and Oklahoma (56%) stand out. Despite being much closer to the southern border, Oklahoma is a similar case to Montana, with 50% of the state’s imports coming only from Canada and 79% of those imports being oil and gas.

Texas (the second-largest state economy in the U.S.) is instead much more dependent on imports from Mexico, which make up 40% of the state’s imports overall. The top goods Texas imported from Mexico in 2024 were motor vehicles and their parts at 23%, followed by computer equipment at 22%.

To learn more about the effects of Trump’s tariffs on his North American neighbors, check out this graphic on the areas in Canada that have the highest exposure to U.S. tariffs.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and Elon Musk must give records to attorneys general that sued them, in addition to answering written questions, a federal judge ruled on March 12.

The U.S. government must give New Mexico’s attorney general and 12 other state prosecutors who sued it numerous documents, including those that DOGE and Musk created or edited regarding the termination of federal workers, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled.

Chutkan largely granted discovery requests from the attorneys general, who say that the actions by Musk as DOGE’s public face are unconstitutional in part because he was not confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

After the judge in February turned down their bid to block DOGE from accessing government data, the attorneys general said Chutkan should grant expedited discovery so they could confirm that Musk and DOGE “are directing actions within federal agencies that have profoundly harmed the States and will continue to harm them” as they prepare a motion for a preliminary injunction.

Government lawyers opposed the motion. “The material the States seek is not relevant to their claims; nor should the Court require such discovery on an expedited timeframe before it has even had a chance to adjudicate the Government’s motion to dismiss,” the lawyers said.

Chutkan said she was granting expedited discovery because it was “reasonable and necessary to evaluate Plaintiffs’ request for injunctive relief.”

She turned aside government arguments that expediting discovery to support the forthcoming injunction motion was not a sufficient reason to speed up discovery.

“Courts in this jurisdiction … have consistently found that preliminary injunction proceedings are exactly the kind of circumstance warranting expedited discovery,” Chutkan said.

The case centers on DOGE’s authority or purported lack thereof, and whether it has been working with or directing agencies to cut personnel and agreements.

In one filing in the case, a White House official said that Musk, a special adviser to President Donald Trump, was not a DOGE employee and did not have the authority to make decisions. Trump later said that Musk was in charge of DOGE, while former consultant Amy Gleason was named as its acting administrator.

DOGE has been assisting various agencies that have terminated tens of thousands of workers since Trump was sworn in on Jan. 20, according to Trump, Musk, and agency officials.

Under the new order, which does not apply to Trump, the government must hand over documents on obtaining access to and making changes to federal databases, lists, and summaries regarding the cancellation of federal agreements, as well as documents created or edited in relation to the termination of federal workers.

The deadline for discovery is 21 days.

DOGE must also identify every individual who has served as the administrator of DOGE, or the functional head of DOGE since Trump took office; every person who is part of DOGE; and all agencies for which DOGE or Musk canceled or directed the cancellation of grants and contracts or the termination of employees, the judge ruled.

Chutkan denied the plaintiffs’ request for two depositions, which the attorneys general said would be planned based on the government’s discovery production.

“[E]ven though Plaintiffs agree not to seek to depose President Trump or Musk, the court recognizes that depositions impose a heavier burden than written discovery,” the judge said. “If Defendants fail to adequately respond to Plaintiffs’ written discovery, Plaintiffs may renew their requests for depositions.”

This is the second order this week requiring DOGE to produce records. A different federal judge on March 10 ordered DOGE to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request, finding that it has been acting independently from the president.

A third U.S. judge in February ordered a DOGE worker to sit for a deposition in a separate case that also seeks to block DOGE from accessing some government systems.

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Well, well, well… look what crawled out of a time capsule.

In a now viral clip, dating from 2011, Barack Obama is pimping his very own “Campaign to Cut Waste,” a quaint little crusade to stop taxpayers from funding crap like a website for forest rangers who apparently moonlight as SoundCloud rappers.

“I’ll put their jams on my iPod,” Obama smirks, “but I’m not paying for their bandwidth.”

Joe Biden, then just Obama’s loyal sidekick, got saddled with the gig, which is probably why nothing ever came of it.

OMG. Obama was a Nazi too. pic.twitter.com/rN6DuombwL

— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) March 14, 2025

Elon Musk himself noted “Obama sounds exactly like DOGE!!”

Obama sounds exactly like @DOGE!! https://t.co/k92s04pJdY

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 14, 2025

Indeed, in June 2011 Obama signed Executive Order 13576 aiming to streamline government operations and save billions, including through selling excess federal property.

Does this sound familiar? Obama announces his own ‘DOGE’ in 2011. Making the government more efficient is a bad thing now though. Got it? pic.twitter.com/oXpPjd8AQc

— m o d e r n i t y (@ModernityNews) March 14, 2025

Obama noted at the time “From the day I took office, I said that we would go through the federal budget line by line to cut out waste and make government more efficient. That’s what this executive order is about. We can’t wait for Congress to do this work. We can’t wait for them to get our fiscal house in order and make the investments we need to keep America great.”

Keep America what now?

He continued,”So today, I’m signing an executive order that will cut waste and promote more efficient spending across government agencies. We’re cutting what we don’t need so we can invest in what we do need.”

Obama added, “I asked all of my Cabinet Secretaries to take a hard look at their budgets and report back on wasteful and inefficient spending at their agencies. And what they found was that certain spending—like buying promotional water bottles, paying for unused cell phones, booking unnecessary travel—is unacceptable.”

So exactly what Trump and Musk are doing now then.

“We’re on track to save billions by selling off excess federal property,” Obama further urged, adding “the Vice President and I launched the Campaign to Cut Waste to root out misspent tax dollars across every agency and department… this order is one more step to make sure we’re delivering a government that’s efficient, effective, and accountable to the American people.”

But somehow now its fascist. OK?

Weird how no one called him Hitler.

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) March 14, 2025

All these democrats in 2010-2012 sound like they would be the number one supporters of DOGE

— Herb 🏴‍☠️ (@HerbNCheese) March 14, 2025

So the leftist pivot is now ‘this…’Obama did it sensibly, not with a chainsaw.’

He did it with tact and skill and you posed with a chainsaw for a photo op while some people suffered from your decisions. Perception matters and optics matter. I don’t disagree with what you’re working on but consider the execution and methodology in which things were…

— Finance for Fine Ants (@Fine_Ants) March 14, 2025

Ahhhh, got ya.

RIP fiddlin foresters pic.twitter.com/nTVG84YqU5

— Flappr (@flapprdotnet) March 14, 2025

Maybe the fiddlin’ foresters were not the most pressing thing to go after?

No one is upset with the idea of DOGE.

They are upset that you are causing mass hysteria all at once. Too many moving pieces and making a lot of mistakes.

— Underdog Specialist (@UnderdogSpecial) March 14, 2025

They certainly seem upset with DOGE.

Obama wasn’t cutting agencies in half or almost in their entirety. He was computerizing processes, getting rid of paperwork/paper files – nothing like DOGE.

— Eric Storm (@starmission) March 14, 2025

PIVOT!

There’s nothing wrong with DOGE in principle. What’s in question is whether it’s being applied correctly

— 🚨 Katherine Brodsky (@mysteriouskat) March 14, 2025

*  *  *

Your support is crucial in helping us defeat mass censorship. Please consider donating via Locals or check out our unique merch. Follow us on X @ModernityNews.

China’s top office on Hong Kong affairs reposted sharp criticism of Hong Kong-based conglomerate CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd.’s deal with a BlackRock-led consortium to purchase Panama Canal ports. The commentary from the local paper Ta Kung Pao cited netizens who called the billionaire founder of the holdings company “spineless” and questioned which “side he should stand on,” according to Bloomberg.

It said that social media users have accused the conglomerate founded by billionaire Li Ka-shing of “spineless groveling,” ignoring China’s interests and “selling out all Chinese people” in the quick deal announced last week.

…

Faced with such a major event and a matter of great justice, the relevant companies should think twice, think carefully about the nature and crux of the issue, and think carefully about what position and side they should stand on,” the commentary said. -BBG

Last week, the BlackRock-led consortium agreed to purchase a controlling stake in CK Hutchison’s Panama ports for $19 billion. The Trump administration had highly publicized the Chinese-owned ports as a national security risk to US supply chains and the US military. Additionally, Panama holds a strategic position for Trump as he begins to revive hemispheric defense across the Americas.

David Blennerhassett, an analyst at Quiddity Advisors, noted that the BlackRock deal with CK Hutchison is a “massive complex deal, one that may take the better part of 2025 to complete; therefore gyrations in the share price will occur as deal specifics and various regulatory approvals are addressed.”

On Friday, CK Hutchison shares dropped 7% in Hong Kong trading.

Local paper Ta Kung Pao continued: “Faced with such a major event and a matter of great justice, the relevant companies should think twice, think carefully about the nature and crux of the issue, and think carefully about what position and side they should stand on.”

Bloomberg noted the port deal “involves only overseas assets” and is “unlikely to need Beijing’s sign-off.” 

Bloomberg Intelligence infrastructure analyst Denise Wong said the port deal is “widely perceived as commercially favorable for the company, valuing the port assets at the higher end of the industry range.”

CK Hutchison’s market capitalization has only increased by $5 billion following last week’s initial news release—just a fraction of the $19 billion the firm is expected to receive when the port deal is completed.

By Bas van Geffen, senior macro strategist of Rabobank

Brussels’ response to Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs has put the European Union in the US president’s crosshairs. Europe announced a 99-page list of American-made goods that may be subject to rebalancing tariffs from April 1, including motor cycles, food & agriculture products, and clothing.

President Trump, of course, was not amused. He claims that the EU has imposed “a nasty 50% tariff on whisky,” adding that the US will shortly counter this with “a 200% Tariff on all WINES, CHAMPAGNES, & ALCOHOLIC PRODUCTS” unless the EU removes its tariffs immediately.

Such a response was to be expected, after Canada’s earlier run-in with the American president. In his tariffs aimed specifically at Canada, President Trump had included a carve-out for energy imports, which would ‘only’ face a 10% tariff. That’s entirely in the US’ interest, as certain states rely heavily on Canadian energy. But Ontario also knows just how interconnected the US and Canadian power grids are. So, when Trump announced steel and aluminium duties earlier this week, Ontario threatened to levy export duties on electricity provided to the US.

The US President was equally dismayed at the Canadian response, threatening an additional 25% tariff on Canadian steel and aluminium. Both sides backed down eventually, and neither the Ontario’s export duty, nor the additional US tariff went into force. However, Canada’s counterbalancing tariffs on US imports remain into force.

Canadian and US officials had a “constructive” meeting yesterday, but the talks ended without any concrete results. Both sides will meet again next week.

As Trump alienates both the EU and Canada, the President’s two targets are getting more aligned. EC President Von der Leyen called for greater cooperation with “like-minded countries, such as […] Canada,” and according to one poll, Canadians see the EU overtaking the US as the country’s primary global ally in the next three to five years.

In fact, 44% of respondents, believes Canada should join the European Union. Brussels is “honored” by the poll, but added that it is a non-starter: only European states can apply for EU membership. But if Trump can rename bodies of water, who is to say where Europe begins or ends? The Eurovision Song Contest also includes Israel and even Australia!

All joking aside, is a hypothetical EU membership the safeguarding that Canada seeks? Yes, the European bloc has quite some power when it comes to trade and the size of its internal market. As long as the conflict remains purely trade-related, at least.

If Trump presses on with retaliatory tariffs in response to Europe’s rebalancing tariffs on the US’ original tariffs, there’s a good chance that Europe may respond to those 200% tariffs. Such a tariff supernova is bad, but what is Europe to do if Trump decides to, say, withdraw military support until the trade dispute is settled to his liking?

Rearming Europe is easier said than done, especially when Europe is in the midst of a trade war with the US. Even without that headwind, European procedures and regulation already make this a Herculean task. The urgency may be clear for European politicians, but members of national parliaments are still struggling with the costs involved with the European Commission’s plans– both in monetary terms, and the fear that it could encroach on countries’ sovereignty.

UMich inflation expectations exploded even higher in preliminary March data with medium-term views spiking to +3.9% – the highest since 1993…

Source: Bloomberg

There’s just one thing… it’s all Democrats…

Republicans expect very little inflation over the next five years but Democrats expect a surge to +4.6%…

Source: Bloomberg

Short-term expectations are even more divided with Democrats expecting inflation to explode to 6.5% this year while Republicans expect no inflation…

Source: Bloomberg

Overall, consumer sentiment declined significantly…

Source: Bloomberg

UMich notes: 

While current economic conditions were little changed, expectations for the future deteriorated across multiple facets of the economy, including personal finances, labor markets, inflation, business conditions, and stock markets. 

Many consumers cited the high level of uncertainty around policy and other economic factors; frequent gyrations in economic policies make it very difficult for consumers to plan for the future, regardless of one’s policy preferences.

But once again, it was all Democrats, who are now convinced that the US outlook has never been worse…

Source: Bloomberg

According to Democrats, this is the apocalypse, folks.

No really, Democrat expectations for the economy have NEVER been lower, including the global financial crisis and COVID. For Democrats, this is the 10th circle of hell.

What’s more, Democrats are boycotting spending to prop up Trump’s economy, and instead are sitting on cash… which according to them will be worth 6.5% less in one year as a result of runaway inflation.

It appears legacy media propaganda works after all…

Finally, the UMich (inflation expectations) data is dramatically different from all the other inflation surveys – including the New York Fed’s…

…which makes us wonder who exactly are UMich surveyors asking these questions to?