“Shoot one. Educate One hundred”

Can it be done? I doubt it’s possible short of fiscal collapse, but when the richest man in the world, who has fully supported getting the next President of the United States elected and who has been tasked with cutting waste out of the US government, is quoting Milton Friedman, there might be a chance.

Before that happens however, Trump and company are going to have move past bullshit like this:

It’s time to put the divisions of the past four years behind us. It’s time to unite, and we’re going to try. We’re going to try. We have to try. And it’s going to happen. Success will bring us together.

Ah huh. I’d like to think that Trump is not so naive as to believe that, especially after the last eight years of their operations against him. Canadian writer David Solway has a different suggestion for Trump:

It should be glaringly obvious that the political Left — in other words, the Democrat Party mafiosi, the Deep State apparatchiks, the rabid legacy media, the rout of decadent academics, the virago feminists, the celebrity cesspool, and a veritable generation of low-intelligence fellow-travelers — are not interested in the dream of reconciliation or the fata morgana of national unity, and never will be. To seek unity with the medullary haters of the Left, the tribe of professional hypocrites and radically disordered minds, is a policy destined to fail.

Despite Trump’s victory in the election Solway is a more than a little discouraged because he thinks that Trump still doesn’t get his enemy:

As Flynn counseled, this is no time for being nice or naively pursuing an accommodation with implacable antagonists, defamers, and saboteurs, as well as with imbeciles and lunatics, who will never under any circumstances cease to practice a destabilizing agenda. They must be defeated root and branch, brought under the hammer of the law where appropriate, and dismissed from the positions of authority they have abused if unity is ever to be even partially achieved. From a sensible perspective, there is no alternative.

True. Reason magazine has suggestions about cutting $2 trillion from the annual US Federal budget of $6.8 trillion, starting with an obvious fact:

The government managed to function at $4.4 trillion five years ago, and American civilization didn’t collapse. The economy was humming, wages were rising, and poverty was falling. 

As Reason points out, the sad truth is that the real budget cuts would have to fall on things like Social Security and Medicare, which he has, for years, sworn to defend and in which arguments he has prevailed now for three GOP nominations in a row. Still, they go with Milton Friedman:

The best way to cut $2 trillion out of the budget is to ax everything the federal government does that it shouldn’t be doing in the first place. It’s time we rediscovered the exercise of thinking critically about government and the role it should or shouldn’t play in our lives. 

Reason is not filled with hope:

If Musk is truly serious about fiscal discipline, he’ll advise the president-elect to eschew the headline policies he promised on the campaign trail. According to the Committee for a Responsible Budget, Trump’s proposed policies would add $7.7 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years, including $1.05 trillion of interest costs (those figures are net of new tariffs revenue)

However, single issue fanatics to one side…. there are other things that Trump could, and should, do to cut the State down to size, starting on day one:

  1. Re-issue 2020 executive order restoring the president’s authority to fire rogue bureaucrats.
  2. Overhaul federal departments and agencies, firing all of the corrupt actors in our National Security and Intelligence apparatus.
  3. Fundamentally reform the FISA courts, ensuring that corruption is rooted out.
  4. Establish a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to declassify and publish all documents on Deep State spying, censorship, and abuses of power.
  5. Launch a major crackdown on government leakers who collude with the media to create false narratives, pressing criminal charges when appropriate.
  6. Make every Inspector General’s Office independent from the departments they oversee, so that they do not become protectors of the deep state.
  7. Establish an independent auditing system to continually monitor our intelligence agencies to ensure that they are not spying on our citizens or running disinformation campaigns against the American people.
  8. Continue Trump administration effort to move parts of the federal bureaucracy outside of the Washington Swamp, just like President Trump moved the Bureau of Land Management to Colorado. Up to 100,000 government positions could be moved out of Washington.
  9. Ban federal bureaucrats from taking jobs at the companies they deal with and regulate, such as Big Pharma.
  10. Push for a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on members of Congress.

As this article says (and I hope but doubt that it’s true):

Trump is coming. It won’t be pretty for anyone who stands in his way or tries to thwart his plans.
…
More than 1,100 Americans from all 50 states have been charged with federal crimes related to the January 6, 2021, uprising at the U.S. Capitol. More than 650 have already pleaded guilty. Seven individuals took off and cannot be located. They will face charges if caught. 

Every single one of the Jan. 6 defendants should receive a pardon. Any still in custody should be let go. The January Sixers need some restorative justice. Those who were responsible have paid more than enough. It is time to close this segment of American history and move on. 

I’ll reserve judgement on a few of those, like a couple of members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who have seriously shady shit in their backgrounds.

Also remember that you don’t go after thousands of people because that’s a “losing” proposition. You need to go after only a small number of the higher ups. As Mao said “Shoot one. Educate One hundred”.

But the clock is ticking:

Trump must work at warp speed. He will have at best two years to put the Big Ship on a proper course. After two years, the next presidential campaign begins, and it’s likely that the Dems will take the House of Representatives.

He could do worse than take advice from Donald Devine served for more than four years as Reagan’s hatchet man at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM):

Devine led the team of Reagan appointees at OPM (of which, yes, I was proudly one) that eliminated more than 100,000 unnecessary government jobs, reduced the cost of civil service health benefits while expanding the choices available, made pay dependent upon job performance for career workers, increased accountability among career senior executives, and changed federal retirement from a defined benefit program with an unfunded liability of more than $560 billion to a defined contribution program….Achieving those goals required daily hand-to-hand political combat with the Mainstream Media, Democrats who controlled Congress and federal employee unions and professional associations.

He’s also just written this article for The American Spectator, Controversial Appointees, Clay Pigeons, and Successful Governmental Politics, which certainly seems like a “how-to” guide for Trump and company.

Sheeeiiit…. maybe this guy is correct, The Democrats’ 2020 Victory Was a Blessing in Disguise.

Also I’m going to buy or borrow the following books: