Just see what you've done

"Amaryllis" by Olga Sarukhanova is from the Georgia O'Keeffe-inspired What Flowers Say collection.

I want to quote a bit of this review by Sam Rosenfeld of Michael Lewis' Who Is Government? The Untold Story of Public Service:

The right's hatred for the civil service contains multitudes. There's a sociological angle—the conviction that the administrative state is under the collective control of a particular class of people zealously committed to a dangerous ideology and bent on resistance by hook or by crook to conservative governance. Trump's iteration of this, like his iteration of all ideas, is deeply personalized, grounded in his understanding of the federal civil service as the people investigating and seeking to punish him for his crimes. The ascendant Silicon Valley strain of anti-bureaucracy, meanwhile, espouses a more avowedly demolitionist ethos in keeping with the hothouse managerial culture of tech. At base, however, the case for government administration is the case for government itself, and that is precisely what the right can't abide.

Democracy is a double delegation game. Voters delegate the task of actually making laws to the politicians they elect to represent them. The politicians then delegate the task of executing those laws to bureaucrats. At their most effective, the grounded portraits of individual bureaucrats in Who Is Government? take us, in their hyperspecificity, all the way back to the first step of that game—the question prior to 'who is government?' of 'why have government?' Across the book's accounts, we see bureaucrats engaging with problems for which free markets and private action would not be able to generate solutions on their own. 'No one coal mining company was likely to fund the [safety] research that would benefit all coal companies,' Lewis notes, and in fact the market even incentivized those companies to neglect implementation of safety features for years after bureaucrats like Chris Mark had developed them—until new laws passed by Congress finally added enforcement teeth to the regulations. The FDA's Stone created a reliable mechanism for making important information about discoveries in the treatment of rare diseases accessible to doctors when no such mechanism had earlier existed—the rareness of the diseases means 'it doesn't really pay anyone to do it,' as one biochemist remarked to Lewis. Eggers describes the work of space nerds at Caltech: 'This is government-funded research to determine how the universe was created and whether we are alone in it. If NASA and JPL were not doing it, it would not be done.'

Ordinary people aren't expected to devise on their own the collective answers to every failure in health care or mine management or space exploration—that's what Congress is there to do. But members of Congress aren't expected themselves to build the clearinghouse for rare disease treatment, or devise the software that determines the right roof reinforcement for a specific coal mine, or build panoramic space telescopes that suppress starlight so far-flung planets can be detected—that's what civil servants are there to do. The tasks that lawmakers ask to be performed in their legislative language are legion, complicated, specialized, and ongoing. That's why there are a lot of bureaucrats, and that's why they enjoy, to a greater or lesser extent, some degree of autonomy to do their jobs. 'What the government job gave me was the freedom to do these things,' Mark the mine engineer tells Lewis. 'No one told me to do it. No one could have told me to do it.'

The idea that "unelected bureaucrats" like these are a bunch of lazy grifters who just suck up government paychecks while not doing anything useful is big on the right. (I'm still baffled by people who insist that commercial entities are more efficient and better to deal with than the DMV. I've never had a problem with the Department of Motor Vehicles in my life and I don't have enough imagination to theorize on what issues they've had with them that make anyone think they are inferior to spending weeks or months on the phone being denied health care by your insurance company.) Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) exists, purportedly, to remedy the gross inefficiency of having lots of these "bureaucrats" bloating the government. (The truth, of course, is that while most people want good government, which is what the bureaucrats are for, rich people just don't want to be governed.) So when one of the DOGE kids gave an interview about what he really found in government, he naturally got fired.

A former employee of the Department of Government Efficiency says that he found that the federal waste, fraud and abuse that his agency was supposed to uncover were "relatively nonexistent" during his short time embedded within the Department of Veterans Affairs.

"I personally was pretty surprised, actually, at how efficient the government was," Sahil Lavingia told NPR's Juana Summers.

Lavingia said the overall message at DOGE was transparency and a vibe of "ask for forgiveness, not permission." So, when a blogger asked for an interview about Gumroad, he agreed. And when asked, he talked about his work at DOGE, including how little inefficiency he saw compared to what he was expecting.

"Elon [Musk] was pretty clear about how he wanted DOGE to be maximally transparent," Lavingia said. "That's something he said a lot in private. And publicly. And so I thought, OK, cool, I'll take him at his word. I will be transparent."

Shortly after the interview was published online, Lavingia got an email. Just 55 days into his work at DOGE, his access had been revoked.

[...]

"I did not find the federal government to be rife with waste, fraud and abuse. I was expecting some more easy wins. I was hoping for opportunity to cut waste, fraud and abuse. And I do believe that there is a lot of waste. There's minimal amounts of fraud. And abuse, to me, feels relatively nonexistent. And the reason is — I think we have a bias as people coming from the tech industry where we worked at companies, you know, such as Google, Facebook, these companies that have plenty of money, are funded by investors and have lots of people kind of sitting around doing nothing."

Note that they assumed they'd find waste, fraud, and abuse because that's what they were used to seeing in the tech sector. The real waste, fraud, and abuse we are facing right now comes not from ordinary government "bureaucrats" nor from recipients of Social Security, SNAP, Medicare, and Medicaid, but from the commercial end of the "public-private partnership" — the contractors and blood-suckers to whom government services have been diverted so they can make money providing nothing of earthly value to the public. One of those people is Elon Musk, whose real mission with DOGE was to eliminate the bureaucrats and agencies that oversee fraud and waste from people like him. That's why the first thing he did was fire the Inspectors General.

* * * * *

I can't talk about the attack on Iran, I said all those things a couple of decades ago and I'm afraid I'll just get apoplectic. So right now, it's all about watching the NYC mayoral primary race, where the establishment has stepped right up to support the egregious and disgusting disgraced ex-governor Cuomo (the same guy whose resignation they once demanded) against a young, popular guy who, according to Larry Summers, would destroy the country by introducing a few free bus routes.

That's entertainment! "Trump goes after Leonard Leo in attack on tariff ruling: President Trump denounced a court ruling blocking his tariffs in a lengthy Truth Social post Thursday night that targeted Leonard Leo, who played a central role in shaping Trump's judicial picks during his first term. 'Hopefully, the Supreme Court will reverse this horrible, Country threatening decision, QUICKLY and DECISIVELY. Backroom 'hustlers' must not be allowed to destroy our Nation!' Trump wrote. It marked the president's first comments after a whirlwind 24 hours that saw the U.S. Court of International Trade block the bulk of Trump's tariffs before an appeals court lifted the order. The tariffs were also blocked by a separate court, but that ruling doesn't go into effect for two weeks. Alongside his condemnation of the ruling, Trump went after Leo, who spent decades forming a conservative judicial pipeline as a longtime leader of the Federalist Society and advised Trump on judge selections during his first stint in the White House." Leo, we will recall, is the guy who arranged for certain Supreme Court justices to have wealthy right-wing sponsors to bribe them into staying on the court and moving even further to the right. And yet, the Trump vs. Leonard Leo show was totally upstaged by the the Elon vs. Trump show.

"The IRS Tax Filing Software TurboTax Is Trying to Kill Just Got Open Sourced: The IRS open sourced much of its incredibly popular Direct File software as the future of the free tax filing program is at risk of being killed by Intuit's lobbyists and Donald Trump's megabill. Meanwhile, several top developers who worked on the software have left the government and joined a project to explore the 'future of tax filing' in the private sector. Direct File is a piece of software created by developers at the US Digital Service and 18F, the former of which became DOGE and is now unrecognizable, and the latter of which was killed by DOGE. Direct File has been called a 'free, easy, and trustworthy' piece of software that made tax filing 'more efficient.' About 300,000 people used it last year as part of a limited pilot program, and those who did gave it incredibly positive reviews, according to reporting by Federal News Network. But because it is free and because it is an example of government working, Direct File and the IRS's Free File program more broadly have been the subject of years of lobbying efforts by financial technology giants like Intuit, which makes TurboTax. DOGE sought to kill Direct File, and currently, there is language in Trump's massive budget reconciliation bill that would kill Direct File. Experts say that 'ending [the] Direct File program is a gift to the tax-prep industry that will cost taxpayers time and money.'"

Why does Maryland keep electing these corrupt governors? "A Democratic Governor Lends A Hand To Loan Sharks: Maryland Governor Wes Moore just approved a new carveout exempting predatory payday lenders from state regulations. [...] Thanks to Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, a bill that exempts certain payday lenders from state laws protecting borrowers from exploitation and discrimination just became law in Maryland. Earned wage access lenders target mostly low-wage workers by fronting them their paycheck earlier with sky-high interest rates and excessive fees. Those predatory tactics have been somewhat reined in by Maryland regulations — but they now won't apply to the growing payday loan market."

Hm, I wonder why The Hill claimed no Democrat had come forward to run for the New Hampshire seat that Jordon Wood is running for. Could it be that he's too progressive?

The June issue of The American Prospect focuses on The Golden Age of Scams, and it's everywhere you look. "There's an economic principle named after a 16th-century British financier—Sir Thomas Gresham—who urged Queen Elizabeth I to clean up the sorry state of the national currency. Gresham's Law states that “bad money drives out good,” and while Sir Thomas meant “bad money” in terms of coinage that didn't carry the intrinsic value of gold or silver, the principle applies just as well to the business world. Simply put, honest companies have a hard time competing with dishonest ones. This is intuitive if you think about it. An auto dealership that only sells lemons and lies about it will earn well above fair value for their vehicles. Snake oil doesn't cost as much to make as a useful medication. Robbing your customers is more lucrative than making sure they're satisfied. If you accept this premise, then you should recognize that we're about to see a lot of honest businesses either turn to the dark side or close up shop."

At The Lever, an audio interview with Stephanie Kelton, "Everything You Think About The Deficit Is Wrong: Every major agency has downgraded America's credit rating. Economist Stephanie Kelton explains why it matters — but not for the reasons you think."

RIP: "Brian Wilson, visionary creative spirit for the Beach Boys, dies aged 82: Musician, who suffered from mental health problems, wrote and produced the 1966 album Pet Sounds – seen by many as the greatest album of all time." They were fun when they did "Help Me, Rhonda"; the studio version wasn't much but when they did "Darlin'" live, it rocked; "Kokimo" seemed dull at first until suddenly Carl soared; but "God Only Knows" is one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard. The Wilson boys were all much greater talents than anyone recognized at the time, but Brian gave them the chance to really show it. Yeah, I cried.

RIP: "Sly Stone Dead At 82." I think I only saw them once, back in 1968 when no one had heard of them. A building had been painted blue on St. Mark's Place and we weren't even sure what it was yet, but my friend and I were walkimg by and the guys at the door saw two young women and pretty much begged us to come in. It was free so we decided to have a look, and found a big room with not enough people milling on the floor but a perfectly competent band on stage. So I leaned up against the stage and watched and listened for a while. But I couldn't read their name on the drumhead and eventually I caught the bass player's eye and waved him over to ask what they were called. "Sly and the Family Stone," he said. Little did we know....

"Democrats set out to study young men. Here are their findings.: A widely mocked project to get under the hood about why Democrats are losing young men has sobering results. [...] The focus groups found that young men feel they are in crisis: stressed, ashamed and confused over what it means to be a man in 2025. They vented about conflicting cultural messages of masculinity that put them in a 'no-win situation around the meaning of 'a man,'' according to the SAM project memo. They described how the Covid pandemic left them isolated and socially disconnected. They also said they now feel overwhelmed by economic anxiety, making 'traditional milestones,' like buying a home or saving for kids' college, 'feel impossible,' an analysis of the research said. 'The degree to which those economic concerns are also impacting how they think about themselves and quote-unquote success of being a man, and living up to their own expectations or the expectations of their family or society,' Della Volpe said. 'There's another layer of economic anxiety that I don't think I fully saw until now.'"

The first time I saw a photo of a room in the Sleeper-McCann House, I thought it was a painting, and proceeded to get confused looking for a gallery of Henry Davis Sleeper's work. There are lots of individual scattered photos of the various rooms in the house, but I didn't see much collected together. There are a few in a slideshow on this page.

Bill Medley on Cheers
Bobby Hatfield on Cheers

Guardian quickie interview with Lee Child, author of Reacher.

The Beach Boys, "Heroes and Villains"