Dog with a Bone & DOGE

Pennsylvania Dem Gov. Josh Shapiro sides with state supreme court ruling not to count certain mail-in ballots. Shapiro is siding with the state's high court after the justices ruled that faulty mail-in ballots can’t be counted amid a contentious recount, delivering a victory to Republican Party officials.

The high court initially ruled on Nov. 1 that mail-in ballots without formally required signatures or dates should not be counted. Democratic-led election boards, however — including in Philadelphia, Bucks County, Montgomery County, and Centre County — balked at the ruling and voted to include such ballots in the recount. 

"Heartening to see. Once Democrats came to the conclusion that even ignoring the Pennsylvania Supreme Court they can’t scrape up enough ballots to win…," RNC Chair Michael Whatley wrote on X. "Governor Shapiro suddenly discovers that he stands with the rule of law. Better late than never."

Still sure the fix wasn't in last election??? Remember Pennsylvania was where the truckload of ballots showed up long after the election center was closed. We went to bed at 11 pm winning PA only to see it wiped out by morning.

Not Just about Whacking Generals & DEI

As Trump goes about filling his cabinet and key staff positions, Secretary of Defense is one of the most critical. As noted, our military is in sad shape. Recruitment goals are falling 30-40% short. IRR stands for Individual Ready Reserve. This is the number of soldiers that are ready to go in the event of war. In 1973 the IRR was 700,000 soldiers. Today it is 76,000. Down almost 90%. The next major conflict might be the War of None.

Why? A confluence of factors. Only 40% of recruitment age youth look favorably on the military. After going 1-3-1 in major conflicts since WW2, our track record has been poor. Moreover, the number of conflicts has grown exponentially. From 1949-73, the AVF (All Volunteer Force = replaced Draft) was sent on 19 overseas engagements. From 1973-2012, the overseas engagements rose to 144. So the probability of going into potentially life-ending combat has mushroomed.

Lamestream and Social media, which regularly attack the military and its missions, have not helped public perception. On top of that, American youth has grown increasingly unfit. Thanks to obesity, drug use and overall physical fitness, only 23% are judged able to serve without a waiver.

Then there's the whole WOKE mess. Who wants to serve when surrounded by unqualified fellow soldiers, when the use of pronouns is more important than combat readiness and when quotas are a higher priority than competency and lethality. Answer? Far less than needed.

And, the Military has other great problems. It is top heavy. We have 88% fewer soldiers than at the end of WW2 and yet we have more Brass. More "stars" to enforce DEI and opine on political affairs. Ridiculous. Under the behest of Biden/Harris the mission was delay and defer. We are still starving Israel and slow playing Ukraine. Victory was the last priority. Dribble out support so you could claim (dishonestly) that "no soldiers died on my watch."

Finally the most important deficiency, we no longer have the technology to win a major conflict. By all accounts, the next significant war will not be fought with munitions or boots on the ground. It will be fought with satellites, cyber warfare, robots and unmanned vehicles. In this area we are woefully bereft. We are still producing WW2 weapons because the mission is not to fight and win when need be, but for Congressmen to keep local employment up and the factories making bullets running so they can get reelected.

Much to do Pete Hegseth. No less dauting than the overhauls of immigration and energy that are needed.

Even the City by the Bay...

Weary San Franciscans voters rejected the ‘stranglehold’ of the progressive left. Locals say 'chaos and lawlessness' drove Election Day change in San Francisco. Voters overwhelmingly ousted Democratic Mayor London Breed in favor of political newcomer and Levi's heir Daniel Lurie, who vowed to declare a fentanyl emergency on his first day in office, shut down the open-air drug markets proliferating in neighborhoods like the Tenderloin, and force drug users to choose between treatment or jail. Wasn't Kamala DA here? The legacy for her and Joe is stunning.

But Mass (Boston) Still Not Ready

U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Boston announced on Wednesday the arrests of two illegal immigrants who have been charged with forcibly raping children in Massachusetts, as well as a third individual who was convicted of raping a child in Brazil, and was hiding in the U.S. after being caught and released at the U.S. border in 2022.

The arrests come after Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said her state would not cooperate with President-elect Trump’s federal immigration enforcement efforts once he returns to the Oval Office in January. ICE said one of the suspects, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, was arrested for forcible rape of a child, but was released in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, by authorities, who ignored a detainer request made by the federal agency to hold or transfer him to federal custody. Boston mayor, Michelle Wu, has taken the same position as Healey.

Tariff Reality

Here are our three biggest export countries

US Exports	Value	Year
Canada	$352.76B	2023
Mexico	$323.23B	2023
China	$147.81B	2023

China's tariffs are 57% higher than ours. Canada's are 60% higher. And Mexico's are 18% lower. Many economists are certain increasing tariffs will reignite inflation. Fact is that didn't happen in Trump's first term when he increased. Reality is prices don't go up. Importers adjust. They lower profit margins to keep prices steady.

Besides which, Trump is a master of carrot and stick. He threatens tariffs to get importers to lower theirs. At the end of the day...China, Canada, rest of world aren't going to get shut out of the most lucrative market in the world.

Recess Appointments

As stated in last issue, I am against this ploy. Still - to put in perspective. Barack made over 30 recess appointments, Dubya over 100, Reagan 70+. Clinton 139. Many were lower level judgeships. Some, however, were Cabinet and even SCOTUS appointments.

Still - not the right way to build consensus.

Trump Appointments

Don't forget a lot of us thought Trump could have done better than JD Vance, but he turned out Trumps!

The opposition of the Left is not nearly so rooted in the credentials of the appointees as it is in the fact they know what's coming down the pike. Massive restructuring and waste elimination. All those precious government jobs (votes) lost. Future Dem voters deported. Bye bye sacred cows.

More on Tulsi Gabbard

This is really a head scratcher. Gabbard was against every Trump foreign policy position he ever espoused. Now she is going to put her spin on the stuff coming out of 18 intelligence agencies. Decide what is true, likely true and baloney. Problem is that intelligence is far from hard and fast science. Think about our misses. Pearl Harbor, WMD, 911, Iran nuclear capability. Those are BIG misses.

Interpretation of intelligence is nuanced. It must be contextualized and related to historical outcomes. Judgment matters and Tulsi has been WAY OFF target. She said taking out Soleimani would lead to WW3. Likewise, she opined abandoning the Nuclear Treaty with Russia (who never abided by it anyway) would do the same. She called Trump a war-monger. Not only is Gabbard unpracticed in this (more) art than science, her judgment has been askew.

Might she not be tempted to put her own two cents in? I guess Trump so covets an outsider not captive to the Beltway crowd that he's willing to take a chance.

Gaetz Dives on the Grenade

As it should be. Best thing he's done.

MIA

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., says that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and FBI Director Christopher Wray skipped a public Senate hearing to avoid criticism over the verdict in the case of Laken Riley's murder.

Mayorkas and Wray were scheduled to testify before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Thursday, but the hearing was postponed after they insisted it be classified and not open to the public. Hawley told Fox News Digital in a Thursday interview that he is calling on Committee Chairman Gary Peters, D-Mich., to subpoena the pair's public testimony.

"Let's not forget who let him into country," Hawley said of Riley's murderer, Jose Ibarra. "Mayorkas lied about how he got into country. He said authorities didn't have information about his past crimes. False. Then he claimed he didn't remember the details. False. Now he's refusing to comment." Fox News Digital reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment on Hawley's remarks, but they did not immediately respond. The judge gave Ibarra life without parole about 8 seconds after defense rested.

Hats off to Fetterman

The biggest surprise of the political season has been the stout, right-headed behavior of John Fetterman. The same John Fetterman I and others mocked two years ago.

Yesterday, bipartisan backlash erupted in response to news that Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court (ICC) targeted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant with arrest warrants. The chamber issued arrest warrants against the two men "for crimes against humanity and war crimes," according to the ICC.

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa. — who has been a stalwart supporter of Israel in the wake of the heinous Oct. 7th Hamas terror attack — responded to the ICC's move on X, writing, "No standing, relevance, or path. F--- that." He capped off the tweet with an Israeli flag emoji. Go John Fetterman. Amazing how stature changes when you back the right horse.

Got to ask. How in the hell can we give taxpayer $$$ or any credence whatsoever to a body that behaves with such utter disregard for right and wrong?

Say it three times. Hypocrites, Hypocrites, Damned hypocrites.

Talkin Heads, Joe Scarborough & Mike Brzezinski trundled with tails between their legs down to Mar a Lago to pay homage to Trump and hopefully avoid Siberia. Scarborough was a huge fan of Trump in the early days. Then turned on him like a rabid dog. Again, how can anyone listen to what turncoats like Kamala Harris and these two spew. Either they are downright stupid or, or, or...they're anybody's dog that'll take 'em huntin'. Or both!

Department of Government Efficiency

None of the President-elect's missions is nearer and dearer to my heart than DOGE. After a brief stint in financial services in Manhattan after college, I spent the next three decades in my own version of DOGE. In 1971, I joined a tiny firm located in Westwood, NJ. They told me they were a new breed of "management consultants". Hell, I didn't even know what the old breed was.

Well, back in the 50's and 60's management consulting meant strategic planning. There were technical consultants and strategic planning consultants, which came to be known as management consultants. Their charge was to work directly for CEOs and help them set strategic direction for the companies they ran. Management consultants like McKinsey, Boston Consulting, later the Big 8 Accounting firms and dozens of other had one primary function - to give advice. They charged boatloads of money for Ivy-educated, 22 year-olds to conduct research, do analyses and make recommendations to the Chief Executive.

Within 10 years the Achilles heel of this discipline became evident. While the recommendations were well thought out and potentially "just what the doctor ordered", we'll never know because most were never fully implemented. Organizational inertia, preoccupation with daily duties and C-suite resistance presented obstacles at every turn. It is not wildly inaccurate to say "most" very expensive strategic plans were never tested.

The company I joined was one of a half dozen (new breed) who aimed to change this. We specialized in two areas. Productivity and implementation. We taught management how to manage and increase productivity. We actually went out on the manufacturing and office floor to help supervisors and managers implement new tools and behaviors to increase efficiency. We were the first vestiges of DOGE.

In 1980, I left this company and started my own. In 2000, I retired (for the first time) after selling my own firm, The Brooks Group, to NYSE company (10X EBITDA). When I retired we were doing business in seven countries for some 25 Fortune 100 size corporations. Marriott, Burlington Northern (now owned by Buffett), JB Hunt, GM, GE, ATT, British Rail, Renault to name a few. Our work was still implementation based but extended far beyond productivity, but remained its core. The average project realized 25% reductions in unit labor cost and a 300% ROI.  In future start ups and investments, I have always applied the lessons I learned in my own version of DOGE.

Now we have two celebrities gearing up to lead the first and long overdue cost reduction project for the US government. Elon Musk (born in South Africa) is, of course, a household name and the greatest entrepreneur of our time. Unlike Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and other tech moguls, Musk's start ups actually build things and he has lots of them. He is joined by Vivek Ramaswamy who gained fame (notoriety?) for his brash outbursts during the Republican primaries. Vivek is also an entrepreneur. Born of Indian parents, Harvard/Yale educated, he built and later monetized the biotechnology firm Roivant Sciences; the "Roi" in the company's name refers to return on investment. Roivant's strategy was to purchase patents from larger pharmaceutical companies for drugs that had not yet been successfully developed, and then bring them to the market. His net worth is pegged at a paltry $800 million. Paltry compared to Musk's $326 billion, that is.

I am very hopeful this project will make a serious dent in government spending, which is rapidly bankrupting the country as we spend over $1 trillion in interest annually. The size of government is not just a huge resource drain, but it gums up pretty much everything we do. A workforce this size (2+ million) has to do something from 9 to 5. Most of what they do unnecessarily intrudes and interferes with our lives everywhere one looks.

I am hopeful but less optimistic that DOGE increases in efficiency and elimination of waste will be made sustainable. In my world, sustainable efficiency required first behavioral, then cultural change. The first step is the systematic elimination of all unnecessary, unvaluable work. Just stop doing it and cut the costs associated therewith. Even whole departments like Education, Labor, Interior and the like. The second step is to reengineer the processes by which remaining work is done. Cut out the waste, streamline and automate. Then third step is implementation of a continuous improvement culture from top to bottom. Quantifiable performance goals, rigorous performance measurement, and clear consequences tied to performance results. Without the third step, improvement will be mitigated over time. Waste and unjustified tasks will creep in. And along with them, cost, cost, more cost!

The federal workforce costs just under $300 billion a year. If ever there was a target rich area it is the government workforce. Our national deficit is $1.8 trillion. Musk says the goal is $2 trillion (Likely an unrealistic target given the currently untouchable entitlements) Clearly he has eyes on more than just the workforce. Happy days are here again!

Enough on DOGE. I'm off to X to volunteer.

Enjoy the weekend and buckle up.