Doing The Work

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I must be getting better–

For those who don’t follow my life assiduously — and why not, I ask — we’ve been falling from disaster into contretemps since August last year, when we got the sewage backflow.

Most of it hasn’t been health, but things that end up encouraging me to overwork, and then I manage to get sick.

However this last cold — didn’t seem to be flu, certainly wasn’t covid — was horrible because it dragged on for two weeks, just sick enough I couldn’t work. Also gave me apocalyptic dreams. And it seems to have spun my thyroid out of kilter again. Which was made worse by my having to postpone my appointment with the endocrinologist because I was coughing my lungs off, and frankly didn’t want to share it with anyone, much less a whole waiting room.

Anyway, pardon me for whining. This is part of my decision to start living more healthily, because I hate wasting time. BUT some of it isn’t fixable by clean living. (Like the low thyroid.)

The purpose of this is not to whine — that was just a side benefit! — but to explain how we got to April and how frustrated I am that the book I finished in October — OCTOBER — of last year is still not in ready to be released, not even in e-arc.

And to tell myself and you guys that “Doing the work takes time.”

When things have gone severely wrong, fixing things takes long.

This applies to the world and particularly to our country right now.

Having found out how much destruction and attacks on our country we were paying for via the various skims and cheats off our own government and our own tax money, I’m probably not the only one chomping at the bit and wanting it all fixed YESTERDAY.

But it’s going to take time.

It’s going to take time because fraud and waste and scamming schemes are woven all through our government. It’s going to take time to unwind it without destroying things that we can’t destroy, either because they are legitimate functions of the government or because though illegitimate there are people depending on them who, through no fault of their own have got herded into needing it. Like… yes, social security. You can’t give a seventy year old back the money and opportunities wasted by paying into social security his whole working life. At this point although not getting back the money he/she paid, this person is dependent on social security to survive. And the same with a lot of other help. The government made it impossible for private individuals to help the needy and shut down a lot of private charity as it used to work. So now people are dependent on the government.

And so it goes. Can the government be brought back within constitutional bounds? I certainly think so.

But it’s going to take time. We’d best hope we have another two terms, because we’re going to need them.

If it all goes well, maybe by the end of my life we’ll be something more closely resembling a republic that fits within the bounds of the Constitution.

This will also give us time to change the culture, so that we don’t run up against people whose idea of conservatism or a golden age is FDR’s autocratic rule in the 40s.

In the meantime, I can do what I can to make myself slightly healthier, so I can produce content more regularly. (Particularly the books, impatiently waiting to be written. Hey, given that Dragon doesn’t work for me, and neither does any of the other programs I’ve ever heard of, is there anything new and AI assisted that I can use to dictate? Because that might help.)

At least these last two days, when I’ve been SLIGHTLY better, I’ve got the Musketeer Mysteries and the Dyce Dare ones re-covered and out in print. (Which most of them weren’t.) So that’s something done.

Tomorrow I should be okay to edit, and maybe even — as my editor suggests — make some progress on Rhodes.

And I NEED to update my substack.

But …. it’s going to take time. Doing the work takes time.

Until I figure out magic, that will have to do for me.

And for the country.

No matter how impatient we get.

80 thoughts on “Doing The Work”

  1. On the time needed to change the track our country is on. I have read that in science the old generation that KNOWS one paradigm needs to die off and the next generations take over before you have real change. Until then you have an acrimonious debate.

    Looking at the various demonstrations and the percentage that are boomers, having us exit the stage would help swing the balance. So, thirteen years can see a major change in our politics.

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    1. Show of hands: How many think that the Boomers shuffling off the stage will “help” swing the balance toward the good?

      “Be careful what you want, children, for all too soon you will get it.”

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      1. Not all of them, but a significant number of the political leaders (visible leaders, Congresscritters) and cultural mavens have been cutting down younger leaders. Once that stops, I think things will change, and we will see both (all?) parties starting to be more realistic and viable. There’s always going to be the fringe element, from libertarian gadfly to Communist to “crazy but his constituents like him.” The political and cultural gerontocracy is who needs to admit that retirement is a viable option.

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        1. The next question being, do they have nothing else to live for? Or are they addicted to the sense of power and prestige?

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    3. I suspect a lot of that is due to them listening to the lies from the corporate media: “Bad Orange Man (TM) is going to eliminate Social Security!!! REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!”

      Eliminate (pick a method) the corporate media and half of the job is done this term.

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  2. Welcome to the Ides of April, the annual deadline for sending your money to those that want you and your Constitution dead…

    Or it was last year. This year we aren’t so keen to fund our demise.

    And while the Republic’s restoration will require an extended period of years, if not decades, I’ll still be surprised if the whole process stays as “peaceful”. The switch hasn’t been flipped to the “ON” position yet, so I thank God for the calm and my fellow warriors for their discipline.

    As for the quality of the nation’s health system and food, I wish RFK Jr the best of luck in tackling the Bigs (Ag, Food, and Pharma) on that front.

    Let’s do our best to reverse the enshittification of everything, starting with what we can control.

    :)

    Also: Happy Easter Week!

    All the Easter lined up this year, so the family gathering was last weekend so everybody could attend the various services and masses this week. I’ll miss a few since work is getting really real after a period of calm before the storm.

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      2. Now that was new to me; thanks! I had to look it up; from Merriam-Webster:

        : the 15th day of March, May, July, or October or the 13th day of any other month in the ancient Roman calendar

        broadly: this day and the seven days preceding it

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  3. If you ever figure that magic out, let your minions know before revealing it to the rest of the world. I’d prefer getting things set right before the dark elves get a chance to muck things up again.

    Take care and get well. I pray for you everyday.

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  5. I saw on X today that the EU has apparently announced a policy of trying to break up Russia.

    1.) This is effectively announcing they’re trying to destroy Russia. They shouldn’t be publicly announcing it.

    2.) How do they hope to achieve this? Are they going to try and maneuver the US into doing it for them? (not happening while Trump is in the White House)

    3.) I suspect their long-term plan for the US is the same.

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    1. Yeah, the EU can FOAD. And it is going to die one way or another, whether it effs off or not. If the countries inside it don’t develop a sense of self-preservation and end it, the Muslim hordes will end it for them.

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    2. EU, empire of Moscow, and USA have different amounts of fundamental internal stability, basically related to bottom up peace levels, and how much elite mysticism is ‘necessary’ to keep things running.

      EU is built on a bunch of ‘international cooperation’ social signaling between the elites of each nation, and basically Trump is an emotional emergency for them.

      Break up of Russia is probably a better workload for the USA than the only real alternative, exterminating the Russians and/or Muscovites.

      EU leadership and the American public live in wholly different sets of mental worlds. They need the formal announcements. We have more ‘ability to act’ in our models.

      Even ‘good’ European politicians seem to be thinking in terms of alternative choices between Beijing, Brussels, DC, or Moscow as an imperial center.

      If the Europeans are making an announcement in public, their private (actual) policy may be to continue to fund Russian expansion, regardless of whether Russia cannot do so effectively.

      If we should need to act urgently, there is a certain logic to nuking Brussels, Beijing, and Moscow. If we do not need to act urgently, we can resolve some business involving enemies domestic before we must turn again to expeditionary forces, and the questions of temporary or permanent solutions to the problems of Russia and of communist China.

      Hopefully this trade war stuff will get what we need without requiring too much shooting war as a result.

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      1. Moscow claims the US as a rival. Beining openly and flagrantly cheats in everything. Meanwhile, Brussels leeches off of the US, and openly mocks the US, while loudly decrying any suggestion from the US that they aren’t the best of friends with us.

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    3. “Break up Russia” would be an objective of the CCP, as they very, very much covet far eastern Siberia and its oodles of untapped resources. Russia/USSR and CCP have fought major battles over their mutual eastern borders. the 1969 conflict almost went nuclear, allegedly.

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      1. Also worth noting that parts of far eastern Siberia used to be part of China. Russia and Qing China signed an agreement stating that Russia would get the territory in exchange for helping with the Europeans. Russia got the land, but apparently didn’t do much. The Chinese remember, and gave Kissinger grief when he stopped first in Vladivostok on one of his official trips to China. They view it as stolen.

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          1. I got called a “stupid boomer” for pointing out the PLA can frelling walk to Siberia and all of its resources.

            They have to swim to Taiwan, and were they to actually manage to take it, I am pretty sure TSMC and the other tech plants on the island would be smoking craters filled with the twisted wreckage of cutting edge fab equipment, decorated with fountains of melts-your-skin-through-the-bunny-suit process chemicals liberally spraying throughout.

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            1. The upside to attacking Taiwan is that they really won’t lose; even with your end scenario, the CCP may not have it, but America and her allies won’t either. And there’s always the possibility that they have enough China loyalists in place to get some or all of it in functional condition, in a short time frame.

              Meanwhile, once they walk to Siberia, all they’ve done is walk to Siberia. They have a huge chunk of permafrost without the infrastructure to exploit the resources under it, and they’ll have to work out the tools to build the infrastructure (like cold-weather metallurgy so the tools don’t shatter), build the infrastructure, and then exploit the resources. That could take a decade or two that their demographics won’t allow for.

              So going for Taiwan now probably makes more sense.

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              1. Mining three harbors, or the approaches to them, would put China in to an economic catastrophe. And the delivery could include hundreds of metallic/magnetic decoys for every real one.

                There is lots of awful for all sides in such a conflict.

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                1. Note that the JDAM precision guidance wing kit, which straps to a iron bomb body making it a standoff precision big Banda boom, also can be strapped to the same dumb bomb body which has been fitted with a Quickstrike sea mine conversion kit. You don’t need to fly over those harbors to mine them.

                  Imagine if those JDAM Quickstrike bombs also had a small solid rocket booster motor fitted, and such were positioned along mountains of Taiwan in the gazillions, to quickly mine the heck out of the Straight of Taiwan right into the opposing harbors, for a Really Bad Day for the PLAN.

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          2. China thinks many things, few of which are true. To that end, Chinese GDP just outperformed estimates with manufacturing and Consumer spending more than offsetting a A9% decline inproperty values. Bloomberg and the rest of the state media has it that they front ran tariffs. I note that electricity usage declined sharply, that the yuan has been crashing, and that China seems to have sold about a quarter of their putative $800 B in US treasuries over the last two weeks trying to support the Yuan, increase GDP, bail out the banks, and get China stocks to rise.

            Personally, I think they’re lying about GDP. Shocking, I know. They’re very dangerous, but if this goes on, not for long. All it needed was one good shove.

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            2. “sold about a quarter of their putative $800 B in US treasuries over the last two weeks“

              –

              It is bad that China reduced their US treasuries bonds? Even if they sold them off at a discount to hurt the US to get them sold? Some thoughts (worth about 2¢, w/ inflation).

              1. If sold at a discount, did the US buy them? Or at least a cutout?
              2. If not the US, or someone in the US buying them, who did? Certain countries that would be less good.
              3. Case for discount sell. Until last 4 years interest rates on bonds have been horribly low. Last 4 years even the bond rates haven’t inched up that much despite inflation.

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              1. it’s bad if you held them since they drove the price way down, for a while anyway, for the rest, I suppose it’s good that China holds less than before but I don’t entirely subscribe to the paranoia about who owns treasury bonds. On the other hand, any sign of stress in China is, long term, good for everyone else and my hope is that the CCP can be eliminated and China become a prosperous, relatively free nation instead of the dangerous bully they are now. Their selling treasuries seems to be to cover up cracks and there is a great deal of stress in China right now so my hope might be closer to fruition than before.

                I do hope the CCP loses the Mandate of Heaven without the massive numbers of Chinese dead that previous losses of the Mandate have caused. But, lose it they must or the rest of us will die,

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              2. The Chinese tend to sell through Belgium

                No data yet on who bought them. The Fed has the balance sheet capacity, but it probably wasn’t them. banks are likely, hedge funds buying the dip more so,

                Bond rates are still a little higher than they should be given the fundamentals and demographics. the Biden inflation is over and the 18-24 month lead of Money to Price Inflation is right on target as always. I suspect rates will go down (up in price) as the Biden looting abates.

                Most of the low rates were justified, it’s not the Fed that sets rates it’s the markets. The Fed just pretends. Things were bad and interest rates reflected that. I think Demographics have more to do with it than anything else. Can’t find a “reputable” economist that agrees with me so I’m almost certainly right. Deflation caused by collapsing populations is the long term play right now, except in the US where we still have time.

                There’s that article I promised that still sits there 3 paragraphs in. Mocking me.

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                1. Sometimes I think I should write my own attempt at it.

                  The most recent case against is that I am currently going nuts over a different and so far successful enough project.

                  The breakdown (seemingly) going down now between the public and the universities is almost certainly related to the universities seeming to be credible when they were assigning values to university and non-university products. The academics took it seriously, and figured that the economic utility of the ‘uneducated’ could be written off, and we got the lockdown.

                  but, before that, there were twenty or thirty years, (at least), of policy evidence that the academics were going increasingly around the bend in estimating economic utility of occupations.

                  There’s a temptation to think that academic machine experts could know the future economy through knowing the future of machines, but they probably cannot. Beyond that, academics are far away from most information for pricing economic acts. Academics do not have the tools to accurately predict the future economy, but absolutely do have the tools to mispredict it.

                  Probably a lot of the government funding of academia was effectively a fee for magical services. The cut is an overdue adjustment. But the stupid bastards think that we are forever obligated to pay, and so they are maybe breaking the illusion worse.

                  I’ve said before that I think the late bronze age collapse is precisely like a preference cascade. I think the preference falsification was something like belief in state cult magics, perhaps some kind of human sacrifice. Something shook the confidence in that magic, and the cultic practices came unglued. (I’m ninety percent sure this explains some of the ‘mysterious’ disapparences of some of the cults that were near the pagan Romans or the Christians. With the exception of some of the Baltic pagans, and the Teutonic Kngihts, seemingly because of the teutonic order’s interest in secular politics.)

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      2. Atbthe same time, they’re almost forced to buy Russian natural grass and oil, so their chest-thumping rings a little hollow.

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        1. Grass?

          Chinese grow the “good” stuff in Oklahoma, and import the fake plastic turf into the US.

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          1. Was is still asking for my email and name every time I post. It’s annoying me. And I do typos. I meant. “gas.”

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              1. Autocorrupt? (Not a typo.) Where does that get into it? I sometimes have problems with posts, but I’ve never seen autocorr(ect/upt) when I type here.

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          2. I think there’s a plank to “Make America Great Again” about resuming the export to Europe of American Natural Grass.

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  6. Praying for you as often as I remember to pray. :) And take your time, we’ll wait. I’ll wait.

    I’m impatient for the Republic, but that’s natural.

    Take good care.

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  8. It’s going to take time because fraud and waste and scamming schemes are woven all through our government. It’s going to take time to unwind it without destroying things that we can’t destroy, either because they are legitimate functions of the government or because though illegitimate there are people depending on them who, through no fault of their own have got herded into needing it. Like… yes, social security. You can’t give a seventy year old back the money and opportunities wasted by paying into social security his whole working life. At this point although not getting back the money he/she paid, this person is dependent on social security to survive. And the same with a lot of other help. The government made it impossible for private individuals to help the needy and shut down a lot of private charity as it used to work. So now people are dependent on the government.

    This also points to why we can’t fix it– because “the problem” has been warped to where folks don’t even know what it is, anymore.

    The 70 year olds have already gotten the benefits from the money that they paid in.

    They grew up in a household that didn’t have to financially support grandma.

    The raised their kids, if they had any, without having to pay for their parents.

    They didn’t have to work and pay in to take fare of folks who are “social security disabled”.

    Now, because they expected to be able to continue to get that payout, and planned accordingly, there is a problem.

    Social security was explicitly set up to be a cost-spreading scheme for current costs, in response to among other things folks who lost all their sons when they were drafted.

    WE ARE NOT GOING TO MANAGE TO GET THIS ACROSS TO FOLKS. Not if we’re also putting effort into actually fixing issues. The sense of entitlement to a situation that was known, in the 70s, to not be sustainable– my mom was informed that it wouldn’t be around by the time she retired, and she IS one of those 70 year olds– is a secondary issue that needs to be dealt with when it gets in the way. It’s a problem we can’t completely solve, though.

    So we need to focus on picking the giant mass apart, enforcing the law as issues are found, and generally seriously pissing off the folks who have been getting away with doing screaming fits for generations.

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    1. Many of the folks shrieking “Social Security is DOOOOOMED!” understood clearly that those taxes go into the general fund, and wanted to raise those taxes so more could be looted for other things besides Social Security.

      No, there is no such thing as a “Social Security Trust Fund”.

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      1. SS wouldn’t be “DOOOOOOMED!!!!” if it wasn’t in the general fund and being raided by non SS programs, but I digress.

        I’m one of the ones pulling in SS (not quite 70). Hubby is in the 70+, SS recipients. Never expected to see a dime personally. We planned for that. Any of us born after 1950 who don’t think otherwise, weren’t thinking. Anyone who thinks they can live on just SS is flat out nuts (most locations … Mom has slightly more, and survives, but her house is paid for.)

        Every paycheck for decades we’d joke we just paid grandparents SS for the month (just with our individual 7% contributions … individually they weren’t getting much), every month (never had a “tax holiday” as neither of us ever made enough to hit yearly max). Took all 3 of us kids and our spouses to pay for our surviving parents. Now, hubby points to the self employed he golfs with and states “Thank you for your 14% contribution.”

        Will we, like our grandparents and parents (at least mom) get back more than we paid in? Probably not. I, and my sisters, might get back what we paid in, if only because we come from long lived genes, especially the female side (bonus, both sides of the genetic tree). Live to 90+ and that could happen.

        I’m perfectly fine with SS going forced 401(k) “pension” route the pensions have been doing. Existing employees’ pension contributions were pulled to the fund and added to their 401(k) pension account. Retired employees already drawing, kept drawing. Ex employees who were vested got 4 choices (at least the one I was vested in): Lump discounted sum immediately, Lump sum at 65, monthly discounted amount immediately, monthly amount starting at age 65. In SS case, anyone not drawing, the amount they paid in would go into their IRA’s. No IRA? Now they have one. Invest as they please. Lose it all? Start looking for private charities.

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        1. If folks owned a “Security 401k”, then various poltroons could not scare up votes with “Social Security is DOOOOOMED!” or “They are gutting your Social Security!”

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          2. No, no, no, the public are idiots, they might invest that money in something like Smith and Wesson Corporation stock, or Exxon Mobile, or even Tesla.

            The horror, the horror.

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            1. This is bad?

              Why?

              (Yes. I know you just forgot the sarcasm tag.)

              Not Tesla. Have you seen the cost of that stock? Even trashed? Don’t know about you, but none of our accounts can afford it.

              Guarantied their current 401(k)’s and pensions (should they have one) are invested in Tesla, S&W, and Mobile, etc., now.

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            2. Hell, if they are going to do forced investing, have it just be a damned index fund and be done with it, with a specific prohibition on government bonds to avoid the current “we replaced all your cash with IOUs” issue

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              1. SOP on 401(k), be it standard or pension 401(k), or even old style pensions.

                Hubby said there are strict rules on what can be invested in either. Old style pensions, no personal options. 401(k)s usually a specific list of index finds, including cash. Thus forbidding specific types of funds on a SS 401(k) is there.

                We started growing our 401(k)/Simple IRA’s faster after rolling them into IRA’s (either job changes or retirement) because personal investment isn’t restricted that way.

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            3. 401k accounts are rarely wide open anything goes. The provider offers a list of choices, usually of very diverse groupings with a focus on “growth stocks” or “Value stocks” or “the XYZ index stocks” or “high tech” or “foreign”, then some funds of various bond types and combinations, then “stable value” portfolios. Might even have a “gold/metals” option. Thus you have a spectrum of risk levels to suit most investment cases, from 20 year olds to 120 year olds.

              A USGOV 401k might run rather conservative, limiting options and quantities in the “risky” stuff.

              Noteworthy is Chile, who switched over to something like 401k decades ago. They have some of the most comfortable retirees in the western hemisphere, when you factor return on investment versus cost of living, and the local expectations of living.

              And folks who -own- their funds fee rather much more secure than folks dependent on what amounts to a handout, that has been repeatedly declared non-mandatory by SCOTUS.

              There is no obligation to pay a particular amount, or even any amount.

              There is no claim on any money paid. Its a tax. It is government money when paid, not yours.

              And SCOTUS has -decisively- confirmed the above two points.

              Congress could even stop the payments via legislation, but leave the tax in place. That might have election consequences, but no legal ones.

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              1. The most important distinction is that any SocSec money is someone else’s money that “they” deign to give you, while a 401k-like balance is your money.

                Which is why there is such resistance to any such change. The powers that be cannot “borrow” 401k balances, replacing them with .gov promissory notes, without your permission so they can use that cash for more USAID junk grants.

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  9. On “fix it now dagnabbit” one of the most frustrating things for me is the sanctimoniousness of the trough-feeders – see Harvard, whose endowment is the largest in the world at over $53 BILLION, whenging that there could possibly be strings attached to their .gov trough-refilling when the DJT admin said they would “freeze around $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60 million in multi-year contracts to Harvard University” unless Harvard stopped letting students of disfavored flavors be actively threatened.

    If they don’t like the strings, they should not take the money. They can certainly afford it with that endowment balance.

    But no, they and all the other well-endowed private universities are entitled to chunks of my income tax payments, because science or equity or something.

    Immensely frustrating.

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    1. That would be like offering SNAP benefits to people making over a million dollars per year because it would be unfair to exclude them.

      Nope. Impose salary caps for grants just like every other program.

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    2. Ah. That is what it was.

      I was wondering, I had been checking executive orders to figure what it was about.

      I’ve deleted a relevant rant or two, recently.

      (Reading too many documents that step by step try to demonstrate mathematics seems to make me /wordier/, regardless of whether appropriate or necessary. I rarely actually need to prove that the universities have done screwed up. The current level of university stupidity and evil is slightly excessive, and then they complain about relatively minor punishments.)

      I mean, yes, Harvard may actually think they are doing due diligence on behalf of their stakeholders. But, the business of universities is rickety, and might not bear the additional stress that they are putting on it.

      If there is anything that my study of the issue has actually established, it is that I have temper issues, and that my reaction might be more of a problem for me than the actual wrongdoing.

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      1. No.

        Private universities with endowments should not get ANY public money. Exceptions would be ROTC programs.

        Period.

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        2. ((waggles hand))

          If gov’t is funding research and development (and yes, there *are* legit cases, particularly wrt DoD), then it is much easier to contract it out to a university via grants than it is to develop a lab and personnel infrastructure for each of what may be wildly varying projects.

          If for no other reason than the top guys in the various fields tend to already be at the universities, and it is easier to get them that way (much like one hires a consulting company rather than trying to find and hire specific individuals away from their current jobs).

          Baby and the bathwater, and all that jazz.

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  10. If it could be fixed overnight, it could be broken again overnight.

    And the people that broke it have less morality than we do, who want to try and save as much as we can, as long as we can.

    I wouldn’t mind if we could fix it overnight. I would gladly see quite a few lampposts decorated with gallows fruit here and in the UK by far too many people who have dodged responsibility. But I also know that our opponents would just fill up ten times as many unmarked graves if we could just snap our fingers and make it happen.

    We’re going to get there. We should have done this twenty, thirty years ago. But “now” is better than “never.”

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    1. “fixed overnight, it could be broken again overnight.“

      –

      Agree.

      Needs to be identified, fixed, and fixed so that if tried to circumvent or break, it is jail time (or worse) for those who try. No matter which branch – Executive, Judicial, Legislative, or Public or Private entities.

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  11. “It’s going to take time because fraud and waste and scamming schemes are woven all through our government.”

    It’s not just the government … it’s entire societal structures. You mentioned SSA and that’s a big elephant. For a look at a moral quandry, look at the so-called Catholic Charities implosion — let’s not get into a contretemps (I love that word with so many meanings!) about the issue of movement of peoples — it’s so much more fundamental than the events of the last 5 years. Christ said to give God what is God’s and to give Caesar what is Caesar’s. And He specifically instructed us to care for our neighbor. What we have now is giving at gunpoint what is God’s to Caesar, to care for our neighbor, purportedly on our behalf. “Catholic” Charities is about 95% government-funded, according to an article I saw recently. Even if that only refers to so-called migrant ministries, that is twisted at best. Not what Christ was looking for.

    Unwinding all this is going to hurt unfortunate people who believed the promises and who get caught in the gears. There’s no way around that unpleasant reality. Protect whom you can and pray for the rest.

    As for DOGE’s dollar accomplishments, I’m not concerned so much with saving $X this year as I am with the reform of the legitimate structures and with the cleansing of the databases — which has needed doing since before any boomer was born but was never done because … I don’t know why, when I worked in tech, we did those things, why wouldn’t the government do them, I don’t think I want to go there, actually. Pray it’s enough to salvage what is needed, to give enough time to make real changes.

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    1. The bureaucracies don’t clean out the databases because disbursing our tax money to the dead, the ineligible and the embezzlers inflates their budgets. Any measures that might lead to reducing their budgets are anathema. As sunlight is to trolls. The Prime Directive of any bureaucracy is to perpetually increase their budgets and hire more bureaucrats.

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      1. It is fascinating to me that the system has been gamed to such a degree – take the undead Social Security numbers: They don’t apply for Social Security benefits using those numbers, because someone in the Social Security bureaucracy has the job of looking at the birth date to figure out the level of SS benefits. No, the bad guys get the death flag set to off, then they go over to a completely separate different database at a different agency, and apply for benefits there, knowing that the query that checks for a valid SSN does not also return the date of birth. So that comes back valid, badabingbadaboom, free money.

        It takes deep inside knowledge of the way multiple agencies data systems interact to do something clever like that.

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          1. Somebody’s cousins in the relevant agency in a database admin group, and a simple line or two of semi-obscured SQL dropped into a big honking zillion line table maintenance routine, and Bob’s your uncle.

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        2. It takes deep inside knowledge of the way multiple agencies data systems interact to do something clever like that.

          Or some government drone, whose agency budget is increased by both legitimate and illegitimate access, telling all the NGOs they work with “go ahead and have people apply; we don’t want anyone left out.”

          Liked by 1 person

          1. They’d still need to know the details of the interconnection, and what fields get returned on a verification query. This is not something to which every GS-whatever has access.

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      2. Yep. To established bureaucracies, efficiency is anathema; they strive for the exact opposite. Solving problems is not in their best interest as bureaucracies. Look at the welfare mess for a perfect example. :-x

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  12. If you are getting unhealthier and more rundown with age, like I was, you might try what has helped me. I’ve spent many years researching supplements and trying them. Everybody is different, their diets and environments are different, but some things seem to help most folks. There is a ton of stuff you can take at the first sign that you’re coming down with something, but since you probably won’t listen to me anyhow, I’ll just recommend a couple of things that will generally help the overall health of any older person.

    Firstly, buy and inject some Epitalon or better yet one of its longer lasting variants N-Acetyl Epitalon or N-Acetyl Epitalon Amidate. Do your own research on where to get it and how to inject it into your subcutaneous fat. It seemingly made me feel years younger and even reversed the progression of some serious allergies (hay fever) that I had developed. That one little experiment has been one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself in life. The stuff is claimed to have some miraculous possible effects, and for me it truly worked miraculously.

    The other thing is creatine. Creatine is the most studied supplement ever. It offers a whole host of benefits. I wouldn’t recommend a woman taking nearly as much as a male bodybuilder, but a little bit helps your mind and body to stay fueled up and not run down.

    I used to get sick a lot. Now I do not. I take a lot of other stuff too, but those are my best two recommendations to start with.

    Vaya con Dios

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  14. Just in case it helps you and yours as it helped my family through some deep water:

    John 16:33 (ESV), “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

    2 Corinthians 4:7-18 (ESV), “But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.

    Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

    So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”

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  16. Sarah,

    I don’t know what kind of phone you use, but an.app called Live Transcribe mysteriously appeared on my Android one day.

    I think it works great 👍.

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