Trillions, to billions, even down to millions: this is why they're screaming about any examination of the books, from D.C. to the blue cities

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but we got diversity!

The top official for LA's homeless services is a woman named Va Lecia Adams Kellum. She runs the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) which has an annual budget of $700 million.

Adams Kellum's agency got some bad press last November when an audit found it was not keeping track of its money very well.

LAHSA, a city-county joint powers agency, failed to establish formal agreements on how and when advances should be repaid, did not always maintain records for capital advances and could not provide an accurate list of all contracts and their execution dates, county Auditor-Controller Oscar Valdez wrote in the 57-page audit released Tuesday night...

In a sample of contracts, the auditors found that LAHSA understated the amounts awarded to two recipients by $505,591 and lacked supporting documentation for approximately $5 million advanced to five recipients.

At the time this audit was released, Adams Kellum claimed the problems it identified were mostly down to previous management.

“Much of these audits are covering time periods before I joined LAHSA, so it’s important that I get that baseline, that I see what those key areas of pain points are, and if we’re on the right track for system improvement that we’ve already put in place, and to further let us know what’s missing,” she said.

Again, that was just 3 months ago. This week LAist identified a problem at LAHSA that Adams Kellum won't be able to blame on someone else. It seems she personally signed off on a $2 million contract with her husband's employer.

The documents show that Va Lecia Adams Kellum, chief executive of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), signed a $2.1 million contract and two other contract amendments with Upward Bound House, the Santa Monica-based nonprofit where her husband Edward Kellum works in senior leadership. The contract names Adams Kellum as the LAHSA official authorized to administer it.

A LAHSA spokesperson told LAist the contracts had inadvertently ended up in front of Adams Kellum to sign...

“Inadvertently”

The $2.1 million contract signed by Adams Kellum authorized federal taxpayer funds for Upward Bound House to pay rent for unhoused people in the region and help them find homes. The money also covered case management and administration costs at the nonprofit.

The records show Adams Kellum signed the three documents directly above the names of her husband’s employer and his boss.

Weird: they're having a difficult time keeping up with their own side’s ever-shifting defense line, let alone the Trump-Musk Express

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where’d everyone go?

Democrats like Chuck Schumer and Rep. Ro Khanna, and even Maine’s pseudo-Republican senator Sue Collins have all been forced to acknowledge that there’s been massive fraud and waste going on down in the swamp, and they’re now trying out “Constitutional Crisis” and “Process” as talking points. But some of the other lizards are still sticking with the “Fraud? What fraud?” line. Anderson Cooper (who knew he was still on television?) is so distraught over being hung out to dry by those who’ve gone ahead that he snapped yesterday, calling his guest Chris Sununu a “dick”, and demanded to see “actual evidence — I demand to see actual evidence!!! Aaaaghhh!”

Okay, the little Vanderbilt boy has always been slow on the uptake, and he was surely abandoned by his playmates back in his school days, so nothing new here, but the NYT? Times editors used to lead the prevaricators, not follow them, and certainly would never have allowede themselves to be left behind to hold the dirty end of the stick, yet here they are:

Sad.

We'll hope that a better design emerges before construction begins

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boring

The former home of Dr. Dustin at 68 Dearfield Drive sold for $3.450 million last June and now its 1.32-acre lot has been subdivided and a new house on 0.6-acre is being offered as No. 66 Dearfield and priced at $7.995 million. I’m sure it will be a fine house, but as a neighbor to the original 1925 house at 68, the preliminary design isn’t its match, in my opinion.

What took them so long?

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After purchasing their home in October 2021, the owners of 65 Hunting Ridge Road chose to linger there for far longer than the standard Greenwich ownership tenure of 18 months, and have only now, finally, put it up for sale. They’re asking $7.495 million. Their predecessors, who stayed put for ten years, albeit involuntarily, tried selling it for $10.750 in 2011, and kept trying until they were able to sell it to these owners in 2021 for $5.995.

We’ll hope that the process runs smoother this time, and these market supplicants will be able to MoveOn™with less effort and with a larger percentage of this original asking price.

It's taken 52 years, but my patience might finally be rewarded; Chuck Schumer thinks so, anway

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In 1972 I voted in a presidential election for the first time; I hated Nixon, and I’d figured out by then, even at 18-years-old, that McGovern was nuts, so what to do? I discovered that a man named John Hospers was running on the Libertarian ticket, and he promised to “take a meat ax to the federal budget”. That seemed like a good idea to me at the time — it still does — but it wasn’t easy to cast my ballot for him. Hosper’s Libertarian party only managed to make it on to two states’ ballots that year, and Connecticut wasn’t one of them. At the time, our politicians had rigged the voting process to make it as difficult as possible to vote for a write-in candidate: you couldn’t vote directly for your choice but had to somehow identify and write in the name of three (six?) designated “electors” instead. I managed to do that, albeit with great difficulty, so in addition to the 3,674 votes Hospers officially received, he gained at least more: mine, chiming in from Connecticut.

Jospers lost — the election must have been fixed — and Washington’s ruling class accelerated its spending to levels that would have been unimaginable in 1972. But now, finally, there’s a glimmer of hope, and all the proper people are terrified. Good.

I have no idea how I ended up on this org's mailing list, but it has some interesting links; if the real estate market continues its present dormancy, I may follow up some of them

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Dear civil servant,

Every day there is fresh bad news out of Washington. DOGE’s dismantling of our government — its disregard for laws, civility and basic decency — is staggering. We’ve particularly been grieving the harm caused to you and to the people you have served both here in America and around the world. As DOGE’s dismemberment of federal agencies continues, we wonder what will be the next critical government service to fall. There is good reason to be very, deeply concerned about the fate of our country. But for the first time in what feels like a long time, we also started to feel a tiny glimmer of something different: hope.

First, let's consider that the courts are affirming what we have all known to be true: This administration’s actions to destroy the civil service and the institutions that Congress created and that you serve are illegal, plain and simple. And it is clear the administration has taken notice.

In this letter, we’ll provide some updates on federal employment matters; cover recent wins and newly-filed lawsuits that fight back against these illegal acts; and look to the damage this administration has already caused and the fight to come.

Federal employment resources

We get frequent questions (understandably!) from civil servants looking to better understand their rights and benefits, now that both are under siege. Below are a number of resources that federal employees can consult to get a better picture of their own situation.

On retirement benefits: Some employees have considered voluntarily resigning out of the fear that being fired would jeopardize retirement benefits — but this is not the case for the vast majority of feds!

On the “Fork” Offer: Federal labor unions sued to block the “Fork in the Road” offer that we wrote about last week, questioning whether it would be honored and arguing it violated the law. A judge agreed to stop — for now — the deferred resignation program from being implemented.

On eligibility for unemployment: When the “Fork” offer was still on the table, Washington Post reporters answered questions from readers, including whether people who accepted the offer would be eligible for unemployment benefits where they lived. (Answer: for many people, it’s unlikely.)

On the rights of probationary employees: Yes, probationary employees have fewer employment protections than non-probationary employees — but that doesn’t mean there are none. Check out Just Security’s FAQ page for more.

Additional resources:

  • The Federal Workers Rights blog maintained by the law firm James & Hoffman.

  • Protect Democracy’s updated webpage with resources for civil servants.

  • Webinars on federal employee rights from the Partnership for Public Service.

  • Stay up-to-date on the administration’s many, many early moves with this New York Times tracker.

  • Senator Tim Kaine’s resources page for federal workers includes a kind statement that is worth a read. Representative Jamie Raskin’s resource page is here, as is a recording from his town hall focused on federal workers.

Fighting back and early wins

This administration and its allies were open about their “shock and awe” strategy to overwhelm people to a point where fighting back to defend the rule of law would begin to feel futile. Is what is happening to our democracy overwhelming? Absolutely. But is fighting back futile? Has the battle already been lost? Absolutely not.

Federal employees, unions, nonprofits, and other organizations are filing lawsuits — some seeking to immediately stop the administration’s lawlessness — and often, they are winning.

These efforts to defend our democracy are critical on their own terms, but they are also essential to giving us all the hope that motivates us to continue the fight.

(Much more at the organization’s webpage)

Judge rules that he has the power to control and edit government agencies' websites

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“and the white house cafeteria! i demand soup be put back on the menu! And none of that spicy stuff either!”

David Strom, HotAir

Insane: Judge Orders Gender Ideology Back Into HHS, CDC, and FDA

Washington — A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration to restore webpages and data that had been scrubbed in compliance with President Trump's executive order on gender ideology while litigation moves forward.

U.S. District Judge John Bates agreed to grant a temporary restraining order sought by the group Doctors for America, which argued that its members used the websites when treating patients and conducting research. The nonprofit organization said that the removal of the webpages by the Department of Health and Human Services and its components violated federal law.

Bates found that the challengers were likely to succeed in their claims that the Department Health and Human Services, CDC and FDA acted unlawfully when they stripped medical information from public-facing websites.

"It bears emphasizing who ultimately bears the harm of defendants' actions: everyday Americans, and most acutely, underprivileged Americans, seeking healthcare," he wrote. Citing declarations from two doctors filed in the case, Bates said if they "cannot provide these individuals the care they need (and deserve) within the scheduled and often limited time frame, there is a chance that some individuals will not receive treatment, including for severe, life-threatening conditions. The public thus has a strong interest in avoiding these serious injuries to the public health."

Strom: Doctors for America was part of Barack Obama's campaign--originally Doctors for Obama--and its mission is to promote every left-leaning cause you can imagine in health care. It has pushed for gun control, defunding the police, and closing down prisons during the pandemic. 

Doctors for America filed its lawsuit against the health agencies on Feb. 4, alleging they violated a federal law that governs the agency rulemaking process and another that requires federal agencies to ensure the public has "timely and equitable access" to their public information.

The group argued in court papers that its members relied on the scrubbed information to provide treatment, conduct research and inform public health responses on topics like youth risk behaviors, adolescent health and HIV.

Doctors for America said some of its members were already experiencing challenges as a result of losing access to information from the CDC. In one instance, it said a Chicago-based physician who works at a clinic serving low-income immigrant families could not consult the CDC's website for resources on how to address a chlamydia outbreak at a local high school and bolster STI testing and prevention efforts. 

Another doctor, who is also a researcher at the Yale School of Medicine, said in a declaration that she lost the ability to consult CDC resources about prescribing treatments.

Strom: Anybody with an ounce of sense knows that no doctor consults any of these web pages for advice on how to treat patients. The idea is absurd on its face. 

Another disruption of still another Washington game that’s been going on for years — decades, in fact

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EXCLUSIVE: Musk Quietly Inserts DOGE Across Federal Agencies In Move That Could Uproot one $162,000,000,000 Gov’t Industry

An OPM memo dated Feb. 4 seeks the redesignation of chief information officers across the government from career positions to political appointees. OPM has recommended that every agency send a request to OPM to reclassify its CIO role from career reserved to “general” by Feb. 14.

The new CIO positions will be working with DOGE, a source familiar confirmed to The Daily Caller News Foundation.

….

Unlike most major institutions, the federal government has no central IT department. Instead, IT responsibilities are dispersed across federal agencies which in turn spend billions on contractors and disparate artificial intelligence technologies. Musk’s housecleaning could reshape this $163 billion industry.

Of that $163 billion, here are the top 15 tech suppliers to the government:

….

Big Balls to the rescue

A Washington Post report revealed Monday that Edward Coristine, the 19-year-old DOGE team member known online as “Big Balls,” has been stationed at the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Technology. The Bureau of Diplomatic Technology provides IT services.

But give Biden’s handlers at least some credit for acknowledging the problem and taking tentative steps towards addressing it:

The Biden administration helped lay the groundwork for the change. Two earlier OPM memos cited in the Feb. 4 memo broadened the authority of government appointees to look outside of government for highly technical roles, including one released in the final months of the last administration.

A 2018 OPM memo under the first Trump administration noted “severe shortages of candidates and/or critical hiring needs” for STEM and cybersecurity. A September 2024 memo released under the Biden administration noted that “severe shortage of talent” in cybersecurity and other high-tech sectors persisted.

The new memo states that moving certain CIO positions away from career positions could help to alleviate it by dramatically increasing the number of candidates available to fill these important roles.

The move is in keeping with public statements about DOGE made by Musk and former DOGE co-lead and potential Ohio gubernatorial hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy about improving the federal government’s tech infrastructure, including examining the vendors the U.S. government works with and the fact that these systems don’t communicate across agencies.

“The federal government is the world’s largest IT customer… In theory, this *should* give us great buying power to negotiate good deals for taxpayers, but of course that’s not what happens,” Ramaswamy said on Dec. 5. “If the federal government were serious about reducing costs, it would procure government-wide licenses.”

The federal government is the world’s largest IT customer, spending ~$2TN since 1994. In theory, this *should* give us great buying power to negotiate good deals for taxpayers, but of course that’s not what happens: in 2021, the US Department of Agriculture agreed to pay $170…

— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) December 5, 2024


Despite the intense focus on DOGE, there has been little discussion of the federal government’s existing methods for managing data and records.

The top five contractors on IT together took in $45 billion in 2024, according to Washington Technology, a trade publication that uses federal procurement data, USASpending.gov and company Security and Exchange Commission filings.

The government is actually massively overpaying for software that doesn’t work

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2024

….

A Washington Post story reported Friday night that Booz Allen Hamilton had described the DOGE team’s access to Treasury data — reportedly “read only” access that doesn’t allow for data manipulation — as “the single greatest insider threat risk the Bureau of Fiscal Services has ever faced.”

The company put out a statement hours after the assessment became public.

“Booz Allen did not conduct a threat assessment or make recommendations regarding DOGE,” a statement read. “Commentary provided in a draft document by a subcontractor contained unsubstantiated personal opinions. … Booz Allen has terminated the subcontractor.”

Booz Allen Hamilton is the government’s fourth largest contractor on IT issues, taking in $8.2 billion in 2024.

And the hits keep cuming

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Elon has changed his name in solidarity with "Big Balls" and other DOGE employees who, like almost every young man on the planet, have had some kind of inappropriate profile name based on potty humor at some point in their life.

Since the leftist media establishment decided to make "Big Balls" a thing, Elon is right there in the trenches with the lads in this fight against clown world.

Gratifying to see that the man in charge of dismantling this hated government is as juvenile as I am: havoc should be fun.