Adam Andrzejewski – The Depth of the Swamp | Hacker News Reader

Adam Andrzejewski – The Depth of the Swamp

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The wastefulness of large bureaucracies has been a running joke for decades now, whether fair or not. That being said, I don't think you're going to find that Hacker News is a good forum for espousing your fiscal conservatism--especially when its couched in some particularly divisive contemporary tropes (e.g., "swamp"). Perhaps you're looking for https://reddit.com/politics ?

You've somehow decided that I am a "fiscal conservative"?

Sadly (or perhaps happily, depending on viewpoint), I am not!

I am not a fiscal conservative.

No.

I am someone who believes (strongly) in transparency (absolute and total) relating to finance/money/transactions - where a public trust is concerned.

That's not a "fiscal conservative".

That's a transparency advocate.

You see, I believe that if we are to have free and fair society in the future, then we must make all financial flows, especially those of governments (both foreign and domestic!) open, transparent, accountable, and subject to public scrutiny.

Now, I am sorry if it offended you because I reposted a video with the title "swamp" in it. Perhaps I should have sanitized and/or censored the title. If you believe that "swamp" is divisive, then perhaps you could contact the author of the video, and/or POTUS, since both seem to use that terminology quite a bit...

Myself? I wouldn't call it the "swamp"...

No.

If I'd call it anything, I'd call it what the late comedian, George Carlin, so eloquently did...

He called it... "The Free Money Club". <g>

He added (also very eloquently, in my opinion!) that to this club, "You and I aren't invited!" <g>

Of course, maybe you'd prefer that it be called the "Swamp" in lieu of "The Free Money Club" -- if those were the only two choices...

Now, I'm not political... I'm apolitical... I'm a man of the mind.

So while I appreciate your kind offer, no, I'm not looking for https://reddit.com/politics...

Perhaps you are looking for a forum online where posters do not have the intellectual capacity to push back as much as they do on HN?

(I'd also point out that I am not your enemy; I'm only the proverbial messenger (well, technically Adam Andrzejewski is the messenger, I'm only the cross-poster! <g>), and please remember there is a "no shooting of the messenger" rule in effect! <g>)

You may now rebut, if you wish...

Adam, (person posting on behalf), my family, friends and I appreciate your hard work, but it is obvious in your speech at Hillsdale that you favor Trump. That’s your prerogative, but please don’t water down the important job you have taken on by playing favorites. 50% of the country does not like him and we need 100% to hear you.

On one hand, you talk about politicians making promises they do not keep, yet on the other, you seem content with trusting the words and promises of politicians. When the VA in Palo Alto was called out for purchasing two sculptures worth $700k, why did another promise by a politician satisfy you? Who was fired? What happened to the statues? What was the Palo Alto VA’s spending report in 2019?

I checked out your app and was disappointed that it has not been updated from 2014. It’s 2020. Have you been in a court battle with California this whole time? And if so, please announce that with a banner or something on your app.

Excerpts:

4:43:

"As many of you know, I'm from Illinois, and it's the SuperBowl of corruption... In Illinois, our #1 manufactured product is corruption..."

9:28:

"When candidate Donald Trump won for President, Here's what we found at the federal level: We did an oversight report called "Mapping The Swamp, A Study Of The Administrative State", and we found that the federal bureaucracy is very expensive, it's $1,000,000 a minute, it's $500,000,000 dollars a day. We found a new minimum wage in 78 of the largest federal agencies, and the minimum wage, the average pay, is $100,000 today for a federal bureaucrat.

But it's not even about the salary, they get performance bonuses! Our auditors found that the agencies gave out one million performance bonuses to bureaucrats, costing taxpayers $1.1 billion dollars! And that shocks most people, they don't know how a million federal bureaucrats can qualify for a performance bonus - most people don't think government's running that well! So we dug deeper, and we found that 99.6 percent of the federal bureaucrats are rated "fully sucessful"! And that's actually impossible! The advertised purity of Ivory Soap is only 99.4 percent!"

https://www.openthebooks.com/

https://www.openthebooks.com/about-us/

https://www.openthebooks.com/assets/1/6/AdamAndrzejewski_Bio...

Article I, Section IX, Clause 7, U.S. Constitution:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Article_One_of_th...

"No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time."

Mission of Open The Books: Capture & post online every dime taxed and spent at every level of government - federal, state and local across America. Simply stated, "Every Dime. Online. In Real Time."

Note to future self: I need a transcript of this man's talk... it's that good.

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