By Lambert Strether.
Patient readers, I have added orts and scraps (more on the DOGEbags). –lambert
Bird Song of the Day
Brown Thrasher, (WBTNW-254) Bee Tree Trail, Creswell US-NC 35.78666, -76.40418, Tyrrell, North Carolina, United States
In Case You Might Miss…
- USAID shutdown vexes evangelicals.
- DOGEbags couldn’t code a lemonade stand, from their websites.
- Boeing not out of the woods.
- Valentine’s Day musical interlude.
Politics
“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles
Trump Administration
“Trump Is Dividing Evangelicals Now, Too” [Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine]. “Trump’s freeze on foreign aid and Elon Musk’s attempts to shut down USAID as a ‘criminal enterprise’ have generated a backlash among some voices within his conservative-Evangelical base. After all, many of them had spent years fighting for the right to receive federal dollars for the educational and charitable work their own missions dictated despite differences with key federal policies (particularly under Democratic administrations). One of their staunchest warriors, longtime ‘religious liberty’ litigator David French, now an op-ed columnist at the New York Times [sigh], has fired back not only at the administration but at fellow Evangelicals who are cheering it on: “There are few things more symbolic of the decline of the Republican Party than this radical turn against humanitarian aid. And it’s not just a turn within the Republican Party; it’s a turn within the evangelical church. It took a generation of legal and political argument (often from Christian conservatives) before the federal government began supporting Christian aid organizations. And now this entire edifice of humanitarian aid threatens to come crashing down.'” • One might argue that the gentle ministrations of Christian Evangelics are the very last thing the Global South needs.
“John Whitehead’s Commentary” [The Rutherford Institute] A long-time “religious right” NGO, with a more varied (and principled) portfolio than usual. And:
Whatever the justifications for discarding, even temporarily, the constitutional framework and protocols that have long served as the foundations for our republic (national security, an economic crisis, terrorists at the border, a global pandemic, etc.), none of them are worth the price we are being asked to pay—the rule of law—for what is amounting to a hostile takeover of the U.S. government by an oligarchic elite.
This is no longer a conversation about stolen elections, insurrections, or even the Deep State.
This has become a lesson in how quickly things can fall apart.
This is what all those years of partisan double standards and constitutional undermining and legislative sell-outs and judicial betrayals add up to: a coup by oligarchic forces intent on a hostile takeover.
The government’s past efforts to sidestep the rule of law pale in comparison to what is unfolding right now, which is nothing less than the complete dismantling of every last foundational principle for a representative government that answers to “we the people.”
This shock-and-awe blitz campaign of daily seizures, raids and overreaching executive orders is a deliberate attempt to keep us distracted and diverted while the government is remade in the image of an autocracy, one in which privacy, due process, the rule of law, free speech, and equality will all be contingent on whether you are worthy of the privilege of rights.
I have long insisted on the need to recalibrate the government, but this is not how one goes about it.
The issue is not whether the actions being taken by the Trump Administration are right or wrong—although there are many that are egregiously wrong and some that are long overdue—but whether the Executive Branch has the power to unilaterally override the Constitution.
If we allow this imperial coup to move forward without pushback or protest, we will be just as culpable as those signing the death warrant for our freedoms.
DOGE
“Elon Musk’s DOGE website has been defaced because anyone can edit it” [The Verge]. Parallel to the link from 404 Media I ran this morning. “The DOGE website created to document how Elon Musk’s team is eviscerating the US federal government is wide open for anyone to edit. This is the same DOGE organization that has gained unprecedented access to sensitive US financial systems with data on millions of Americans. While doge.gov displays a banner describing itself as ‘an official website of the United States government,’ the developers say it ‘feels like it was completely slapped together” and doesn’t appear to be running on government servers.” • Oh.
“Elon Musk’s Waste.gov Is Just a WordPress Theme Placeholder Page” [404 Media]. And the deck: “Musk told reporters all of DOGE’s actions are ‘maximally transparent.’ The website tracking waste is currently about an imaginary architecture firm…. The White House registered both waste.gov and DEI.gov—which redirects to waste.gov—last week, Reuters reported.” • So why doesn’t DOGE use government servers? That suggests there’s some issue with DOGE’s place in the government org chart that we don’t know about.
* * * “How Scary is DOGE?” (podcast) [Adam Tooze, Ones and Tooze]. Ginormous screenshot because Apple’s miserably inadequate podcast software won’t let me copy the text of the transcript. For those of you who were wondering “COBOL, what’s the Big Deal?” here is your answer.
And:
So, from their websites, the DOGEbags shouldn’t be coding for a lemonade stand. And we let them at the Bureau of Fiscal Services’ COBOL?
“The DOGE Czar’s Plan to Loot Medicare” [Maureen Tkacik, The American Prospect]. Worth reading in full. “Elon Musk’s coup plotters cut their teeth at an obscure Obamacare agency that burned $10 billion testing bogus cost savings initiatives.” It’s been awhile since I looked seriously at health care, but by my recollection, which Tkacik more than refreshes, the “Obamacare agency,” the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation MR SUBLIMINAL “Innovation!” Danger Will Robinson! was a scam, an attempt to buff the turd of private health insurance through its Accountable Care Organization (ACO) programs, which boiled down to private equity giveaways. One Brad Smith ran CMMI. One Steve Davis ran Elon’s hostile takeover of the Twitter: “Smith and Davis are said to be the real operating leaders of DOGE, with the latter playing the bad cop masterminding the scorched-earth shutdowns and cuts, while Smith and a 24-year-old deputy from his Nashville VC firm are said to be building the vision of what will replace everything that DOGE has eradicated, according to a source familiar with his recruiting efforts. CMMI, a highly unusual agency with a ten-year, self-renewing budget outside the appropriations process and an extraordinary ability to grant waivers from the statutes governing CMS, including fraud and kickback statutes, is said to be a model for how Musk wants DOGE to reimagine the federal government.” • There are, of course, private equity weasels everywhere. Perhaps they will be part of the four-man DOGEbag teams Elon plans to install in every agency! (I have to say that Tkacik sketches a highly plausible picture, one fully compatible with the stupidest timeline. However, the relation between the CMMI dude and the actual DOGEbag teams needs work. I would add that the Trump administration is said to be siloed, with multiple approaches proposed for any given project, and one picked. For all we know, there are other players besides Smith and Davis. NOTE The headine is deceptive; looting Medicare would be bad enough, but making CMMI the model for Federal Government reform would be truly horrid.
“I asked Former Bureau of the Fiscal Service Employees to Interpret An Elon Musk Tweet. Here’s What they Told me” [Nathan Tankus, Notes on the Crises]. This caught my eye: “My sources are also very skeptical that any career Treasury employee told Elon Musk that half of the expenditures that constituted “entitlements payments to individuals with no SSN” were “unequivocal and obvious fraud”. It’s hard to say more without knowing the context. This is the difficult thing with government by the pronouncement of Elon Musk. He can say stuff without any corroboration much faster than anyone else can check facts or correct falsehoods.”
Syndemics
“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison
Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).
Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!
Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (wastewater); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).
Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).
Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, thump, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
Lambert: The CDC has turned all the data I track back on, FWIW.
| Wastewater | |
| ★ This week[1] CDC February 10 | Last week[2] CDC (until next week): |
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| ★ Variants [3] CDC February 15 | ★ Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC February 8 |
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| Hospitalization | |
| ★ New York[5] New York State, data February 12: | ★ National [6] CDC February 13: |
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| Positivity | |
| National[7] Walgreens February 10: | Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic February 8: |
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| Travelers Data | |
| Positivity[9] CDC January 20: | Variants[10] CDC January 20 |
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| Deaths | |
| Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC January 25: | Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC January 25: |
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LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”
NOTES
[1] (CDC) Down, nothing new at major hubs.
[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.
[3] (CDC Variants) XEC takes over. That WHO label, “Ommicron,” has done a great job normalizing successive waves of infection.
[4] (ED) A little uptick.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Definitely jumped, but no exponential growth either, Odd.
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). Leveling out.
[7] (Walgreens) Leveling out.
[8] (Cleveland) Continued upward trend since, well, Thanksgiving.
[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Leveling out.
[10] (Travelers: Variants). Positivity is new, but variants have not yet been released.
[11] Deaths low, positivity leveling out.
[12] Deaths low, ED leveling out.
Stats Watch
Industrial Production: “United States Industrial Production” [Trading Economics]. “Industrial production in the US increased 2% year-on-year in January 2025, the biggest rise since October 2022, following a downwardly revised 0.3% gain in December 2024.”
Retail: “United States Retail Sales YoY” [Trading Economics]. “Retail Sales in the United States increased 4.2% year-on-year in January 2025, following an upwardly revised 4.4% rise in December 2024.”
Manufacturing: “Boeing’s Push to Boost 737 Production Starts With Closing ‘Shadow Factory'” [Wall Street Journal]. “Boeing is promising this year to get its jet production to precrisis levels and chip away at a growing backlog of orders. First, the manufacturer needs to clear out the dozens of planes in its shadow factories. A shadow factory is what Boeing executives call a production line where engineers and mechanics work on fixing, maintaining or updating aircraft instead of building new ones. They exist for the company’s two-bestselling models, the 737 MAX and 787 Dreamliner. As Boeing is struggling to hire and train enough machinists, the shadow factories can occupy some of the company’s most experienced workers. In some cases, Boeing spends more hours inspecting and reworking planes than it did to produce them in the first place. ‘It seems like 30% of everybody’s job is fixing something that’s bad quality or late product or something that shouldn’t have happened,’ CEO Kelly Ortberg told employees last year at his first town hall meeting.” • W. Edward Deming wouldn’t be rolling in his grave; he’d be clawing his way out of it. Didn’t these Boeing executives know anything? Also, if I were owned an airline, I’d think twice about taking planes off the shadow lines, for exactly the same reasons Qatar Airways refused to take 787s from South Carolina (when that was still possible).
Manufacturing: “Trump’s beef with Boeing” [Politico]. “‘Boeing, we’re not happy with the service we’re getting in terms of those planes,’ he told reporters Wednesday in the Oval Office. Trump has been pushing for a new presidential jet since his first term, when in 2018 he got personally involved in contract negotiations with Boeing and landed a $3.9 billion deal for two 747-8s that will fly faster, farther and cleaner than the current fleet of Air Force One planes. The aerospace firm is now trying to wiggle out of it, Trump argued. ‘They’re saying they’re getting hurt by it,’ Trump said. ‘They have to produce the product. They agreed to build planes at a certain price.’ A Boeing spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.” • No doubt!
Manufacturing: “US transportation chief demands meeting with Boeing CEO on safety” [Reuters]. ” U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on Thursday he had asked Boeing’s to come to Washington, D.C., ‘as soon as possible’ to discuss quality and safety issues at the company. The U.S. planemaker has been under scrutiny after a series of crises involving safety, including when a door panel flew off a new Alaska Airlines (ALK.N), opens new tab 737 MAX 9 in mid-air last year. Duffy added he would ‘visit Boeing myself to evaluate firsthand the measures being implemented to ensure its planes meet the highest safety standards,’ in a post on X. Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment.” • No doubt!
Manufacturing: “Weeks from homecoming, Boeing Starliner astronauts want to set the record straights” [CNN]. “NASA’s Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore — the two astronauts who launched on Boeing Starliner’s first crewed test flight and have been in low-Earth orbit since June — want to set the record straight: They aren’t stranded on the International Space Station, and they weren’t abandoned…. Williams also reiterated a sentiment she has expressed on several occasions, including in interviews conducted before she left Earth. ‘Butch and I knew this was a test flight,’ she told CNN’s Cooper acknowledging the pair has been prepared for contingencies and understood that the stay in space might be extended. ‘We knew that we would probably find some things (wrong with Starliner) and we found some stuff, and so that was not a surprise,’ she said.”
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 45 Neutral (previous close: 45 Neutral) [CNN]. One week ago: 38 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Feb 14 at 1:15:09 PM ET.
Gallery
We’ll always have Paris:
Woman with an Umbrella pic.twitter.com/e8iIjOynTn
— Pierre Bonnard (@pierre_bonnard) February 14, 2025
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