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2:00PM Water Cooler 2/5/2025

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By Lambert Strether.

Readers, I awoke with an especially nasty head cold yesterday, which I am still fighting today, so this Water Cooler will end when I creep back to bed, there to drink plenty of fluids. –lambert

Bird Song of the Day

Brown Thrasher, BHI–Thompson Island (restricted access), Suffolk, Massachusetts, United States. Includes a far-off airplane.

* * *

In Case You Might Miss…

  1. DOGE: New lawsuit from Public Citizen on DOGE data “access.”
  2. DOGE goons have write access to Treasury’s payments system (Tankus, Wired, Marshall, but not Taibbi).

* * *

Look for the Helpers

Saving datasets (1):

Saving datasets (2):

* * *

My email address is down by the plant; please send examples of there (“Helpers” in the subject line). In our increasingly desperate and fragile neoliberal society, everyday normal incidents and stories of “the communism of everyday life” are what I am looking for (and not, say, the Red Cross in Hawaii, or even the UNWRA in Gaza).

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

* * *

DOGE

Alliance for Retired Americans, American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO, and Service Employees International Union, AFL-CIO v. Scott Bessent, in his official capacity as Secretary of the Treasury, Department of the Treasury, Bureau of the Fiscal Service (PDF) [UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA]. I am encouraged by Public Citizen’s involvement. Readers will recall that in fighting TPP — a fight they won! — Public Citizen was an absolute honey badger. Here is the Plea for Relief, where (a), (b), and (c) repeat in simplified terms the Counts:

WHEREFORE, Plaintiffs pray that this Court:

a. Declare that Defendants’ decision to implement a system by which Elon Musk or other DOGE-affiliated individuals may access the Bureau’s records and obtain personal information about individuals and taxpayers contained there is unlawful.

b. Enjoin Defendants from continuing to permit such access or obtain such personal information.

c. Enjoin Defendants to ensure that future disclosure of individual records will occur only in accordance with the Privacy Act, the Internal Revenue Code, and the SORNs [System of Records Notice, placed in the Federal Register] applicable to the system of records at issue.

d. Grant any temporary, preliminary, or permanent injunctive relief necessary to protect the privacy of individuals whose information is contained within the system of records.

I have two quibbles. First:

This Court has statutory jurisdiction over this action pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1331, because this action arises under the laws of the United States, namely, the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. §§ 702, 706.

Readers will recall from my previous DOGE post that Lexology took a different view. Recall the DOGE is a temporary organization under the rechristened United States Digital DOGE Service, which is in the White House:

The APA governs federal agencies’ rulemaking and adjudication processes. Entities within the Executive Office of the President that solely advise and assist the President are exempt from the APA. DOGE’s advisory role likely places it outside the scope of the APA

This is the only justification given for the Court having jurisdiction. Do any real lawyers out there have thoughts?

Second, the case pertains only to access, not giving DOGE goons admin privileges for the entire system. It does seem to me that if indeed DOGE’s raison d’etre is indeed “advice” — hard to believe, with Elon’s constant drumbeating, but assume so — then there is no reason at all for DOGE to have admin privilges, which exist to change things, not to undestand and proffer advice about them. Readesr?

* * *

“Afternoon of Day Six of the Trump-Musk Treasury Payments Crisis of 2025: Changing the Treasury Payments Source Code & the Treasury’s ‘DOGE’ gag order” [Nathan Tankus, Notes on the Crises]. Tankus on Odd Lots; first breakthrough to the mainstream. “A source familiar with the situation reports to me that: ‘They are also doing a lot more to protect [Marko Elez, the dude with admin privileges]. As an example: there is a gag order on BFS IT personnel right now. They are not permitted to discuss “DOGE”, even in discussions internal to the Bureau. I have never seen anything like this before. Marko Elez’s unchecked behavior throughout the most sensitive payments infrastructure in the United States is something they are working very hard to protect.” • I hate to quote Talking Points Memo, but we must all pull together on this–

“Musk Cronies Dive Into Treasury Dept Payments Code Base” [Talking Points Memo]. “Overnight, Wired reported that, contrary to published reports that DOGE operatives at the Treasury Department are limited to “read only” access to department payment systems, this is not true. A 25-year-old DOGE operative named Marko Elez in fact has admin privileges on these critical systems, which directly control and pay out roughly 95% of payments made by the U.S. government, including Social Security checks, tax refunds and virtually all contract payments. I can independently confirm these details based on conversations going back to the weekend. I can further report that Elez not only has full access to these systems, he has already made extensive changes to the code base for these critical payment system.” Presumably there is a source code control system such that Elez’s changes can be rolled back? Somebody should find out….

“Day Six of the Trump-Musk Treasury Payments Crisis of 2025: “Treasury has been denying that they gave Marko write access, but I am looking at his access request right now” [Nathan Tankus, Notes on the Crises]. “One source is aware of this letter and explicitly denied it late yesterday: ‘Treasury has been denying that they gave Marko write access, but I am looking at his access request right now and it has the Deputy Assistant Commissioner for IT Operations instructing the team to disregard all previous instructions and assign Marko read/write privileges for the database. Thus, one way that this letter could be technically true in a bizarre and wildly dishonest sense is that by first having ‘read-only’ access and then having ‘read and write’ access, they could be said to have ‘read-only’ and ‘read and write’ access simultaneously. But probably the United States Treasury is just lying… [T]his source says, regarding the fact that the letter does not mention Marko Elez, states ‘That’s definitely a purposeful evasion.’ In any , the situation remains extraordinarily, incomprehensibly dire as they continue to have ‘read and write; access. According to a source familiar with the situation a senior IT employee shared a schedule of blackouts (system outages, typically for maintenance which can include system code changes) for the Payment Automation Manager (PAM), International Treasury Services (ITS) & the Standard Application for Payments (ASAP) to Marko Elez. Recall that PAM is the primary way for the Treasury to send payments, having sent 4.7 trillion dollars last year.” • Public Citizen should obviously amend their cases immediately to prevent this. (I’m starting to think at “access” is one of those words; it prevented the story from advancing for three days. I should also note that a lot of Tankus’ stuff is single sourced, so he and we need more greybeards to step forward. Here from Office Space is the least bad scenario (since there are no policy or Constitutional implications):

And one of the worst:

“Scare enemies & on occasion kill them”? Smile when you say that, son. Though Karp doesn’t smile MR SUBLIMINAL Boeing; OpenAI.

“Treasury Department Letter to Members of Congress Regarding Payment Systems” [U.S. Department of the Treasury]. “Treasury has no higher obligation than managing the government’s finances on behalf of the American people, and its payments system is critical to that process. In keeping with that mission, Treasury is committed to safeguarding the integrity and security of the system, given the implications of any compromise or disruption to the U.S. economy. The Fiscal Service is confident those protections are robust and effective. Therefore, expanding on efforts that began under the prior Administration, Treasury has been undergoing a review of these systems to maximize payment integrity for agencies and the public.” • Which would be why David Lebryk resigned.

“Nation Shrugs as Godzilla Eats Washington” [Matt Taibbi, Racket News]. USAID triumphalism: “On NBC, former U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) official Michael Schiffer wailed that the beheading of his former organization would cause national security to ‘erode.’ His quote came as USAID’s budget has been cracked open and Americans are leafing, transfixed, through its colossal library of crazy-ass contracts. From $39 million for ‘Gender Equality in Water, Power, and Transportation’ to ‘Recognizing the Third Gender in Bangladesh to “Ukrainian Resilience Through Fashion’ to a ‘TransFormation Salon’ to a pre-Taliban plan to help ‘Afghan Women Enter the Financial Sector,’ it’s a bottomless pit of ‘I don’t want to pay for that.’ A trip through USASpending.gov led me to an “art therapy” contract whose deliverables include things that look like (but can’t be, of course) suggestive pics of queer teenagers… If we close the door on such work, the former USAID official Schiffer said, ‘America’s Enemies Will Rejoice.’ Joe Scarborough called USAID ‘the ultimate soft power.’ Look, , but I’m not sure it’s a national security line item” This is very funny, but at the same time I know exactly what it is, because I did it 2003 – 2006: It’s singing in chorus (as I called it then) or dogpiling (as we call it today). The prurient element adds a sort of locker-room frenzy to the whole mishegoss. More: “MSNBC was one of many outlets to describe USAID as a ‘humanitarian‘ organization today — the Morning Joe graphic is a frowning waif-child — even though the world knows it to be a transparent CIA proxy used as cover for intel shenanigans. How can they think this is the smart play?” • Finally Taibbi says something important. Look, I like a snarky takedown as much as the next person — they’re fun and easy to write — but how come Nathan Tankus, Wired, and (gawd help us) Josh Marshall are eating Taibbi’s lunch on the ginormous story of DOGE’s read/write (admin privileged) access to our trillion-dollar payments system?

* * *

“Trump and Musk demand termination of federal office leases through General Services Administration” [Associated Press]. “One of the next moves in President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s sweeping effort to fire government employees and curtail operations is using the agency that manages thousands of federal employee worksites around the country to cut down on office space. Last week, regional managers for the General Services Administration, or GSA, received a message from the agency’s Washington headquarters to begin terminating leases on all of the roughly 7,500 federal offices nationwide, according to an email shared with The Associated Press by a GSA employee. The order seems to contradict Trump’s own return-to-office mandate for federal employees, adding confusion to what was already a scramble by the GSA to find workspace, internet connections and office building security credentials for employees who had been working remotely for years. But it may reflect the Trump administration’s belief that it won’t need as many offices due to its efforts to fire employees or encourage them to resign.”

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!

Vaccines: MMR

Babe wake up:

Can a doctor in the readership confirm?

* * *

Lambert here: Much is now back.

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Wastewater
This week[1] CDC January 27 Last week[2] CDC (until next week):

Variants [3] CDC January 18 Emergency Room Visits★[4] CDC January 25

Hospitalization
New York[5] New York State, data February 3: ★ National [6] CDC January 31:

Positivity
★ National[7] Walgreens February 3: ★ Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic February 1:

Travelers Data
★Positivity[9] CDC January 13: ★ Variants[10] CDC January 13

Deaths
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC January 11: Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC January 11:

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

There are no statistics of interest today.

* * *

The Bezzle: “Arkham Intelligence Data Unmasks Satoshi’s $108 Billion Bitcoin Vault” [Bitcoin.com News]. “On Tuesday, blockchain analytics entity Arkham Intelligence unveiled its discovery of $108 billion in BTC held within the recognized bitcoin wallets linked to Satoshi Nakamoto. By leveraging advanced forensic tools and the renowned Patoshi Pattern, the platform traced these holdings to the pseudonymous creator’s earliest digital vaults, casting fresh light on the dormant fortune’s staggering scale.” • Hmm. I’ve always wondered at Satoshi’s uncanny ability to remain unfound. Perhaps he’s a spook? Or a front for a committee of spooks?

The Bezzle: “After twelve years of writing about bitcoin, here’s how my thinking has changed” [Moneyness]. From 2024, still germane. “If you want to buy some bitcoins, go right ahead. We can even help by regulating the trading venues to make it safe. But don’t force others to play. Alas, that seems to be where we are headed. There is a growing effort to arm-twist the rest of society into joining in by having governments acquire bitcoins, in the U.S.’s case a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. The U.S. government has never entered the World Series of Poker. Nor has it gone to Vegas to bet billions to tax payer funds on roulette or built a strategic Powerball ticket reserve, but it appears to be genuinely entertaining the idea of rolling the dice on Bitcoin.” And: “Bitcoin is an incredibly infectious early-bird game, one that after sixteen years continues to find a constant stream of new recruits. How contagious? I originally estimated in a 2022 post, Three potential paths for the price of bitcoin, that adoption wouldn’t rise above 10%-15% of the global population, but I may have been underestimating its transmissibility…. It begins with a small strategic reserve of a few billion dollars. It ends with the Department of Bitcoin Price Appreciation being allocated 50% of yearly tax revenues to make the number go up, to the detriment of infrastructure like roads, hospitals, and law enforcement. At that point we’ve entered a dystopia in which society rapidly deteriorates because we’ve all become obsessed on a bet.” • Sadly, “early bird game” is undefined. Readers? NOTE This is an important take, so I’m leaving it up, this time with the URL.

* * *

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 39 Fear (previous close: 38 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 46 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed).Last updated Feb 5 at 3:15:48 PM ET.

Groves of Academe

Since we won’t keep our children safe from airborne diseases, it only makes sense we’d feed their minds with AI slop:

Zeitgeist Watch

“What’s a Pig Butchering Scam? Here’s How to Avoid Falling Victim to One” [ProPublica]. “If you’re like most people, you’ve received a text or chat message in recent months from a stranger with an attractive profile photograph. It might open with a simple ‘Hi’ or what seems like good-natured confusion about why your phone number seems to be in the person’s address book. But these messages are often far from accidental: They’re the first step in a process intended to steer you from a friendly chat to an online investment to, ultimately, watching your money disappear into the account of a fraudster. ‘Pig butchering,’ as the technique is known — the phrase alludes to the practice of fattening a hog before slaughter — originated in China, then went global during the pandemic. Today criminal syndicates target people around the world, often by forcing human trafficking victims in Southeast Asia to perpetrate the schemes against their will.” • I don’t see why we’d have to have human trafficking when we can just use AI.

Class Warfare

Speaking of NGOs:

News of the Wired

“Why being a ‘bingo night’ regular could buy your brain an extra 5 years” [StudyFinds]. “Older adults who maintained active social lives developed dementia approximately 5 years later than their less social peers (age 92 versus 87), according to a study of 1,923 seniors

Simple activities like dining out, playing bingo, taking day trips, or attending religious services were associated with a 38% lower risk of developing dementia.” • And for very online introverts?

* * *

Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi, lichen, and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From IM:

IM writes: Grass fringing the Pacific Rim terrane mélange. An authentic black and white film image from the westy west coast. The composition is more about the textures than any central feature– relax and let the eyes move!”

* * *

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About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

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33 comments

  1. t

    The Register continues with delightful coverage of DOGE and in a much needed relief from everyone always IDing Musk as “the world’s richest man”, the Register uses the modifier “the world’s richest and most impatient man.” That is jounalism!

    Reply ↓
  2. Mikel

    Musk little greedy f’er is trying to skim or try to make one his scammy payments ideas a thing.
    He probably will do more and he doesn’t care if he eventually gets caught scamming because he already bought his pardon.
    There. Said it.

    Reply ↓
    1. aleph_0

      This is interesting, and possibly close. I hadn’t really thought of the “I’m going to privatize the Dept. of Treasury payments and weld it to X, the Everything App” angle, but that does seem like something Elon would try to do.

      The second part is what gives me pause about lawsuits as being the solution here. This is fast, lawsuits are slow, and Musk doesn’t tend to be honest in public or follow court orders.

      Reply ↓
  3. Adam1

    “…they could be said to have ‘read-only’ and ‘read and write’ access simultaneously.”

    Why it would definitely be obscuring the facts to tell the media only 1 of the 2 privileges, it is totally normal to have both.

    It is bad practice to log into a production system with any write permissions unless you were specifically executing a write type of command or change. To log in with those permissions to just investigate or do research only invites accidents to do major damage. Hence even persons who have been given the privileges to make changes to systems often have 2 sets of log in permissions… 1 is read only and the other is read & write.

    Reply ↓
  4. ChrisFromGA

    Re: DOGE lawsuit, jurisdiction

    28 USC 1331 (Federal Question) is one of the simplest Federal Rules of Civil Procedure:

    https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/1331

    “The district courts shall have original jurisdiction of all civil actions arising under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States.”

    The plaintiffs here cite a Federal statute, the APA, for Federal Question. As Lambert points out, D.O.G.E. looks to have been carefully crafted as an advisory board. Hence, I agree w/Lexology that it might be exempt:

    DOGE’s advisory role likely places it outside the scope of the APA.

    Being a student I can only suggest that it might have been wise to include a Constitutional basis for the complaint. At the minimum, this would have given the suit better odds (2 ways to get to jurisdiction, not just one.)

    I’ve never heard of an advisory board being given the sort of privileged access to Federal IT systems without Congressional authorization, so alleging something along the lines of a violation of the 4th amendment (protection against “unreasonable searches and seizures”) might have legs. The heart of the complaint seems to be about privacy, so including that could at least help get past the complaint stage. Worst scenario – it does not harm the case.

    What about the shadowy status of DOGE – is it a governmental actor? Or private? Note that this sort of deliberate obfuscation of the nature of the beast is a trick that the Biden admin used to avoid scrutiny when they infiltrated Facebook and other social media companies to induce them to censor information on COVID treatments, thereby making it look like it was coming from the private sector not the government. Not every Court is going to let them get away with that trick …D.O.G.E. is clearly acting as Trump’s agent.

    At the complaint stage, you just need to plead enough to survive a motion to dismiss (plus show standing, get past jurisdictional hurdles.) So I would have thrown in a Constitutional argument as well, even if it wasn’t well-argued yet.

    Reply ↓
    1. albrt

      I agree it would make sense to have more than one basis for jurisdiction, but it seems to me that if a non-agency interferes or takes over work that was delegated to an agency, that qualifies as an APA problem.

      Although this stuff seems obscure, lawyers who deal with it have seen most of the possible dodges. The classic is when somebody gets the bright idea to ignore the process for making rules by calling something a “guideline.”

      Reply ↓
  5. upstater

    Lambert ponders about a dues paying or formal party membership for the Democratic party sometimes. Apparently in NYS one can be excommunicated from a party enrollment!

    In democratic (small “d”) NYS one can have a voluntary party registration judicially stripped. A registered Democrat changed his registration to run for Syracuse mayor as a RINO Republican ala Michael Bloomberg. The Republicans are in a tizzy!

    Syracuse GOP leaders reject RINO candidate Tim Rudd: ‘It went south really quick’

    A member of the Syracuse Republican Committee, former Onondaga County Legislator Jim DiBlasi, filed a complaint with Onondaga County Republican Chairman asking for a party disenrollment hearing. Under state election law, political party officials can hold such a hearing and then decide to seek a state Supreme Court order to have a person removed as a registered member of that party for not being “in sympathy with the principles.”

    Rather amazing purity test! Goes well with Cuomo’s COVID election “reforms” that basically outlawed third parties.

    Reply ↓
  6. LifelongLib

    Re the mumps, IIRC in the mid-60s we were immunized against smallpox(!), polio, diphtheria, pertussis aka whooping cough, and tetanus. There was nothing for mumps or measles and getting those was considered a normal part of childhood. I recall being told that it was good to have the mumps when I did (age ~10) because it could be dangerous later, but I wasn’t told why.

    Reply ↓
  7. IM

    As a doctor: post-mumps testicle is so a thing. Not everyone gets the oorchitis (15-30% unvaccinated post-pubertal males), but when it happens, it is impressive and can cause permanent damage. Nice smooth orderly organ becomes disorganized fibrotic mess. Infertility rare but possible.

    And not just the testis, there’s mumps meningitis too…

    Reply ↓
  8. Mikel

    “It begins with a small strategic reserve of a few billion dollars. It ends with the Department of Bitcoin Price Appreciation being allocated 50% of yearly tax revenues to make the number go up, to the detriment of infrastructure like roads, hospitals, and law enforcement. At that point we’ve entered a dystopia in which society rapidly deteriorates because we’ve all become obsessed on a bet.”

    That’s an idea from someone who REALLY hates America.

    Reply ↓
    1. Mikel

      And it’s going to be done to divide society.
      Dealing with people that don’t want any nation with a representative government in existence that will curb their excesses.

      Reply ↓
  9. Grumpy Engineer

    “Then there is no reason at all for DOGE to have admin privileges, which exist to change things, not to understand and proffer advice about them.”

    At face value, I would argue that mere read-only access would be adequate for auditing purposes. But I will note that sometimes changes are required to improve search capabilities (like enabling additional database indexing functionality), and this should only be done by experienced administrators who are familiar with the system. Having a single 25-year-old engineer (who is new to the system) making changes without supervision is a good way to accidentally break things.

    Reply ↓
  10. Carolinian

    As it happens I know someone who works for the Federal government, is four years from retirement and is now plunged into uncertainty about what is going on. Elsewhere it is reported that 20,000 workers have already taken “the deal”–if the buyout indeed exists–but that the normal year to year turnover is 6 percent so perhaps many would have quit anyway.

    But one should say that there have been those here who thought bending the law and the legal process to stop Trump was entirely appropriate and not just as great a violation of “the norms” as what is happening with Musk. Government workers on the sidelines of all this have a right to complain but our tawdry Dems do not. All the baloney coming out of Trump’s mouth lately is the sound of the system failing. A little integrity–across the board–would be a refreshing change.

    Reply ↓
    1. ChrisFromGA

      I have a theory that Musk and his geek squad may be a sort of forensic accounting team. They’ll uncover where the money is going and report back to Trump.

      The Politico revelation might be overblown, though, after reading that it could have been a bill for subscription services (apparently USAID paid for a subscription to Politico Pro.) That’s still bad, as it shows how entagled the private media are with the government, but not as bad as direct subsidies to keep the entire operation afloat.

      Jury still out … I would be looking for payments to Business Insider, Forbes, and other “independent media” that all started singing to the same sheet music right when Russia invaded Ukraine. Plus they all started showing up in Yahoo and Google new feeds, quite a coincidence!

      Reply ↓
      1. Mikel

        “I have a theory that Musk and his geek squad may be a sort of forensic accounting team.”

        Ok. Turn that team on Musk’s contracts.

        Reply ↓
        1. Lambert Strether Post author

          > “I have a theory that Musk and his geek squad may be a sort of forensic accounting team.”

          Auding is a process with standards and deliverables. It’s not like Judy Garland playing “Let’s put on a show!”

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          1. ChrisFromGA

            Standards … we don’t need no steenkin’ standards!

            Musk is freewheeling like a mix of an advanced threat actor, forensic accountant, muckraking journalist, and uber-geek techie. And maybe an Oceans 11 style criminal bank robber.

            Fail fast!

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    2. Lambert Strether Post author

      > keep the focus on the Treasury

      “When asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton simply replied, ‘Because that’s where the money is.'”

      I think the DEI stuff is a real focus, and legitimately so — thinking of the checkbox HR crapola — and getting rid of it will do the Democrats a favor (not that they understand or accept this, as the DNC shows). As long as it doesn’t turn into rolling back the clock to Jim Crow, as some Republican factions want.

      But the Fiscal Service stuff changes the Constitutional Order. Suppose Musk and his goons simply install a filter at the end of the check-writing pipeline that can simply prevent simply check for disfavored entities or projects from being printed — even though those checks were authorized by law? Or suppose President Musk uses the same software to “save” $4 billion a day by marking al checks down? In other words, what happens to the Congress’s Article I powers?

      Reply ↓
  13. hamstak

    Regarding DOGE and the payments system, besides the fraction of a cent scam, here are a few possibilities that come to mind (ignoring the plausibility/legality of each):

    1) Planting evidence: look, we found code proving that China/etc. has compromised our sacred code!
    2) Creating a backdoor for arbitrary denial of payments — a sort if internal sanctioning
    3) Introducing proprietary code, requiring remuneration to the patent/copyright holder
    4) No actual code is being changed, but perhaps just code comments, with the intent of driving further hysteria (which seems to be Trump’s current general approach between tariff’s, expansionism, Gaza, and so forth)

    Provided that genuine code changes are being implemented:

    1) How are these being audited/authorized?
    2) How are these being tested?
    3) Have any of these gone into production?
    4) Were established protocols followed with respect to 1-3?
    5) I find it implausible that a bundle of meaningful logical changes could be accomplished in such a short period of time, which implies some degree of system foreknowledge. It wouldn’t just be off the top of Don’s or Elon’s noggins.

    Reply ↓
    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      > 5) I find it implausible that a bundle of meaningful logical changes could be accomplished in such a short period of time, which implies some degree of system foreknowledge. It wouldn’t just be off the top of Don’s or Elon’s noggins.

      So they had an informant?

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      1. hamstak

        It would be irresponsible not to speculate.

        Operating under these assumptions:
        1) To repeat, this regards meaningful logical changes and not just code comment edits or changing variable names so they are suffixed with _MAGA
        2) The system under consideration is leviathan: complex, layered, multi-generational, lots of nooks and crannies.
        3) Changes have been described as “extensive” (per the TPM excerpt above); what qualifies as extensive? Maybe a few minor (in terms of effort, not necessarily consequence) changes applied to a number of parallel, similar subsystems could be called “extensive” and performed rather cold. A number of varying, complex logical changes? Not so much.

        Would a 24 year old programmer with how much experience with payment system structure/programming and (presumably) COBOL be able to accomplish, (presumably) single-handedly, in a short period of time, extensive, meaningful logical changes?

        This is why I tend to favor 4) from my first list in my previous comment: “extensive”, benign/non-logical changes being made to code documents, such as adding comments about what they would like to change in the future or what have you — the purpose being to raise a ruckus and then come back and say “Hey you fools, you raised a ruckus over nothing!”

        But at this point, who knows.

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    2. ChrisFromGA

      We need to update our threat models … billionaire oligarch buys influence with President, burrows into the largest financial payment system in the world. Introduces backdoors, elevates privilege, spoofs payments, tampers with system.

      Our lovable rascal then uses lateral movement into adjacent Federal Reserve banking systems to fund his next Mars mission. Data exfiltration. Privacy violations.

      Social engineering extraordinaire!

      Reply ↓
  14. CA

    Note that Japan has been experiencing a widespread flu infection period. Evidently there have been more than ordinary severe cases. As for me and my family, we routinely use the season’s flu vaccine. My parents use a double dose vaccine. Our experience has been excellent, but I just mention this and no more.

    Reply ↓
  15. marym

    Lawsuit filed today
    Protests and a Lawsuit Confront DOGE as It Targets Labor Department
    https://inthesetimes.com/article/elon-musk-trump-doge-labor-department

    Federal Employee Unions Sue DOGE and the Department of Labor
    Plaintiffs allege that DOGE-affiliated employees plan to enter the Department of Labor on Feb. 5 and will attempt to gain access to sensitive data and processes, including personal information of government employees and Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigations.
    https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/federal-employee-unions-sue-doge-and-the-department-of-labor

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  16. none

    I have a buddy who did a stint as a programmer at the IRS a decade or two back. If Fiscal Service’s codebase is anything like the IRS’s, there is zero chance that a handful of Muskrats have managed to change anything significant in this little time.

    Reply ↓
  17. flora

    An aside: I’ve enjoyed and learned so much reading WC. Maybe especially from The Gallery section. Hard to explain. Art isn’t politics or science. Manet, Monet, etc. The very small ivory carving of a woman’s portrait made 25,000 years ago just rocked me. Maybe that’s the point of art. Just want to say before we get near the end of February when many people will be saying: Thank you, Lambert.

    Reply ↓

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