Tag: wasteful spending

Big Balls Is Back, Saving Social Security This Time

On Thursday, Wired reported that ‘Big Balls’ is back and now at the Social Security Administration.

Wired reported:

Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, one of the first young technologists brought on to Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has returned to government shortly after resigning.

“Edward Coristine joined the Social Security Administration this week as a special government employee,” Stephen McGraw, an SSA spokesperson, tells WIRED. “His work will be focused on improving the functionality of the Social Security website and advancing our mission of delivering more efficient service to the American people.”

Multiple sources at the SSA tell WIRED that Coristine has appeared in person to work onsite at the agency’s Woodlawn, Maryland, headquarters. One SSA employee says they saw Coristine with DOGE engineer Aram Moghaddassi, a current X and former Neuralink employee deployed at the agency. The pair was spotted at the SSA cafeteria as recently as Monday, although it’s unclear what day this week Coristine’s employment officially began. “Coristine looked nervous, almost embarrassed,” the SSA source says. “Aram was on the phone with someone … then said, ‘Yes, I’m with him right now,’ gesturing to Big Balls.”

Pentagon Officials Caught Using Taxpayer-Funded Credit Cards at Casinos, Bars, and Clubs

Pentagon Officials Caught Using Taxpayer-Funded Credit Cards at Casinos, Bars, and Nightclubs Totaling $1.3 BILLION

Washington, D.C. – A scathing new audit from the Department of Defense Inspector General (DODIG) has blown the lid off a jaw-dropping scandal: Pentagon officials have been using taxpayer-funded credit cards to bankroll gambling sprees, bar tabs, and late-night parties at nightclubs. While Americans scrape by amid soaring costs, the brass at the DoD have been living large—on your dime.

Taxpayer Money Down the Drain

The audit zeroes in on the Government Travel Charge Card (GTCC) program, designed to cover official travel expenses for DoD personnel. Instead, it’s become a slush fund for reckless spending:

  • $387,642.66 blown at casinos and mobile app stores—think slot machines and Candy Crush, courtesy of taxpayers.
  • $112,484.69 racked up at bars, lounges, and nightclubs, with spikes during holidays and big games like the Super Bowl.
  • A staggering 3.9 million transactions worth $1.2 BILLION left unchecked because no one bothered to look.

This isn’t pocket change—it’s a full-on heist of public funds.

Oversight? What Oversight?

The Pentagon had a fancy tool, the Visa IntelliLink Compliance Management (VICM) system, meant to catch shady charges. But here’s the kicker:

  • The Defense Travel Management Office (DTMO) ignored red flags, letting high-risk spending slide without a peep.
  • Hundreds of Program Coordinators—supposed to keep this in check—couldn’t even be bothered to log in.
  • Rules to spot fraud? Outdated and ignored, leaving the door wide open for abusers to keep swiping.

It’s like handing out free credit cards at a Vegas buffet and telling no one to watch the tab.

Déjà Vu All Over Again

This isn’t even new. Back in 2015, a similar audit caught DoD cardholders dropping cash at casinos and strip clubs. Promises were made, heads nodded—but nothing changed. A decade later, the party’s still going, and taxpayers are still footing the bill.

Your Money, Their Playground

Picture this: You’re juggling bills while some Pentagon hotshot pulls cash from a casino ATM or buys rounds at a nightclub—all charged to Uncle Sam. Meanwhile, the DoD begs Congress for more funding, claiming it’s strapped for cash to defend the nation. The audit says $1.2 billion in transactions went unscrutinized. That’s not a glitch—that’s a grift.

Where’s DOGE When You Need It?

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), hyped as the cure for government waste, is our best shot to slam the brakes on this nonsense. We need Elon Musk’s DOGE to put an end to this once and for all—starting with this $1.2 billion mess. Taxpayers can’t wait any longer for the cleanup to begin.

No One’s Paying the Price

Here’s the part that’ll make your blood boil: despite this damning evidence, not one official has been fired, fined, or even scolded. Zero accountability for millions squandered. The Pentagon’s silence is deafening, and taxpayers are left holding an empty wallet.

How Covid Is Challenging Over-Population Myths With Sex

For decades, we’ve been told that the population of the earth is one of the causes of many of our problems and only by reducing it (Bill Gates) will we survive.

This is either something that is a global destruction issue (like the dinosaur extinction) or is just more climate scare tactics (yes, it is the same group claiming the death of the planet by weather also). Certainly history will be the judge but so far none of the climate extinction events have come true (such as from an Inconvenient Truth FWIW).

NOW WE HAVE THE TEST – SEX

One would think that if you were holed up with someone else, sooner or later it would lead to babies in 9 months. I get that there is birth control but we’ve seen that people are inconsistent and sooner or later it happens. Look at office sex. A lot of people wind up doing it with co-workers they’d never touch except for familiarity.

However, we find that this is not the case. People have stopped bumping uglies.

CBS obtained data from health departments in over two dozen states that shows “a 7% drop in births in December—nine months after the first lockdowns began.”

Research from the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., predicts that births may well be down 300,000 to 500,000 in 2021.

The prediction is based on a negative correlation between birth rates and the unemployment rate. Higher unemployment means fewer babies.

Brookings also notes, contrary to what the romantics thought would happen, that surveys of couples, particularly those with young children at home, report declines in sexual activity.

But these COVID-related hits to birth rates really attach to a trend of declining fertility rates in the U.S. that has been going on for years.

WHO ISN’T DOING THE DIRTY?

The U.S. fertility rate in 1900 was almost 4, more than double today’s rate. Please don’t tell me it was because times were so much more safe and certain over a century ago.

In a 2019 Pew Research survey, 16% said having children is essential for a man to have a fulfilling life. Twenty-two percent said it is essential for a woman to have a fulfilling life.

In the same survey, 57% said that “having a job or a career they enjoy” is essential for a man to have a fulfilling life. Forty-six percent said “having a job or career they enjoy” is essential for a woman to have a fulfilling life.

Regarding being married, 16% said it is essential for a man to have a fulfilling life, and 17% said it is essential for a woman to have one.

This data, I think, sheds light on why Americans are not having children. It’s not because times are so hard. Every time is challenging, and Americans are more comfortable and prosperous today than ever in history.

Maybe the Brookings scholars will be right about having 300,000 fewer births in the U.S. in 2021 because of COVID-19.

They get picked on for being losers, but the millennials and Gen-X,Y and now Z are not holding their own. There is a reason for a generation of Baby Boomers. They came home from war and got busy about life. Boomers had the hippie sex and love days so they held up their end of the deal.

Humor here: Maybe all the drugs that the Boomers did is why we have screwed up generations that follow. The boomers got out of the parents basements and for the most part never returned.

WHAT WE WILL FIND OUT ABOUT OVERPOPULATION

Now we will see if the over population alarmists are right (no) or are they full of it to try and get money (the usual reasons). With the younger generation just not doing it to the fill the needs of replenishing our population minimums it’s going to go down. We will then get to see if there is enough food (yes), land (yes) and will people kill the earth (no).

The population scare tactics crowd will not stop until they move onto the next scare to try to get us to part with part of our paychecks so that congress can waste it.

Judge for yourself. I think we have the technology to farm all the food we need and people haven’t been able to change the temperature more than a tenth or two (not even proven yet scientifically, no the science isn’t settled yet).

Here’s my advice. Get busy at getting busy. The planet is resilient. We need the kids and generations prior to ours survived actual million death events unlike Covid. The death count is so overstated and incorrectly calculated that by just correcting for actual Flu deaths would make what it is, less significant were it not an election year in 2020