Blank lines and a storage mine (02-12-2025--Hour2)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalendershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:29] Again, I want to just point out the just the the the vision, the image of Elon Musk and Donald Trump at the Oval Office. Trump sitting behind the Resolute desk. Elon standing. You know, to Trump's right, but to the left of the screen because we're looking at them. So Elon standing there and he's got his little kid who's like, I don't know, three years old or something who's very well behaved.

[00:00:55] I mean, yeah, I know he kind of. You know, he was acting like a kid, so he's kind of walking around and then he's like wants to get held, picked up. Elon puts him on his shoulders and the kids like, you know, messing with his dad's hat and his hair and all this. But by and large, a well behaved kid. Like I at that age, I probably would have been just like running around, grabbing all of the Sharpies off of Trump's desk or something.

[00:01:22] And Trump didn't seem to mind and they seem to get along. And by the way, that's the other image that comes across in this media availability at the Oval Office yesterday afternoon. Is that these two guys do not hate each other. They're not vying for supremacy, alpha dog status and all of that. They seem to both understand the mission, right?

[00:01:44] The mission is to root out all of this waste and fraud and abuse and the stories that Musk brought. Had they been broken and you can still, by the way, legacy outlet people, reporters, you can still go and investigate this stuff. So that's going to be one of the nice benefits is when the data, when the information comes out, when this data is produced, you're going to be able to track this stuff too.

[00:02:14] And you're going to be able to do this kind of investigative journalism. And you're going to be able then to affect change, which is what gets you the awards. That's how you win awards. That's the model, right? Reporter uncovers something. They then rush to the government and they're like, what are you going to do about it? And some lawmakers like, oh my gosh, this is terrible. I'm going to do something about it. And then they file a bill doing something about this thing. And then it passes.

[00:02:43] And then the media, you know, pat itself on the back. And then they submit that for awards material. And then they win awards for it because they did something that, you know, affected change. You can do this with all of these grants, all of these programs and stuff. You can go out and find the corruption and save American taxpayers billions of dollars. You can help in this fight. You can do it. This is a good thing to do. This is a necessary thing to do.

[00:03:14] So listen to Musk. Here he says that at a high level, and this is another brilliant move here. They're taking back the word democracy. Because the left has been using this as sort of a catch-all for everything anti-Trump, right? Trump is a threat to the democracy. Democracy dies in darkness. Like all of this catastrophizing about the democracy.

[00:03:42] And Trump, or sorry, Musk distills this down and how it relates to the task at hand. The purpose of their mission is to, in fact, restore democracy. If there's not a good feedback loop from the people to the government, and if you have rule of the bureaucrat, if the bureaucracy is in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have?

[00:04:10] If the people cannot vote and have their will be decided by their elected representatives in the form of the president and the Senate and the House, then we don't live in a democracy. We live in a bureaucracy. So it's incredibly important that we close that feedback loop, we fix that feedback loop, and that the public, the public's elected representatives, the president, the House, and the Senate, decide what happens, as opposed to a large unelected bureaucracy.

[00:04:39] This is not to say that there aren't some good, there are good people who are in the federal bureaucracy, but you can't have an autonomous federal bureaucracy. You have to have one that's responsive to the people. That's the whole point of a democracy. Yes, precisely. That's the point. If you can't ever change this leviathan, then you really don't have a voice in the governing of your country.

[00:05:07] And so when somebody runs on a platform and promises that they are going to root out the deep state, the bureaucratic managerial class, they're going to find the waste, fraud, and abuse. They're going to act as your retribution. They're going to find savings so you keep more of your money. That will increase economic productivity. It will put more or let you keep more money in your pocket. That generates more economic activity. And you are more free.

[00:05:35] We are all more free. That's what people voted for. And I know the left doesn't understand this because they think that everybody that voted for Trump is just a fascist. See, this is the problem when you think in just this narrow way about all these other people and why they voted. And when you make these assumptions and then you blind yourself to reality.

[00:05:59] Failure is when reality and your wishes meet. Okay. And your wishes are not based in reality. Like you may try to fool the markets for so long, but you don't fool them forever because the market is us.

[00:06:19] He says we have a fourth branch, an unelected, unconstitutional branch of government that has more power now than really any elected representative. And this is not in line with the will of the people. The other part of it is the truth, the two trillion dollar deficit. If we don't do something about this deficit, country's going bankrupt.

[00:06:46] I mean, it's it's really astounding that the the interest payments alone on national debt exceed the Defense Department budget, which is shocking because we've got a lot. We spend a lot of money on defense. But and if that just keeps going, we're essentially going to bankrupt the country. So what I really want to say is like it's not optional for us to sit to reduce the federal expenses. It's essential. It's essential for America to remain solvent as a country.

[00:07:16] And it's essential for America to have the resources necessary to provide things to its citizens and not simply be servicing vast amounts of debt. Right. The problem is that that's what gets you elected. See, so the people running for office, they make all of the promises. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. And then people vote so they can get something out of the Treasury.

[00:07:40] This same sort of stuff happens at every level of government all the way down to HOAs. And people don't want to pay for the things that you have to pay for. They want I don't want to pay any money. I don't want to pay assessments, high assessments. And then you don't do any of the maintenance and then stuff starts falling down. And then, oh, lo and behold, we don't have any money to fix everything. And now you're bankrupt and your home values crater. Like. This is all predictable.

[00:08:05] People on the right have been talking about this looming catastrophe of the debt for. My entire life. Longer than my entire life. Aside from the one brief period under Bill Clinton with the Republican Congress where they balanced the budget. I would submit it wasn't even really balanced because it doesn't address the unfunded liabilities in the out years of Social Security and Medicare obligations. But at least it was.

[00:08:35] Like revenue meeting expenses. And now we have borrowed so much money, as he just said, the interest to service the debt is more than we spend on the military, which like eight hundred billion dollars. That is insane. That will bankrupt us.

[00:08:55] And you know what happens overnight if we are no longer the world's reserve currency because we're now no longer a stable currency. Your standard of living will be cut in half overnight. Because nobody's going to be using the dollar for everything. It's not going to be the the currency of the globe.

[00:09:19] And then you end up with other countries or maybe the U.N. trying to do its own currency and they will do the exact same thing. They will inflate it by making promises, printing debt and then running more and more deficits and then everything crashes like this is. This is not fiscally sound. It has to get fixed. And besides, isn't this the best way to fix it? To root this stuff out? Find the savings?

[00:09:47] And then you don't have to worry about Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security being touched. Right? All right. I hope you had a happy holiday season. But tell me if something like this happened at your house. Your family and friends are gathered around. Maybe y'all are in the living room. You're laughing, swapping stories, reminiscing. And then somebody says, hey, dad, remember those old VHS tapes? Did you ever get them transferred? And then the room gets all quiet.

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[00:10:40] And next year, instead of talking about those memories, imagine gathering the family to watch them together. Talk about a memorable gift. So do what I did. Trust the experts at Create a Video, conveniently located in Mint Hill right off I-485 and online at createavideo.com. Elon Musk standing alongside of Donald Trump in the Oval Office talking about what Doge is doing.

[00:11:05] And Trump said some of the things that they have found so far in their investigation has been shocking, to say the least. Billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse. And I think it's very important. And that's one of the reasons I got elected. I said, we're going to do that. Nobody had any idea it was that bad, that sick and that corrupt.

[00:11:31] And it seems hard to believe that judges want to try and stop us from looking for corruption, especially when we found hundreds of millions of dollars worth, much more than that, in just a short period of time. We want to weed out the corruption. And it seems hard to believe that a judge could say, we don't want you to do that. So maybe we have to look at the judges because that's very serious. I think it's a very serious violation.

[00:11:57] And Trump kept coming back to this line of attack. He kept referencing the court rulings that have been trying to stop Doge and his administration from doing what I think it's pretty clear they are empowered to do. He is the leader of the executive branch. And these courts seem to be saying, you can't look at this stuff, even though it's inside the executive branch.

[00:12:23] And if the chief executive can't do that, then what are you saying about the power of that bureaucratic branch, this fourth branch of government? That they're unaccountable. They can do whatever they want. That's nuts. Musk highlighted, then, deficiencies, specifically in the Treasury Department accounting process.

[00:12:47] Basic controls that should be in place, that are in place in any company, such as making sure that any given payment has a payment categorization code, that there is a comment field that describes the payment, and that if a payment is on the do not pay list, that you don't actually pay it. What? None of those things are true currently. So the reason that departments can't pass audits is because the payments don't have a categorization code. It's like just a massive number of blank checks just flying out the building.

[00:13:16] So you can't reconcile blank checks. You've got comment fields that are also blanks. You don't know why the payment was made. And then we've got this, a truly absurd, a do not pay list, which can take up to a year for an organization to get on a do not pay list. And we're talking about terrorist organizations. We're talking about known fraudsters, known aspects of waste, known things that do not match any congressional appropriation. It can take up to a year to get on the list.

[00:13:44] And even what's on the list, the list is not used. It's mind blowing. So what we're talking about here, we're really just talking about adding common sense controls that should be present, that haven't been present. It doesn't make any sense unless it's intentional, right? Like, how do you not adhere to basic accounting principles? You're the Treasury Department.

[00:14:13] You deal with the money. The IRS is under you guys. They go after people for not doing proper accounting. Businesses and individuals face criminal penalties if they don't do this stuff correctly. And you guys aren't even coding things so you know how to track spending. And he says this is why departments can't pass audits. They can't even pass an audit. I don't even have a high opinion of audits.

[00:14:42] Most audits don't even catch a lot of fraud. They don't. I mean, when I was up in Asheville, the Buncombe County government was passing all of its audits every single year. Meanwhile, the county manager was siphoning off millions of dollars in corruption. So, like, that's a minimum. You can't even pass an audit. But you don't even do the data collection and the entry on the front end in order to attempt to pass an audit. It's craziness.

[00:15:12] Musk said the stuff that they are finding is so basic that you can't believe it doesn't even exist already. This is a guy that comes out of the business world. And he looks at this stuff and it's like, what are you doing? How has this been able to go on for so long? You cannot audit if you can't trace the payments.

[00:15:41] You don't know what you're spending the money on. So how did it happen? Well, he has an explanation for that, too. All right. If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events. And I know you do, too. And you've probably heard me say, get your news from multiple sources. Why? Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with Ground News. It's an app and it's a website.

[00:16:08] And it combines news from around the world in one place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check.ground.news slash Pete. I put the link in the podcast description, too. I started using Ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself.

[00:16:37] Check.ground.news slash Pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get 15% off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. At the press availability yesterday, Elon Musk talked about the Treasury Department's failure to do basic accounting mechanisms so they can follow where the money is going.

[00:17:07] So basic, he says, you can't believe that these systems don't already exist. And then he explains how this happens and why it happens. Really, everything is geared towards complaint minimization. So then you understand the motivations. So if people receive money, they don't complain, obviously. But if people don't receive money, they do complain. And the fraudsters complain the loudest and the fastest.

[00:17:38] So then when you understand that, then it makes sense. Oh, that's why everything just, they approve all the payments at Treasury. Because if you approve all the payments, you don't get complaints. But now we're saying that, no, actually, we are going to complain. If money is spent badly, if your taxpayer dollars are not spent in a sensible and prudable manner, then that's not okay. Your tax dollars need to be spent wisely. Oh, my gosh.

[00:18:08] He said this is not draconian. This is not radical. It's common sense. And it is. He is exactly right. Like, why wouldn't you want to root out this kind of fraud? Why wouldn't you want to know? He pointed out that there are also people listed in the Social Security system as being 150 years old. Now, do you know anyone who's 150? I don't know. Okay.

[00:18:36] They should be on the Guinness Book of World Records. They're missing out. So, you know, that's a case where, like, I think they're probably dead. That's my guess. Or they should be very famous. One of the two. And then that a whole bunch of Social Security payments where there's no identifying information. Well, why is there no identifying information? Obviously, we want to make sure that people who deserve to receive Social Security do receive it. And that they receive it quickly and accurately.

[00:19:08] Social Security payments without any identifying information. I still don't even understand how that happens. What does that mean? Is there a name on the check? It's getting mailed to an address, but there's no record of the person? Like, I don't even understand that. And then this is, I think, the craziest thing.

[00:19:36] We are storing retirement paperwork for federal employees in a mine. An actual limestone mine in a mountain. The most number of people that could retire possibly in a month is 10,000. We're like, well, why is that? Well, because all the retirement paperwork is manual on paper. It's manually calculated, then written down on a piece of paper.

[00:20:05] Then it goes down a mine. And I'm like, what do you mean a mine? Like, yeah, there's a limestone mine where we store all the retirement paperwork. And you look at a picture of this mine. We'll post some pictures afterwards. And this mine looks like something out of the 50s because it was started in 1955. So it looks like it's like a time warp.

[00:20:27] And then the limiting factor is the speed at which the mine shaft elevator can move determines how many people can retire from the federal government. And the elevator breaks down sometimes and then nobody can retire. Doesn't that sound crazy? Yes. There's a thousand people that work on this. There are a thousand people. There's a thousand people that work on just federal employees retiring.

[00:20:57] And they have to calculate all of their retirement benefits by hand. And I heard this morning from a former federal employee, they say it takes like four to six months. They calculate it by hand. And you know that's not going to go well because eventually nobody's going to be alive that knows how to do any math anymore. And so, like, I don't even know what we're going to do at that point.

[00:21:17] They then put the documents in a manila envelope and then they have to transport them down a mining elevator for storage. And they put pictures out. I've seen the pictures. It's pretty cool. It looks like a villain's lair from a Bond movie except, like, with paperwork. You know, just like rows and rows and racks of boxes filled with all of these envelopes of all the federal retirees.

[00:21:48] I don't know if any of them are 150 years old. But the limiting factor, he says, is the speed of the elevator. It just takes so long to drive the elevator down for you to drop off the paperwork in the storage facility or something. And so that's why you can't have, because he said they encountered this problem and they learned about the mine when they were offering early retirement.

[00:22:18] Hey, why don't we just get a whole bunch of people to early retire and that'll help cut the workforce down. And they were told, oh, you can't do that because we're limited to only 10,000 people a month because that's the speed of the elevator. That's what? Who designed this? Why did we build this?

[00:22:43] I mean, I guess it's in the mine or it's in a mountain in a mine shift. So I guess like at the time it was a good idea. Like this is going to be really secure. You have to run down a mine elevator to get down there. But my gosh, like. You guys know there are computers. I know they're fairly recent inventions, but holy Toledo. How about we use some of these super smart computers to do this stuff? Right.

[00:23:11] Like I'm I'm upset when I can't get a W2 sent to my email and I can download it, you know, like. And you guys got to wait six months for your retirement to kick in because it takes an elevator shaft that long to run. It's just insane. This is insane. Why are we doing this? Because that's the way it's always been done.

[00:23:37] He said having people do anything else, like really, like almost literally anything else in the society rather than running manila envelopes down a mine shaft would be more productive. And that would add to the prosperity of the entire country. Like at a high level, if you say, like, how do we increase prosperity is we get people to do to to to shift from roles that are low to negative productivity to high productivity roles.

[00:24:07] And so you increase the total output of goods and services, which means that there's a higher standard of living available for everyone. That's that's the actual goal. That's the goal. Why are you fighting me on this? Do you disagree that that is a worthy goal? Well, let's talk about why you don't want Americans to be more prosperous. Like, why don't we all just start with something like, hey, guys, how about we make a faster elevator? Like, could we unify around that? Like, start small. Baby steps here, Democrats.

[00:24:36] Let's have a faster elevator down the mine shaft for the filing of the retirement documents. Hmm. I'm all about solutions here. I'm just trying to bring people together, you know. Here's a great idea. Yep. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in Western North Carolina? Just a quick drive up the mountain. And Cabins of Asheville is your connection.

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[00:25:50] And they have pet-friendly accommodations. Call or text 828-367-7068. Or check out all there is to offer at cabinsofashville.com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. A couple of emails here. This is from Philip. It's a peat mail. Philip writes in and says, My bad in thinking that the Marxist hatred of lower taxes was just ideology and manifesto.

[00:26:17] Now I see that the Marxists want more money for themselves and their communist agenda. This explains the ad infinitum request to raise the debt ceiling and taxes. Similar to Satan in the movie The Devil's Advocate, who plans to overload the system until it all comes crashing down. Well, that's Cloward and Piven. Pure evil and criminal. USAID spending at a time of unprecedented budget deficits is corruption at the highest levels.

[00:26:50] John is not impressed with the, what was her name? Melanie Stansberry, a Democrat from New Mexico. Shrill and constantly using the words literally and actually. Couldn't a polished speaker be used? No, she's the ranking member. She was the best they had to offer, which is kind of sad. But Dennis says, It appears that the Democrats in their drive-thru media's code phrase for the week is, Constitutional crisis.

[00:27:23] Indeed. Go back and listen to the podcast of either Monday or Tuesday's show. Yes, this is the narrative they're going with. It's no longer the democracy. It's constitutional crisis. He says, I would suggest that the best example to define constitutional crisis is to turn back the pages of the last four years. John says, let me do the math here. There's a thousand people working at the Federal Retirement Center in that mine.

[00:27:51] Only 10,000 people can retire per month. And that means each person, each employee doing the processing is processing 10 retirement packages per month, which is 2.25 packages a week per person. Well, you know, they're probably all working from home and they're doing it by hand. They're manually calculating the retirement benefits.

[00:28:19] So, I guess that could be a two-week or a three-day process per package. I mean, that's... Each package then takes you like 20 hours or 18 hours, let's say, per week, per person. Are we hiring the best math people for this gig? I don't know.

[00:28:48] Or maybe we should hire people with stronger backs so they can haul more of the envelopes down the elevator. No, he says it's the speed of the elevator. So, then there was a reporter who asked Musk whether or not this is a hostile takeover. You're detractors, Mr. Musk. I have to what? Including a lot of Democrats. I have detractors? You do, sir. I don't believe it.

[00:29:15] Say that you're orchestrating a hostile takeover of government and doing it in a non-transparent way. What's your response to that criticism? Well, first of all, you couldn't ask for a stronger mandate from the public. The public voted... We have a majority of the public voting for President Trump. We won the House. We won the Senate.

[00:29:43] The people voted for major government reform. There should be no doubt about that. That was on the campaign. The president spoke about that at every rally. The people voted for major government reform. And that's what the people are going to get. They're going to get what they voted for. And a lot of times, you know, people that don't get what they voted for. But in this presidency, they are going to get what they voted for. And that's what democracy is all about. Show me what democracy looks like. Right?

[00:30:12] Isn't this what all of the protesters in the streets have been demanding? This is actual responsiveness. This is why it's such a foreign thing to see. We don't understand. Wait. Wait. We voted for you based on these promises. Now you're doing it? I'm so confused. Email from Greg. He says,

[00:30:38] A friend of mine helped the state of Florida DOT with their accounts payable. He spent six months creating a system. After testing, training, and implementing the system, the head of the DOT told him, We are not going to use the system because it ties our hands in writing checks. Yeah, that is not, that's not surprising. Right?

[00:31:06] They want a free hand to do what they want to do. And if that doesn't align with the priorities of the voters, Well, pound sand voters, take a hike. Scram. Michael Schellenberger, a journalist, independent journalist, author of the book San Francisco, he says, The New York Times says that Elon Musk asserts without proof that bureaucracy is rife with fraud.

[00:31:36] Without proof. Okay. Schellenberger points out that the GAO under Joe Biden, General Accounting Office, or Government Accounting Office, under Biden estimated last year, that we are losing somewhere between $233 billion all the way to $521 billion every year to fraud. Up to half a trillion dollars in fraud every year

[00:32:03] in the GAO report under Joe Biden. This is not Elon Musk asserting, quote, without proof. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecalendorshow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone. Thank you.