The question that comes to mind is: can the government reproduce the function that Politico (and other outlets) served in a more cost effective way without losing the value of the product? If it aids government functioning, I don’t mind my tax money going to make things work better. If it’s cost effective to buy these reports from third parties instead of hiring people to produce them, what’s the problem? I haven’t seen anyone talking about that perspective before deciding it’s a “bad” thing.
If it would be better for the government to do this work itself, then the right thing to do is (1) create the new system that provides the data that Politico does, then (2) drop the subscriptions.
Killing the subscriptions first is just another "move fast and break things". Clearly politically motivated. I don't agree that this was good.
I agree. I worked in the environmental field for the government and we had a subscription to “Greenwire”. It was a quick and thorough look at environmental issues of the day, court cases, reg changes etc. We used it to keep track of the bigger picture. A publication which I believe, is available to the public. Expensive for an individual, but available. The best situation might be the government producing these sorts of products, but here we go again….the never ending battle between big(ger) government and privatization. As others have mentioned, each product should be scrutinized before axing it.
But…do we really believe the story that Musk et al are doing this to save money? Or rid us of the “deep state”? Or is it part of the plan to control the system, by replacing Politico with their own loyalists? We can’t lose sight of the FACT that the attempt at grand replacement of the civil service with partisan loyalists, Musk service, is real. They have published it, advertised it, and are hiring as we speak. Worse, IMHO, is what is happening with programs/agencies like the FFA, which they want to privatize. In many agencies, cripple them to destroy their ability to enforce regulations that our techy and other corp bros find inconvenient.
A little over $1M won’t cut it, not even close. Do you have any idea of the per capita cost of a new hire in the fed gov? You have to factor in the costs of administration for their hiring, which can be significant especially if there are background checks/security clearances needed, plus the costs of the facility, materials & equipment they’d have to use, plus taxes (FICA, etc), training (specific to the agency), transportation reimbursement (many are eligible), etc. Now I have a new research project 😂 I bet someone has already quantified this. Bottom line: you might be surprised what it really costs to do.
How much govt workers cost is no secret. OPM publishes all sorts of data and information. Here is the grade and wage scale for Minneapolis for instance (varies a bit by locality based on cost of living). Many administrative positions top out at GS 7 or 9.
Gov pay scale is not exorbitant, often not on par with private sector. The benefits are good, paid leave and good healthcare. It takes years and/or performance to go up in grade. You are assigned a grade upon employment, based on your skill set and education. You top out at a grade based on your position. We hired consultants out of the private sector that took definite reductions in wage/benefits, for various reasons, including not wanting the hassle of managing the administrative work required of the company.
In how many ways does private enterprise feed off of government funds? It is hard to imagine that Congress passed any legislation that specifically names Politico to be a beneficiary, so that means that some decision maker somewhere made the call.
The "Medicare Advantage" program is a gift to private insurance companies. The elephant in the room is the "defense" industry that gains directly from the nearly $1 trillion "defense" budget. I heard that Musk is going to the Pentagon. Praise be!
Today it was news that NOAA is being invaded by DOGE. Privatize NOAA, so that all of the weather information freely available to the public becomes subject to fees that must be paid to get a forecast or to view a satpic from a satellite that we have paid for? I am worried that Musk is on a mission to blow everything up so that private enterprise can selectively pick up this or that piece and profit from it.
I'm pretty certain that's exactly what his goal is for much of what he's doing. If it's data and expertise he values then he wants to own it and privatize it so he can either make money from it or have special access. If it's data he doesn't value then he wants it to go away and the people who understand it to be unable to continue to do their jobs or share what they know with anyone else. Definitely not share the knowledge collected through taxpayer funding with actual taxpayers. Informed citizens are exactly what this administration considers enemies. I'd be a lot more excited about this if I thought the "savings " would go anywhere other than some even worse already wealthy corporation more eager to profit off the death throes of our country. It's not that all of that money was wasted, it was and it wasn't in the bigger picture. I'd rather it do something more important like feed the hungry or pay a few fucking civics teachers.
I agree. And note that for all this wrecking going on where we are supposedly going to find out all the details of how ripped off we have been, the wrecker, DOGE, may not be questioned or restrained. We must not be able to see inside it or question its authority thought it is directed by a private individual who, it appears, is the ultimate authority whose plan is his own and not for us to know.
The founders knew all about the danger of unlimited power and devoted much thought to how power could be restrained. We are seeing what can happen when there is no restraint.
Exhibit #1 is the US allowing Israel unrestricted power, making it a monster. Israelis themselves have seen how Netanyahu has built up his power so that he is at the point of undermining the Israeli justice system and will wage war to keep the country distracted from his own misdeeds. Will that be next here in America, with Trump challenging the courts to stop him, he has already been packing them.
No American should rest easy with Trump as President. Too many have allowed their rage to give him power. A man with such a lust for power and so impressed with himself should never be given such power as he has right now. Only judges in the court system stand between him and tyranny.
Exactly, and that will be when the crunch comes, when he refuses to abide by a court order, so prone as he is to lashing out in frustration. As chief executive he has the police, the armed forces, all the executive agencies answering to him. It will be then that true Americans loyal to liberty and justice for all will refuse to serve under him and I am afraid such people will be a small minority. Popular rage drove the French Revolution which ended up turning on everyone who gained power under it. The current hunt for "inefficiency" could so easily become a hunt for people to blame and punish.
Yay! I’ve been searching Substack for this sort of discussion. To me it’s the 800 lb gorilla in the room, actually, sitting on our lap! Do we really believe the story that Musk et al are doing this to save money? Or rid us of the “deep state”? Or is it part of the plan to control the system, by replacing Politico with their own loyalists?
We have to keep in the forefront of any analysis of what or why they are doing anything, the FACT that their attempt at a grand replacement of the civil service with partisan loyalists, Musk service, is real and ongoing. They have published it, advertised it, and are hiring as we speak. They are firing all the young trainees on probation and if replaced, it will be with loyalists to Trump/Musk, not you and implementing the law and regs of this country. I believe the DOGE site has an application process!
Worse, IMHO, is what is happening with programs/agencies like the FFA, which they want to privatize. For many agencies, cripple them to destroy their ability to enforce regulations that our techy and other corp bros find inconvenient. And the total elimination of others. Many of which are regulating or investigating Musk’s businesses….including USAID. Look it up…like nine different agencies are, or were, taking him to task, for several years now, for some violation or another. I believe Reich has a good diagram of this.
Getting all the data and information……giving us no transparency…buying off the GOP Congress. Hardly seems they are seeking a robust democracy in which power is shared amongst us, through three co equal branches of government.
This is pretty incoherent. Through subscriptions the government is privatizing something in principle it could build itself but doesn't, usable data about its own operations. Privatizing what's in the nebulously public domain is a perfectly cromulent business model in this fallen world. Meanwhile these stable geniuses also want to eliminate NOAA's free, public-facing products do they can be put in private hands instead.
Neither the outrage that employees can expense subscriptions (a normal workplace perk) nor the outrage against NOAA are in any way justifiable.
Good story Klip and Arkin. I know a few E&E News reporters - who were very good at their role before Politico bought the site a couple years back - fled under the corporate thumb. So in the end, Poltico sent their own reporters into the "new" E&E news who knew little about how to report energy issues, and these new ones replaced the smart ones. Several of the former E&Rers are on Substack now, the real home of intelligent discourse.
You seem to be suggesting that there is a difference between a 'free' press, and a bought-and-paid-for one. We shall see which, if any, MSM are left standing after the 'subscriptions' are cancelled.
Politico did an informative series exposing Oligarch Eric Schmidt, even if most of it was hand delivered to reporters by a PI firm. OK with me if their expensive elite targeted products tank, but it was targeted for a political reason.
“Taxes pay for government to produce the data and for Politico to process the data into proprietary formats the public never gets to access”- systemic poverty means the infrastructure to address inequality is priced out of reach.
"In other words, the federal government shells out millions to learn about its own goings-on from reports based on the government’s own data. Taxes pay for government to produce the data and for Politico to process the data into proprietary formats the public never gets to access.
If the government thinks its own data is too unruly to navigate (which it is) or Congress is not giving the public all it needs to track legislative processes, maybe they could actually fix these problems. Politico is far from the only company that takes insider government data not readily available to the public and then sells it back to the federal government."
Ok. We can all agree that this is not an ideal situation for public transparency and use of taxes, sure.
Do you really believe that anyone involved in cutting these expenditures is actually going to reduce the taxes of
folks making $50K-100K??!!
These assholes have no plans to reduce taxes in any meaningful way for us. SOMEONE has to pay for the federal contracts and that someone is us. Am I supposed to be more outraged at these premium subscriptions than I am about how going forward my taxes will only pay the best, whitest, manliest assholes around for much worse shit that cost more?!
I don’t see what the big deal is here. Gov’ts contract to private sector all the time. Is the issue that the data should be made public or is it consulting high costs, or is Politico a bad actor? I don’t get it.
"So why should ordinary people’s taxes pay for it?
The major media refuses to answer this question and instead has gone to bat for Politico with misleading “fact checks” and compulsive repetitions of the phrase “conspiracy theory.” "
It's annoying that the major media views its job now as opposing Trump, full stop. Rather than look into the government spending itself and help provide context and non-biased information, they instead frame everything as "debunking" Trump's conspiracy theories.
Not sure this qualifies as holding power to account.
They used to care about this sort of thing rather than defend it:
Ken, I try not to specifically request anything, as you are so busy. But, the whole Clinton Foundation/Chelsea Clinton being fake news? Is it fake news? I see fact checks but the wording makes me suspicious. There are no real fact checkers because they are all taking money from the people they should check. It's insanity.
Doubt it! Why would I pay for their crazy shit! If America is under attack by and the freaks that stole the election and are not law abiding why are we not storming the he capitol?
The question that comes to mind is: can the government reproduce the function that Politico (and other outlets) served in a more cost effective way without losing the value of the product? If it aids government functioning, I don’t mind my tax money going to make things work better. If it’s cost effective to buy these reports from third parties instead of hiring people to produce them, what’s the problem? I haven’t seen anyone talking about that perspective before deciding it’s a “bad” thing.
If they are going to use a consultant to provide the services, taxpayer should all have access to it. That would be great!
If it would be better for the government to do this work itself, then the right thing to do is (1) create the new system that provides the data that Politico does, then (2) drop the subscriptions.
Killing the subscriptions first is just another "move fast and break things". Clearly politically motivated. I don't agree that this was good.
I agree. I worked in the environmental field for the government and we had a subscription to “Greenwire”. It was a quick and thorough look at environmental issues of the day, court cases, reg changes etc. We used it to keep track of the bigger picture. A publication which I believe, is available to the public. Expensive for an individual, but available. The best situation might be the government producing these sorts of products, but here we go again….the never ending battle between big(ger) government and privatization. As others have mentioned, each product should be scrutinized before axing it.
But…do we really believe the story that Musk et al are doing this to save money? Or rid us of the “deep state”? Or is it part of the plan to control the system, by replacing Politico with their own loyalists? We can’t lose sight of the FACT that the attempt at grand replacement of the civil service with partisan loyalists, Musk service, is real. They have published it, advertised it, and are hiring as we speak. Worse, IMHO, is what is happening with programs/agencies like the FFA, which they want to privatize. In many agencies, cripple them to destroy their ability to enforce regulations that our techy and other corp bros find inconvenient.
A little over $1M won’t cut it, not even close. Do you have any idea of the per capita cost of a new hire in the fed gov? You have to factor in the costs of administration for their hiring, which can be significant especially if there are background checks/security clearances needed, plus the costs of the facility, materials & equipment they’d have to use, plus taxes (FICA, etc), training (specific to the agency), transportation reimbursement (many are eligible), etc. Now I have a new research project 😂 I bet someone has already quantified this. Bottom line: you might be surprised what it really costs to do.
How much govt workers cost is no secret. OPM publishes all sorts of data and information. Here is the grade and wage scale for Minneapolis for instance (varies a bit by locality based on cost of living). Many administrative positions top out at GS 7 or 9.
https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/salary-tables/pdf/2025/MSP.pdf
Gov pay scale is not exorbitant, often not on par with private sector. The benefits are good, paid leave and good healthcare. It takes years and/or performance to go up in grade. You are assigned a grade upon employment, based on your skill set and education. You top out at a grade based on your position. We hired consultants out of the private sector that took definite reductions in wage/benefits, for various reasons, including not wanting the hassle of managing the administrative work required of the company.
I got busy lol
In how many ways does private enterprise feed off of government funds? It is hard to imagine that Congress passed any legislation that specifically names Politico to be a beneficiary, so that means that some decision maker somewhere made the call.
The "Medicare Advantage" program is a gift to private insurance companies. The elephant in the room is the "defense" industry that gains directly from the nearly $1 trillion "defense" budget. I heard that Musk is going to the Pentagon. Praise be!
Today it was news that NOAA is being invaded by DOGE. Privatize NOAA, so that all of the weather information freely available to the public becomes subject to fees that must be paid to get a forecast or to view a satpic from a satellite that we have paid for? I am worried that Musk is on a mission to blow everything up so that private enterprise can selectively pick up this or that piece and profit from it.
I'm pretty certain that's exactly what his goal is for much of what he's doing. If it's data and expertise he values then he wants to own it and privatize it so he can either make money from it or have special access. If it's data he doesn't value then he wants it to go away and the people who understand it to be unable to continue to do their jobs or share what they know with anyone else. Definitely not share the knowledge collected through taxpayer funding with actual taxpayers. Informed citizens are exactly what this administration considers enemies. I'd be a lot more excited about this if I thought the "savings " would go anywhere other than some even worse already wealthy corporation more eager to profit off the death throes of our country. It's not that all of that money was wasted, it was and it wasn't in the bigger picture. I'd rather it do something more important like feed the hungry or pay a few fucking civics teachers.
I agree. And note that for all this wrecking going on where we are supposedly going to find out all the details of how ripped off we have been, the wrecker, DOGE, may not be questioned or restrained. We must not be able to see inside it or question its authority thought it is directed by a private individual who, it appears, is the ultimate authority whose plan is his own and not for us to know.
The founders knew all about the danger of unlimited power and devoted much thought to how power could be restrained. We are seeing what can happen when there is no restraint.
Exhibit #1 is the US allowing Israel unrestricted power, making it a monster. Israelis themselves have seen how Netanyahu has built up his power so that he is at the point of undermining the Israeli justice system and will wage war to keep the country distracted from his own misdeeds. Will that be next here in America, with Trump challenging the courts to stop him, he has already been packing them.
No American should rest easy with Trump as President. Too many have allowed their rage to give him power. A man with such a lust for power and so impressed with himself should never be given such power as he has right now. Only judges in the court system stand between him and tyranny.
100% except my faith in his willingness to listen to the courts (should they enforce the law) is zero. So is my faith in his party to do same.
Exactly, and that will be when the crunch comes, when he refuses to abide by a court order, so prone as he is to lashing out in frustration. As chief executive he has the police, the armed forces, all the executive agencies answering to him. It will be then that true Americans loyal to liberty and justice for all will refuse to serve under him and I am afraid such people will be a small minority. Popular rage drove the French Revolution which ended up turning on everyone who gained power under it. The current hunt for "inefficiency" could so easily become a hunt for people to blame and punish.
What you say here sounds almost exactly like multiple posts on r/fednews unfortunately.
I never knew about that Reddit thread. Thanks for mentioning it.
Yay! I’ve been searching Substack for this sort of discussion. To me it’s the 800 lb gorilla in the room, actually, sitting on our lap! Do we really believe the story that Musk et al are doing this to save money? Or rid us of the “deep state”? Or is it part of the plan to control the system, by replacing Politico with their own loyalists?
We have to keep in the forefront of any analysis of what or why they are doing anything, the FACT that their attempt at a grand replacement of the civil service with partisan loyalists, Musk service, is real and ongoing. They have published it, advertised it, and are hiring as we speak. They are firing all the young trainees on probation and if replaced, it will be with loyalists to Trump/Musk, not you and implementing the law and regs of this country. I believe the DOGE site has an application process!
Worse, IMHO, is what is happening with programs/agencies like the FFA, which they want to privatize. For many agencies, cripple them to destroy their ability to enforce regulations that our techy and other corp bros find inconvenient. And the total elimination of others. Many of which are regulating or investigating Musk’s businesses….including USAID. Look it up…like nine different agencies are, or were, taking him to task, for several years now, for some violation or another. I believe Reich has a good diagram of this.
Getting all the data and information……giving us no transparency…buying off the GOP Congress. Hardly seems they are seeking a robust democracy in which power is shared amongst us, through three co equal branches of government.
This is pretty incoherent. Through subscriptions the government is privatizing something in principle it could build itself but doesn't, usable data about its own operations. Privatizing what's in the nebulously public domain is a perfectly cromulent business model in this fallen world. Meanwhile these stable geniuses also want to eliminate NOAA's free, public-facing products do they can be put in private hands instead.
Neither the outrage that employees can expense subscriptions (a normal workplace perk) nor the outrage against NOAA are in any way justifiable.
Good story Klip and Arkin. I know a few E&E News reporters - who were very good at their role before Politico bought the site a couple years back - fled under the corporate thumb. So in the end, Poltico sent their own reporters into the "new" E&E news who knew little about how to report energy issues, and these new ones replaced the smart ones. Several of the former E&Rers are on Substack now, the real home of intelligent discourse.
Imagine the cable fees the US government pays to show fox news in every military mess hall.
You seem to be suggesting that there is a difference between a 'free' press, and a bought-and-paid-for one. We shall see which, if any, MSM are left standing after the 'subscriptions' are cancelled.
Great reporting! I am wondering that according to Ken’s pay stub, did the Intercept receive USAID funds?
I believe they received small sums from foundations which themselves were recipients of USAID funding
Is First Look Freedom Defense Fund one of them?
Politico did an informative series exposing Oligarch Eric Schmidt, even if most of it was hand delivered to reporters by a PI firm. OK with me if their expensive elite targeted products tank, but it was targeted for a political reason.
“Taxes pay for government to produce the data and for Politico to process the data into proprietary formats the public never gets to access”- systemic poverty means the infrastructure to address inequality is priced out of reach.
"In other words, the federal government shells out millions to learn about its own goings-on from reports based on the government’s own data. Taxes pay for government to produce the data and for Politico to process the data into proprietary formats the public never gets to access.
If the government thinks its own data is too unruly to navigate (which it is) or Congress is not giving the public all it needs to track legislative processes, maybe they could actually fix these problems. Politico is far from the only company that takes insider government data not readily available to the public and then sells it back to the federal government."
Ok. We can all agree that this is not an ideal situation for public transparency and use of taxes, sure.
Do you really believe that anyone involved in cutting these expenditures is actually going to reduce the taxes of
folks making $50K-100K??!!
These assholes have no plans to reduce taxes in any meaningful way for us. SOMEONE has to pay for the federal contracts and that someone is us. Am I supposed to be more outraged at these premium subscriptions than I am about how going forward my taxes will only pay the best, whitest, manliest assholes around for much worse shit that cost more?!
Fuck that.
Bravo Klippenstein!! Keep em comin!
If we can't trust the government then who the F$$k can we trust?? hahahaha Alex Jones??? Free Luigi!!
I don’t see what the big deal is here. Gov’ts contract to private sector all the time. Is the issue that the data should be made public or is it consulting high costs, or is Politico a bad actor? I don’t get it.
"So why should ordinary people’s taxes pay for it?
The major media refuses to answer this question and instead has gone to bat for Politico with misleading “fact checks” and compulsive repetitions of the phrase “conspiracy theory.” "
It's annoying that the major media views its job now as opposing Trump, full stop. Rather than look into the government spending itself and help provide context and non-biased information, they instead frame everything as "debunking" Trump's conspiracy theories.
Not sure this qualifies as holding power to account.
They used to care about this sort of thing rather than defend it:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/the-air-forces-10000-toilet-cover/2018/07/14/c33d325a-85df-11e8-8f6c-46cb43e3f306_story.html
Ken, I try not to specifically request anything, as you are so busy. But, the whole Clinton Foundation/Chelsea Clinton being fake news? Is it fake news? I see fact checks but the wording makes me suspicious. There are no real fact checkers because they are all taking money from the people they should check. It's insanity.
Thank you for this information!
Boycott taxes we are dufunding the right wing bull shit
And remember God’s got this, timing so perfect🗽🔥
Let’s call their God Damn bluff really what do we have to loose?
Doubt it! Why would I pay for their crazy shit! If America is under attack by and the freaks that stole the election and are not law abiding why are we not storming the he capitol?