So much going on! Will Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and the Department of Government Efficiency  succeed in their supposed quests to shut down everything from USAID to the Department of Education to God knows what else?

As the establishment crowd moans and the MAGA crowd rejoices over the sketchy claims of cuts and eliminations, I’m adopting (and strongly suggesting that others adopt) a wait-and-see  attitude, a posture of sangfroid rather than swivet or schadenfreude (sorry if you have to look those terms up).

Just because someone associated with the government says X, one needn’t, and probably shouldn’t, unquestioningly believe X.

“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete,” CIA director William J. Casey allegedly told US president Ronald Reagan at a 1981 White House meeting, “when everything the American public believes is false.”

Nearly four decades later, Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, put it a different way to journalist Michael Lewis: “The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with sh*t.”

The fecal matter in question seems to be “disinformation” on an industrial scale. Not just false claims, but conflicting claims and stage magic style misdirection — so much of it all that any attempt at figuring out what’s really going on feels like a 24/7 game of Whac-A-Mole [TM].

Neither of those formulations are really new, nor is the phenomenon limited to Republican administrations. The old saw, “how can you tell a politician is lying? His lips move!” remains perennially popular for good reason.

Politicians, policy-makers, and all too many “thought leaders,” lie.

They lie about their actions.

They lie about the motives behind their actions.

They lie about the effects, both prospective and retrospective,  of their actions.

They lie knowingly, they lie constantly, and they lie for the most obvious reason: Telling the truth wouldn’t get them what they want. What they want, of course, is power. Ever more power, over more people and more things, world without end.

It’s not an occasional case, it’s a systemic attribute. As Friedrich Nietzsche noted in the 19th century, “everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.”

A collective entity built on lies must necessarily be made up of individual liars.

How can we know whether Trump, Musk, and friends are serious about cutting the size, scope, and power of government, or, if so, successful at doing so?

Figuring that out won’t be easy. Neither they, nor their opponents, nor their media hangers-on, are people any sensible American would ask for directions if lost, or leave alone in a room with their wallet.

Question everything. Then question the answers. Then hope for the best.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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As January bled into February, Lora Kelly notes at The Atlantic, US president Donald Trump “announced 25 percent tariffs on the country’s North American neighbors, caused a panic in the stock market, eked out minor concessions from foreign leaders, and called the whole thing off (for 30 days, at least).”

Cue collective sigh of relief, but the title of the piece — “How the Tariff Whiplash Could Haunt Pricing” — tells an even more disturbing tale.

Yes, tariffs are terrible (btw, they’re not taxes on “the country’s North American neighbors,” but on the American consumers who buy goods from those neighbors), but there are worse things.

One of those worse things is regime uncertainty.

In his 1997 paper published under that title (and subtitled “Why the Great Depression Lasted So Long and Why Prosperity Resumed after the War”), economist Robert Higgs explains:

“[T]he insufficiency of private investment from 1935 through 1940 reflected a pervasive uncertainty among investors about the security of their property rights in their capital and its prospective returns. This uncertainty arose, especially though not exclusively, from the character of federal government actions and the nature of the Roosevelt administration …”

A long-term tariff is certainly economically damaging. It both raises prices on imports and enables domestic producers to raise THEIR prices on the same kinds of goods. It makes everyone (except the politically connected domestic producers who lobbied for it) poorer.

But at least a stable tariff can be planned for. Investors just factor it in to their decisions.

Suppose, however, that tariffs were set on a daily basis by spinning a roulette-type wheel. One day the tariff on, say, imported cars was 0%. The next day, 100%. The day after that, 29%.

Existing auto manufacturers would factor the maximum POSSIBLE tariffs into their prices rather than risk losing money on sudden changes, and few would invest in the risky business of building new plants to build more cars.

Consumers would get screwed on car prices every day; investors wouldn’t risk getting screwed on profitability going forward.

The actual effect of Trump’s tariff shenanigans might not be as stark as the daily roulette wheel hypothetical, but uncertainty will inevitably drive consumer prices up and interest/investment in producing potentially tariffed goods down.

“In this world,” Benjamin Franklin wrote in 1789, “nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

Tariff roulette removes even that second element of certainty. And all we get in exchange is reduced general prosperity.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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On January 28, US president Donald Trump made federal government employees an offer that, at least theoretically, they could refuse: “If you choose not to continue in your current role in the federal workforce, we thank you for your service to your country and you will be provided with a dignified, fair departure from the federal deferred resignation program.”

The offer included a generous severance package. Those accepting would continue to receive pay and benefits through September.

The employees could accept — and tens of thousands DID accept — the offer, apparently by simply replying “resign” to notification emails on or before February 6.

On February 6, a federal judge extended the deadline for several days.

Meanwhile, three unions representing government employees filed suit claiming the offer is “arbitrary and capricious” as well as illegal.

I’m no authority on the legalities here, but I can see why those unions prefer not to lose a bunch of dues-paying members.

Personally, I’m all in favor of the “buyout” — but only on one important condition: Those employees must not be replaced.

The federal government employs about three million people, not including military personnel (who presumably didn’t receive the buyout offer).

Given the limited scope and power of that government, according to its own Constitution, cutting the federal workforce by 90% would probably leave it still much fatter than it has any plausible reason to be.

Not that the federal government considers itself bound to obey that Constitution, of course. It discards the supposed “supreme law of the land” whenever it finds that law inconvenient.

But big, permanent cuts to that workforce size would reduce its ability to  “sen[d] hither Swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their Substance,” as the Declaration of Independence complained of King George III doing.

They would also reduce government spending, at least once the severance pay and benefits end.

And with unemployment levels continuing at historic lows, sending a bunch of people back to the productive sector might at least partially offset Donald Trump’s efforts to deport millions of workers.

OK, probably not enough to stop the big price increases his deportations, tariffs, and trade wars are about to hit our wallets with … but anything to take the edge off, right?

If the purpose and outcome of the buyout is a substantial reduction in the number of government employees, we’ll all be better off.

If the purpose of the buyout is just to replace “civil servants” with “Trump loyalists,” well, that’s a different story.

Once the dust settles, Congress should reduce future appropriations for federal employee payroll  and benefits to reflect the number and cost of the departing employees. Whether Trump purrs or howls will tell us what the purpose was.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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