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epistasisyesterday at 6:13 PM1 replyview on HN

I remember people citing the All-In podcast about "you can always cut 10% without affecting things negatively" or something silly like that. Or thinking that $1T/year of cuts is something that's possible without taking out social security and medicare and tons of defense spending.

I can not tell you how much respect I have lost for anybody involved with the All-In podcast. They sold out all credibility for political wins for wanna-be fascists.

These jokers all got lucky, obviously. They can not perform basic analysis of organizations, clearly. What a joke of a result!


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thwartedyesterday at 6:43 PM

PJ O'Rourke had a line in his book "Parliament of Whores" when he, as a layman, ham-fistedly cuts a bunch of stuff from the federal budget, and then just subtracts 10% from it at the end. Probably not the originator, but a quote I think about often.

"Add it all together, and I've cut $282.8 billion, leaving a federal budget of $950.5 billion, to which I apply O'Rourke's Circumcision Precept: You can take 10 percent off the top of anything. This gives me another $95 billion in cuts for a grand total of $337.8 billion in budget liposuction."

Parliament of Whores, page 103.

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