Election Lore

  • USING AI WITH THE SAFETIES OFF – A USER ERROR WAITING TO HAPPEN

    On April 2, 2025, President Donald Trump announced a comprehensive tariff plan. This post was prompted by recent speculation that the White House’s plan for broad reciprocal tariffs may have been shaped—at least in part—by AI. Whether that’s true or not, it raises a serious question: What happens when powerful decisions are driven by prompts…

  • Effective Strategies to Shrink the Deficit

    A high-level look at what’s possible The federal deficit is about $1.5–2 trillion per year. We can’t ignore it forever — but the usual arguments (raise taxes, cut benefits) miss the bigger picture. Here’s a smarter path that could shrink the deficit by up to half over time — without hurting families: – Reduce healthcare…

  • Solving SSA’s Problems: A Voter’s Perspective

    Most of my posts are about solving problems. And SSA does have problems—that’s not my opinion; their own internal audits say so, and the GAO backs it up. I’m not making this up or pulling it from AI. I’m using SSA as an example because DOGE and the White House are fixated on it, which…

  • Understanding SSA’s 2024 Digital Modernization Strategy

    I’ll admit—I didn’t read all of SSA’s modernization plans. After going through the 2024 Digital Modernization Strategy, I see that much of what I think is needed is already in progress. The strategy began during President Trump’s first term with the 2017 IT Modernization Plan and has continued through President Biden’s tenure with the 2024…

  • Why Drug Prices Are Unnecessarily High

    The root problem in our drug pricing system isn’t just high prices—it’s how those prices are set. In a normal market, buyers and sellers see the price and make decisions accordingly. But in pharmaceuticals, the system is built on information hiding and artificial scarcity. LIST PRICES AREN’T REAL Manufacturers set list prices arbitrarily high, but…

  • Smart Cost-Cutting: Stopping $90 Billion in Improper Payments

    If we’re serious about reducing federal spending, we need to begin where the waste is—not where the services are. For me, that means starting with fraud, waste, abuse, and error in Medicare and Medicaid. Each year, these programs account for an estimated $100 billion in improper payments. That includes clear fraud, like phantom providers and…

  • Why Education Should Drive US Economic Strategy

    The United States should focus its economic strategy on education, not broad-based tariffs aimed at job creation. While tariffs may offer short-term political appeal, they are a blunt instrument that misunderstands the realities of the global economy. Many of the jobs lost to globalization were labor-intensive roles that either became automated or shifted offshore to…

  • Social Security Administration: Job One

    The Social Security Administration has one job—to get the right payment to the right person at the right time. It’s not a tech startup where 95% uptime is acceptable. If checks go out late, that’s not a glitch—it’s a failure of mission, a breach of trust, and a warning sign of mismanagement. What’s worse is…

  • Georgia’s Strategy to Combat the Opioid Crisis

    The federal government has failed to prioritize the development of a non-addictive opioid replacement. Research is scattered, underfunded, and bogged down by bureaucracy. Meanwhile, the opioid crisis continues to cost the U.S. $1.5 trillion per year, with fentanyl smuggling fueling a deadly addiction cycle. Georgia has a unique opportunity to change the trajectory of this…

  • The Cost of Leadership: Principles vs. Personal Stakes

    We expect leaders to stand by what they believe. But what happens when those beliefs start costing them personally? When sticking to their principles threatens their own financial or political standing? Take Donald Trump and electric vehicles. For years, Trump has said EVs will destroy the auto industry and be “very bad for the country.”…