Speaker 1: What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to
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smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for
your support. We are probably not going to hear about
egg prices anymore. I know, we heard a lot about
egg prices, and then we heard nothing about egg prices,
and then we heard a lot about egg prices. And
now we're not hearing a lot about egg prices. And
the reason why is because the egg prices have apparently
come down. They have come down. So now I feel
pretty stupid having bought all of those egg futures, but
you know, so be it. I'll just eat them so.
Figures released by the US Department of Agriculture show that
the average cost of one dozen eggs is now significantly
cheaper than in recent days. The economic indicator website called
Trading Economics shows that a dozen eggs were five dollars
and fifty one cents on Tuesday. That is two dollars
cheaper than when it was at its all time high
of over eight dollars at the beginning of the month
eight seventeen is what it peaked out at, and now
it's at five point fifty one. It's about, well, you know,
two and a half bucks cheaper, which is good. It's
a good thing, especially for people who eat eggs, of
which I am one a goal. So full disclosure there,
I not only did I buy the egg futures, which
is really just they just crack all the eggs and
put them in a carton and then you can just
shake them up and you just get eggs right out
of the thing. Anyway, a Gallop poll showed that voters
overwhelmingly cited economic pressures as the key reason that they
voted for President Donald Trump in November. Right, this is
the thing that I think a lot of Trump supporters
need to keep in mind. That it was the economy.
People were fed up with the economy. Yes, there are
other issues, Yes, there are other things that people were
motivated to vote by. Absolutely, We've covered them in depth
on the show for years. But as James Carvill famously said,
it's the economy, stupid, right, it's the economy, and people
wanted relief from Bidenomics and Donald Trump promised that. So
people are going to be willing to put up with
a little bit of pain for a short amount of time.
But if the economic impacts do not soften soon, Donald Trump,
I think is in trouble and the Republicans are in
trouble for the midterm election. We are still a good
ways away, right, but that's what everybody in DC is
looking at. This is what they're concerned about, is the
midterm elections. And rightly, so, if you don't get these
economic indicators tained, then it's going to spell problems for
the Republicans and that is going to then jeopardize Donald
Trump's ability to actually get his agenda implemented because he
can only do so much as president. There's a lot
of the stuff that he wants to do, and we'll
talk about the Department of Education here in a bit,
but that's going to require Congressional action, and you cannot
count on Democrats to help because they don't care to help.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: This is a bureaucratic state that they have empowered so
as to empower themselves, so they are not interested in
dismantlinging this leviathan that keeps them in power. So you're
gonna have to win elections, and that becomes way more
difficult with bad economic indicators. This is my concern with
the tariff and trade wars that Donald Trump is pursuing
all over the place, slapping tariffs here and there and
pulling them back and do it. You know, business does
not like uncertainty, and I think a lot of people
give Donald Trump a lot of leeway on this stuff.
And as I have cautioned repeatedly, let's give it a minute.
Let's see what happens. So I'm not racing to the
you know, to the window to fling myself out here.
I'm just saying this is my concern because I have
been told certain things about tariffs by people who study tariffs,
and they say that tariffs are not so great. And
when you get into these kinds of tariff wars or
trade wars, they can get out of control very quickly,
and they can raise the price and grind our economy
to a halt. I don't know if that's going to happen.
I'm just saying that's what I'm worried about, and that's
what a lot of people are worried about. So when
I see a story that egg prices have come down,
this makes me feel a little bit better, right, because
I'm old enough to remember when Democrats were hammering away
on the price of eggs, because Republicans were hammering away
on the price of eggs before the election, because the
price of eggs had gone up, and the price of
everything had gone up, and things were unaffordable, and people's
cost of living was higher, and the inflation was run away,
and so it was the economy, right, And so when
Biden loses, oh sorry, I mean Kamala Harris, when she
loses the election, then immediately you have this pivot. Within
like a week, you have Democrats and media. But I
repeat myself saying, what about egg poises? How come you
haven't brought the egg poises down? Which is absurd, Like
the guy's been in office like seven days and you're
demanding that what he just like unilaterally set the price
of eggs at something. It's just nuts. So we knew
what the problems with the egg industry was, right. You
had a lot of the birds that had to be
slaughtered because of the bird flu and all of that,
and so you had these you had these problems in
the industry. They are now subsiding. Those impacts are now subsiding.
Egg prices surged mainly due to the outbreak of the
bird flu, and that actually goes back to February of
twenty twenty two. This is according to Newsweek, that the
bird flu decimated poultry stocks at farms across the country.
More than one hundred eleven million birds, mostly egg laying hens,
were infected or cold, in other words, killed. They were slaughtered,
which I don't know why you slaughter the ones that
don't have the flu. I mean, I understand slaughtering the
ones that have the flu. And if there's no cure
or whatever, then yeah, you kill those birds that have
the flu so it doesn't spread. But if you have
birds that don't have the flu, then maybe you keep
them around, maybe quarantine them separately, just you know, two
weeks or so, just to you know, flatten the curve
and then find out whether or not they have immunity.
And if they have heard immunity or maybe flock immunity
it might be, then you then you know, like, hey,
these birds survived. Let's keep breeding these birds because they're
immune to that bird flu strength. But I don't. I
am not an agricultural expert here by any means. I'm
not a chicken expert or a vet. I do eat
a lot of chicken, and I eat their offspring, but
I don't know about bird flu contagiousness, so I am limited.
I'm just a radio host. Other problems such as inflation,
supply chain issues, transportation costs, and new state animal welfare
regulations have all contributed to higher prices. Supply chain issues, inflation,
transportation costs, and animal welfare regulations. Like almost every single
one of those is gov CO related. Inflation, check transportation costs,
check new regulations check. So yeah. The cost of eggs
hid an all time high after Trump's inauguration in January.
He vowed to tackle the price of eggs. On day one,
he said he was gonna crack it. He did not, Actually,
I just made that up. His administration admitted in December
that it was a hard thing to do is to
bring down these egg prices once they are up, and
that is true. The drop in prices can be attributed
to a fall in demand or a slow down in
the spread of the bird flu. So either way, good news,
good news, unless, of course, you bought a lot of
egg futures, then you may have yeah, yeah, you may
take a loss on that. Now, the consumer price index
good news here. Inflation in the month of February only
rose by two point eight percent on an annual basis,
so compared to last year, two point eight percent. That's
slightly lower than economists had forecasted it. So that's that's
a pretty good sign. The month to month is a
two percent great again, lower than expected. That's a good
sign too. So just let's just see, let's give it
a minute. We don't have to run around the The
sky isn't falling just yet. I mean, I'm watching, I
am watching the sky. If it starts falling, I will
be sure and let you know, 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,
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 dot ground, dot 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
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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. I have a Pete tweet here
from Eric who says, Pete, we are from the government.
We heard you had three sick birds, and we are
here to help. We're going to murder all one hundred
eighty seven and forty of your birds for you, while
raising the cost of supplies to replace them. You're welcome. Yeah,
that seems to be the gov CO approach on the
bird flu situation. Again, not a vet, not a chicken expert,
although I do eat a lot of them. Also, here's
a tweet from the Urn who says mainstream media fear
porn fails again. Yeah, this is why I caution when
you read reports from legacy outlets. So much of the
quote reporting or journalisming as I call it, it's all speculative.
It's all like this looking ahead and making predictions, and
it's it really is the laziest form of and I
don't even want to call it journalism because it isn't
really journalism. It's just speculation. And when I went to
journalism school and I was a reporter, I reported on
things that had occurred, right, things that happened or were
happening in real time, live breaking news. Right, this is
what is actually going on. That's not to say that
you can't at some point draw some conclusions or tease
out some things like this could have an impact here
or there or whatever. But the value of that speculation
isn't very great because if you are incorrect, there's no
price to be paid for it. And so over time
we end up now with so much of the media
apparatus being geared towards simple predictions and not reporting. And
again I just caution the predicting doesn't have a lot
of value because so much of it is wrong, and
the reporters never come back and tell you that they mispredicted,
that they got it wrong. They will never come back
and say, we thought this was going to happen and
then it didn't happen. Sorry about that, right, They never
say that. So the only way to know whether somebody
should be believed or not is to basically keep a
running tally, which is onerous. People aren't going to do it. Okay.
Regarding the inflation numbers that were reported today by the government,
grocery prices, they do continue to rise. Groceries increased two
point six percent in February. That's over two point six
percent over a year earlier. According to the CPI report,
the ongoing rise of food cost is creating a financial
pinch for many households. Egg prices were a driver of
last month's grocery inflation. Okay, so now with the price
of eggs coming down, you would expect to see some
of those grocery prices dropping too. Coffee also went up
six percent on an annual basis. Restaurant meals jumped three
point seven percent from a year ago. Now when you
look at the chart, though, the massive inflation that we
saw was under Joe Biden, right, and that has never like,
that hasn't gone away. That's the problem with inflations. Why
it's the hidden text. It's once it's in there and
everybody is paying the additional costs, it never ratchets back down.
It just goes one direction. So yes, even with inflation
growing at only two percent, it's still a two percent
cumulative impact on the prior inflationary numbers. And we saw
those numbers in the you know, nine, ten eleven percent
range three or four years ago. So I don't know
if I don't know if the inflation's going to be
able to be tamed. But we'll we'll find out. Now
the House has passed a stop gap spending bill. All right, Hey,
real quick, if you would like to get your product
or service in front of about ten thousand people multiple
times a day, send me an email at Pete at
thepeteclendarshow dot com and ask me about advertising. It's super affordable.
It's baked into this podcast forever, and podcasts have a
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Pete at Thepete calendarshow dot com and I can show
you how it works. Run the numbers with you again.
That's Pete at the peteclendarshow dot com. I do have
some messages this from Dennis regarding the egg prices. The
producers regulating egg prices. Maybe just may have just been
playing a shell game with US Americans. That's okay, that's possible.
I see what you did there, John says, two weeks
to flatten the curve. Lol, That's why I love you.
Keep up the great work. And John wants to know
have any other countries been experiencing an outbreak of chicken flu?
Did they slaughter all of the flocks too? Well? I
can google that for you, John, and sure enough. According
to the United Nations, this was from December of twenty four.
Avian flu reported in one hundred eight countries across five continents,
more than five hundred bird species infected with at least
seventy mammalian species, and according to Worldanimalnews dot com, two
hundred and fifty million birds were slaughtered. That was back
in October of twenty twenty three, so I'm guessing it's
probably more than that by now, probably half a billion globally.
And yeah, I've got you know, BBC eight days ago
bird flew outbreak confirmed at a chicken farm, So it is, Yes,
it is happening all over the world. I don't know
if this one originated in Wuhan either, but probably so. No,
I don't know that. I'm just saying it's but yeah, well,
I mean they do tend to originate in that certain
part of the globe, Denny says, Pete. Maybe we coin
the phrase speculative journalism. I predict it may catch on.
That's there, you go, that's yeah, I mean, there's speculative journalism.
But I almost feel like I give it too much
credit by calling a journalism. But that's probably my own
bias towards the term, you know, like journalism to me,
represents a higher standard. I don't know, like there's reporting
and then there's like journalism, Like investigative journalism is what
I think of in those terms, and I just I
don't even know. It's just speculation. A lot of the
stuff that we see it's just speculation. All right. Let
me jump over here to the Washington Times piece by
Alex Miller. Nearly halfway into the fiscal year, House Republicans
gave up yesterday and passed an extension of spending, primarily
at twenty twenty four levels, saying they wanted to turn
the page and start on President Trump's agenda. By the way,
this has gotten Rand Paul to come out against this, saying,
all you're doing is locking in the spending that was
put into place by Democrats and Joe Biden. Why why
are we continuing to do that? So that's Ran Paul's position.
They cut from a few programs. They increased funding for
some of their priorities this time around, like immigration enforcement
and the military. But this Continuing Resolution or the CR
passed on a two seventeen to two thirteen vote. You
had one Democrat joining the Republicans in approving it, that
was Jared Golden of Maine. And you had one Republican
joining all the Democrats in voting against it, and that
would be Thomas Massey from Kentucky. So Democrats, according to
the Washington Times, we're eager to try to hang a
loss on mister Trump. That's why they opposed it, Because
if you think about it, It does make a bit
of sense. If this was, you know, a continuing resolution
for funding that they did when they were in control,
why wouldn't they keep doing it? Why wouldn't they pass
a CR. Well, we like everything that we funded. We
would like to see the CR pass, and we know
the CR will pass, but we would really like Donald
Trump to take a loss on something, so we'll try
to block it or something. But then of course they
don't block it, and so I'm not really sure you
actually got anything out of that vote. The bill marked
a retreat for the Speaker, Mike Johnson, who had promised
not to accept a continuing resolution, but President Trump came
in and backed the CR, and that proved to be
the deciding factor in persuading the fiscal hawks weary of
supporting this kind of stop gap spending measure right because
they were on a deadline Friday. They had to fund
government before Friday because funding expires from the stopgap measure
that they passed in December. And this is how we
continuously fund our bloated federal budget is by these stop
gap continuing resolutions or the omnibus bills. And they they
set us up with these deadlines that oh, we got
to pass it.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: You don't have time to read the seventeen thousand page bill.
We just have to pass it, or else the whole
government shuts down and you'll be blamed for it and
everything else. It's just an awful way to govern and
to do finances. The Loan Republican Thomas Massey from Kentucky
voted no. Trump threatened to lead the charge to find
a candidate to replace him in the twenty twenty sixth election.
Massey shrugged that off, noting that when he was the
only Republican to vote against Trump's COVID nineteen relief bill
in twenty twenty, he got the same threat, and then
he went on to win reelection with eighty one percent
of the vote. Anyway, So Massey's not worried in the
Republican run Senate though. Because this bill cleared the House,
this is now going over to the Senate. The bill
is going to need Democrat votes if it's going to
clear the sixty vote threshold in order to survive. Democrats
are going to be under pressure to stop a partial
government shutdown. So I would just tell you here's a
little bit of prediction from me. Watch the way that
this is covered right, watch the way that the media
treats this story. Will they be blaming Democrats for a
government shutdown if that's what ends up happening, Because this
continuing Resolution is essentially continuation of their spending that they
did when they had the power. So why would you
vote against it now except to try to hurt Trump?
And the only way that you can hurt Trump by
you shutting down the government by not passing a se
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Let's go over to the phones and talk with Jane. Hello, Jane,
welcome to the program. How are you.
Speaker 2: I'm fine. I hope you're well.
Speaker 1: Hi am well good.
Speaker 2: Seem to have okay? When I was listening to you,
you seem to think that animal ware welfare groups were
kind of lack of doodle people. But I'll but but.
Speaker 1: What did I say that would lead you to believe?
What would what did I say that prompted you to
say that.
Speaker 2: You were saying that animal welfare groups And believe it
or not, I could see your eye roll on the radio.
Speaker 1: Just kidding, I say, because I didn't eye roll at all,
and I don't even think I mentioned animal welfare groups.
Speaker 2: Yes you did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've read this story. I read it. I have
the story.
Speaker 2: Oh goodness, don't be so defensive. I just wanted to
make a point.
Speaker 1: Well, no, here's the Jane, Jane, I get defensive when
you start attributing things to me that I didn't say.
So that's so, just go ahead and make your assertion
or state whatever it is you want to say, rather
than trying to preface it with like this reframing of
something you thought I said, even though I never said
anything about animal welfare groups being whack adoodle.
Speaker 2: No, No, you didn't say that. No you didn't say that. Now,
may I apologize first? I would like to apologize for
your name. If I chug your name, it's fine.
Speaker 1: Just go ahead and whatever. What so, what is your
what is your comment?
Speaker 2: Most of these animal welfare groups are after are are
aiming for humane, just humane treatment of farm animals. Now
in the case of the chickens. I used to work
on a dairy form and my husband and I ran
chickens for a while. Now. The thing is is that
if you keep if you let chickens live in a
space and they get out and they get fresh air,
and there's not hundreds of thousands of them, they won't
have compromised immune systems, and that's what makes them very
much prey. And the stress, the stress of it, because
it's it's torture, makes them liable to contract disease and
to for it to spread very rapidly. That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So you're saying the humane certified free range, which are
not the same thing, I have learned that that increases
the likelihood that they're going to get sick.
Speaker 2: No, I'm saying that. All I'm saying is because all
of this stuff that gets with certification and blah blah
blah is if the fact is is that if you
return a little more to a family farm type scenarios,
the chickens will have room to get out in fresh air,
they won't be stressed, and they will be more likely
to produce, to produce eggs and to avoid illness.
Speaker 1: That's all I'm saying, yeah, So we always buy certified
humane because we learned because we have farmers in our family,
and they have taught us what the difference between certified
humane versus free range versus cage free, Like, all of
these things mean different things, and the big producers have
found ways to kind of brand as you know, quote
unquote CA free, even though it's it's not a humane
way to raise the chickens. I have heard though that
being out in like a pasture setting, that that does
expose them to migratory birds that may have the flu.
Speaker 2: That I didn't know. All we knew is that when
we let our rome free, is that falks and and
coyotes just had the best time ever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, now that is true. Yeah I know, and
yeah and so right, So it's just like everything else, right,
there are trade offs to all of this stuff, and
so I am I would prefer like in all of
the above. Uh so, like we prefer to try to
support the farmers that raise their animals in humane ways.
We buy steak and pork with the same certified humane
labeling because that means something, and it means something different
than the cage free or free range, which has it
seems like an organic as well. A lot of this
stuff has been gained now by a lot of the
big corporate producers, so we just look for the certified
humane label.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you very much for that, and I'll tell
you one day. The factory farms are going to be
the end of us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're Yeah, they're pretty nasty, pretty nice, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, but I mean they're going to start fixing prices
and everything because they're growing. They're running the little guy
out and it's not going to be good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now, Jane, I appreciate the call. Yes, ma'am, all right,
take care, Thank you. I appreciate the call. All right, Hey,
real quick, if you would like to get your product
or service in front of about ten thousand people multiple
times a day, send me an email at Pete atthepeteclendershow
dot com and ask me about advertising. It's super affordable,
it's baked into this podcast forever, and podcasts have a
higher conversion rate than other social media platforms, making it
the best bang for your buck. Send me a message
Pete at Thepete calendarshow dot com and I can show
you how it works. Run the numbers with you again.
That's Pete at the Pete calendarshow dot com. Let me
go back to the story from the last hour. Jane
mentioned animal welfare organizations, and I knew I had not
said that. I was reading from the story from Newsweek
and it said new state animal welfare regulations, so laws,
and then I pointed out inflation, transportation costs and the
regulations are all government mandates, right those that's that's government policy,
that's having the impact on the egg prices. That was
what I That was what I read from the Newsweek
article and what I had commented on. I didn't say
anything about any kind of organizations. I have a message
from Eric on Twitter who says the story mentioned changes
in animal welfare laws that increased costs, which is true,
even if some of those laws are worthwhile. Also PETA
is insane and gives them all a bad name. That's yes,
that is also true. So yeah, I just wanted to
just for clarification. So, and this happens very often. I
have learned over my twenty years in radio that people
hear things and it prompts them to call. And I'm
not attacking Jane or anything, but she heard me say
animal welfare regulations and she thought I was saying organizations.
I did not say that, And so that was the
disagreement that we had had regarding the CR spending the
Continuing Resolution. Tim says, it seems that when it comes
to spending, the uniparty never gets off stupid. According to
Austrian Economics, inflation is caused by government overspending, therefore excessive borrowing.
I guess most of Washington never took the class. That
is probably accurate as well. I'm not sure how many
Austrian Economics subscribers we have in Washington, d C. But yes,
that's the way. That's that's the Austrian school way of thinking.
Is that you keep borrowing money and that creates the
inflation because you're pumping out more and more dollars into
the system. And that's why it takes a long time
for those you know, the dollars to come back home,
basically right as it's like a tide. And when it
comes back in, now you've got too many dollars chasing
too few goods. It raises the price of things and
the value of the lowered because everybody's got a bunch
of dollars because you printed so many of them and
you put them out into the system. Regarding the continuing Resolution,
Matt Vespa over at town hall dot com, he said
the six months r to prevent the government from closing
its doores. On March fourteenth, it was approved. A government
shutdown will stop the deportations, the work from the Department
of Government Efficiency, and the rebuilding of the military. So
the real prize is passing the budget reconciliation package, and
the shutdown would disrupt that reconciliation process immensely. And CBS
reports many Democrats have reservations about the six month stopgap measure,
this continuing resolution that passed last night, warning that it
would give and Doge even more latitude to carry out
cost slashing efforts. That's because a continuing resolution, unlike regular
appropriations bills, lacks a congressional statement of direction on how
funds are to be spent by a department or agency.
So that's why Democrats were opposed to it as well.
They see it as a way for the Trump administration
to keep racking up wins that they want to try
to avoid. Meanwhile, over at USAID, a senior official told
the remaining staff there to convene at their now former
headquarters in Washington, d C. Yesterday where they would do
an all day group effort to destroy documents, which is
what you would totally do if you weren't doing anything wrong.
That's yeah, that's not at all suspicious behavior. It seems
a little, I don't know, it seems a little problematic.
The materials earmarked for destruction include contents of the agencies,
quote classified safes, and personnel documents at the Ronald Reagan
Building that according to an email that was sent by
USAID's acting executive director Erica Carr and This email was
obtained by Politico, she wrote, quote shred as many documents.
First reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes
unavailable or when it needs a break. When you're just
shredding so much paper, right, it needs to cool down
a little bit. You just take those documents then stuff
them into burn bags. She also instructed staff to label
the burn bags with the words secret in dark sharpie.
The email did not provide any reason for the destruction
of all of the documents. The building is being emptied
out after mass layoffs, which may have disrupted routine document
destruction timetables. According to Politico, customs and Border Protection is
actually planning to move into the facility. They've rented just
under four hundred thousand square feet of office space in
the building last month. But I think it's important to
understand here that, at least according to Politico, the destruction
of all of the documents and the burning and the
shredding and such, it's Trump's fault, right, it's because of
Donald Trump. The effort underscores the tumultuous way in which
the Trump administration is dismantling an agency that once managed
a forty billion dollars annual budget and had more than
ten thousand staff around the wall, around the world. I
am reminded of a line for from the documentary Forest Gump. Uh,
it's just the SLB. Johnson in this war, right, guys,
Donald Trump is not forcing you to shred things, you know,
to come into the office on a shredded shred day
and a burn day like that's you guys are doing this.
That's your choice to do this stuff a former USAI
D staff. And besides, wouldn't the NSA H don't they
have records of all of this stuff anyway, like intriplicate
on all of their servers and stuff, don't they whendn't
they have all of that? Or do they not spy
on USAI D just us, a former USAID staffer, confirmed
the veracity of the email and described the destruction of
agency documents as unprecedented. Quote, I have never seen something
like this end mass. Everyone with a safe is supposed
to keep it up to date and destroy documents when
they no longer need to be stored. Some time, security
will check your safe and tell you if you have
to clean out old material. This person spoke on the
condition of anonymity due to a fear of possible reprisals
by the Trump administration. So they're yeah, they're from slaughtering
chickens to slaughtering USAID documents. I'm sure they would not
dispose of any kind of incriminating information like that. I'm
sure they would not do that. Meanwhile, over at the
Department of Education, they are cutting their staff by roughly
fifty percent. US Department of Education announced yesterday last night
that it will be cutting its staff by about half
as part of a reduction in force or rif. I
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In a press call, a senior department official said that
of the four one hundred thirty three employees currently at
the EDG shed the Education Department, thirteen hundred of them
are going to be subject to the reduction in force. Okay,
so just over thirteen hundred firings out of forty one hundred.
That number is on top of the two hundred and
fifty nine who did the deferred resignation program. There was
three hundred thirteen who took the voluntary separation incentive payment
of twenty five grand. There was another sixty three probationary
employees who got terminated last month, So I added them
all up, and that leaves out of forty one thirty
three total employees, there will now be twenty one eighty three,
so a little bit more than half. As the President
and Secretary Linda McMahon have noted repeatedly, what we are
doing right now in education is simply not working. Seventy
percent of kids cannot read proficiently by the time they
reach high school. We have spent over a trillion dollars
at the federal level since the department was created, and
test scores and outcomes have plummeted even before pandemic related
school closures drove down performance even more, said a US
Department of Education senior department official. But in the meantime,
this is according to the Federalist dot com. In the meantime,
the bureaucracy has grown, and we have a department now
that exists largely to oversee contractors, add strains and in
many cases do duplicative efforts across the department. Part of
the reduction includes cutting department building leases in San Francisco,
New York, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, and Cleveland. Eventually, the department
will consolidate into one building in the nation's capital instead
of three. Now. Part of the problem here is that
Trump is going to need Congress to actually do something okay,
because Trump cannot actually get rid of an entire department
that was created by an Act of Congress. Back when
the Trump administration offered eight months of severance to federal workers,
teachers' union leaders started a campaign to convince workers that
the administration could not be trusted and nobody should take
the deal. Obviously that has not worked out right, because
about fourteen percent of the workforce at the ed Department
did take the deal. But you have to wonder how
many of the thirteen hundred and fifteen people that are
getting laid off wish they had taken that offer when
it was made they were misled by their union leadership.
This is from John Sexton at hotair dot com. He says,
is there any lower limit on this headcount? At just
over forty one hundred employees, the Education Department was already
the smallest government department. In a matter of days, the
headcount will be down to about two thousand. Can the
secretary drop that number? Take it down to two hundred?
Maybe twenty? Right, It wouldn't technically be abolished, and some
future president could revive it and staff it up again,
but it would effectively be dead until Congress gets around
to passing a law to eliminate it completely. Now, the
head of the teachers union, one of them, Brandy Weingarten,
she of the lockdowns that harmed your kids. She has
been going around on media stations, just flipping out on
MSNBC and other legacy outlets. Why. Dwayne Patterson, also at
hot air, dot com. He says vouchers is the reason
the death knell of teachers unions school choice since COVID,
largely due to how mismanaged the virus was at the
national level and the impact it had on schools. Along
with the Woe Dei agenda invading the curriculum, parents all
over the country demanded a way out for their kids
and a pathway into charters, religious schools or private academies.
New Hampshire is now going to be added to the
list of states that provide school choice. You got Georgia, Kansas, Missouri, Montana,
South Carolina. They have all passed more limited school choice
bills or some have longer phase in language. But really
what it amounts to is that half of the United
States now have at least some form of school choice
options for parents right that want to pull their kids
out of a failing school, and that child's national funding
into the school of their choice can follow. So the
Teachers' Union Randy Winegarten, the leader of that union, were
very much one of the catalysts that helped to make
this state level education revolution happen a lot faster. So
the idea is to block grant the money directly to
the states bypassing the need for a federal agency. Trump
signaled he might even be willing to put a little
carrot out there and prioritize the distribution of those block
grants by waiting them more to states that have school
choice legislation. That's why Winegarten is flipping out, according to
Dwayne Patterson, that if you start waiting the money, so
in other words, states that have school choice programs would
get larger chunks of the money per child. Right, that's
going to incentivize more states to adopt school choice programs. Winegarten,
you may recall, was paid a little over a half
a million dollars in salary at the height of COVID
when reopening plans were being discussed, and she was literally
writing the CDC rules on the phone with doctor Wilenski
several times a week, writing the policy to favor her
union's teachers. Right, this is all of their own making,
hoisted upon their own petard as it were. All right,
that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much
for listening. I could not do the show without your
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and don't break anything while I'm gone.