Luke Thomas

I heard a lecture.

There was...

I will send it to you.

It's from the Citations Needed podcast.

That's the name of it.

And I want to be clear when I come on the show to purposely cite my sources so that anybody who wants to hear this can double check it.

They did a whole series or whole lecture anyway on that term or the terminology waste, fraud, and abuse.

This goes back to robber barons in both the early part of the 20th century and even late 19th century using that term

So sloganeering waste, fraud and abuse specifically to target programs that that are essentially in the interests of voters.

Right.

Like here's we're going to put we're going to put more money into health care.

We're going to put more money into the welfare state.

We're going to put more money into the social safety net.

These are things that would be good for you.

And then.

oligarchs in society getting out there and calling it waste fraud and abuse even though it's objectively in your interest as a voter for the most part to vote for these kinds of things it has a long history and of course it doesn't mean anything it's like what count what like you have to define what waste is and they were doing things like oh the government's counting soybean crops every year yes you fucking idiot there's a reason for that the government has a vested interest in knowing

what kind of crop yields are existing in the country so that in the event of disaster, what they have on, and by the way, they store some of this data and also some of these reserves, they have to know what resources are available in the event of a crisis.

This is actually like a critical function of the federal government.

The reality is the federal government is vast.

It is huge.