Massive turbine power being built off NY coast despite Trump ban on offshore wind projects

 A massive wind power project off the coast of New York blew past President Trump’s executive order to block or pause all new wind energy leasing in federal waterways — which opponents claim will destroy aquatic life and the commercial fishing industry.

Norway-based Equinor, which already had all the necessary lease and permit approvals from the feds before Trump’s January 20 executive order went into effect, confirmed that it has started construction at the site — laying rock as the foundation for the giant 54 wind turbines — 15 miles off the coast of Long Beach.

Equinor will deliver the power by connecting to Con Edison’s electric grid via a cable link from the ocean floor to the substation at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in Sunset Park.

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The “Empire Wind 1″ project, which is taking place off the coast of New York, ignored President Trump’s executive order to block or pause all new wind energy leasing in federal waterways.Empire Wind

The “Empire Wind 1″ project — which will power 500,000 homes — has the strong backing from both Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul, in part to help meet the goals of the ambitious state climate change law mandating 100% zero-emission electricity by 2040 and the phasing out of fossil fuels by 2050.

The president has made it clear he’s not a fan of wind power, saying, “We’re not going to do the wind thing. Big, ugly windmills, they ruin your neighborhood.”

“They destroy everything, they’re horrible, the most expensive energy there is,” Trump said.

“They ruin the environment, they kill the birds, they kill the whales.”

The fishing industry also claims offshore wind farms are dangerous hot air.

“The whole fishing industry economy could be lost,” said Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association.

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Norway-based Equinor, which had all the proper lease and permit approvals from the federal government prior to Trump’s January 20 executive order went into effect, has confirmed that they have started construction.Empire Wind

“A comprehensive review from the Trump administration is needed to make fishing great again.”

Commercial fisheries scoop up and reel in scallops, squid and fluke in the area where the wind turbines are being erected.

“We can’t coexist with offshore wind power. It would be like steaming into a death trap,” Brady said.

Offshore wind farms can interfere with navigational radar used by ships and smaller vessels to avoid collisions, posing challenges for safe maritime navigation, a 2022 report released by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine found.

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The project has been backed by Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul, in order to meet the goals of the new climate change law in the state mandating 100% zero-emission electricity by 2040 and the phasing out of fossil fuels by 2050.Empire Wind

Trump’s executive order bans or restricts new offshore wind farms in federal waterways — but it did not explicitly halt projects that had already been approved with federal leases and permits, as is the case with Equinor’s Empire Wind 1 project.

“This withdrawal temporarily prevents consideration …for any new or renewed wind energy leasing for the purposes of generation of electricity or any other such use derived from the use of wind,” the order states.

But the edict adds, “Nothing in this withdrawal affects rights under existing leases in the withdrawn areas.”

Trump also called for an “immediate review of federal wind leasing and permitting practices.”

The US Department of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy confirmed that the Empire Wind project got approved under the wire — having received all necessary approvals a year before Trump’s executive order went into effect.

“BOEM approved the Construction and Operations Plan for the Empire Wind project on February 21, 2024, about a year before the Presidential memorandum,” the federal regulatory agency said.

“BOEM is implementing President Trump’s memorandum of January 20, 2025, temporarily withdrawing the Outer Continental Shelf from offshore wind leasing. The memorandum also pauses new or renewed approvals, rights-of-way, permits, leases, or loans for offshore wind projects pending a review of federal wind leasing and permitting practices.”

Brady, the fishing group advocate, said the wind turbines could be seen from the coast line, which Equinor did not dispute.

A rep for the firm said turbine visibility will depend on the weather, activity in the commercial shipping lanes between the lease area and shore and other variables.

Jacob Riis Park in the Gateway Recreational Area, for example, is about 21 miles from the turbine project.

The Equinor spokesman confirmed that construction was underway to build the foundation for the Empire Wind 1 project

“Empire Wind 1 is already under development and will provide a critical source of energy to meet increasing electricity demand. Equinor has secured all necessary federal permits and will continue to comply with those permits,” the rep said.

“Marine operations for Empire Wind 1 resumed this spring, with rock laying taking place this month. Construction continues at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal, where more than 1,500 workers are revitalizing the long-neglected port.”

Equinor did not discuss the fate of “Empire Wind 2” — the second phase — of its offshore wind farm, suggesting it will be shelved because of Trump’s executive order.

https://nypost.com/2025/04/10/us-news/turbine-power-off-ny-coast-moves-ahead-despite-trumps-ban-on-offshore-wind-projects/

Just say no to another secret tax hike to bail out the eternally cash-strapped MTA

 Here we go again: Gov. Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers are secretly moving to ratchet up taxes once more, hitting large companies in and around the city via the “payroll mobility tax.”

The goal: to raise $2 billion for the MTA money pit as part of this year’s budget.

Yet much of the tax will come from the pockets of average New Yorkers, with companies — those that don’t flee, anyway — raising prices and holding down workers’ wages to cover the new costs.

Haven’t heard about this? That’s by design: Lawmakers are hashing out the deal with the gov behind closed doors and refuse to discuss it publicly.

That way Albany can impose the tax as a fait accompli and avoid a public backlash that could block it.

After all, Hochul & Co. surely know voters are sick of being squeezed, time and again, to bail out the MTA.

Remember: This $2 billion tax hike would be on top of the $1 billion or so a year the gov hopes congestion-pricing tolls bring in for the agency.

The excuse: the need to plug a $33 billion hole in the MTA’s $68 billion capital budget.

Yet Albany already raised the “mobility tax” just two years ago, fares are rising again in August and the MTA got $15 billion extra from the feds during COVID.

Recall, too, that Albany created the mobility tax in 2009 to (supposedly) put the agency on a firm fiscal footing. Ha!

And don’t expect any new tax or other revenue stream to be a lasting fix.

Because the MTA, with its $20 billion budget, isn’t short of cash; it simply spends too much.

When will enough be enough?

If only Hochul & Co. would exert the same kind of energy on holding down MTA costs as on plotting secret new tax hikes.

They can take on labor and insist on work-rule changes to save a bundle. Get better (cheaper) construction contracts and improve management.

They can prioritize the current system, rather than look to fund overpriced upgrades — like the 1.8-mile Second Avenue Subway extension that, at $7.7 billion, will be the most expensive per-mile subway build-out in history.

Meanwhile, New Yorkers should just say no to this umpteenth stealth tax hike.

Before lawmakers ram it through with no one looking.

https://nypost.com/2025/04/10/opinion/just-say-no-to-another-secret-tax-hike-to-bail-out-the-eternally-strapped-mta/

Free Trade: Reagan and the Austrians vs. the World of Today

 

By John F. Di Leo

I was raised to respect the Austrian School of economics. From the hardliners at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) and Reason to the more moderate libertarians like Milton Friedman and President Reagan, the conservatives of my generation (I’m 62) knew several things with absolute certainty:

·      Taxation is Theft.

·      The most important goal of our Founding Fathers was limiting the size and scope of government.

·      The Invisible Hand of the Free Market delivers the best results for the consumer.

At the same time, however, we recognized certain other fundamental truths of government:

·      Government is instituted to protect society from external enemies and internal criminals.

·      Government needs to build roads and bridges.

·      Government needs to provide a framework of stable currency, the rule of law, corporate structure, intellectual property protection, and an investment system in which people can work, and earn, and accumulate wealth.

How did we square these two sets of rules – the opposition to government and a clear need for government? 

By understanding the importance of both, and balancing them, all with an eye to the cardinal rule of obeying the Constitution.

Yes, we need police and courts and prisons; yes, we need an army and navy and air force.  A nation as big as ours will need its government to do many expensive things, so we must always be on our guard to do these things as cost-effectively as possible.

When the left has proposed other expensive things – unconstitutional things – one of our responses has rightly been, “We can’t afford to do the things we have to do; don’t propose more costly unconstitutional things that we can’t afford anyway.”  It still happens, of course; the Left is more adept at their goal of violating the law than the right is at obeying it. But at least we have always tried. We of the right always understood this need to find a middle ground between absolutely minimal government and a government that meets its legitimate needs, like B-52s, ICBMS, and modern containerports.

Nowhere is there a better example than in the current debate – referred to online as “What Would Reagan Do?” – about tariffs and free trade.

President Trump has proposed a high tariff barrier to force foreign governments to reduce the massive barriers – both tariff and non-tariff – that they have erected against American exports.

And the natural response of good Reaganites and Friedmanites is to look back in our memories and recall how Ronaldus Magnus and the great professor from the Chicago School referred to trade and tariffs.

Search engines produce plenty of quotes; YouTube finds us wonderful sound bites.  Forty years ago, the conservative position was crystal clear: tariffs should be low, if we must have them at all, because high tariffs just serve to reduce options and raise prices for the consumer. Choices and cheapness were the goals of the hour.

We should not be so quick to assume, however, that the proclamations of our youth still apply. The global economy has changed in several ways since then, ways that neither Reagan nor Friedman ever anticipated.

At the time when Reagan and Friedman were rightly singing the praises of the free market, the United States had two general levels of tariffs in place: low duty rates for goods made in most-favored-nation (MFN) countries, and the high rates (ranging from 30 to 60 percent) that we assessed on Warsaw Pact members. 

We basically didn’t trade with our main enemies – the Soviet Union, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Cuba, North Korea, etc. We didn’t export to them and we didn’t import from them … but if by some odd chance we unexpectedly imported something from a third country that had been made behind the Iron Curtain, we walloped it with huge tariffs (known as Column 2 duties) that were five to ten times the rates we assessed on the products of Canada, Western Europe and our other friends.

These high tariffs are still in place, in fact – they never went away – but the list of countries they cover was greatly reduced. Since the Soviet Union broke up, the Column 2 tariffs only applied Cuba and North Korea for years, though Russia and Belarus were recently added back in, due to Russia's Ukraine invasion.

It’s been a while, and I must admit, I don’t know for sure if the question was ever asked of them, but I don’t recall either Reagan or Friedman ever calling for the elimination of the Column 2 tariffs.  They both knew that the Soviet Union, with its continual efforts to spread communism around the globe, was our undeniable enemy.  We traded with them as little as possible (we sold basic commodities like grain, more from a humanitarian effort than anything else), and we never even considered opening up broad trade or lowering our high tariffs on the Warsaw Pact countries until the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Politburo was tossed out on their ears.

And that’s not the only difference between then and now.

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, Western Europe was still a continent of separate, sovereign nations. West Germany, Italy, France, the U.K., et al. were separate countries that set their tariffs independently of each other.  Yes, they all joined the world in adopting the Harmonized Tariff System in the mid 1980s, but they were still relatively reasonable in terms of their import/export processes. Outside of products meriting serious safety concerns, like foods and beverages, most products could be imported freely, with a low duty payment upon importation and then unobstructed entry into their marketplace.

Fortress Europe put an end to all that.

From the 1990s onward, the EU dreamed of building a government that only an Orwellian bureaucrat could love, with non-tariff barriers-to-entry that were never dreamed of in the days when “Free To Choose” was dominating our television screens and our bestsellers’ lists.

Today, an American seeking to sell most products into the European market must appoint an Authorized Representative in Europe, file for CE Mark approval of every model number, spend the money to redo his tooling to mold the EU codes and approval logos into his product, and comply with outrageous constraints on the materials he uses, both for product and packaging alike.

Our Founding Fathers never dreamed that our trading partners would create such things as the CE Mark in Europe and the SASO program in the Middle East, or such regulatory beasts as RoHS, REACH, and PFAS. You simply can’t call it a free market – no matter where the tariffs are set – when your products can’t even enter an ally’s country without years of effort, hundreds of thousands of dollars in tooling changes, applications, and permit fees, and an army of regulatory consultants.

And what of China, which over the past forty years has grown to be the world’s manufacturing behemoth? Do we have free trade with Mainland China?

China has put whole American and European industries out of business through the use of dumping programs (government subsidies to enable companies to sell below cost until they wipe out their competition in the target country). China has used every financial tool -- currency manipulation, government partnerships, and subsidies -- to take much of the world’s manufacturing from both the Western world and the low-cost countries of the rest of the world.

China requires that all foreign businesses operating in China are either literally or effectively joint ventures with the Chinese government – and therefore the Chinese military. Everything that happens in China serves the politburo in Beijing, whether consciously or not.  And intellectual property rights are a joke there, no matter what assurances a Western manufacturer proudly works into his purchasing contracts.

And as if that weren’t enough, China has taken the place of the USSR in spreading its tentacles across the globe. 

Oh, they do it differently – contracting as a service-provider to operate ports, mines, logistics centers, laboratories, workers’ apartment buildings, and more, rather than just sending in military advisors to foment revolution, as Stalin and Brezhnev did.

But the end result is the same; China has footholds all over the world, often situated at or near key military locations.

And even as China has taken over Hong Kong and threatened Taiwan -- even as it has claimed international waters as its own and engaged in saber-rattling with virtually all its neighbors across both land and sea – the United States, Canada, Mexico and Europe all continue to do business in China, to buy from China, to sell to China, to entrust China with our very livelihood by inextricably linking our supply chains with China’s manufacturing centers.

Is this the situation that Reagan and Friedman foresaw when they cheered the value of free trade?

Or is it infinitely more likely that these great champions of Western Civilization and limited government, these solid anti-communists, would stare in shock at our current codependent, abusive, practically suicidal relationships with China and Europe, and ask us in horror if we’ve gone stark raving out of our minds to put up with such a status quo.

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation manager, trade compliance trainer, and speaker. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/04/free_trade_reagan_and_the_austrians_vs_the_world_of_today.html

Pigs at the Trough: SoCal food bank accused of using food funds for cars, trips to Vegas, and more

 

By Monica Showalter

After braying for more public funding to feed the poor and "food-insecure," it turns out, a lot of food bank NGO leaders have been focused on feeding themselves.

According to the Los Angeles Times:

The state has filed a lawsuit against the Foodbank of Southern California alleging that its leaders misappropriated more than $11 million in state funds to enrich themselves and their families over the course of a decade.

The nearly 50-year-old Long Beach nonprofit shuttered most operations in September after the state halted all funding and California Highway Patrol agents raided the building as part of an investigation into the nonprofit’s use of government money.

Jeanne Cooper, the last CEO of the operation before the lawmen caught up with it, was making, on paper a $139,875 compensation package, plus $6,112 listed as "other" according to ProPublica.

That's low, though she may have had ways of drawing other "benefits." The LAT reports:

Cooper and her husband, Lamarr Ramsey, are accused of owing the Department of Social Services more than $250,000. The state alleges she purchased cellphones, smart watches, home renovations, furniture, home lawn services, gas cards, gift cards and an artificial Christmas tree with food bank funds.

If true, then the $139K was just gravy.

There are grosser instances of gigantic salaries from people in this particular NGO industry.

Like this charmer:

Or this one:

It's pretty amazing that food banks are such magnets for so much corruption.

Yet on all of them, the pleas for more are always out there, and how could any lawmaker, let alone the public, turn down a plea for food for the hungry?

Get a load of what the chief of the California Association of Food Banks and a pal were writing a couple months ago:

With the high cost of living, elevated levels of post-COVID need, earthquakes, and now firestorms — California’s hunger crisis is not just continuing, it’s getting worse.

Food insecurity in California is rising, with 22% of all households and 27% of households with children experiencing hunger.

Food banks are struggling to meet sustained and heightened levels of demand. At the same time the federal government is threatening sweeping funding freezes for anti-hunger
programs and pushing for cuts to CalFresh, our biggest and most important anti-hunger program.

If implemented, these policies will place an even greater burden on California’s food banks. The California Association of Food Banks’ 41-member network — which supports more than 6,000 churches, soup kitchens, schools, and pantries that distribute food — is providing groceries to more than 6 million Californians each month.

More, more, more. And Joe Biden's Bidenflation was just the vehicle to make it happen. More hunger, more public funds, more public funds, bigger salaries and that Vegas getaway, the free home improvement, and free car at least one of them reportedly helped herself to. No wonder Joe Biden and whoever was pulling his puppet strings was indifferent to inflation on his miserable watch. More misery meant bigger and better cash flow for his NGO allies who made bank in every way imaginable.

Grosser still is the Maxine Waters game -- of employing the relatives on the public dime.

According to the LA Times:

Among the other people named in the complaint is community activist “Sweet” Alice Harris, who founded Parents of Watts, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting disadvantaged youth and families in Watts.

The lawsuit alleges that Harris used her position on the food bank’s board to funnel more than $173,000 in funding to Parents of Watts.

She’s also accused of using her role to hire her granddaughter as a salaried employee and appoint her son-in-law to the board. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Just yuck.

How much more of this was going on that hasn't been reported? And how much food was taken out of the mouths of the Biden-impoverished to "pay for" this kind of alleged corruption?

The food bank claims it delivered 40 million to 60 million pounds of food annually. Whether they really did is anyone's guess, the Times didn't check.

Now that one at least has been busted and shut down, but whether these experienced NGO operatives face any real consequences is anyone's guess. They know how to sing for their supper to the public, which translates pretty well to juries, too.

And it's bound to be uneven justice. Not too long ago, and in the same Long Beach area, a pair of nuns from the Carondelet order were thrown in jail for misappropriating educational funding, and using it to blow on trips to Vegas.

Funny how they all do the same things.

The nuns, some of whom I know, actually do very good work and restored the stolen funding from their own funds, and I was sorry to see the Vegas pair, who apparently had a gambling addiction, get the book thrown at them. But justice is justice.

Now we learn of much worse corruption surrounding these private 501(c)3 food banks, one after another, premised on the politics of public funding and every one of them a Democrat voter, with all donations kicked back to Democrats.

Will the bunch in this case, if convicted, get similar punishment? They're so used to escaping any accountability owing to their political ties it's hard to see. But they should get the same types of sentencing as the nuns got if found guilty because this is the marker that was set.

Then the political creeps who enabled them from the one-party blue Democrat machine of state should be next. I guess I can dream, but the corruption gets even worse the higher you go up the California chain of command. For now, let it be known that food banks attract an awful lot of pigs to these government-funded troughs.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/04/pigs_at_the_trough_socal_food_bank_accused_of_using_food_funds_for_cars_trips_to_vegas_and_more.html

Tempest Scrambles for Ways to Bankroll Late-Stage Liver Cancer Asset

 

According to Tempest, its options include a partnership or licensing deal, as well as a merger or an acquisition.

Tempest Therapeutics is looking for “strategic alternatives” that will allow it to take its investigational PPARα antagonist amezalpat forward into late-stage development, the biotech announced on Thursday.

Some of Tempest’s options include searching for a partner, licensing deals or joint ventures over amezalpat. The company is also open to a merger or an acquisition, as per its news release. Tempest has not provided a timeline for this strategic review, nor did it make any promises that Thursday’s announcement will result in a business transaction.

Tempest’s scramble for funding isn’t surprising. In a March 27 note to investors, William Blair analysts noted that the biotech had just over $30 million in cash and cash equivalents—only enough to cover the “start-up costs” of a Phase III trial for amezalpat.

Tempest already has a partner for amezalpat—and a powerhouse one at that. In October 2024, the California-based biotech inked a collaboration agreement with Roche to study amezalpat in combination with Tecentriq and bevacizumab (marketed by Roche under the brand name Avastin), positioning the regimen as a frontline option for unresectable or metastatic hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Roche has committed to providing a supply of Tecentriq for the trial, while Tempest will remain the study’s principal sponsor. That 2024 deal is a follow-up to a 2021 collaboration on the same drug combos in a Phase Ib/II trial. Tempest retains all development and commercial rights to amezalpat.

“Clearly additional funding will be needed to fully conduct the Phase III study,” the William Blair analysts noted, “which we believe could come from an additional development partner and/or equity financing.” Still, William Blair expressed optimism about Tempest and amezalpat, which it called “an attractive development opportunity for multiple partners.”

Designed to be taken orally, amezalpat is a small-molecule drug that selectively binds to and blocks PPARα, a transcription factor protein involved in various lipid-related metabolic processes. Tempest is studying amezalpat for HCC, a cancer of the liver that some studies have linked to sustained and excessive PPARα activation.

In June 2024, Tempest released Phase Ib/II data for the drug, showing that when used with Tecentriq and bevacizumab, the oral PPARα blocker elicited a 35% improvement in overall survival (OS) versus Tecentriq plus bevacizumab alone. Patients given the amezalpat regimen saw median OS of 21 months as compared to 15 months in control comparators.

In its news release on Thursday, Tempest also revealed that it had already completed an end-of-Phase II meeting with the FDA and has aligned with the regulator on a Phase III study for the amezalpat combo regimen.

https://www.biospace.com/business/tempest-scrambles-for-ways-to-bankroll-late-stage-liver-cancer-asset

MedPAC Says Yes to Increasing Medicare Physician Pay Based on Healthcare Inflation

 Medicare fee-for-service payments to physicians should be based on the Medicare Economic Index (MEI), a measure of healthcare inflation, according to a recommendation approved unanimously Thursday by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC).

"I think it's so important that there be a predictable inflation-based formula for updating the fee schedule," said Larry Casalino, MD, PhD, of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, who was attending his last meeting as a MedPAC commissioner. "I'm willing to vote for the recommendation and the principle on which it stands."

The recommendation stated that "Congress should replace the current-law updates to the Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) with an annual update based on a portion of the growth in the [MEI] (such as MEI minus 1 percentage point)." The recommendation would increase federal spending by $15 billion to $30 billion over 5 years compared with current law, according to commission staff.

Although Casalino voted for the recommendation, he did have a slight quibble with it. "The recommendation mentions 'such as the Medical Economic Index minus 1%' -- it isn't specifically for MEI minus 1%," Casalino said. "If I had my way, the [recommendation] would be a payment update equal to or only slightly below the MEI; 1% is a bit more than that."

In addition, "I encourage Congress to follow the MedPAC 2023 recommendation for higher payments when a physician sees a low-income beneficiary," he said. "I think that's really important."

Commission member R. Tamara Konetzka, PhD, of the University of Chicago, praised the draft report -- which was unavailable to the public -- for its inclusion of a discussion of payment ceilings and floors, even though they weren't included in the final recommendation. "Personally, I think I would have liked this recommendation even more if it had alluded to not a specific number, but to a [payment] ceiling and floor as possibilities," she said. "But I am totally fine with the way it's written now, because I think the text goes into this nuance."

Consideration of a payment ceiling is important, she added, because "if you can imagine a crazy high inflation rate -- like 7% or 8% -- if it's MEI -1% ... All of that [6% payment increase] burden is going to go to beneficiaries. The chapter does a great job of explaining that there is beneficiary burden associated with this recommendation."

Commissioner Betty Rambur, PhD, RN, of the University of Rhode Island in Kingston, agreed. "We hear providers screaming about inadequate reimbursement, and we hear people screaming about the lack of ability to pay for care," she said. "This issue of increased cost-sharing ... I think is really serious, so I support the ceiling and floor."

Commission member Brian Miller, MD, MBA, MPH, of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, also praised the idea of payment ceilings and floors; he highlighted a letter that the American Occupational Therapy Association sent to the commission. The letter included a chart showing that from 2016 to 2024 -- a period when Medicare reimbursement rates for occupational therapy remained relatively flat -- applications for occupational therapy schools dropped by 50%.

Miller reminded commissioners that occupational therapists have to accept Medicare rates if they want to treat Medicare beneficiaries; they must treat Medicare's payment -- plus the beneficiary copay -- as payment in full. "This is, I think, a sign that when you have flat fee rates ... the labor force responds appropriately," said Miller. "So I think that that is a further evidence that we need to think carefully [about] a PFS update having a floor and a ceiling."

The commissioners also unanimously approved a recommendation to have Congress "direct the [HHS] secretary to improve the accuracy of Medicare's relative payment rates for clinician services by collecting and using timely data that reflects [sic] the costs of delivering care." In a staff presentation, MedPAC principal policy analyst Geoffrey Gerhardt, MPP, noted concerns about the accuracy of the relative value units (RVUs) used as part of the formula that determines fee schedule payments. This recommendation would not have any effect on Medicare spending due to budget neutrality requirements, he said.

MedPAC made similar recommendations in 2006 and 2011 to no avail, said commission member Robert Cherry, MD, MS, of UCLA Health in Los Angeles, California. "One of the reasons why we're still using outdated data is because this is a very laborious, detailed process," he said. "Hopefully, we'll be able to use AI [artificial intelligence] tools to actually apply to the data and be able to update the RVUs in a way that makes sense and makes it less laborious ... I just wanted to mention that because I think they'll still have trouble unless some of those newer tools are utilized."

The recommendations approved on Thursday will be included in the commission's June report to Congress.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/medicare/115066

March Deficit Unexpectedly Drops To 5 Year Low As DOGE Hits Dem Money-Laundering Schemes

One month ago, when looking at the latest US Treasury income and spending, or as it is better known, deficit, data we found something shocking: the last months of the Biden admin were marked by spending unlike anything ever seen before, in fact, spending in the first six months of fiscal 2025 surpassed even the crisis 2020 and 2021 when the US injected trillions into the economy.

Then Elon Musk's DOGE came on the scene... and thing changed quickly.

Earlier today the Treasury published its revenue and spending report for the month of March, the first month when DOGE was fully operational, and the results were interesting. As shown in the chart below, in March total US government receipts were $368 billion, while spending totaled $528 billion.

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The difference between how much money the US brought in vs how much it spent, means that in March the US budget deficit was $161 billion. Which sounds like a lot (it is) until you realize that in February the deficit was almost twice as much, or $307 billion. And compared to the $236 billion deficit a year ago, 2025 was a solid 32% lower.

How come? Well, first of all receipts rose 10.7% to $367.6BN. Which is good. But what was great is that spending, which has traditionally been the real problem, actually shrank by 7.1% to $528.2BN.

And this is where DOGE came in. 

While various mandatory spending categories posted continued gradual increases - after all, these require an act of Congress to be revised - there was a huge, $45 billion drop in Income Security, from $105 billion in February to $60 billion in March, the largest one month decline since June 2021 as Elon ripped up much of the massive fraudulent fund flow network Democrats had established over the past few decades and covered up simply as 'income security' when it really was a giant slush fund used for everything from graft, to corruption, to bribes, to paying leftist media for favorable coverage.

The result: the March US deficit was the lowest since 2020 before the covid crash, and down $76 billion from a year ago.

That's the good news. The bad news is that despite the sharp drop in the March deficit, the longer-term trendline in spending vs income remains unsustainable as the following chart shows.

And another way of showing it: yes, the blue line (income security), dropped but everything else continues to rise...

... and especially interest expense, which as of the end of Biden's admin, at Dec 2024, hit a new record high of $1.124 trillion LTM, which is more than double where it was when Biden walked into the White House in Q1 2021.

Bottom line: While March was the first month in which we saw the budget-busting effect of DOGE finally come to the fore, the Sisyphean challenge for the Dept of Government Efficiency is just starting, because while a $50BN drop in "Income Security" and a $76 billion decline in the deficit YoY is a terrific start, the reality is that this is a mere drop in the bucket for the unsustainable trajectory which the US is on, and if Trump, Musk, DOGE and the majority of Americans truly hope to rightsize the US balance sheet, a lot more work - and as the last few days have shown - a lot more pain is coming. 

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/march-deficit-unexpectedly-tumbles-5-year-low-doge-cracks-down-democrat-money-laundering