Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Seven oh five, here a fifty five krc DE talk station.
Happy Tuesday one time's right here. Glad to be hosted
for fifty five Carcy Mornings. So especial when a guy
like Todd Zinser is in studio to talk about what's
going on in Washington, d C. Spent a lot of
time there because Todd was an inspector generally. He was
in DC for thirty one years conducting audits and investigations
(00:35):
of federal officials programs and operations. And he penned an
op ed piece to the Cincinni Inquirer of the new
igs and Doge should collaborate Todd, It's always great to
have you in studio, my friend. Thank you, Brian, Good morning,
Good morning. Let's start with, you know, ten thousand foot view.
What do before we get to the idea of Donald
Trump firing them? What do inspector generals do? What are
(00:59):
they tasked with? What are their day to day responsibilities?
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Right? The Inspectors General are based on a nineteen seventy
eight law called the ig Act of nineteen seventy eight.
It's been amended a couple of times, but it basically
puts Inspectors general in each of the department or cabinet
departments and numerous other agencies. And it basically has two sides.
(01:22):
They have an investigative side and they have an audit side.
An audit is very expansive. It's it security audits, contract audits,
grant audits, financial statement audits. They do the whole thing,
and on investigations. They do investigations of fraud against the government,
criminal cases, and they also do administrative cases involving misconduct
(01:46):
and other rule violations and things like that. They operate
a hotline for fraud, waste and abuse reports, and they
have a dual reporting requirement. They report to both the
Secretary of the Department. They have a reporting obligation to Congress.
So they're like stuck in the middle. And in years
(02:06):
past they've been described as straddling a barbed wire fence.
So there are i think right now, seventy four Inspectors General.
Back in nineteen seventy eight, I think it started with
a dozen, and it's just expanded. And there are igs
that are appointed by the president and there are igs
that are appointed by the head of their independent agency.
(02:30):
So the igs that Trump removed, it's called removal in
the federal government not firing, but the ones that he
removed are all from most For the most part, they're
from the cabinet departments. There's only two cabinet departments that
were not affected. Two IGS and cabinet departments that were
not affected. One was Justice Michael Horowitz and the other
(02:53):
was the IG at the Department of Homeland Security, who
is currently doing cases or investigations of the Secret Service
and what happened with the assassination attempts. So those are
the only two. All the other igs removed came from
cabinet departments. There are a couple of agencies, like the
IG for Afghan Reconstruction, I guess was removed for some reason.
(03:17):
He was actually a good IG. But the focus is
on the departments.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Now this I guess what I consider. And you know,
pick a department, and I don't think you can find
a single department in the federal government that hasn't been
accused of or allowed fraud, waste, and abuse to occur
under its watch. I mean Medicare, Medicaid, social Security, the
PPP loan program. We go down the entire list of
(03:45):
any government program. People are constantly committing acts of fraud,
and billions and billions of dollars could be saved if
that was ferreted out. So that that has happened and
continues to happen over I would argue deck aids that
failure lies in the lapse of the IGS.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Then, well, to a certain extent it does. They have
to I mean they have to have a good program
in place to identify their risks in the department. They
look at programs and say, what are the risks in
these departments that is going to be defrauded and they're
supposed to identify that and report those And the fact
is that the programs are set up in such a
(04:24):
way that they're easy to defraud. Yeah, and there's not
a whole lot the IG can do across the board
like that. But if they have a case, or if
they have an audit that they perform, they're going to
make a recommendation for improvements. And they're not the most
well funded agencies in the federal government.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
I can tell you that well, I can understand that,
But I mean therein lies the challenge. If billions of
dollars are being misspent or stolen, I can make the
argument then it will be a great allocation of resources
to improve the funding to allow the its to actually
be able to do their job and ferret out this
waste and abuse and fraud.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Right and and not to be too cynical, but like,
I'll go ahead, there's been there's been special Inspectors General
set up for various reasons, like Pandemic Relief, the Recovery Act.
They set up special igs to focus on those areas.
And when they do that, Congress is able to say, well,
we put an IG in place, so we have fixed
(05:23):
that problem. The IG is on the case when it's
really kind of just window dressing in a lot of cases,
Oh exactly, they put an IG in place, but they
don't give the IG all the resources here or she
needs so.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Or as you put it out a moment ago. Congress
is the ones who is the one who created the
program or passed the law that's being followed in its implementation.
But the law itself has so many giant holes in
it that allow this easy fraud to occur. They don't
go back and fix the problem that they started with this,
you know, a poorly written law.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Right, like the the pandemic relief programs, like the people PPP,
the pandemic relief has been defrauded by hundreds of billions
of dollars. Yeah, so in situations like that, there are
some things the igs can do, but not much really.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Oh all right, well, sorry conclusion on that from Todd Zenzer,
But he was in this role and he knows what
he's talking about. Is there any argument that these now
fired igs can make that they're allowed to keep their job?
I know there's been a tradition of presidents keeping in
(06:35):
place and this is the subject matter of your op
ed piece. New igs and doges should collaborate, Obviously. Donald
Trump's wants is a new sheriff in town. He wants
his own people there, people who are aligned with his
message about ferreting out fraud, waste, and abuse and cutting
the size and the scope of government. So I get
his motivation, But do they have any claim to the
job that they have been removed from? Right?
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Well, back in two thousand and eight, Congress was trying
to put some kind of protection in place for the igs,
and the original idea was to establish some kind of
four cause standard for igs that they couldn't be fired
at will. The president would have to establish some cause
(07:16):
to fire them. Well, that never happened, and instead, oh,
they compromised and put this reporting requirement in place that
the president had to give Congress thirty days. Notice why,
I don't really know. I never understood what was supposed
to happen in those thirty days, except maybe give the
IG a couple more paychecks or give Congress time to
(07:39):
build a big frenzy around it. But it really has
no purpose. And I think that Trump ignored that requirement
on purpose, on purpose because they don't think it's constitutional.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Yeah, I can see that that.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
It interferes with the president's authority to hire and fire. Yeah,
so I think they just ignored it. There is a
case involving the Consumer Financial Protection Board, the thing that
Elizabeth Warren set up. They set that up completely outside
of the president's authority and Congress's authority. That is funded
(08:17):
by the Federal Reserve, and there is a fork. They
tried to put a four cause provision in there, and
that failed. Somebody sued them, and that no longer exists.
So they are now also under the authority of the president.
But the authority of the president to hire and fire
is pretty fundamental. Well, I would say, I mean, it's
(08:38):
his administration, and he the nation would well served if
a bunch of IGS are out there undermining the administration's
aims and goals. Well, the other thing that goes on,
and it goes on under the radar, is back in
twenty twenty, I did a presentation for a group about
(08:59):
the IGS, and I went and looked at headlines in
the paper trying to figure out what the IGS were
up to, and article headline after headline after headline where
all of these reports about Democrats asking igs to investigate
the Trump administration for one reason or another. You know,
(09:20):
for example, one of them was they wanted the Treasury
IG to investigate why the Harriet Tubman twenty dollars bill
was being delayed. I mean, that's that's the kind of
thing that Congress just tries to harass the Trump administration
back in twenty twenty at least. And I don't think
(09:40):
Trump wants to put up with that either. So he's
can imagine he's going to put his people in place
that will tell Congress, you know, we're not going to
do that. Plus he disrupts the relationship between the incumbent
IGS and Congress. You build a relationship with people in Congress,
congressmen and staff. Well, he's disrupted all of that with
(10:01):
these removals.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Let's pause. We'll bring Todd back and find out do
Inspectors General have to listen to folks in Congress badgering
them to investigate the president himself. Let's find out what
leverage they have with Todd Zen's or former Inspector General himself.
First word for Pressedisionterriers. You want a kitchen remodel project
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Speaker 2 (11:36):
This is fifty five krc an iHeartRadio station, Win.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
The Wild Time for the Channel nine weather forecast. It's
gonna be mostly sunny day today with a higher forty
two and some light win partly cloudy every night. Gusty
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forty five for the high down to twenty six overnight
with some clouds and a partly cloudy start. A Thursday
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(12:02):
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in type.
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Speaker 1 (12:39):
Fifty about KRCV talk station, Happy Tuesday. Todd's ins are
consider at city. He knows what he's talking about because
he was an inspector general, had to live in Washington,
d C. And he served his various different inspectors General.
I guess firing these inspectors centers makes all the sense
in the world, and he todd. As you've talked about
(13:00):
and as I asked you, given the scope of any
of these departments over which they set, getting a handle
on the job in and of itself has got to
be a long term proposition. I mean the size of
like the Medicare program or Social Security or Commerce, as
you just mentioned to me when you were when you
(13:22):
get centered to Commerce, like I really didn't even know
what commerce is all about. So I learned the.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Job right well. The the transition between igs goes on
and you have to rely on your You have to
rely on the staff there that they're still They've got
their audits planned and they're conducting their audits, and the
investigative side is doing their investigations. That the challenge is
to understand from the department's perspective what's going on, and
(13:50):
meeting with the heads of the departments, meeting with the
people in the departments that are really carrying out the programs.
You got to get out and you have to do
that kind of groundwork to really understand what the issues
are in the department. When I got to Commerce, I
went around to each departments and spoke to the leadership.
And here's an example. I went to the Patent Office
(14:10):
right and talked about their challenges, and the big challenge
for them was how long what their backlog was. There's thousands,
hundreds of thousands of patent applications in a backlog, and
I said, well, isn't the goal to reduce the backlog
to like zero or close to zero. Well, no, they
(14:31):
can't do that because if it gets too low, then
they don't have enough work for their patent examiners. So
it's like you run into things like that. They really
don't really don't make sense.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
That doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
It does.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Well, it's just an illustration of the stupidity of government,
you know. Because they do not have to earn to
keep themselves alive and to float like any other business.
They live off stealing money from us. They've got no
incentive to do their job. In order to keep the job,
they've dragged their feet.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
We did one case at the Patent Office where they
hired all these paralegals because they were going to hire
a bunch of additional patent judges. So they hired all
these paralegals, but they never got around to hiring the judges.
So these paralegals worked from home and did nothing, and
somebody finally got a guilty conscience that called the IG's
office and said, hey, we're sitting around getting paid to
(15:22):
do nothing. And they wasted millions and millions of dollars.
And what was crazy is they all got above average
performance appraisals and they got performance bonuses. Oh so things
like that happen.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
You know, you say it and you just wish it
wasn't true, But in so many levels, it just doesn't
surprise me at all.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Yeah, well, it's a big The federal government is huge.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
It's too big people.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
People don't really appreciate how huge it is.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Well, going back to the idea that Congress can pester
one or other inspectors general to look into and investigate,
like say the president of the United States of America,
which has happened under Trump administration. Do the inspector general say,
Can they turn around and say, no, that's not my job.
I'm over the Commerce Department. I don't have anything to
investigate about Trump or fill in the black president. Right.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Well, one of the big controversies that the IG investigated
under Trump was when a Hurricane Dorian occurred and there
was all kinds of destruction. Trump had actually predicted that
the hurricanes path was going to be different than what
(16:37):
the Weather Service had predicted, and he used the little
marker to mark up their math. Yeah. Well, the IG
was requested to investigate all that, and it's like, why,
what's the big deal?
Speaker 1 (16:53):
So that's the find out if Donald Trump's clairvoyant. Yeah,
so I demanded an answer. So that's the kind of
stuff that can go on, and it did. It did
go on with the Democrats when Trump came in. They
were sending all kinds of requests to the igs all
over the government. Well, you didn't restore my confidence in
(17:17):
the government, todd Sensor, just putting an exclamation point on
everything that we were fearing and worrying about. It's all true, folks,
It's a lot worse than you and I ever imagine.
Please Dear God, new sheriff in town lot, Donald Trump
and the DOGE team and everybody else, These new Inspector
General stick to the task of their job and fared
(17:38):
out the fraud wasted abuse on behalf of the American taxpayer.
Do you have any optimism that that might happen time?
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Well, what I'm optimistic for is that a lot of
this is being done with these removals clear the path
for the IGS to align their YEAH resources and operations
with the Department of Government Efficiency the government that DOGE
has put teams in each department, but it's very small teams.
And if they could align with the IG and instead
(18:08):
of thinking of it as they want to prevent the
IGS from doing work, they need to view it as
they want the IGS to do specific, exactly targeted work
that will support what DOOSE just trying to do.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Well.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Hopefully that can happen. And let's face it, man, there
is a ton of low hanging fruit out there that
they could get rid of right away. Todd, you always
have a welcome spot here in the fifty five KRC
Morning Show. Appreciate your being able to tap into your
knowledge and expertise in these areas, and we'll look forward
to having you on the show again real soon seven
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Seven oh five, here a fifty five krc DE talk station.
Happy Tuesday one time's right here. Glad to be hosted
for fifty five Carcy Mornings. So especial when a guy
like Todd Zinser is in studio to talk about what's
going on in Washington, d C. Spent a lot of
time there because Todd was an inspector generally. He was
in DC for thirty one years conducting audits and investigations
(00:35):
of federal officials programs and operations. And he penned an
op ed piece to the Cincinni Inquirer of the new
igs and Doge should collaborate Todd, It's always great to
have you in studio, my friend. Thank you, Brian, Good morning,
Good morning. Let's start with, you know, ten thousand foot view.
What do before we get to the idea of Donald
Trump firing them? What do inspector generals do? What are
(00:59):
they tasked with? What are their day to day responsibilities?
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Right? The Inspectors General are based on a nineteen seventy
eight law called the ig Act of nineteen seventy eight.
It's been amended a couple of times, but it basically
puts Inspectors general in each of the department or cabinet
departments and numerous other agencies. And it basically has two sides.
(01:22):
They have an investigative side and they have an audit side.
An audit is very expansive. It's it security audits, contract audits,
grant audits, financial statement audits. They do the whole thing,
and on investigations. They do investigations of fraud against the government,
criminal cases, and they also do administrative cases involving misconduct
(01:46):
and other rule violations and things like that. They operate
a hotline for fraud, waste and abuse reports, and they
have a dual reporting requirement. They report to both the
Secretary of the Department. They have a reporting obligation to Congress.
So they're like stuck in the middle. And in years
(02:06):
past they've been described as straddling a barbed wire fence.
So there are i think right now, seventy four Inspectors General.
Back in nineteen seventy eight, I think it started with
a dozen, and it's just expanded. And there are igs
that are appointed by the president and there are igs
that are appointed by the head of their independent agency.
(02:30):
So the igs that Trump removed, it's called removal in
the federal government not firing, but the ones that he
removed are all from most For the most part, they're
from the cabinet departments. There's only two cabinet departments that
were not affected. Two IGS and cabinet departments that were
not affected. One was Justice Michael Horowitz and the other
(02:53):
was the IG at the Department of Homeland Security, who
is currently doing cases or investigations of the Secret Service
and what happened with the assassination attempts. So those are
the only two. All the other igs removed came from
cabinet departments. There are a couple of agencies, like the
IG for Afghan Reconstruction, I guess was removed for some reason.
(03:17):
He was actually a good IG. But the focus is
on the departments.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Now this I guess what I consider. And you know,
pick a department, and I don't think you can find
a single department in the federal government that hasn't been
accused of or allowed fraud, waste, and abuse to occur
under its watch. I mean Medicare, Medicaid, social Security, the
PPP loan program. We go down the entire list of
(03:45):
any government program. People are constantly committing acts of fraud,
and billions and billions of dollars could be saved if
that was ferreted out. So that that has happened and
continues to happen over I would argue deck aids that
failure lies in the lapse of the IGS.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Then, well, to a certain extent it does. They have
to I mean they have to have a good program
in place to identify their risks in the department. They
look at programs and say, what are the risks in
these departments that is going to be defrauded and they're
supposed to identify that and report those And the fact
is that the programs are set up in such a
(04:24):
way that they're easy to defraud. Yeah, and there's not
a whole lot the IG can do across the board
like that. But if they have a case, or if
they have an audit that they perform, they're going to
make a recommendation for improvements. And they're not the most
well funded agencies in the federal government.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
I can tell you that well, I can understand that,
But I mean therein lies the challenge. If billions of
dollars are being misspent or stolen, I can make the
argument then it will be a great allocation of resources
to improve the funding to allow the its to actually
be able to do their job and ferret out this
waste and abuse and fraud.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Right and and not to be too cynical, but like,
I'll go ahead, there's been there's been special Inspectors General
set up for various reasons, like Pandemic Relief, the Recovery Act.
They set up special igs to focus on those areas.
And when they do that, Congress is able to say, well,
we put an IG in place, so we have fixed
(05:23):
that problem. The IG is on the case when it's
really kind of just window dressing in a lot of cases,
Oh exactly, they put an IG in place, but they
don't give the IG all the resources here or she
needs so.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Or as you put it out a moment ago. Congress
is the ones who is the one who created the
program or passed the law that's being followed in its implementation.
But the law itself has so many giant holes in
it that allow this easy fraud to occur. They don't
go back and fix the problem that they started with this,
you know, a poorly written law.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Right, like the the pandemic relief programs, like the people PPP,
the pandemic relief has been defrauded by hundreds of billions
of dollars. Yeah, so in situations like that, there are
some things the igs can do, but not much really.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Oh all right, well, sorry conclusion on that from Todd Zenzer,
But he was in this role and he knows what
he's talking about. Is there any argument that these now
fired igs can make that they're allowed to keep their job?
I know there's been a tradition of presidents keeping in
(06:35):
place and this is the subject matter of your op
ed piece. New igs and doges should collaborate, Obviously. Donald
Trump's wants is a new sheriff in town. He wants
his own people there, people who are aligned with his
message about ferreting out fraud, waste, and abuse and cutting
the size and the scope of government. So I get
his motivation, But do they have any claim to the
job that they have been removed from? Right?
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Well, back in two thousand and eight, Congress was trying
to put some kind of protection in place for the igs,
and the original idea was to establish some kind of
four cause standard for igs that they couldn't be fired
at will. The president would have to establish some cause
(07:16):
to fire them. Well, that never happened, and instead, oh,
they compromised and put this reporting requirement in place that
the president had to give Congress thirty days. Notice why,
I don't really know. I never understood what was supposed
to happen in those thirty days, except maybe give the
IG a couple more paychecks or give Congress time to
(07:39):
build a big frenzy around it. But it really has
no purpose. And I think that Trump ignored that requirement
on purpose, on purpose because they don't think it's constitutional.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Yeah, I can see that that.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
It interferes with the president's authority to hire and fire. Yeah,
so I think they just ignored it. There is a
case involving the Consumer Financial Protection Board, the thing that
Elizabeth Warren set up. They set that up completely outside
of the president's authority and Congress's authority. That is funded
(08:17):
by the Federal Reserve, and there is a fork. They
tried to put a four cause provision in there, and
that failed. Somebody sued them, and that no longer exists.
So they are now also under the authority of the president.
But the authority of the president to hire and fire
is pretty fundamental. Well, I would say, I mean, it's
(08:38):
his administration, and he the nation would well served if
a bunch of IGS are out there undermining the administration's
aims and goals. Well, the other thing that goes on,
and it goes on under the radar, is back in
twenty twenty, I did a presentation for a group about
(08:59):
the IGS, and I went and looked at headlines in
the paper trying to figure out what the IGS were
up to, and article headline after headline after headline where
all of these reports about Democrats asking igs to investigate
the Trump administration for one reason or another. You know,
(09:20):
for example, one of them was they wanted the Treasury
IG to investigate why the Harriet Tubman twenty dollars bill
was being delayed. I mean, that's that's the kind of
thing that Congress just tries to harass the Trump administration
back in twenty twenty at least. And I don't think
(09:40):
Trump wants to put up with that either. So he's
can imagine he's going to put his people in place
that will tell Congress, you know, we're not going to
do that. Plus he disrupts the relationship between the incumbent
IGS and Congress. You build a relationship with people in Congress,
congressmen and staff. Well, he's disrupted all of that with
(10:01):
these removals.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Let's pause. We'll bring Todd back and find out do
Inspectors General have to listen to folks in Congress badgering
them to investigate the president himself. Let's find out what
leverage they have with Todd Zen's or former Inspector General himself.
First word for Pressedisionterriers. You want a kitchen remodel project
done right? You want pressedision Terriers. That is John Ryan
(10:23):
that you'll be working with. It's his company and he's
the man that'll sit down, maybe in your own kitchen
right now, over a cup of coffee or something, from
an initial design to final installation, work out the details
of your kitchen. I strongly recommend when you're working with
John listen to some of the ideas he has because
they are brilliant. With more than thirty maybe thirty five
years experience and doing almost exclusively kitchens. Trust me, he's
(10:43):
been there and done that. He knows what works, he
knows what doesn't, and he will kindly talk you away
from making mistakes and offering better solutions like storage solutions,
which we follow. John's recommendation on that and love how
easy it is to store things in our kitchen. Now
John was able to find extra space in our kitchen
and it seemed like an impossible challenge, but no, it's
(11:04):
amazing what he did. So like our kitchen, you'll be
truly truly impressed with the work, the attention to detail,
and you'll enjoy working with John. I can assure you
of that. A real pleasant, pleasant man uh and again
knows what he's doing with all those years of experience. Experience,
learn more and maybe check out some of the prior
projects he's done over the years. Prestige one two three
dot com Prestige one two three dot com a plus
(11:26):
with a better business bureau. Tell John, Brian and Paul
Atte said, Hi when you call him up to talk
about your kitchen. Five one three two four seven zero
two two nine five one three two four seven zero
two two nine.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
This is fifty five krc an iHeartRadio station, Win.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
The Wild Time for the Channel nine weather forecast. It's
gonna be mostly sunny day today with a higher forty
two and some light win partly cloudy every night. Gusty
wins a lower thirty one. Sonny tomorrow for the most part,
forty five for the high down to twenty six overnight
with some clouds and a partly cloudy start. A Thursday
showers and rain shows up sometime in the evening. I
(12:02):
have forty seven on Thursday. Right now, it's thirty one
in type.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
For traffic from you See Out Traffic Center. Expect more
and you see health more clinical trials, more treatment options
for personalized care, more chances to get you back to being.
You visit you seehealth dot com. A couple of accidents.
Northbound seventy five. There's a wreck at the very end
of the ramp from eastbound seventy four. The second wreck
(12:27):
is near Town Street. Was in the left lane, now
on the right shoulder, but traffic's backing up through Saint Bernard,
Chuck King, Vermont fifty five krc the talk station.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Fifty about KRCV talk station, Happy Tuesday. Todd's ins are
consider at city. He knows what he's talking about because
he was an inspector general, had to live in Washington,
d C. And he served his various different inspectors General.
I guess firing these inspectors centers makes all the sense
in the world, and he todd. As you've talked about
(13:00):
and as I asked you, given the scope of any
of these departments over which they set, getting a handle
on the job in and of itself has got to
be a long term proposition. I mean the size of
like the Medicare program or Social Security or Commerce, as
you just mentioned to me when you were when you
(13:22):
get centered to Commerce, like I really didn't even know
what commerce is all about. So I learned the.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Job right well. The the transition between igs goes on
and you have to rely on your You have to
rely on the staff there that they're still They've got
their audits planned and they're conducting their audits, and the
investigative side is doing their investigations. That the challenge is
to understand from the department's perspective what's going on, and
(13:50):
meeting with the heads of the departments, meeting with the
people in the departments that are really carrying out the programs.
You got to get out and you have to do
that kind of groundwork to really understand what the issues
are in the department. When I got to Commerce, I
went around to each departments and spoke to the leadership.
And here's an example. I went to the Patent Office
(14:10):
right and talked about their challenges, and the big challenge
for them was how long what their backlog was. There's thousands,
hundreds of thousands of patent applications in a backlog, and
I said, well, isn't the goal to reduce the backlog
to like zero or close to zero. Well, no, they
(14:31):
can't do that because if it gets too low, then
they don't have enough work for their patent examiners. So
it's like you run into things like that. They really
don't really don't make sense.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
That doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
It does.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Well, it's just an illustration of the stupidity of government,
you know. Because they do not have to earn to
keep themselves alive and to float like any other business.
They live off stealing money from us. They've got no
incentive to do their job. In order to keep the job,
they've dragged their feet.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
We did one case at the Patent Office where they
hired all these paralegals because they were going to hire
a bunch of additional patent judges. So they hired all
these paralegals, but they never got around to hiring the judges.
So these paralegals worked from home and did nothing, and
somebody finally got a guilty conscience that called the IG's
office and said, hey, we're sitting around getting paid to
(15:22):
do nothing. And they wasted millions and millions of dollars.
And what was crazy is they all got above average
performance appraisals and they got performance bonuses. Oh so things
like that happen.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
You know, you say it and you just wish it
wasn't true, But in so many levels, it just doesn't
surprise me at all.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
Yeah, well, it's a big The federal government is huge.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
It's too big people.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
People don't really appreciate how huge it is.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Well, going back to the idea that Congress can pester
one or other inspectors general to look into and investigate,
like say the president of the United States of America,
which has happened under Trump administration. Do the inspector general say,
Can they turn around and say, no, that's not my job.
I'm over the Commerce Department. I don't have anything to
investigate about Trump or fill in the black president. Right.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Well, one of the big controversies that the IG investigated
under Trump was when a Hurricane Dorian occurred and there
was all kinds of destruction. Trump had actually predicted that
the hurricanes path was going to be different than what
(16:37):
the Weather Service had predicted, and he used the little
marker to mark up their math. Yeah. Well, the IG
was requested to investigate all that, and it's like, why,
what's the big deal?
Speaker 1 (16:53):
So that's the find out if Donald Trump's clairvoyant. Yeah,
so I demanded an answer. So that's the kind of
stuff that can go on, and it did. It did
go on with the Democrats when Trump came in. They
were sending all kinds of requests to the igs all
over the government. Well, you didn't restore my confidence in
(17:17):
the government, todd Sensor, just putting an exclamation point on
everything that we were fearing and worrying about. It's all true, folks,
It's a lot worse than you and I ever imagine.
Please Dear God, new sheriff in town lot, Donald Trump
and the DOGE team and everybody else, These new Inspector
General stick to the task of their job and fared
(17:38):
out the fraud wasted abuse on behalf of the American taxpayer.
Do you have any optimism that that might happen time?
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Well, what I'm optimistic for is that a lot of
this is being done with these removals clear the path
for the IGS to align their YEAH resources and operations
with the Department of Government Efficiency the government that DOGE
has put teams in each department, but it's very small teams.
And if they could align with the IG and instead
(18:08):
of thinking of it as they want to prevent the
IGS from doing work, they need to view it as
they want the IGS to do specific, exactly targeted work
that will support what DOOSE just trying to do.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Well.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Hopefully that can happen. And let's face it, man, there
is a ton of low hanging fruit out there that
they could get rid of right away. Todd, you always
have a welcome spot here in the fifty five KRC
Morning Show. Appreciate your being able to tap into your
knowledge and expertise in these areas, and we'll look forward
to having you on the show again real soon seven
twenty six. Right now, folks, if you have KRCD talk stations,
Zimmer Heating and air Conditioning, Yeah, get in touch with them.
(18:43):
You'd be glad you did. Proud they are at Chris
Simmer is proud of his family's tradition. This is third
generation Zimmer ownership. They have excellent customer service. They are
licensed at what they do, and they can service any
kind of HVAC system, So if your system goes out,
trust the folks at Zimmer. It's easy the schedule appointment
and learn more about the company and all the different
services they offer. Just kind of go Zimmer dot com.
(19:04):
Upper right hand corner. You'll see two places the schedule appointment,
the after hours click or the UH just schedule the
appointment click. Either way, it's easy to schedule it and
to'll arrive on time and they will service your unit
or fix it or replace it. Of course, they are
carrier experts most notably, but they do service all types
of air conditionings and heaters, so it's Zimmer for all
(19:26):
your needs. Five one three, five two one ninety eight
ninety three five one three, five two one ninety eight
ninety three again online at go Zimmer dot com. Fifty
five KRC dot com. Hello
Brian Thomas News
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