The numbers are there. They say “billions” wasted, misspent, stolen. And eventually, we’ll know the exact numbers because knowing exactly how much money American taxpayers lost through mismanagement, fraud, and giveaways is what accounting is all about. Sure, we can generalize, but what we want is specificity. That’s why the math is important. The numbers will tie the bloated bureaucracy to its bloating. They will show a relationship between numbers of dollars lost and number of unnecessary programs, such as the funding of transgender operations for Guatemalans in Guatemala. You want that revealed because you went to an accountant, an online tax form, or your savvy Uncle Bernard to do your taxes last year and you’re about to go through the anxiety-ridden process again before April 15.
The Arrow of Accounting
If the “arrow of time” can fly in only one direction (forward, in case you don’t live in this Cosmos), the “arrow of accounting,” when released, does the opposite. It does fly into the past. And the archer who shoots that arrow, shoots at a target in the recent past. Like a statute of limitations that eliminates every crime but murder as a target of justice and accountability, the deep past restricts the aim of the accountant-archer. Past waste is a moot point. Whatever the government spent farther back in time, say in the recesses of the 1960s, on overpriced wrenches and pens that work in space (The joke goes, “Russians used a pencil”), might be a target, but it’s not worth hitting. The target of the recent past, however, lies within the arrow’e easy reach. In fact, a meticulous accountant can hit the bullseye unless someone purposely obstructs the target.
Hitting the Bullseye
Numbers reveal relations in very specific ways, like those associated with SOHCAHTOA, the mnemonic device you learned in trigonometry. Those relationships called the sine, cosine, and tangent are framed in simple rational numbers, the opposite over the hypotenuse, the adjacent over the hypotenuse, and the opposite over the adjacent sides of a right triangle. There’s no fudging, no room for making up whatever pleases you because you belong to a political party, religion, or race. The numbers are the numbers, and the accounting numbers like the ordinary “natural numbers” you learned on your tiny toddler fingers, one, two, three, four…. “How old will you be tomorrow, Suzy? Three fingers! Yay! Big girl!”
As David Berlinski writes about the ability of numbers to reveal connections in his A Tour of the Calculus, “It is this enviable specificity that makes mathematics something other than as form of magic” (100). Otherwise, the number of tax dollars misspent, lost, or stolen can be the stuff of dark magic. “Don’t concern yourself, citizen; we have your back; we have it ALL in hand. Besides, it’s too complex for you anyway. Trust us. We aren’t trying to trick you. We’re not magicians who make a scantily clad helper disappear from a trunk only to reappear from behind a curtain, or even more spectacularly, from the back of the room, sitting in the last row. How did he do that? Where did she come from? Wasn’t someone else occupying that seat?
No.
No, we shouldn’t trust them, those government magicians to whom we gave our wallets. They have spent; they have made the contents of many wallets permanently disappear. We won’t reach into another pocket to find that money. The magician won’t even pull a quarter from behind our ears.
DOGE’s Archers
DOGE seems to be in the process of revealing, tens, to possibly hundreds of billions of dollars spent during your recent lifetime, the money gone, much of it unaccounted for; some of it to your enemies, the people plotting to kill Americans—you specifically. And that “possibly hundreds of billions of dollars”could actually have yet another trio of zeroes—10 not to the ninth power, 10 not to the tenth power, not even to the eleventh power, BUT to the twelfth power (trillions?!): $1,000,000,000,000+ during your lifetime, not your entire lifetime, mind you, but your relatively recent lifetime, close enough in your personal past for even an amateur archer to hit.
But there are some who would obscure the target. Who knows why? Some even intend to stand in front of it, willing, it seems, to take an arrow in defense of waste, fraud, and abuse like mercenary North Korean soldiers on the battlefields of Ukraine told to rush across a flat muddy and mined field toward a battery of Ukrainian soldiers or like the French knights and mercenary crossbowmen during Battle of Crécy that were routed by Welsh and English longbowmen in 1346. Foolish battle tactic to achieve what? More waste, fraud, and abuse?
The accountants of DOGE have the high ground like the forces of King Edward III on that hillside above the muddy lowland. Why do Democrats want to make that perilous charge?
The numbers don’t lie. The numbers are irrefragable. The targets are so numerous the archers don’t even have to aim.
The Arrow of Accounting
If the “arrow of time” can fly in only one direction (forward, in case you don’t live in this Cosmos), the “arrow of accounting,” when released, does the opposite. It does fly into the past. And the archer who shoots that arrow, shoots at a target in the recent past. Like a statute of limitations that eliminates every crime but murder as a target of justice and accountability, the deep past restricts the aim of the accountant-archer. Past waste is a moot point. Whatever the government spent farther back in time, say in the recesses of the 1960s, on overpriced wrenches and pens that work in space (The joke goes, “Russians used a pencil”), might be a target, but it’s not worth hitting. The target of the recent past, however, lies within the arrow’e easy reach. In fact, a meticulous accountant can hit the bullseye unless someone purposely obstructs the target.
Hitting the Bullseye
Numbers reveal relations in very specific ways, like those associated with SOHCAHTOA, the mnemonic device you learned in trigonometry. Those relationships called the sine, cosine, and tangent are framed in simple rational numbers, the opposite over the hypotenuse, the adjacent over the hypotenuse, and the opposite over the adjacent sides of a right triangle. There’s no fudging, no room for making up whatever pleases you because you belong to a political party, religion, or race. The numbers are the numbers, and the accounting numbers like the ordinary “natural numbers” you learned on your tiny toddler fingers, one, two, three, four…. “How old will you be tomorrow, Suzy? Three fingers! Yay! Big girl!”
As David Berlinski writes about the ability of numbers to reveal connections in his A Tour of the Calculus, “It is this enviable specificity that makes mathematics something other than as form of magic” (100). Otherwise, the number of tax dollars misspent, lost, or stolen can be the stuff of dark magic. “Don’t concern yourself, citizen; we have your back; we have it ALL in hand. Besides, it’s too complex for you anyway. Trust us. We aren’t trying to trick you. We’re not magicians who make a scantily clad helper disappear from a trunk only to reappear from behind a curtain, or even more spectacularly, from the back of the room, sitting in the last row. How did he do that? Where did she come from? Wasn’t someone else occupying that seat?
No.
No, we shouldn’t trust them, those government magicians to whom we gave our wallets. They have spent; they have made the contents of many wallets permanently disappear. We won’t reach into another pocket to find that money. The magician won’t even pull a quarter from behind our ears.
DOGE’s Archers
DOGE seems to be in the process of revealing, tens, to possibly hundreds of billions of dollars spent during your recent lifetime, the money gone, much of it unaccounted for; some of it to your enemies, the people plotting to kill Americans—you specifically. And that “possibly hundreds of billions of dollars”could actually have yet another trio of zeroes—10 not to the ninth power, 10 not to the tenth power, not even to the eleventh power, BUT to the twelfth power (trillions?!): $1,000,000,000,000+ during your lifetime, not your entire lifetime, mind you, but your relatively recent lifetime, close enough in your personal past for even an amateur archer to hit.
But there are some who would obscure the target. Who knows why? Some even intend to stand in front of it, willing, it seems, to take an arrow in defense of waste, fraud, and abuse like mercenary North Korean soldiers on the battlefields of Ukraine told to rush across a flat muddy and mined field toward a battery of Ukrainian soldiers or like the French knights and mercenary crossbowmen during Battle of Crécy that were routed by Welsh and English longbowmen in 1346. Foolish battle tactic to achieve what? More waste, fraud, and abuse?
The accountants of DOGE have the high ground like the forces of King Edward III on that hillside above the muddy lowland. Why do Democrats want to make that perilous charge?
The numbers don’t lie. The numbers are irrefragable. The targets are so numerous the archers don’t even have to aim.
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