Sherman Frederick/Properly Subversive

One hundred twenty-five years ago cowboy writer Eugene Manlove Rhodes began his novel “Paso Por Aqui” with this: “Exceptions are so inevitable that no rule is without them —except the one just stated.”

That’s good advice, especially in the world of modern politics, where nothing is ever as black and white as first reported. So much of the truth rests somewhere in the middle, sometimes shaded toward Team A and sometimes toward Team B.

For example, the Democratic Party wants you to believe that the Department of Government Efficincy’s foray into government services is a reckless gang of teens rooting through government processes like pigs at feeding time. They say the kids at DOGE aren’t familiar with Common Business-Oriented Language (COBOL), a 60-year-old code used by the Social Security Administration.

That seems far from the truth to me.

First, every DOGE volunteer I have seen on television isn’t a teenager. They’re fully grown adults who have distinguished themselves in their fields of endeavor and are now working for free to help the government become more efficient.

The idea that these guys can’t work around older codes doesn’t ring true, even if it is a code like COBOL, which is ancient hieroglyphics in comparison to the modern computer systems the DOGE volunteers know, understand, and probably invented.

The latest discovery is especially concerning.

Elon Musk and Antonio Gracias said they found evidence of a massive enrollment of non-citizens onto Social Security. And, a spot check found that some of the numbers issued to non-citizens also cast votes in the last election.

Musk characterized what they found as possible evidence the Joe Biden Administration gamed the voting system, saying: “It was a massive large-scale program to import as many illegals as possible ultimately to change the entire voting map of the United States and disenfranchise the American people.”

Politifact cast shade on Musk’s interpretation of the data, reporting: “The federal government issues Social Security numbers to immigrants who are legally authorized to work in the U.S. so they can pay taxes. Having a Social Security number does not allow immigrants to register to vote in federal elections nor does it make them immediately eligible for Social Security benefits.”

We need more investigation to know which side the truth leans toward in this case. But, clearly, this isn’t a coding issue. We’re talking about data interpretation.

Let’s dig into it. Shouldn’t take long.

Our experience so far is that DOGE isn’t perfect. But it also has a knack for sifting through government processes and finding issues. Maybe this is a time they missed the mark — one of those inevitable exceptions to the rule.

That would be a relief if it were. But what if there’s something to it? The term “existential threat” would certainly apply, no?

PROPERTY TAXES

Sparks Assemblywoman Natha Anderson has introduced Assembly Joint Resolution 1 to raise Nevada property taxes through the back door.

AJR 1 resets the current property tax calculation in such a way so that current homeowners won’t pay more, but new homeowners would.

That is, in fact, a property tax increase.

ONE MORE THING

(You can read more from Sherman Frederick at shermanfrederick.substack.com.)