By Lambert Strether.
Readers, I awoke with an especially nasty head cold yesterday, which I am still fighting today, so this Water Cooler will end when I creep back to bed, there to drink plenty of fluids. –lambert
Bird Song of the Day
Brown Thrasher, BHI–Thompson Island (restricted access), Suffolk, Massachusetts, United States. Includes a far-off airplane.
In Case You Might Miss…
- DOGE: New lawsuit from Public Citizen on DOGE data “access.”
- DOGE goons have write access to Treasury’s payments system (Tankus, Marshall, but not Taibbi).
Saving datasets:
The @uscensusbureau has taken down American Community Survey microdata.
Thankfully @nikhil_woodruff had a local copy, so we now store it on @ThePolicyEngine servers. pic.twitter.com/6LaKntuw0h
— Max Ghenis (@MaxGhenis) February 4, 2025
My email address is down by the plant; please send examples of there (“Helpers” in the subject line). In our increasingly desperate and fragile neoliberal society, everyday normal incidents and stories of “the communism of everyday life” are what I am looking for (and not, say, the Red Cross in Hawaii, or even the UNWRA in Gaza).
Politics
“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles
DOGE
Alliance for Retired Americans, American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO, and Service Employees International Union, AFL-CIO v. Scott Bessent, in his official capacity as Secretary of the Treasury, Department of the Treasury, Bureau of the Fiscal Service (PDF) [UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA]. I am encouraged by Public Citizen’s involvement. Readers will recall that in fighting TPP — a fight they won! — Public Citizen was an absolute honey badger. Here is the Plea for Relief, where (a), (b), and (c) repeat in simplified terms the Counts:
WHEREFORE, Plaintiffs pray that this Court:
a. Declare that Defendants’ decision to implement a system by which Elon Musk or other DOGE-affiliated individuals may access the Bureau’s records and obtain personal information about individuals and taxpayers contained there is unlawful.
b. Enjoin Defendants from continuing to permit such access or obtain such personal information.
c. Enjoin Defendants to ensure that future disclosure of individual records will occur only in accordance with the Privacy Act, the Internal Revenue Code, and the SORNs [System of Records Notice, placed in the Federal Register] applicable to the system of records at issue.
d. Grant any temporary, preliminary, or permanent injunctive relief necessary to protect the privacy of individuals whose information is contained within the system of records.
I have two quibbles. First:
This Court has statutory jurisdiction over this action pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1331, because this action arises under the laws of the United States, namely, the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. §§ 702, 706.
Readers will recall from my previous DOGE post that Lexology took a different view. Recall the DOGE is a temporary organization under the rechristened United States
DigitalDOGE Service, which is in the White House:The APA governs federal agencies’ rulemaking and adjudication processes. Entities within the Executive Office of the President that solely advise and assist the President are exempt from the APA. DOGE’s advisory role likely places it outside the scope of the APA
This is the only justification given for the Court having jurisdiction. Do any real lawyers out there have thoughts?
Second, the case pertains only to access, not giving DOGE goons admin privileges for the entire system. It does seem to me that if indeed DOGE’s raison d’etre is indeed “advice” — hard to believe, with Elon’s constant drumbeating, but assume so — then there is no reason at all for DOGE to have admin privilges, which exist to change things, not to undestand and proffer advice about them. Readesr?
* * * “Afternoon of Day Six of the Trump-Musk Treasury Payments Crisis of 2025: Changing the Treasury Payments Source Code & the Treasury’s ‘DOGE’ gag order” [Nathan Tankus, Notes on the Crises]. Tankus on Odd Lots; first breakthrough to the mainstream. “A source familiar with the situation reports to me that: ‘They are also doing a lot more to protect [Marko Elez, the dude with admin privileges]. As an example: . Marko Elez’s unchecked behavior throughout the most sensitive payments infrastructure in the United States is something they are working very hard to protect.” • I hate to quote Talking Points Memo, but we must all pull together on this–
“Musk Cronies Dive Into Treasury Dept Payments Code Base” [Talking Points Memo]. “Overnight, Wired reported that, contrary to published reports that DOGE operatives at the Treasury Department are limited to “read only” access to department payment systems, this is not true. A 25-year-old DOGE operative named Marko Elez in fact has admin privileges on these critical systems, which directly control and pay out roughly 95% of payments made by the U.S. government, including Social Security checks, tax refunds and virtually all contract payments. I can independently confirm these details based on conversations going back to the weekend. I can further report that Elez not only has full access to these systems, he has already made extensive changes to the code base for these critical payment system.” Presumably there is a source code control system such that Elez’s changes can be rolled back? Somebody should find out….
“Day Six of the Trump-Musk Treasury Payments Crisis of 2025: “Treasury has been denying that they gave Marko write access, but I am looking at his access request right now” [Nathan Tankus, Notes on the Crises]. “One source is aware of this letter and explicitly denied it late yesterday: ‘Treasury has been denying that they gave Marko write access, but I am looking at his access request right now and it has the Deputy Assistant Commissioner for IT Operations instructing the team to disregard all previous instructions and assign Marko read/write privileges for the database. Thus, one way that this letter could be technically true in a bizarre and wildly dishonest sense is that by first having ‘read-only’ access and then having ‘read and write’ access, they could be said to have ‘read-only’ and ‘read and write’ access simultaneously. But probably the United States Treasury is just lying… [T]his source says, regarding the fact that the letter does not mention Marko Elez, states ‘That’s definitely a purposeful evasion.’ In any case, the situation remains extraordinarily, incomprehensibly dire as they continue to have ‘read and write; access. According to a source familiar with the situation a senior IT employee shared for the Payment Automation Manager (PAM), International Treasury Services (ITS) & the Standard Application for Payments (ASAP) to Marko Elez. Recall that PAM is the primary way for the Treasury to send payments, having sent 4.7 trillion dollars last year.” • Public Citizen should obviously amend their cases immediately to prevent this. (I’m starting to think at “access” is one of those words; it prevented the story from advancing for three days. I should also note that a lot of Tankus’ stuff is single sourced, so he and we need more greybeards to step forward. Here is the least bad scenario (since there are no policy or Constitutional implications):
“Nation Shrugs as Godzilla Eats Washington” [Matt Taibbi, Racket News]. USAID triumphalism: “On NBC, former U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) official Michael Schiffer wailed that the beheading of his former organization would cause national security to ‘erode.’ His quote came as USAID’s budget has been cracked open and Americans are leafing, transfixed, through its colossal library of crazy-ass contracts. From $39 million for ‘Gender Equality in Water, Power, and Transportation’ to ‘Recognizing the Third Gender in Bangladesh to “Ukrainian Resilience Through Fashion’ to a ‘TransFormation Salon’ to a pre-Taliban plan to help ‘Afghan Women Enter the Financial Sector,’ it’s a bottomless pit of ‘I don’t want to pay for that.’ A trip through USASpending.gov led me to an “art therapy” contract whose deliverables include things that look like (but can’t be, of course) suggestive pics of queer teenagers… If we close the door on such work, the former USAID official Schiffer said, ‘America’s Enemies Will Rejoice.’ Joe Scarborough called USAID ‘the ultimate soft power.’ Look,
Syndemics
“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison
Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).
Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!
Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (wastewater); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).
Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).
Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, thump, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
Vaccines: MMR
Babe wake up:
I once did surgery on a guy who had mumps 50 years prior. His testicles looked like someone had microwaved them, chewed them, spit them out, and then shoved them back in his scrotum. That is what mumps does to testicles. Vaccines prevent this from happening.
— Ashley Winter MD || Urologist (@AshleyGWinter) February 5, 2025
Can a doctor in the readership confirm?
Lambert here: Much is now back.
| Wastewater | |
| This week[1] CDC January 27 | Last week[2] CDC (until next week): |
|
|
|
| Variants [3] CDC January 18 | Emergency Room Visits★[4] CDC January 25 |
|
|
|
| Hospitalization | |
| New York[5] New York State, data February 3: | ★ National [6] CDC January 31: |
|
|
|
| Positivity | |
| ★ National[7] Walgreens February 3: | ★ Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic February 1: |
|
|
|
| Travelers Data | |
| ★Positivity[9] CDC January 13: | ★ Variants[10] CDC January 13 |
|
|
|
| Deaths | |
| Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC January 11: | Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC January 11: |
|
|
|
LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”
NOTES
[1] (CDC) Down, nothing new at major hubs.
[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.
[3] (CDC Variants) XEC takes over. That WHO label, “Ommicron,” has done a great job normalizing successive waves of infection.
[4] (ED) A little uptick.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Definitely jumped, but no exponential growth either, Odd.
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). Leveling out.
[7] (Walgreens) Leveling out.
[8] (Cleveland) Continued upward trend since, well, Thanksgiving.
[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Leveling out.
[10] (Travelers: Variants). Positivity is new, but variants have not yet been released.
[11] Deaths low, positivity leveling out.
[12] Deaths low, ED leveling out.
Stats Watch
There are no statistics of interest today.
The Bezzle: “Arkham Intelligence Data Unmasks Satoshi’s $108 Billion Bitcoin Vault” [Bitcoin.com News]. “On Tuesday, blockchain analytics entity Arkham Intelligence unveiled its discovery of $108 billion in BTC held within the recognized bitcoin wallets linked to Satoshi Nakamoto. By leveraging advanced forensic tools and the renowned Patoshi Pattern, the platform traced these holdings to the pseudonymous creator’s earliest digital vaults, casting fresh light on the dormant fortune’s staggering scale.” • Hmm. I’ve always wondered at Satoshi’s uncanny ability to remain unfound. Perhaps he’s a spook? Or a front for a committee of spooks>
The Bezzle: “After twelve years of writing about bitcoin, here’s how my thinking has changed” [Moneyness]. From 2024, still germane. “If you want to buy some bitcoins, go right ahead. We can even help by regulating the trading venues to make it safe. But don’t force others to play. Alas, that seems to be where we are headed. There is a growing effort to arm-twist the rest of society into joining in by having governments acquire bitcoins, in the U.S.’s case a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. The U.S. government has never entered the World Series of Poker. Nor has it gone to Vegas to bet billions to tax payer funds on roulette or built a strategic Powerball ticket reserve, but it appears to be genuinely entertaining the idea of rolling the dice on Bitcoin.” And: “Bitcoin is an incredibly infectious early-bird game, one that after sixteen years continues to find a constant stream of new recruits. How contagious? I originally estimated in a 2022 post, Three potential paths for the price of bitcoin, that adoption wouldn’t rise above 10%-15% of the global population, but I may have been underestimating its transmissibility…. It begins with a small strategic reserve of a few billion dollars. It ends with the Department of Bitcoin Price Appreciation being allocated 50% of yearly tax revenues to make the number go up, to the detriment of infrastructure like roads, hospitals, and law enforcement. At that point we’ve entered a dystopia in which society rapidly deteriorates because we’ve all become obsessed on a bet.” • Sadly, “early bird game” is undefined. Readers? NOTE This is an important take, so I’m leaving it up, this time with the URL.
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 45 Fear (previous close: 44 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 47 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Feb 4 at 2:10:42 PM ET.
Rapture Index: Closes down one on Food Supply. “The lack of activity has downgraded this category” [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 180. (Remember that bringing on the Rapture is good.) • This is a tough crowd. Surely Trump’s first month brought the Rapture closer?
Groves of Academe
Since we won’t keep our children safe from airborne diseases, it only makes sense we’d feed their minds with AI slop:
The Cal State system, where I teach, just announced a murky but far-ranging & evidently unprecedented public-private initiative to, per the Chancellor, “establish the CSU as the nation’s first and largest AI-powered public university system[.]” This is very concerning imo, pic.twitter.com/8UJ2nTP8GJ
— Martha Lincoln (@heavyredaction) February 5, 2025
I am not feeling wired today.
Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi, lichen, and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From IM:
IM writes: Grass fringing the Pacific Rim terrane mélange. An authentic black and white film image from the westy west coast. The composition is more about the textures than any central feature– relax and let the eyes move!”
Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser. Material here is Lambert’s, and does not express the views of the Naked Capitalism site. If you see a link you especially like, or an item you wouldn’t see anywhere else, please do not hesitate to express your appreciation in tangible form. Remember, a tip jar is for tipping! Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I’m on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for three or four days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals:
Here is the screen that will appear, which I have helpfully annotated:
If you hate PayPal, you can email me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, and I will give you directions on how to send a check. Thank you!
