Fire Hydrant of Freedom
Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Politics & Religion => Topic started by: Crafty_Dog on November 13, 2024, 02:39:13 PM
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https://x.com/i/web/status/1856510568896606248
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Perhaps the should release DOGECoin 2.0 and work out a way to tie it’s value to the amount of waste that gets discarded. I’d be in!
https://dogecoin.com/
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Vivek Ramaswamy said federal contractors should expect “massive cuts” when the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) begins working in 2025, promising “some agencies to be deleted outright.”
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Vivek Ramaswamy said federal contractors should expect “massive cuts” when the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) begins working in 2025, promising “some agencies to be deleted outright.”
don't these recommended cuts have to be reviewed and voted on by Congress?
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Perhaps he is assuming the Congress will agree?
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Seems to me an executive branch department can spend less than what is authorized without further authorization from Congress. Many things like eliminating departments, combining departments, even changing work rules may require acts of Congress.
No doubt the Left, even the elected right, will go nuts when they see $2 trillion in cuts. )
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I can hardly wait:
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy: The DOGE Plan to Reform Government
Following the Supreme Court’s guidance, we’ll reverse a decades long executive power grab.
By Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy
Wall Street Journal
November 20, 2024
Our nation was founded on the basic idea that the people we elect run the government. That isn’t how America functions today. Most legal edicts aren’t laws enacted by Congress but “rules and regulations” promulgated by unelected bureaucrats—tens of thousands of them each year. Most government enforcement decisions and discretionary expenditures aren’t made by the democratically elected president or even his political appointees but by millions of unelected, unappointed civil servants within government agencies who view themselves as immune from firing thanks to civil-service protections.
This is antidemocratic and antithetical to the Founders’ vision. It imposes massive direct and indirect costs on taxpayers. Thankfully, we have a historic opportunity to solve the problem. On Nov. 5, voters decisively elected Donald Trump with a mandate for sweeping change, and they deserve to get it.
President Trump has asked the two of us to lead a newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to cut the federal government down to size. The entrenched and ever-growing bureaucracy represents an existential threat to our republic, and politicians have abetted it for too long. That’s why we’re doing things differently. We are entrepreneurs, not politicians. We will serve as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees. Unlike government commissions or advisory committees, we won’t just write reports or cut ribbons. We’ll cut costs.
We are assisting the Trump transition team to identify and hire a lean team of small-government crusaders, including some of the sharpest technical and legal minds in America. This team will work in the new administration closely with the White House Office of Management and Budget. The two of us will advise DOGE at every step to pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings. We will focus particularly on driving change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws. Our North Star for reform will be the U.S. Constitution, with a focus on two critical Supreme Court rulings issued during President Biden’s tenure.
In West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (2022), the justices held that agencies can’t impose regulations dealing with major economic or policy questions unless Congress specifically authorizes them to do so. In Loper Bright v. Raimondo (2024), the court overturned the Chevron doctrine and held that federal courts should no longer defer to federal agencies’ interpretations of the law or their own rulemaking authority. Together, these cases suggest that a plethora of current federal regulations exceed the authority Congress has granted under the law.
DOGE will work with legal experts embedded in government agencies, aided by advanced technology, to apply these rulings to federal regulations enacted by such agencies. DOGE will present this list of regulations to President Trump, who can, by executive action, immediately pause the enforcement of those regulations and initiate the process for review and rescission. This would liberate individuals and businesses from illicit regulations never passed by Congress and stimulate the U.S. economy.
When the president nullifies thousands of such regulations, critics will allege executive overreach. In fact, it will be correcting the executive overreach of thousands of regulations promulgated by administrative fiat that were never authorized by Congress. The president owes lawmaking deference to Congress, not to bureaucrats deep within federal agencies. The use of executive orders to substitute for lawmaking by adding burdensome new rules is a constitutional affront, but the use of executive orders to roll back regulations that wrongly bypassed Congress is legitimate and necessary to comply with the Supreme Court’s recent mandates. And after those regulations are fully rescinded, a future president couldn’t simply flip the switch and revive them but would instead have to ask Congress to do so.
A drastic reduction in federal regulations provides sound industrial logic for mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy. DOGE intends to work with embedded appointees in agencies to identify the minimum number of employees required at an agency for it to perform its constitutionally permissible and statutorily mandated functions. The number of federal employees to cut should be at least proportionate to the number of federal regulations that are nullified: Not only are fewer employees required to enforce fewer regulations, but the agency would produce fewer regulations once its scope of authority is properly limited. Employees whose positions are eliminated deserve to be treated with respect, and DOGE’s goal is to help support their transition into the private sector. The president can use existing laws to give them incentives for early retirement and to make voluntary severance payments to facilitate a graceful exit.
Conventional wisdom holds that statutory civil-service protections stop the president or even his political appointees from firing federal workers. The purpose of these protections is to protect employees from political retaliation. But the statute allows for “reductions in force” that don’t target specific employees. The statute further empowers the president to “prescribe rules governing the competitive service.” That power is broad. Previous presidents have used it to amend the civil service rules by executive order, and the Supreme Court has held—in Franklin v. Massachusetts (1992) and Collins v. Yellen (2021) that they weren’t constrained by the Administrative Procedures Act when they did so. With this authority, Mr. Trump can implement any number of “rules governing the competitive service” that would curtail administrative overgrowth, from large-scale firings to relocation of federal agencies out of the Washington area. Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome: If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home.
Finally, we are focused on delivering cost savings for taxpayers. Skeptics question how much federal spending DOGE can tame through executive action alone. They point to the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which stops the president from ceasing expenditures authorized by Congress. Mr. Trump has previously suggested this statute is unconstitutional, and we believe the current Supreme Court would likely side with him on this question. But even without relying on that view, DOGE will help end federal overspending by taking aim at the $500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended, from $535 million a year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $1.5 billion for grants to international organizations to nearly $300 million to progressive groups like Planned Parenthood.
The federal government’s procurement process is also badly broken. Many federal contracts have gone unexamined for years. Large-scale audits conducted during a temporary suspension of payments would yield significant savings. The Pentagon recently failed its seventh consecutive audit, suggesting that the agency’s leadership has little idea how its annual budget of more than $800 billion is spent. Critics claim that we can’t meaningfully close the federal deficit without taking aim at entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which require Congress to shrink. But this deflects attention from the sheer magnitude of waste, fraud and abuse that nearly all taxpayers wish to end—and that DOGE aims to address by identifying pinpoint executive actions that would result in immediate savings for taxpayers.
With a decisive electoral mandate and a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, DOGE has a historic opportunity for structural reductions in the federal government. We are prepared for the onslaught from entrenched interests in Washington. We expect to prevail. Now is the moment for decisive action. Our top goal for DOGE is to eliminate the need for its existence by July 4, 2026—the expiration date we have set for our project. There is no better birthday gift to our nation on its 250th anniversary than to deliver a federal government that would make our Founders proud.
https://x.com/rickydoggin/status/1859362612275970277?s=61
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The math here has its scary elements:
How To Cut $2 Trillion Of Fat From The Federal Budget
"A goal of $2 trillion of budget savings is crucial to the very future of Constitutional democracy and capitalist prosperity in America."
QUOTH THE RAVEN
NOV 22, 2024
By David Stockman, Brownstone Institute
A goal of $2 trillion of budget savings is crucial to the very future of Constitutional democracy and capitalist prosperity in America. In fact, the soaring public debt is now so out of control that the Federal budget threatens to become a self-fueling financial doomsday machine. So more power to the DOGE of Musk and Ramaswamy. In spades!
For want of doubt, just recall this sequence. When Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980 on a call to bring the nation’s inflationary budget under control, the public debt was $1 trillion.
By the time Donald Trump was elected the first time it had erupted to $20 trillion, which has now become $36 trillion. And under current built-in spending and tax policies it will hit $60 trillion by the end of the current 10-year budget window.
Thereafter, however, soaring interest expense will ignite a veritable fiscal wildfire. On paper, the public debt would power upward unabated to $150 trillion by mid-century under the CBO’s latest projection. Yet even the latter is based on a Rosy Scenario budget model that assumes Congress never again adopts a single new tax cut or spending program and that the US economy steams along without a recession, inflation recurrence, interest flare-up, or other economic crisis during the entirety of the next quarter-century!
Of course, long before the public debt actually hits $150 trillion or 166% of GDP per the CBO’s current long-term projection, the whole system would implode. Every remnant of America as we now know it would go down the tubes.
So we need to be clear that the team of Musk and Ramaswamy is talking about savings of $2 trillion per year and relatively soon, too. We make this clarification because we see the usual clueless commentators on Bubblevision saying, “Oh, they must be talking about $2 trillion over 10 years or at least a multi-year period of time.”
But we don’t think they meant that at all because Elon’s statement on the matter at the Madison Square Garden rally was very clear, and, quite frankly, if realized over 10 years or even 5 years it would be hardly worth the bother. That’s because the nation’s fiscal doomsday machine will be accumulating interest expense so fast as to make $2 trillion of savings spread over a decade little more than a rounding error. To wit, Federal interest expense has already passed the $1 trillion per year mark, which figure will hit $1.7 trillion by 2034 according to CBO and would top $7.5 trillion per year at minimum by our calculations by mid-century.
That is, if something drastic is not done now—like a $2 trillion annual budget savings soon—America will be paying more interest on the public debt within 25 years than the entirety of the Federal budget—Social Security, defense, Medicare, education, highways, interest, and the Washington Monument—today.
So, yes, Musk surely did mean $2 trillion per year in this interchange:
“How much do you think we can rip out of this wasted, $6.5 trillion (annual) Harris-Biden budget?” Howard Lutnick, a Wall Street CEO and Trump’s transition team co-chair, asked Musk at the former president’s recent rally held at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
Without offering specifics, Musk said in response that he thinks “at least $2 trillion” in a brief moment that has since gained widespread attention online and drawn mixed reactions from budget world.
Obviously, the sprawling Federal government and its prodigious expanse of spending and debt literally defies easy comprehension and graspable solutions. After all, the current annual budget of $7 trillion amounts to Federal spending of nearly $20 billion per day and $830 million per hour. And when you talk about the 10-year budget outlook, comprehension literally fades away completely: The current CBO spending baseline for 2025-2034 amounts to $85 trillion or just shy of the annual GDP of the entire planet this year.
So based on experience we suggest building the $2 trillion case around a target year and several big buckets of savings by type. The latter can then be used to build a detailed but comprehensible plan for arraying and conveying the desperately needed house-cleaning of the Federal budget.
In that context, FY 2029 makes the most sense as a target year since it would represent the 4th and outgoing Trump budget; and also one which would give sufficient time for phasing in some of the sweeping cuts that will be needed, but not so far in the distant future as to be largely irrelevant to the here and now of fiscal governance during Donald Trump’s second term.
We’d also suggest three big buckets of savings, which we would short-hand as follows:
Slash the Fat…by eliminating unnecessary and wasteful agencies and bureaucrats wholesale.
Downsize the Muscle…by curtailing national security capacities and functions not needed for an America First policy.
Cut the Bone…by reducing low-priority entitlements and subsidies that the nation cannot afford, and which a reasonable view of societal equity does not require.
Needless to say, when it comes to the vast wasteland of the Federal budget there are innumerable ways to skin the cat. But based on our own experience of more than a half-century of familiarity with the Federal budget as both a participant and an informed observer, we judge the following mix to be the most plausible and balanced way to get to the $2 trillion of annual savings by FY 2029.
To be sure, even this relatively judicious mix is sure to ignite firestorms on the banks of the Potomac like never before, but it can be strongly justified and defended for the reasons we will lay out in several subsequent installments.
Slash the Fat: $300 billion or 15%.
Downsize the Muscle: $500 billion or 25%.
Cut the Bone: $1.2 trillion or 60%.
Suffice here to say that even the first bucket would leave them screaming to high heaven in the Swamplands of DC. But even that $300 billion savings could be accomplished only by eliminating entirely the estimated $50 billion annual cost of Biden’s misguided Green New Deal, including all EV credits and subsidies, and $150 billion per year of other forms of corporate welfare and subsidies embedded in the budget and tax code.
We will amplify the details of this $200 billion of inherent fat and waste in Part 2. But suffice it here to say that attacking the usual shock effect lists of outrageous studies, stupid foreign aid projects, or even payments to dead people, as is often used to illustrate wasteful spending, will get you barely a fractional decimal point of the savings target, as desirable as eliminating this nonsense might be in its own right.
For instance, the savings from eliminating “Dr. Fauci’s Monkey Business on NIH’s Monkey Island” from the list below would amount to just 0.002% of the $2 trillion target, while eliminating the “USAID Fund to Boost Egyptian Tourism” would save just o.0003% of the target.
Even some of the larger ideas of this sort, such as more timely elimination of dead people from the Social Security rolls, would not get you very far, either. That’s because 1.1 million Social Security recipients pass on their rewards each year, and departing beneficiaries would be receiving an average benefit currently of $1,907 per month. So one month of dead people on the rolls costs the not inconsiderable sum of $2.1 billion.
At the present time, however, that does not actually happen. The rolls are purged every month based on newly filed death certificates, and this encompasses the termination of payments to anyone who died during the month, including the last day. So the average duration on the rolls of Social Security decedents is 15 days, which computes to $1.050 billion of payments.
Thus, the average duration of dead people on the rolls might well be cut by two-thirds if the Musk and Ramaswamy team could come up with some more efficient software to monitor, report, recalculate last month’s benefits, and then terminate decedents. In turn, that means getting the dead people off Social Security 10 days faster would amount to a savings of $700 million per year or about 0.04% of the $2 trillion target. That is to say, there is undoubtedly room for efficiency improvements and elimination of outright waste and stupidity everywhere in the Federal budget, but it unfortunately adds up to rounding errors.
Stated differently, if it doesn’t “scream and bleed” politically it won’t likely make a dent in achieving the $2 trillion goal. There is just plain nothing antiseptic about slashing the Federal budget.
In this regard, it would take an average 47% cut in the current nondefense Federal headcounts of 1.343 million, including the elimination of a dozen or more agencies entirely, to achieve the balance of $100 billion of savings in the Slash the Fat category.
And that’s a comprehensive figure based on an average cost per Federal employee of $100,000 in pay per year plus $44,000 in average benefits and fringes—escalated to $160,000 per bureaucrat by FY 2029. In Part 2, we will lay out the most plausible and judicious route to the Slash the Fat category with respect to both $200 billion of corporate welfare and Green New Deal waste and $100 billion of excess nondefense payroll.
Then in Part 3, we will lay out how to cut $500 billion per year of unneeded muscle from the national security budget, followed by $1.2 trillion per year of bone from the entitlement and domestic welfare basket.
https://quoththeraven.substack.com/p/how-to-cut-2-trillion-of-fat-from?r=2k0c5&triedRedirect=true1`1`1
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/musk-unleashes-online-army-on-federal-workers-a-tough-way-to-find-out-she-s-losing-her-job/ar-AA1uA2aK?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=725ae2f915e14e91b0dd56d597fe5b3c&ei=77
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https://dailycaller.com/2024/11/26/ramaswamy-biden-admin-50-billion-chip-subsidies/
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I have donated to Cong. McClintock's campaigns a couple of times:
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In free-market capitalism, just say no to subsidies
Sellers will always accept them and raise their prices accordingly
By Rep. Tom McClintock
Free-market capitalism is the most democratic way to organize an economy. In a free market, consumers vote every day with every dollar they spend on what they want the economy to produce, who will produce it and what they’re willing to pay for it. The daily prices in this never-ending plebiscite also convey vast information regarding every product, including the scarcity or abundance of the resources in it, the labor conditions that produced it and the systems that distributed it.
It is a perfect system that requires only that government protect the freedom of a willing seller and a willing buyer to make an exchange according to their own best judgment. No force is required because both act in their own interest. The price signals of that simple exchange, multiplied infinitely every day, guide the labor and resources of an economy to their highest and best use, according to every person’s interests, needs and judgment.
Despite this, politicians love to interfere with this perfect mechanism through various tools designed to “direct” the economy — that is, to replace the judgment of individual consumers and producers with the judgment of politicians.
One of the most insidious and self-destructive ways they do this is by subsidizing the things they think consumers should buy to make those things more attractive. This stuffs the economy’s ballot box, diverting resources from their highest and best economic use for consumers to the highest and best political use for politicians. Worse, it corrupts the accurate price signals essential for consumers to make rational decisions over allocating their own resources and thus directing overall economic output.
Insurance, electric cars, mass transit, sugar, milk, solar panels, airline tickets, housing, tuition, health care, film production, green energy — it is hard to find a sector of the economy that isn’t rife with subsidies. Let’s not forget the infinite subsidies that saturate our tax code.
True, these subsidies make favored products cheaper, and who can begrudge cheaper health care, tuition or housing? But that’s an illusion.
The reality is that sellers will always accept subsidies by raising their prices accordingly. Those receiving the subsidies are somewhat better off, and everyone else is much worse. As subsidies artificially inflate prices, more subsidies are required to ameliorate their effect in a continuing spiral.
It’s no coincidence that prices in heavily subsidized sectors such as health care, housing and tuition are rising faster than the underlying inflation rate. Provide first-time homebuyers with a $25,000 subsidy, and sellers accept that windfall by raising their prices on the housing stock.
Subsidies cost hundreds of billions of dollars and inflate the prices of the things being subsidized. They also misallocate resources and misdirect consumer decisions.
Insurance, for example, is how markets assign a dollar value to risk. Building a house in a flood zone is risky, and high insurance premiums reflect that. Subsidized insurance rates invite people to take risks that high premiums would otherwise warn them against.
Accurate price signals are absolutely essential for consumers to make rational decisions as they vote every day on what the economy should produce and are just as essential for producers to know what consumer demands they most need to fulfill.
Subsidies are so deeply ingrained in the economy that getting rid of them all seems a fool’s errand. Every subsidy has a constituency — and the bigger the subsidy, the more powerful the constituency. But budget writers grappling with the largest federal debt in history and with an economy operating well below its potential should be looking for every way to reduce, eliminate or reform subsidies or substitute for them other mechanisms that can serve the same societal aims without doing so much damage.
So here is a modest proposal to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy: To balance the budget and improve the economy, just say no to subsidies. Not only will that save hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars, it will reduce the overall cost of the things being subsidized and reinvigorate the economy by restoring the flow of capital to its most productive use.
Tom McClintock represents California’s 5th Con-gressional
District
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We have discussed the CFPB here previously-- particularly in context of it being self-financing. I did not understand SCOTUS's ruling that this did not violate Separation of Powers.
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Elon Musk called for eliminating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Vivek Ramaswamy said the “midnight-hour expenditures” and regulations the Biden administration is attempting to cement before President-elect Trump takes office will “get special scrutiny” from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). [According to Marc Andreessen in his recent interview, the CFPB, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and other agencies have heavily engaged in “administrative power” to de-bank tech executives, and exercise strong controls over the crypto and AI industries. It is likely major tech leaders who supported Trump will push to depower or eliminate the CFPB and reign in the SEC and CFTC. – R.C.]
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https://www.bizpacreview.com/2024/12/04/biden-admin-locks-in-deal-for-federal-employees-to-work-from-home-through-trump-presidency-1507199/?utm_campaign=bizpac&utm_content=Newsletter&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_source=Get%20Response&utm_term=EMAIL
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second
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/elon-and-vivek-issue-first-doge-decision-and-94-percent-of-feds-will-be-hit-first/ar-AA1vlW1A?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=2b77abbf1e0e488ba86db35c4fbe61fe&ei=11
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"A Biden administration official just agreed to an updated contract with a powerful union that locks in telework through 2029"
- I'm no legal expert but I say not worth the paper it's written on, current administration has no power to bind the government past Jan 20. Take it all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.
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OTOH a contract is a contract. Not clear to me how this plays out.
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Author argues this non-government entity with no direct authority is a non-government entity with no direct authority.
I ask, where in the constitution does it empower the federal government of today to spend 40% more than they are ake in putting massive financial burdens on citizens not born yet without their consent?
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https://washingtonmonthly.com/2024/12/09/musk-and-ramaswamys-doge-project-to-eviscertate-the-federal-government-is-a-legal-train-wreck/
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Yes, debt is future taxes imposed without representation.
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Pasting this here as well:
https://americanrefugees.substack.com/p/elon-and-vivek-have-the-swamp-on?r=1qo1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/vivek-rewrites-1500-page-pork-filled-budget-bill-using-just-75-words-dems-and-rinos-will-despise/ar-AA1waXoE?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=f65050f2ad48467999513f348562b521&ei=13
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I recall someone phoning into his show or something he read from a listener asking something like why do not the Rs cut spending or will they ever.
His response was something like, no
It is "the source of their power".
ccp:
Thus, essentially little or no hope.
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/sean-spicer-s-lost-court-case-sets-huge-precedent-for-47-trump-can-go-in-and-fire-everyone/ar-AA1whDgF?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=bf38eb40b36347c3a01d6c3bb2a2d9f9&ei=38
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"It is "the source of their power. "
ccp: "Thus, essentially little or no hope."
Right. How do we break this cycle?!
Step one, win the trifecta.
Step two, argue with each other, repeal nothing, cut nothing, continue as if not in power, lose power, throw hands up - can't fix it in the minority party, repeat.
break the cycle (all capitals, shouting multiple exclamation points).
During the campaign I realized the Elon Musk thing, now called DOGE, is our one shot. But by themselves they can cut or pass nothing, just advise like Heritage etc.. But if they get the right answer and a majority of support they/we could apply pressure.
But a majority will never agree on what to cut or by how much.
It has to be a great big package where no one likes everything but everyone (51%) knows it's the right thing today.
If we cut $2Trillion today we would still be $38 trillion in debt with trillion dollar interest costs and nothing noticeably better, not like a new bridge going in.
We dug this hole. Does anyone Wan to climb out.
PS. Even the ith a magically balanced budget going forward, economic growth is only we survive and improves lives.
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Deferring the age of entitlements kicking in for those many years away is a sine qua non. On this Nikki Haley was right.
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DOGE Can Rediscover the Power of Congress
The founders thought the legislative branch would dominate, but it has surrendered its authority.
By Mike Gallagher
Jan. 2, 2025 12:56 pm ET
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s Department of Government Efficiency is flying higher than a meme stock. Like the SpaceX platform catching a Falcon rocket on re-entry, the two men have captured a weary country’s imagination with a vision for an institution that could do the seemingly impossible: hold federal agencies accountable for failure, reduce profligate spending and promote productive reform.
In theory, such an institution already exists. It’s called the U.S. Congress, and the founders envisioned it as the dominant branch of government. In practice, however, many Americans don’t recognize this role for Congress because the legislative branch has systematically surrendered its constitutional authority to the executive and judiciary, especially when it comes to spending.
Messrs. Musk and Ramaswamy, with their “lean team of small-government crusaders,” say their focus is “driving change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws.”
This is understandable given the dysfunction Congress displayed in the recent budget debacle. But if the DOGE men don’t focus on reforming Congress’s budget process, they will struggle to realize their ambition of revolutionizing the federal government and returning America to fiscal sanity. If the department focuses only on executive orders, it will pump water out of the swamp only to deposit it back in. DOGE will be remembered as a cheap public-relations stunt.
Instead, Messrs. Musk and Ramaswamy must go full “founders mode,” Silicon Valley slang for a maniacal effort to fix the hardest problems at every level of an organization. They must pair this with the mode of the American founders, tackling congressional reform and restoring the original vision of Article I powers.
Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen has described Mr. Musk’s management style as a laser focused on “the biggest problem right now until that thing is fixed.” To do that Mr. Musk must recognize that Congress’s self-inflicted impotence, and the attendant budget dysfunction, is the biggest problem. Left unaddressed, this constitutional cancer will diminish DOGE’s achievements.
Congress has routinely failed to pass a budget, leading to 131 stopgap spending measures since 1997 and multiple government shutdowns over the past decade. As a recovering congressman, I can confirm that there are no excuses for that sorry track record. That this happens every year also demoralizes new members who want to be part of a functioning institution.
As part of the next negotiation to keep the government open, scheduled in mid-March, DOGE’s leaders should encourage members to pass something like the Prevent Government Shutdowns Act proposed by Sen. James Lankford (R., Okla.). The bill would provide short-term funding to stop a shutdown while forcing Congress to stay in session and shutting down taxpayer-funded travel until legislators do their jobs.
Though DOGE plans to steer clear of entitlements, the country is being bankrupted because of mandatory government spending on autopilot without any congressional review. Messrs. Musk and Ramaswamy would fire a CFO who had no plan to address a company’s looming bankruptcy.
DOGE should therefore champion the Trust Act, which was a bipartisan, bicameral proposal in the previous Congress until the Biden administration demagogued it as a “death panel” bill. Unlike other proposals to tackle entitlement spending, the bill would create discrete rescue committees for each of the federal trust funds that are at risk of insolvency—Social Security, Medicare Part A and highways. The bill would empower each rescue committee to bring its solution to the House and Senate floors for a vote, so congressional leadership couldn’t kill reform efforts merely to shield members from making tough votes.
A truly bold DOGE would also help revitalize old proposals whose time has come. The department should start by studying the work of the 1993 Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, whose plan to streamline committee jurisdiction and thereby improve the budget and appropriations process was torpedoed by powerful, entrenched committee chairmen.
At the beginning of the 115th Congress in 2017, we briefly debated combining the authorizing and appropriations committees—as was the custom of the early Congress. These newly empowered committees would have to submit annual bills that both authorize and appropriate, thereby maximizing oversight and minimizing budgetary dysfunction.
The 2018 Joint Select Committee on Budget and Appropriation Process Reform recommended moving to a two-year budget process, which would allow more time for oversight and “free up time in the legislative calendar to enable Congress to not be mired down in annual budget resolution squabbles.”
Forcing Congress to rediscover its power, and thereby counteract the growing ambition of the administrative state, may prove more difficult than taking humanity to Mars. But as the Silicon Valley truism suggests, and as some in the Washington swamp are starting to believe, never bet against Mr. Musk. If DOGE harnesses the American people’s dissatisfaction with Washington, lays out a bold package of congressional reforms and uses Mr. Musk’s unique platform to push legislators to vote on that agenda, we could realize the DOGE vision of “a federal government that would make our founders proud.”
Mr. Gallagher, a Journal contributor, is head of defense for Palantir Technologies and a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute. He represented Wisconsin’s Eighth Congressional District (2017-24) and was chairman of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.
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https://www.oann.com/newsroom/musk-and-ramaswamys-doge-is-hiring-a-small-number-of-full-time-salaried-employees/
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second
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/musk-abandons-doge-s-2-trillion-pledge-to-cut-costs/ar-BB1razG9?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=20d81d14e5934a40a13a4629833b3411&ei=21
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"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
- 10th Amendment, Bill of Rights
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https://amgreatness.com/2025/01/14/poll-nearly-half-of-federal-employees-say-they-plan-to-resist-trumps-incoming-administration/
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44 % of Federal employees ADMIT to not cooperating with the election mandate. I suspect it would be more in reality.
JFK who is lauded in MSM allowed Fed employees to unionize for collective bargaining:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_10988
I simply do not understand how these people can be so protected from being fired for not doing their job as required..
Can anyone image how fast they would be terminated in the private sector?
They work for all of us not the Democrat Party. Darn it!
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The theory is to prevent bureaucracy jobs from becoming patronage from political winners to their supporters.
We must increase the levels at the top that serve at the will of the President, but beware being seen as politicizing the lower levels. Of course they have the Dem virus that job permanence reifies, but the real fight is the top rungs. Get that right, and word will flow down.
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https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2025/01/19/reports-vivek-ramaswamy-has-been-voted-off-the-doge-island-n2650779
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I’ve a jaundiced view as a former boss of mine—a bona fide narcissist—ended up there after we duked it out. More globally, however, there are a lot of good reasons to end this org that specializes, it seems, in keeping voluntary efforts in hard pressed areas from succeeding:
Trump Is Right: End FEMA
Cato @ Liberty / by Chris Edwards / Jan 28, 2025 at 5:09 PM
Chris Edwards
President Trump travelled last week to see damage from the North Carolina floods and Los Angeles wildfires. He suggested that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) be reformed or terminated, and he signed an executive order creating a new council to review the agency.
Trump suggested “maybe getting rid of FEMA,” and he said, “I think we’re going to recommend that FEMA go away and we pay directly.” The president’s inclinations are right, as I discuss in this study, but we should phase out FEMA and federal payments to the states for disasters.
a
The American system of disaster response is not supposed to be a top-down structure imposed by Washington. Rather, the system is based on federalism, private charitable efforts, and mutual aid between states, cities, and utilities. Unfortunately, growing federal intervention is undermining this efficient, decentralized structure.
Here are 10 reasons why FEMA is not needed and sometimes detrimental.
Budget deficits. The federal government must cut spending to deal with massive budget deficits. Congress should repeal funding of activities that the states can fund themselves, including disaster response and reconstruction.
Federalism. The Congressional Research Service noted, “The United States takes a ‘bottom up’ approach to both managing and providing assistance, during and following a disaster.” State and local governments employ more than one million personnel in police, fire, and other first responder activities. State governors have wide-ranging responsibilities and powers during disasters, such as being able to order evacuations.
Role Not Unique. A bipartisan congressional report after Hurricane Katrina in 2006 noted that “many Americans … falsely viewed FEMA as some sort of national fire and rescue team,” but “FEMA is not a first responder agency.” Instead, FEMA’s main role is handing out aid, but states should cover disaster costs with their own rainy day funds.
Bad Incentives. Growing FEMA bailouts create a disincentive for states, businesses, and individuals to prepare for disasters. The states demand federal aid, and federal politicians put the costs on the national credit card. Growing federal intervention displaces more efficient state, local, and private efforts.
Infrastructure. The vast majority of the nation’s infrastructure is owned by state and local governments and the private sector, not by the federal government. It is the responsibility of infrastructure owners to know the risks, to fortify facilities, and to seek insurance coverage.
Top-down regulations. With federal funding of disaster response and rebuilding comes top-down regulations that encumber state and private efforts. FEMA’s bureaucratic barriers to private efforts during and after disasters are notorious, as with Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Private-Sector Response. In US history, disasters have generated huge outpourings of aid from individuals, businesses, churches, and charitable groups. The American Red Cross, for example, provides food, water, and temporary shelter after disasters. After recent flooding in North Carolina, Elon Musk sent more than 10,000 Starlink terminals, Walmart and Home Depot delivered food and supplies, and Taylor Swift donated $5 million.
Resource Sharing. A key feature of US disaster response is resource sharing between states, cities, utilities, and other groups. Standing agreements allow governments and utilities to rush teams and equipment to their neighbors hit by hurricanes, fires, and other disasters. Firefighting teams and equipment have poured into Los Angeles from dozens of states and Canada. Within a day or two of Helene hitting North Carolina, utility crews were arriving from up and down the East Coast.
Interstate Fairness. Each state has pros and cons that individuals and businesses trade off when considering where to locate. Florida and California have warmer climates than Michigan but higher risks of natural disasters. It is not fair for low-risk states to be continually paying through taxes for disasters in high-risk states, especially when the latter have not sufficiently prepared.
Crucial Federal Roles. While FEMA mainly hands out aid, other federal agencies hold critical skills and resources for disaster response. The Coast Guard’s search and rescue operations are vital during hurricanes. The National Guard under state command plays many crucial roles after disasters, such as medical care, law enforcement, and debris removal. The US Army supplied assets to aid the Helene and Milton efforts, and the Air Force flew search and rescue missions.
Congress should phase out FEMA aid for disaster preparedness, response, and relief. FEMA does perform some unique roles—such as flood mapping—and these can be moved to other agencies. Some FEMA activities, such as flood insurance, should be privatized.
In the wake of Katrina, Florida Governor Jeb Bush warned against strengthening federal powers at the expense of the states: “As the governor of a state that has been hit by seven hurricanes and two tropical storms in the past 13 months, I can say with certainty that federalizing emergency response to catastrophic events would be a disaster as bad as Hurricane Katrina.”
As such, the federal government should only fill roles where it can add value not provided by the states or private sector. In disasters, Bush noted, “If you federalize, all the innovation, creativity, and knowledge at the local level would subside.” That is true in many areas of state, local, and private activity.
This study elaborates on these ideas.
https://www.cato.org/blog/trump-right-end-fema
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A word in noting Vivek's departure from DOGE and hence from this thread:
I saw him in an interview on FOX. He was polite and mutually respectful about the separation, and spoke of his interests being more aligned with Constitutionalism and Federalism. To the extent that this is true, his move to run for governor makes sense.
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/musk-and-allies-have-reportedly-seized-key-hr-office-and-skipped-past-officials-to-send-mass-resignation-email/ar-AA1y8t49?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=aede84d0c5964846bf1b7eb9640a36d6&ei=15
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https://www.oann.com/newsroom/tva-chief-jeff-lyash-steps-down-after-previous-critique-by-trump-of-10-5m-compensation/
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https://twitchy.com/brettt/2025/02/01/treasury-official-resigns-rather-than-comply-with-doge-audit-n2407696
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well, he did the right thing. resign
as opposed of so many others who stay where they are and resist and slow walk every thing.
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https://www.ar15.com/forums/general/Squads-of-FBI-escorted-out-of-offices-and-fired/5-2776391/
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But wait! There's more!
https://redstate.com/bobhoge/2025/02/02/usaid-officials-lock-doge-out-of-the-building-trump-delivers-the-find-out-response-n2185111
This is a coincidence no doubt!
https://x.com/i/web/status/1886163624193823018
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/musk-says-criminal-organization-usaid-is-beyond-repair-and-50-billion-agency-will-be-shut-down/ar-AA1yk7jc?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=de84f5a559be42deb44e3254a0c60985&ei=6
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https://x.com/WallStreetApes/status/1886623414024131002
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https://notthebee.com/article/wired-ran-a-hit-piece-on-doge?utm_source=Not+The+Bee+Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=02042025
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https://danconiajournal.substack.com/p/special-report-what-to-expect-from?fbclid=IwY2xjawIQexpleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHV-KDDkE7-2iMHD5HkgVJb5NMieFkr-74uny1c6Sxyi7rdp2_KBALgMyaw_aem_31KcjDIM5M9i8v3PglwV5w
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Some impressive creds on these kids:
Connie Francis sang Where the Boys Are.
Today I will tell you who the boys are.
Chance Townsend of Mashable mocked the crew of software engineers who are combing through the records of the $6,000,000,000,000—$6 trillion—the federal government spent last year. He asked, who are these little boys? And why are they in charge of our money?
Actually, Elon Musk said they have read-only access to the payment records.
Musk put them in charge of reading the payments because Congress and a string of presidents put the nation on the brink of bankruptcy. We are $36 trillion in debt and on our way in a handbasket to $50 trillion by the end of Trump’s second term. Trump wants to slow the spending.
Who they are is very interesting, as Arte Johnson would say.
I’ll start with Luke Farritor and the Herculaneum papyri, which are a bunch of scrolls found in 1756 in the village of Herculaneum which was destroyed along with Pompei when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD. The scrolls were too frail to unfurl without destroying them. For 265 years protectors kept but never opened the scrolls.
Along came Farritor, a college student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, who figured out how to read them digitally. While other kids are using AI to undress their fellow students and celebrities, this little boy used AI to unveil documents, which went unread for 1,956 years.
He and his team won the $700,000 Vesuvius Challenge to read the scrolls. He was all of 21. These are the scrolls.
That was two years ago. After interning with Space X, he earned a Thiel Fellow award of $100,000. He dropped out of college and went to work on cutting government waste.
Next is Akash Bobba. The Economic Times reported:
Before landing in DOGE, Bobba built an impressive resume that spanned multiple Silicon Valley powerhouses. He attended UC Berkeley’s prestigious Management, Entrepreneurship, and Technology (MET) program, a highly selective initiative designed to nurture future tech industry leaders.
Bobba worked as an intern at Meta, Palantir, and the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, gaining experience in AI, data analytics, and financial modeling. But what truly set him apart was his problem-solving ability and resilience under pressure.
A viral anecdote from his time at Berkeley highlights his genius-level coding skills. A former classmate, Charis Zhang, recalled a remarkable incident where Bobba essentially rewrote an entire project from scratch overnight after a teammate accidentally deleted it just two days before a deadline.
Next up is Edward Coristine, 19, who worked at Musk’s Neuralink company which is working to use brain chips to help the paralyzed walk again.
Before that, he was a system engineer at Path Network, which “Arising out of necessity and utility, the innovation at the core of Path began first as an answer to the question of the possibility of truly granular network intelligence. This innovation, a distributed network monitoring platform, was a necessary one, as Founder and CTO Marshal Webb can attest. Frustrated due to the lack of granular & insightful network intelligence services and curious of the promise of novel approaches to this central problem, Mr. Webb began work on the foundation of the platform with a number of close friends. This foundational phase would indeed prove to be quite fruitful, with new concepts such as incentivized network and geographic diversity being melded into the framework of the platform.”
And on and on. I have no idea what any of this says but I know what it means: at 19 this guy is good enough for Musk. That’s good enough for me.
Please note that these three babies are linked to companies founded by the guys who built PayPal, and sold it. After PayPal they did things like start car companies. I trust people who made billions off high tech over GS employees when it comes to computers.
Next up is Ethan Shaotran. He founded Energize AI, which received a $100,000 grant from Open AI. His team was one of 10 recipients out of a field of 1,000 applicants.
I have no idea what it does, but Open AI said it is “developing guidelines for aligning AI models with live, large-scale participation and a ‘community notes’ algorithm.”
Next up is Gavin Kliger:
Gavin Kliger is a Senior Software Engineer at Databricks since May 2020, with a strong background in software engineering and research. Kliger served as a Featured Speaker at KubeCon Europe in April 2023, presenting work on Kubernetes controllers to an audience of 240 engineers. Prior experience includes research at Berkeley NetSys Lab, focusing on maintaining invariants in cloud-based microservice deployments, and a role as a Software Engineer at Twitter, where Kliger led a project to virtualize Mac build infrastructure. Kliger was also an Accel Scholar at Berkeley and has taught programming and robotics to public school students. Kliger holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.
I think this Gavin knows what he is doing, as opposed to that other one who is literally burning California down.
Next there is Gauthier Cole Killian, who is a volunteer.
He works at Jump Trading: “We empower exceptional talents in Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science to seek scientific boundaries, push through them, and apply cutting-edge research to global financial markets.”
And just like the original astronauts, there are 7 DOGE young-uns.
Times Now World reported, “Marko Elez is 25 years old. He graduated from Rutgers University and worked as an engineer for X and SpaceX. According to WIRED, Elez has direct access to Treasury Department systems that disperse almost all federal government payments. In 2023, the system paid 87.9% of all federal payments. Elez has also been given administrator-level privileges that could allow him to change user permissions and delete and modify critical files that contain sensitive and confidential information.”
So he’s doing what some unelected GS administrator did before. The difference is he is doing it for the people, the bureaucrat did it for the Democrats and a fat pension.
The Democrat Party’s talking points begin with saying they are too young. Were the 17-year-olds who helped storm the beaches at Normandy too young? How old was Steve Jobs when he founded Apple? How old was Bill Gates when he founded Microsoft to steal Apple’s work?
Another talking point is they are too young to make decisions on government decisions. They won’t be making those decisions. Musk won’t either. Donald Trump, 78, will ultimately decide. All they are doing is providing him the data he needs and that is what Democrats fear.
The final talking point is who elected them?
Well, who elected David A. Lebryk, the lifer at Treasury who refused to give them and thus the president access to records on where the money goes? He resigned/retired ahead of being fired.
Musk has done the near impossible. He found the only youths in America that the Party of the Pedophiles hate.
Cheeseburger Griller Chuck Schumer told Congress, “Leader Jeffries and I will join together to push legislation to prevent unlawful meddling in the Treasury department’s payment systems, to prevent everyone's records from being made available to a small group of people who can look at them at will.”
Meddling!
The government is corrupt and would have continued to bilk the public if not for those meddling software engineers.
Uncle Sam’s spending is so fat, he needs a liposuction only a Elon Musk and a bunch of little boys can deliver.
Two weeks into the project, the babies are making Democrats cry. This is how you get Democrats to quit crying: throw cheese at them. It works.
Who are these little boys? Right now they are the most important software engineers in the world and some of them are even old enough to drink.
https://donsurber.substack.com/p/who-the-little-boys-are?r=1qo1e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true
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VERY Impressive!!
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Babylon Bee hits the truth.
"Democrats Warn Trump’s Unelected Shadow Government Is Dismantling Their Unelected Shadow Government"
https://babylonbee.com/news/elon-is-an-unelected-official-warns-government-with-3-million-unelected-officials
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/elon-musk-s-doge-moves-on-to-wasteful-spending-motherlode-this-is-where-the-big-money-fraud-is-happening/ar-AA1ytYEJ?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=a6fd682339be4408a3bacbffc638f204&ei=36
https://www.wsj.com/politics/elon-musk-doge-medicare-medicaid-fraud-e697b162?st=bCX4BA&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1887184902543577590
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Hurricane Musk and the USAID Panic
Elon gets a flavor of the pushback his DOGE project will get.
By The WSJ Editorial Board
Feb. 4, 2025 5:52 pm ET
Hurricane Elon is blowing through Washington, creating panic and pushback wherever he and his government-efficiency minions appear. Mr. Musk sometimes blows hot air, and he needs to be watched to stay within legal guardrails. But he’s also hitting targets that have long deserved scrutiny and reform, which helps explain the wailing over the U.S. Agency for International Development.
USAID—not a household acronym—provides money to various countries and non-governmental organizations. The agency sends money to around 130 countries, including Ukraine, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Syria, according to the Congressional Research Service. In 2023 the agency managed more than $40 billion and no fewer than 10,000 employees. The ostensible goal is to make friends and influence countries in the American interest.
No doubt spending $40 billion is bound to do some good somewhere. One oft-cited example is the Pepfar program that has funded anti-AIDS efforts in Africa in particular. But USAID, like most foreign aid, has become something of a plaster saint in Washington even if it does far less good than advertised.
Thus Mr. Musk brought down the wrath of the Beltway by targeting AID as part of his Department of Government Efficiency. His method taken from the private sector is to move fast even if he breaks things—and fix them later. When USAID officials leaked their dismay to the press, Mr. Musk tweeted that the place is a “viper’s nest” and the solution is “to basically get rid of the whole thing.”
President Trump piled on with his typically restrained observation that “I love the concept but they turned out to be radical left lunatics.” Cue the political panic.
USAID is hardly full of Mother Teresas who only want to do good without a political agenda. House Foreign Affairs Chairman Brian Mast cites examples of USAID’s progressive agenda at work.
The agency in the Biden years supported electric vehicles in Vietnam and a “transgender clinic” in India. A Serbian LGBTQ group called ‘Grupa Izadji,’ received $1.5 million to ‘advance diversity equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities.” There are many other examples.
These grants are dumb and wasteful, but some USAID spending may undermine U.S. interests. An analysis by the Middle East Forum says $164 million of USAID money has supported radical organizations around the world, and $122 million of that aid was going to groups aligned with foreign terrorist organizations.
According to the report, USAID has given millions of dollars to “organizations directly in Gaza controlled by Hamas” and that recipients of the money have “called for their lands to be ‘cleansed’ from the ‘impurity of the Jews.’” The Middle East Forum notes that money also often flows to anti-American groups through intermediary recipients that fail to vet local partners.
This sounds like an agency that needs a house-cleaning and maybe a reduction in what it does so it can focus on the most important. That’s what Secretary of State Marco Rubio now says he plans to do, rather than shutting the agency down as Mr. Musk claimed he wants to do. Mr. Musk can’t shut it down in any case. Congress established it as an independent agency in 1998, under the supervision of State, and so it would require an act of Congress to close it down. That isn’t about to get 60 votes in the Senate.
The USAID uproar is a taste of the pushback that Messrs. Musk and Trump are going to face as they work to shrink and reform the executive branch. What Ronald Reagan called the “iron triangle” of interest groups, Congress and the news media isn’t going to give up power or money without a fight. You can add career regulators to that triangle.
That’s all the more reason for the DOGErs to have a plan that works within the law and builds political support. The lawsuits are already flying, and courts will derail Mr. Musk’s project before it even gets off the ground if he isn’t careful.
More oversight and transparency for a leaner USAID makes sense, and we wouldn’t mind if it vanished. But that takes more sustained political effort than a howling wind of tweets in the middle of the night.
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Uh oh , , ,
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IN/IN12500?fbclid=IwY2xjawIRx0JleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHcJbmnRcLSDMwX-9H2BfGv1ZXDc_nUbh508HW6T8W1-eyaDyZ_fCjAokMQ_aem_SGvBWKB9Sq69gRrqiUEPfQ
And Michael's FB convo with the poster who brought this up:
================
Eric, here is my read:
Section 1413 reaffirmed USAID's role as an independent establishment within the executive branch, reporting to the Secretary of State. This section did not diminish the President's authority over foreign assistance programs. Instead, it maintained the existing structure, ensuring that USAID remained a distinct entity while operating under the foreign policy guidance of the Secretary of State.
Therefore, the enactment of Section 1413 did not remove or reduce any presidential authorities granted under the Foreignu Assistance Act of 1961. The President retained the same powers to establish, administer, and terminate foreign aid programs as authorized by the original act.
Do you see it differently?
3h
Reply
Eric Benjaminson
Michael Brewer Thanks, Michael. I read this as stating that he can’t shut the Agency down nor subsume USAID into the State Department; that he can end specific programs but not change them without consultation with Congress; he can’t stand down all programs without consultation with Congress, as that would violate the terms of the original appropriations; he can’t transfer programs to other agencies; and his temporary permission to reorganize the Agency ended in 1999.
2h
Reply
Michael Brewer
Eric, thank you for the additional info and for giving me some reading and fuel for better comprehension!
Taking in what youve suggested, this is my take.
The President cannot unilaterally subsume USAID into the U.S. State Department without Congressional approval, but the Executive Branch does have limited administrative flexibility to realign certain functions of USAID under State Department oversight.
FARRA explicitly protected USAID as an independent agency within the Executive Branch, preventing its dissolution without Congressional action. This was tested under Bush and in the first Trump administration and Obama asserted the protections, so I'm buying in so far, no question.
Any attempt to dissolve USAID, merge it fully into the State Department, or strip its core functions would require new legislation. However, the President, via the Secretary of State, has administrative control over foreign aid programs, including USAID’s funding, policies, and integration with State Department priorities.
USAID already operates under the “foreign policy guidance” of the Secretary of State, meaning its strategic direction aligns with the State Department. So while the President can shift operational functions or align policies, the agency itself cannot be dissolved or fully absorbed into State without Congress passing a new law. None of this, however, limits his ability to audit or realign expenditures, and none of it takes away the authority to set and administer foreign aid priorities or to stop funding initiatives the president deems counter to American interests.
Further, a simple majority in the House and Senate being all the president needs to pass the required laws for absolute dissolution, I'd assume Trump is confident that if push came to shove, he'd have the votes to do so, especially once the waste and irresponsible administration of tax-funded programs is laid bare.
I've struggled in recent years as I've seen what I consider to be unforgivable and unconstitutional behavior from bad actors in my former agencies. I think the activities of Crossfire Hurricane gave the FBI two black eyes and a trust problem it will not easily overcome. Watching 51 senior officials, several of whom I worked for at sone point, sign onto a weasel-worded letter that was pure disinformation to cast doubt on the Hunter Biden laptop story in order to sway opinions (and the election) was a death blow to my faith. In any other context, in any other country, that would be called what it was - a subversive act aimed at regime change. I hate seeing the many good people in these agencies - and there are indeed many more good people than bad ones - caught up in the turmoil. It breaks my heart, and I feel for them all. But it's impossible to deny the corruption any longer. And since it cannot be denied, it simply must be addressed. It'll hurt, no doubt, but this is a "choose your hurt" situation. The pain of the tumor or the pain of the surgery.
2h
Reply
Eric Benjaminson
Thanks, Michael! I agree with you in large part and agree completely about your read on the USAID-related legislation. Take good care.
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Fourth
https://x.com/i/web/status/1887013921552261430
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"Congress established USAID as an independent establishment (defined in 5 U.S.C. 104) within
the executive branch..."
- Layman constitutionalist here, that sounds outside of constitutional structure to me.
Inside the executive branch but not reporting to the singular executive?
Legislative branch putting restrictions on the power of the executive branch?
Imagine an executive order changing how Congress sets committee assignments.
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LINO lawyer here-- that sounds like a reasonable line of thought to me.
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http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2025/02/07/ingraham_for_liberals_a_36_trillion_debt_is_not_a_national_emergency_but_doge_identifying_scams_is_a_national_emergency.html
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https://www.bizpacreview.com/2025/02/07/bessent-sets-record-straight-says-doge-members-are-treasury-employees-1521262/
·
🚨U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessen just laid every media rumor to rest over DOGE in the Treasury. Come to find out two of the DOGE members are Treasury employees:
**Reporter**: We're inside the cash room at the Treasury Department. It is almost impossible to overstate how important the work that is done in this building is to the U.S. financial system. Yet right now, there is widespread concern about the DOGE's team's access to sensitive payment systems. Are you at all worried that this access and that tinkering of the payment systems could affect the Treasury's market or cause any disruption?
**Scott Bessen**: Good, well, thank you for asking me about that because there's a lot of misinformation out there. First of all, when you say the DOGE's team, these are Treasury employees—two Treasury employees, one of whom I personally interviewed in his final round. There is no tinkering with the system. They are on read-only, they can make no changes. It is an operational program to suggest improvements. We make 1.3 billion payments a year, and this is two employees who are working with a group of longstanding employees.
**Reporter**: The letter that the Treasury Department sent earlier this week talked about how the team currently does not have access to change the system. Have they at any point this year had the ability to make changes?
**Scott Bessen**: Absolutely not. This is no different than you would have at a private company. And by the way, the ability to change the system sits over at the Federal Reserve. So it doesn't even lie in this building. So they could make suggestions on how to change the system, but we don't even run the system.
**Reporter**: And if they request the ability to change the system, would you grant that?
**Scott Bessen**: No, again, they have no ability to change the system. I have no ability to grant that change. They can make suggestions, then it would go to the Federal Reserve, and just like any large ERP system, there would be tests, there would be this, there would be that, and then the Fed will determine whether these changes are robust or not.
**Reporter**: As the Secretary of Treasury, you also oversee the IRS. Do you know what kind of access the team has to IRS data or individual taxpayer data?
**Scott Bessen**: Well, I'm glad you asked that too because, look, the IRS—the privacy issue is one of the biggest issues. And under the past four years, we've seen a lot of leaks out of there. The IRS systems are quite poor. When I started in college in 1980, I learned the program in COBOL. I think there are 12 different systems at the IRS that still run on COBOL. But as of now, there is no engagement at the IRS.
**Reporter**: And if they request that access, would you sign off on that request?
**Scott Bessen**: They haven't, so we'll take that when it comes to it. I think there is a lot to do there, but the President was elected with a big agenda, and to the extent that getting the IRS in better shape is part of that, sure. Because, look, with the IRS, what am I concerned about? I am concerned about collections, I am concerned about privacy, and I am concerned that the system is robust and customer service.
**Reporter**: But do you think that if they ask for access, that is something you would consider signing off on?
**Scott Bessen**: There are a lot of things I'd consider. But, look, we're in the middle of the tax filing season right now. We even, you know, with the government buyouts that are being— that expired midnight tonight, we have the mandated that the IRS customer-facing employees, they're not eligible for that until May 15th. So I don't imagine anything's going to go on at the IRS until then or beyond.
===========
Also see: Klobushar with Soros Jr.
https://m3.gab.com/media_attachments/61/a2/03/61a20383083f517850a12e317426abe2.png?width=568
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https://x.com/Geiger_Capital/status/1887622543382634728
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/10-days-that-shook-the-world-5803395?utm_source=ref_share&utm_campaign=twitter&rs=SHRNCMMW&fbclid=IwY2xjawITMV9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHQJKr-CicK7EzomjcAtSaGm4Jldol536a6sSfpsUX-hwGKOtQzF0Vu_jBA_aem_YDnkdqLJLknA86vcsJJOpw
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NOAA tries to dodge & weave on the DIE front & ends up in DOGE’s sights. While they are there hopefully they’ll take a look at how NOAA cooks the climate books too:
https://legalinsurrection.com/2025/02/hurricane-doge-sweeps-into-the-national-oceanic-and-atmospheric-administration/
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/musk-s-doge-teen-was-fired-by-cybersecurity-firm-for-leaking-company-secrets/ar-AA1yC7Yh?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=569df50a2a6448d68a2d719f311f53ef&ei=11
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Second
https://danconiajournal.substack.com/p/special-report-what-to-expect-from?fbclid=IwY2xjawITcCtleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHbncRFYFO8L6JZLdI6Ikr3PDE2uYsPTdfL0hZ1fjUE9F764NWNeAE5Ujfg_aem_hEa9R5cJr_cdKdBBSR4Ibg
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Second
https://danconiajournal.substack.com/p/special-report-what-to-expect-from?fbclid=IwY2xjawITcCtleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHbncRFYFO8L6JZLdI6Ikr3PDE2uYsPTdfL0hZ1fjUE9F764NWNeAE5Ujfg_aem_hEa9R5cJr_cdKdBBSR4Ibg
Those “supporters” would be wrong.
In my day job I’ve attempted to implement a lot of the steps mentioned, and get pushback from everyone involved every time. Methinks “supporters” confuse reflexive avoidance with going too far.
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He hasn't gone too far for me either.
Having the government on your back takes on a different meaning if you're taking a check from them. Spending and processes should be scrutinized.
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Agreed!
I think the author's intended point is that part of Musk's method is to go "too far" as part of the process of discerning what is "just right".
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/the-greatest-threat-we-ve-ever-faced-us-treasury-division-classifies-doge-staff-as-extreme-danger/ar-AA1yCI1I?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=5abeb7b030eb4487a922a238f1af8aa4&ei=16
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/musk-s-ally-given-power-to-halt-tax-refunds-and-social-security-checks-report/ar-AA1yBKxa?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=4a390598ce214720aadf59d211c599c4&ei=19
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This is fascinating to me.
https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2025/02/07/the-dirty-secret-of-doge-dems-built-it-n3799582?utm_source=twdailyam&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&bcid=a1714aba6c197395707aecde9ada65a65090b7be5f45291f6611e9cf3bd6bace&lctg=2677215
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/federal-judge-denies-motion-to-block-doges-access-to-labor-department-systems-5806532?utm_source=Goodevening&src_src=Goodevening&utm_campaign=gv-2025-02-08&src_cmp=gv-2025-02-08&utm_medium=email&est=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYvAqcwcVzc7PzLYPrHFRB710wA0AIj31kx5JTWZu9FddhEg4S8RP
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Perhaps tangential to DOGE, but emblematic of the deep rot in the system. I mean holy kaka, when I was a 17 year old kid figuring out food cost in the kitchen I managed I understood I couldn’t justify an expense without confirming the raw ingredient actually came in the back door. Seems like many feds haven’t quite sorted that out:
https://x.com/AutismCapital/status/1888023047116124602
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(1) DEMS TURN TO COURTS TO STOP TRUMP OVERHAUL: Washington D.C. District Judge Carl Nichols ordered the Trump administration to pause a plan to place 2,000 U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) employees on leave until 14 February.
New York District Judge Paul Engelmayer temporarily blocked Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to Treasury information, until a hearing scheduled for 14 February.
Why It Matters: The Trump administration is currently facing at least 20 lawsuits over DOGE access to government systems, and agency and personnel actions. The two latest suits to block political appointee access to Treasury systems, and block USAID employees from being placed on administrative leave were filed at the last minute Friday, likely to generate favorable media coverage supporting the Trump resistance. Democrats are also now threatening to force a government shutdown to stop Trump from reforming federal agencies. - R.C.
(2) VOUGHT: CFPB MONEY SPIGOT NOW TURNED OFF: Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought said the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will not take its next draw of unappropriated funding. “The spigot that was long attributed to CFPB’s unaccountability is now being turned off,” Vought added.
Why It Matters: The CFPB has long been criticized as a progressive cudgel operating outside Congressional oversight because it’s funded through the Federal Reserve instead of Congress. CFPB supporters say this is to protect it from political influence. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), along with political action groups like Indivisible, MoveOn, and others are holding a protest against Elon Musk and Russ Vought outside the CFPB building today as legal challenges are filed. - M.S.
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Panties are being soiled in San Fran. Note: the author states she has been reporting these orgs to CA leadership, to no avail
DOGE Accountability 101: The Left is Freaking Out With US Taxpayer Gravy Train Cut Off
San Francisco’s nonprofit sector is the largest per capita of any California county – $9 billion outstanding in federal grants and loans
By Katy Grimes, February 10, 2025 9:06 am
Non-profit organizations and Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have become a shadow government in the U.S. Many years ago I reported blatantly phony non-profit groups to the California Attorney General. Nothing ever happened. So for many years, going back to when Jerry Brown was California’s Attorney General, I have researched and investigated dubious non-profits and written about them, hoping government officials would take notice – to no avail. California’s corruption begins at the top, as does the corruption in the United States.
Think back to Barack Obama and ACORN, a very shady “community activist” organization that helped bring Obama to power. ACORN was a community organizing group that claimed to help poor people with low-income housing issues, but was really registering thousands/millions of people to vote in Democratic districts. Some of these supposed voters reportedly were actually dead, nonexistent, or used shacks and empty buildings as their home addresses.
Sounds just like ACTBlue.
The lid was blown off of ACORN by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, but the organization never really disbanded – they just changed names and continued their “community organizing” and shady leftist voter registration practices.
At the Globe, we’ve reported on so many dubious organizations, with damning details, but crickets… Read this recent article, about “Free Speech for People,” the non-profit parent organization of “Impeach Trump. Again.” for an example.
With President Donald Trump and DOGE Chairman and “White House Tech Support” Elon Musk exposing the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) agency, the scheme is up.
“USAID has been a substantial funder of over 6,200 journalists across 707 media outlets and 279 “media” NGOs, including 90 percent of the reportage out of Ukraine,” Wikileaks posted on X.
And: “USAID has pushed nearly half a billion dollars ($472.6m) through a secretive US government financed NGO, “Internews Network” (IN), which has “worked with” 4,291 media outlets, producing in one year 4,799 hours of broadcasts reaching up to 778 million people and “training” over 9000 journalists (2023 figures). IN has also supported social media censorship initiatives.” (more on this organization to come).
It gets worse.
“USAID Sent $9.3B to Islamic Terror States That Killed 3,000 American Soldiers, And over $18 billion to Islamic terrorist states,” Daniel Greenfield reports today:
USAID support for Somalia had doubled under the Biden administration and with $3.3 billion from USAID allocated in the last 5 years.
USAID sent $2.1 billion to Gaza and the West Bank since the Hamas attacks of Oct 7. In 2024 alone, $917 million was programmed for the terrorist areas occupying Israel.
USAID provided over $3.7 billion to Afghanistan since the Taliban took over with $832 million in the previous fiscal year alone.
Even while the United States of America was at war with the Houthis, the Islamic terrorist group firing on US Navy vessels out of Yemen, USAID continued to direct billions of dollars to Yemen. In 2024, USAID announced a $2.7 billion aid request for Yemen and allocated $753 million. Over the last 5 years, it doled out $3.4 billion.
The San Francisco Standard reports today Bay Area nonprofits are dumbfounded from President Trump’s “funding cuts and chaos. San Francisco has the largest share of the nonprofit workforce of any California county. Other Bay Area counties, including Santa Clara, San Mateo, and Alameda, follow right behind.”
Oh no. Say it isn’t so!
“San Francisco’s nonprofit sector is the largest per capita of any California county – $9 billion outstanding in federal grants and loans for Bay Area entities, according to U.S. contract data. That includes more than $1 billion earmarked directly for nonprofits, and much more that filters down to organizations across the region through state and local governments and institutions.”
This has been paid from taxpayer money – money taken from the people’s paychecks. As Greenfield wrote, “USAID’s partnerships with foreign governments, and with large unaccountable organizations including the UN and the World Bank, have raised concerns of money laundering. The revolving door between USAID personnel and some of the non-profit and for-profit groups who all profit from it has also raised questions about the legitimacy of those arrangements.”
Elon Musk posted on X details of DOGE’s deep dive into Medicaid payments:
To be clear, what the @DOGE team and @USTreasury have jointly agreed makes sense is the following: – Require that all outgoing government payments have a payment categorization code, which is necessary in order to pass financial audits. This is frequently left blank, making audits almost impossible. – All payments must also include a rationale for the payment in the comment field, which is currently left blank. Importantly, we are not yet applying ANY judgment to this rationale, but simply requiring that SOME attempt be made to explain the payment more than NOTHING! – The DO-NOT-PAY list of entities known to be fraudulent or people who are dead or are probable fronts for terrorist organizations or do not match Congressional appropriations must actually be implemented and not ignored. Also, it can currently take up to a year to get on this list, which is far too long. This list should be updated at least weekly, if not daily. The above super obvious and necessary changes are being implemented by existing, long-time career government employees, not anyone from @DOGE. It is ridiculous that these changes didn’t exist already! Yesterday, I was told that there are currently over $100B/year of entitlements payments to individuals with no SSN or even a temporary ID number. If accurate, this is extremely suspicious. When I asked if anyone at Treasury had a rough guess for what percentage of that number is unequivocal and obvious fraud, the consensus in the room was about half, so $50B/year or $1B/week!! This is utterly insane and must be addressed immediately.
“So they designed treasury payments the same way they designed the voting system. Impossible to audit,” a follower responded.
Musk replied:
“The best way to understand the system is that it is designed for complaint minimization: people don’t complain if they receive money, but do complain loudly (especially fraudsters!) if they don’t receive money. Therefore, everything is geared towards sending out the money, even if wasteful or fraudulent.”
“This was how they turned all of us into slaves! And spent our money like Hunter Biden…” another follower responded.
Boom.
Adding insult to injury, “DOGE Team Discovers FEMA Spent $59 Million Last Week on Luxury Hotels for Illegals in NYC Violating the Current Law – Musk Vows to Recoup the Funds,” the Gateway Pundit reported this morning.
Meanwhile, back in San Francisco, hands are wringing, pearls are being clutched, big crocodile tears are being wept, and safe spaces will be needed:
“City leaders are considering layoffs to close the gap on a massive home-grown deficit. And that assumes San Francisco holds onto the $1.8 billion in federal funds it is counting on this year — 11% of the city budget, according to the controller’s office. With threats looming that the Federal Emergency Management Agency won’t reimburse $234 million it owes the city, and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi directing the Department of Justice to pause funding to sanctuary cities, it’s clear that San Francisco’s government is in a similar predicament to local nonprofits.”
DOGE is investigating the more than $100 Billion a year of entitlements payments to individuals with no Social Security Number or even a temporary ID number. Our government was paying billions out to people with no provable existence. Let that sink in.
Shut it down. All of it.
https://californiaglobe.com/fl/doge-accountability-101-the-left-is-freaking-out-with-us-taxpayer-gravy-train-cut-off/
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https://www.businessinsider.com/musk-doge-records-public-information-foia-presidential-records-act-2025-2?fbclid=IwY2xjawIYOtVleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHRdMtWSR_oZalI4jbXK1tOX-lDF9kaT-xWARxcx7WnBtn7lG5J0QBj-FVg_aem_QEBrv1zTuxIPSZOf4YJTJg
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Q2na-WGpcc
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Dem talking point:
"Is Musk was the right man for the job to cut the Pentagon’s budget, given his company SpaceX has ongoing contracts with the military?"
Seems like a fair question. How do we respond?
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@BillAckman
We should not be surprised by the pushback against @DOGE as criminal acts are about to be exposed.
Quote
Mark Mitchell, Rasmussen Reports
@Mark_R_Mitchell
·
11h
Over three times more people in DC are googling "Criminal Defense Lawyer" than anywhere else in the US!
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Dem talking point:
"Is Musk was the right man for the job to cut the Pentagon’s budget, given his company SpaceX has ongoing contracts with the military?"
Seems like a fair question. How do we respond?
We keep saying that he has only the power of recommendations no further and the Trump team go out of their way to avoid the appearance of favoritism when considering his ideas. That said Trump has clearly been granting favoritism .
AND we keep pointing out we cannot have government audit themselves anymore without true and honest outside opinion
Are there enough "criminal defense lawyers" in the swamp to go around? :wink:
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2nd post:
For those playing at home … the DOGE tracker:
https://www.doge-tracker.com/
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https://www.oann.com/newsroom/trump-to-sign-order-slashing-part-of-federal-govt-workforce-allowing-agency-eliminations-and-role-reductions/
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https://x.com/DOGE?fbclid=IwY2xjawIbQeRleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHVaDYD1OBU6nTegl8_u8cxMGDCtk7IKFzNtzfLsYcHs0AWluKNuDXjG81A_aem_33OzWVeiW863HbYPyNAfDA
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What are the betting markets saying about the success of DOGE?
https://news.polymarket.com/p/bite-of-the-doge
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IT HAS TO BE DONE BY CONGRESS!!!
IT HAS TO BE DONE MORE SURGICALLY AFTER STUDY NOT BY TAKING AN AXE AND CUTTING WHOLE PROGRAMS!!!
THE CHIEFS OF THE BUREAUCRACIES SHOULD DO IT SINCE THEY, WHO ARE OF COURSE LIFE LONG DEDICATED PUBLIC SERVANTS, THE ONES WHO REALLY KNOW WHAT CAN AND CAN'T BE CUT.
Me -> how stupid is this thinking? Congress and the bureaucratic class cannot do what they never have done because as Rush would say :
That "is their source of power".
We have to win the midterms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections
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https://news.yahoo.com/news/finance/news/elon-musk-wants-u-treasury-200729407.html
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https://x.com/i/web/status/1890815411907674372
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https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2e117ab7-f835-4c14-b120-b9fdc24c31e1_932x1004.png?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
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Jeepers, I hope we've dispatched social science grad students to capture the oral histories of the ~1.5 million citizens that were alive during the Civil War.... :roll:
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1891350795452654076
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Barack Obama, "We don't need to wait for Congress to do something about wasteful spending that's out there."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulZ-dIj0tkA&t=37s&pp=2AElkAIB
What changed?
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https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2025/02/white-house-mum-after-classified-info-reportedly-appears-on-musks-doge-website/
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https://www.oann.com/newsroom/report-social-security-chief-resigns-over-doge-requesting-access-to-recipient-data/
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Michael Brewer on my FB page:
Marc Denny preach it! It's good to see some of the youth waking up to why it matters that they be participants in the political system and not just consumers of it.
As far as the impoundment issue, I'm also looking into it with some new perspectives. I'm no expert, and like most, I only started giving a shit when all this became a real thing, so the sum of my experience spans about a month. That said, here's what I have found so far -
Disclaimer: I leaned on ChatGPT to help me compile this stuff. The list is ChatGPT's work, not mine. The opinions about it are mine.
Key Precedents of Presidential Impoundment
1. Thomas Jefferson (1801)
Context: Jefferson refused to spend funds appropriated for gunboats, arguing that they were unnecessary.
Outcome: As Congress did not challenge him, the impoundment was effectively accepted.
2. Andrew Jackson (1830s)
Context: Jackson refused to use appropriated funds for internal improvements, believing they were unconstitutional.
Outcome: Since Congress did not pass legislation to force the spending, his impoundments stood.
3. Franklin D. Roosevelt (1930s-1940s)
Context: FDR selectively refused to spend funds appropriated for public works projects and defense programs based on policy priorities.
Outcome: While Congress pushed back, no formal legal challenge over presidential impoundment was made.
4. Dwight D. Eisenhower (1950s)
Context: Eisenhower withheld funds appropriated for public housing, citing concerns over inflation and fiscal responsibility.
Outcome: Congress did not override his decisions.
5. John F. Kennedy & Lyndon B. Johnson (1960s)
Context: Both presidents used impoundment to control federal spending, particularly in areas such as highways and water projects.
Outcome: Congress began questioning the practice but took no significant action.
6. Richard Nixon (1969–1974)
Context: Nixon took impoundment to new levels by withholding billions of dollars from programs he opposed, including environmental and social programs.
Key Conflict: He impounded funds for the Clean Water Act and other congressional priorities.
Legal Challenge:
Train v. City of New York (1975): The Supreme Court ruled that the President could not refuse to spend appropriated funds when Congress had clearly mandated their expenditure.
Outcome: This case led to a significant rollback of presidential impoundment power.
Nixon's actions finally pushed Congress to legislate the activity.
After Nixon’s aggressive use of impoundment, Congress passed the Impoundment Control Act (ICA) of 1974, which:
Restricted the President’s authority to withhold appropriated funds.
Required the President to notify Congress if funds were not to be spent.
Allowed Congress to override any impoundment through legislation.
So that brings us to a couple of interesting questions. All of this is a bureaucratic process, and as such, there are lots of rules about money and when and how it can be used. For example, there are three types of money appropriated to programs in government:
Annual Appropriations: Most federal funds are annual appropriations, meaning they must be obligated within the fiscal year for which they were appropriated. If not obligated, they expire and revert to the Treasury.
Multi-Year Appropriations: Some funds are available for a longer period (e.g., two-year or five-year appropriations), giving Congress more flexibility in releasing them if an impoundment challenge extends beyond a single fiscal year.
No-Year Appropriations: Some funds (e.g., those for ongoing programs) do not expire and remain available indefinitely.
This gives Trump a loophole with which to play, and it's a very powerful one. Pay attention, kids, because this is where you can win by losing. If the appropriations window for funds expires before they are spent—whether due to presidential impoundment, legal challenges, or administrative delays—the funds typically revert to the U.S. Treasury as expired or canceled funds. That means if Trump makes a move to impound funds and Congress contests that, with a sympathetic Congress and the right kind of maneuvering, he can stretch the process out past September 30th and those funds go back to the Treasury anyway. I would be surprised if we didn't see some of that kind of thinking enter into the DOGE calculus, and the really juicy targets saved for the summer so that they're closer to the end-of-year mark. If Trump's goal is to cut waste and return money to the Treasury that was being wastefully or fraudulently spent, he could get that done even if Congress successfully blocks the impoundment.
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https://x.com/i/web/status/1891682715419685362?fbclid=IwY2xjawIiBE9leHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHU4jEd_tcJXMDz8Z4x9vN1P06AMRbJ4LVLjCWQciHEuhHg9nBhEl_p9TKA_aem_JGyA8410ZiaptB9Ov6KSUg
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Checking sites listed by Elon:
https://share.icloud.com/photos/01a9JLHWnw5kPrYjm8Nn5dsag
As long as they are paper straws and not plastic ones….
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https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/02/stephen-miller-exposes-foreign-fraud-rings-foreign-nationals/
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second
https://x.com/DOGE/status/1891367329616760989
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/musk-misreads-social-security-data-millions-of-dead-people-not-on-benefits-experts/ar-AA1zoi4Z?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=af7063a08aa844c19d4bb6fd0c0b3bac&ei=6
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IIRC, Abrams was linked to much of the electoral hijinks in Atlanta 2020:
https://freebeacon.com/trump-administration/billions-doge-found-parked-at-bank-earmarked-for-stacey-abrams-backed-green-group/
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This is how Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7 works:
IIRC, Abrams was linked to much of the electoral hijinks in Atlanta 2020:
https://freebeacon.com/trump-administration/billions-doge-found-parked-at-bank-earmarked-for-stacey-abrams-backed-green-group/
https://monsterhunternation.com/2025/02/18/educating-the-stupid-on-how-audits-work-in-real-life/
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Doge on ending the USPS monopoly. I handle the mail contract for my college and can attest to all sorts of wacky manifestations of monopoly that likely wouldn’t exist in a competitive market place (though I also have my share of Amazon horror stories and consider them something of a defacto monopoly, too).
https://x.com/DOGE_USPS/status/1892437673543160089
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I’ve become a regular Coffee & Covid reader. Given that he tends to cover multiple topics under the aegis of a single URL, I’m going to start breaking his bon mots up by topic, albeit posting the same URL for each piece published in that day’s column:
Hahahaha! Behold, the most side-splitting headline since they had to figure out how to climb down from mandatory outdoor masking. Yesterday, the New York Times ran a story headlined, and I am not making this up, “Trump Team Finds Loophole to Defy Spirit of Court Orders Blocking Spending Freezes. The sub-headline explained, “Officials cite other legal authorities — not Mr. Trump’s court-blocked directives — to keep withholding foreign aid and domestic grant money.”
image.png
Speaking as a litigator, try as hard as you like, but it is literally impossible to “defy” the “spirit” of an order—because a court doesn’t issue a “spirit.” It issues orders. Not spirits. Parties aren’t required to hold séances asking spirits what the judge really meant. ‘Spirit of the Injunction, speak to us!’
The phrase “defying the spirit” is semantic skullduggery. It hints darkly at malfeasance without actually alleging any particular violation. It’s how journalists (or robed activists) smear someone even when they are following the rules. If a judge wanted to prohibit a specific action, they could —arguably, they are duty bound to— do so clearly. If they didn’t, but wished they had done, that’s on them.
The Times isn’t even accusing the Trump Team of malicious compliance. It should know the difference too, since the Times lovingly reported Biden’s childlike efforts to skirt the Supreme Court’s slamdown of his criminal student loan forgiveness programs. Oh, Biden’s lawyers are so creative! So brave! So persistent! But I guess when Democrats actually defy the express terms of orders, that’s okay. Just not spirits.
image 2.png
The Times’s knickers are twisted. It wasn’t supposed to be this way! Things were going so swimmingly. Last week, Judge Amir H. Ali —the country’s first Muslim-Canadian federal judge— ordered the Trump Administration’s foreign payments freeze to itself be frozen. In other words, get out your Ouija boards and reopen the money gates!
Biden appointed Judge Ali, 39, to the DC District Court last year based on his experience practicing as a civil rights activist lawyer. (He was confirmed 50-49.) In other words, Ali had never been a judge, not even a county judge, not even a traffic ticket magistrate. But now, he’s a brand-new federal court justice. Ta-da! And he is conjuring up restraining orders against the President of the United States faster than a drive-thru medium reading palms at an interstate travel plaza.
This week, after the payments gusher failed to resume gushing (it resumed only a flaccid trickle) as per the spirits of Judge Ali’s order, the plaintiffs complained in court they still hadn’t gotten their checks. The judge summoned the parties into court, and the Trump Team explained that they were complying, they were ignoring Trump’s instructions, as ordered, but they were still withholding payments under various other statutes, contractual and grant provisions, and other rules that have been around for a long time. The judge never ordered them to ignore other laws.
Young Judge Ali is discovering what a more seasoned benchholder might have foreseen: the vexing difficulty of micromanaging the federal bureaucracy. The bureaucrats know the byzantine laws and regulations and contract rules— and he doesn’t. So one simple order won’t resurrect USAID. He’ll need an entire team of Ghostbusters.
The New York Times needs a new Tarot deck.
https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/triggering-thursday-february-20-2025
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2nd post:
@DOGE
Schools have spent nearly $200B of COVID-Relief funds with little oversight or impact on students. $393K to rent out a Major League Baseball stadium, $86K in Caesars Palace hotel rooms, $60k in swimming pool passes, and even an ice cream truck. All of this money was drawn with zero documentation.
There is $4B left and the new
@usedgov
is setting a simple new rule - all grantees must provide receipts for every purchase BEFORE funding is released.
Sources:
https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-updates-guidance-covid-19-funding
https://defendinged.org/investigations/wasteful-esser-expenditures/
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https://x.com/i/web/status/1893473601870836105
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https://x.com/i/web/status/1894064757142937904
:-o :-o :-o
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Data Republican (small r) whose X posts I've shared here has been doxxed and so has self-identified as she hopes to control the narrative, with autism and being deaf a part of her identity and story.
https://x.com/DataRepublican/status/1894540234089795908
And interview with her (through an interpreter):
https://x.com/schneggen2/status/1894544097022529542
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https://apnews.com/article/doge-elon-musk-federal-government-resignations-usds-6b7e9b7022e6d89d69305e9510f2a43c?utm_source=join1440&utm_medium=email&utm_placement=newsletter&user_id=67240ea61fcc1570a1033988
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https://www.bizpacreview.com/2025/02/27/the-numbers-dont-lie-mystery-data-scientist-who-caught-elons-eye-speaks-out-on-doge-1525687/?utm_campaign=bizpac&utm_content=Newsletter&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_source=Get%20Response&utm_term=EMAIL
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https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1897118766347309355?t=TENS1TCoPouEPz3GC3RWYw&s=09
$8 million for making mice transgender.
If I were a mouse, I wouldn't do that for $8 million. But these mice had no choice!
Seriously, this money is not even trying to buy strategic alliances around the world like China does with bait and switch uh belt and road. Our money was trying to spread left-wing politics around the world.
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-cabinet-confronted-liar-elon-musk-in-white-house-showdown/ar-AA1Au2z5?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=0f21cf2d7476493e834bcb935b7b2ce9&ei=7
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https://www.oann.com/newsroom/agriculture-secretary-cancels-600k-grant-to-study-menstrual-cycles-in-trans-men/
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/doge-staffers-reportedly-draw-large-salaries-funded-by-taxpayers-while-elon-musk-pushes-for-wasteful-spending-cuts/vi-AA1At5it?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=a9c277ad43d2422ab7149079c4911de8&ei=36
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I saw this article . I distinctly recall Elon and Vivek calling for volunteers.
I guess that idea did not work out.
I am not sure they should be paid with government money though. Can't they find money somewhere else. How about Trump's meme coin money?
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But the point is that they ARE govt employees, yes?
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I don't know really
contractors ?
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Pretty sure this has been definitively answered here.
DOGE is a rename of something duly set up by Obama. Its people ARE govt employees.
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https://americanwirenews.com/doge-finds-300m-in-covid-loans-given-to-kids-11-years-old-and-younger/
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third
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/elon-musk-s-doge-is-reportedly-automating-government-tasks-with-an-ai-chatbot-as-it-continues-to-slash-the-federal-workforce/ar-AA1ABS5T?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=0bdcddd5c74c48cfa9ae33c333f8138b&ei=54
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https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/doge-chain-of-command-revealed-in-court-filing-showing-musk-is-not-the-boss/ar-AA1B2f2B?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=90b9705bd2ca48d0aef79ec971cb5bf8&ei=40
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https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4307615/posts
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https://thefederalist.com/2025/03/28/6-unbelievably-scammy-federal-practices-doge-staff-reveal-in-fox-interview/
A billion dollar survey that should have cost $10,000, led to no changes.
More Federal Credit Cards issued than federal employees.
(Doug). When do some of these wasteful, fraudulent, unauthorized expenditures become criminal conduct?
700 Different IT Systems at Just One Federal Agency
The National Institute for Health has more than 700 different IT software systems that don’t talk to each other, overseen by 27 different chief information officers, most of whom aren’t technicians, Musk and DOGE’s Brad Smith said.
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https://x.com/i/web/status/1910067646827057152
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https://americanwirenews.com/dems-already-hate-the-guy-slated-to-take-over-doge-for-musk-big-surprise/