There’s been less news over the last week of particular new acts of DOGE slash and burn. That may reflect that DOGE is having to look harder at its preferred targets to harvest more organs make more cuts, while pointedly avoiding the Mother of All Federal Waste, our arms spending. Or perhaps it’s a sign of DOGE running into more legal obstacles and having to slow down or even selectively retreat.
But as we’ll see, the damage DOGE has already done via haphazard hacking of Federal institutions is considerable, and is likely to grow, as the impact of staff shortages compounds. And that in turn is leading to rising anger and upset among the public at large.
But let’s first turn to the centerpiece of DOGE’s lying, that of its grossly inflated claims of how much in expenditure reductions it had achieved. We’ll put aside the entirely legitimate question of whether the terminated outlays were wasteful, or instead represented initiatives to which the DOGE crowd is ideologically opposed. We’ll see (as Wukchumni alerted readers early) the casualties include the National Parks and services for handicapped students in Alabama.1
Lambert pointed out that the extreme and casual destruction being done by DOGE represents a split between DOGE and the MAGA base, and the MAGA types have yet to react effectively. For instance, veterans are being harmed by cuts to the VA, when MAGA wants more and better servicemembers, and places considerable weight on at least the appearance of treating those who have served their country decently.
Unfortunately, DOGE as Musk’s too-literal chainsaw killer may demonstrate that it is not always wise to take Trump literally. He seems determined to return the US to the 1890s, when life was nastier, more brutish, and shorter than in the 21st century.
You might ask how could Trump and his fellow billionaires want that? An answer likes in the Michal Kalecki classic article on the political obstacles to full employment. To very much truncate a careful and sophisticated arguments, even though capitalists would be richer under full employment than with meaningful levels of unemployment, they aggressively pursue policies that achieve the latter. Why? The first is they want greater social distance from workers and the increase in employer power that the so-called reserve army of the unemployed provides. Second, they do not want to concede that government can and routinely does play a major role in promoting prosperity. They prefer power to be concentrated in their hands and for government to be diminished as a competitor for influence.
DOGE is thus implementing this world view in an Ayn Rand-fable-believer strong form manner.
Recent developments follow.
DOGE Doubles Down on Deception After Caught Out Lying Massively About Its Spending Reductions
It is hitting the point where we should start with the default that anything Musk or Musk allies say about DOGE’s “accomplishments” is a lie until proven otherwise.
The DOGE “wall of receipts” has been shown by multiple sources to be a gross exaggeration of the actual outlay reductions, even before getting to the fact of whether these cuts reduced alleged “waste,” let alone the overhyped “fraud”.
So far, the fraudster looks to be DOGE, which is going hard into reverse on its promises of transparency to keep up its pretenses.
We’ll skip over the history of the claims and counterclaims about DOGE’s tally. The fact that they have gone so deeply into hiding screams that they can’t be trusted:
Nothing is transparent or honest about DOGE's activities. They aren't finding fraud and abuse; they are the fraud and abuse. Listen to this report from @Fahrenthold in the NYT. pic.twitter.com/JA0UoiuB3j
— Izzy
(@1zzyzyx1) March 16, 2025
There has been an important win on the transparency front. A judge ruled that DOGE is subject to Freedom of Information Act disclosures and must cough up some records in short order. Note that the judge’s order, cited in Politico, specifically decries DOGE’s secretiveness:
A federal judge has ruled that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is wielding so much power that its records will likely have to be opened to the public under federal law.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper said the vast and “unprecedented” authority of DOGE, formerly known as the U.S. Digital Service, combined with its “unusual secrecy” warrant the urgent release of its internal documents under the Freedom of Information Act…
It’s the first significant ruling in a growing legal push to pierce DOGE’s secretive veil, a decision that undercuts Musk’s repeated insistence about the operation’s transparency — and the White House’s refrain that Musk is simply a run-of-the-mill presidential adviser with limited decision-making authority. Cooper said this representation is undercut by the weight of evidence that has trickled out in court and in the news.
The judge noted that DOGE’s speed and the fluidity of its leadership appear to be by design. He is ordering “rolling” productions of DOGE records to begin within weeks.
Based on our considerable experience with CalPERS on Public Records Act requests, it’s a given that responses will be late and incomplete (and/or with intelligence-insulting redactions), so the plaintiffs will have go after DOGE with the legal equivalent of a jackhammer. You can expect DOGE also to try to adopt practices that don’t leave digital footprints. But this ruling is a big step in the right direction.
Evidence of Widespread DOGE Damage Rising
The Wall Street Journal, in The Unintended Consequences of Trump’s Firing Spree, prominently featured on the front page, goes through a diverse, both geographically and in terms of impact, list of some of the places where DOGE cuts are already causing a lot of counter-productive pain, as in doing damage that seems well in excess of the purported merits of any budget tightening. The story is admittedly a compilation of anecdata, but the examples are so-wide ranging as to serve as an early indicator of the scope of harm. Its illustrations include:
Cancelled VA health programs, including ones to help homeless vets get apartments
Longer queuse and cancelations of programs in providing treatment to vets with injuries and mental health issues resulting from their service
The afore-mentioned reduction in Alabama of a program to get handicapped kids to classes
A “pause,” which included a reduction, in peak season campsite bookings in Yosemite and other National Parks; reduced opening hours at visitors centers; ends or reductions of tours at some sites
The firing of a private sector transplant expert recently brought on board to improve organ transplant regulation
Reduced frequency or even the cessation of weather balloon launches at multiple locations due to staff cuts
Excessive firings at the Department of Energy, including of staff at nuclear facilities, resulting in the gaps being filled by sure-to-be-more costly contractors
Firing staffers essential improving the enrollment process for Obamacare
This must-read article, in its bland “just the facts, ma’am,” manner, makes clear how haphazard and lazy the personnel cutting process has been:
In the private sector, employment attorneys say, major companies can spend months analyzing workers’ job performance, position and skills before making big cuts. They enlist senior leaders to recommend which workers to keep, pore over union rules and smooth the process of applying for unemployment benefits for fired workers. Such forethought is key to ensuring the employees who remain can still get the work done, they say.
The Trump administration has adhered to few of those norms so far.
Managers say essential staff have been cut, and that the administration hasn’t followed detailed rules on how to enact widespread layoffs. Government agencies have granted voluntary buyouts to tens of thousands of people, fired probationary workers—a term for those who were hired or promoted in the past year or two—and are planning for deep reductions in the next few months. So far, many cuts haven’t taken into account workers’ performance or the necessity of their roles.
And despite the appearance of a slowdown in DOGE’s pace, more is set to come:
Deeper cuts are expected in the coming months as agencies begin the next phase of the downsizing: a so-called reduction-in-force process that is a highly regulated exercise used infrequently in government. Agencies were told they had until last Thursday to outline how many positions would be cut through attrition, layoffs, a Trump-ordered hiring freeze and the proposed elimination of agencies’ functions.
One former senior government official described the process like baking a cake with 20-step directions and that leaders must read the rules countless times. Workers’ tenure, veterans status and performance must be taken into account during layoffs.
Along with that, yet more evidence of a disregard for the rule of law and contracts. Again from the Journal:
The Office of Personnel Management on Wednesday told agencies that collective-bargaining agreement provisions that “excessively interfere with management’s rights” to lay off employees aren’t enforceable. It urged agencies not to respond to every request for information from unions.
Even though the next example is (so far) an isolated case, it follows on the heels of the DOGE fabrication that millions of dead people were getting Social Security distributions because the SSNs of dead people were still in the system. No way, no how did that establish that meaningful unwarranted payments. The big reason that the numbers were still in the database was that it would be more costly to remove the records than stop sending checks when they died.
DOGE stole several months of this 82 year old's social security payments, canceled his Medicare, and falsely declared him deceased to claw back payments retroactively. He then struggled to rectify this because DOGE is gutting the Social Security admin staff and closing buildings. https://t.co/JisOINwhHj
— regwag2025 (@wideofthepost) March 16, 2025
DOGE has tried denying that it has anything to do with this man’s distress, that it does not directly meddle in Social Security operations. That seems like a stretch since there is at least one one-time DOGE member who is now at Social Security, having been kicked out of DOGE for sending personal information from government records unencrypted (why was he sending personal information at all, one might ask?). The fact that a crook or incompetent was nevertheless given job protection by giving him a perch at Social Security should already be a big red flag. From The Verge:
Court documents filed Friday in an ongoing lawsuit against the US Treasury Department reveal that a 25-year-old staffer for the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) violated Treasury policy by sending a spreadsheet that had personal information to two other members of the Trump administration, reports Bloomberg.
The staffer, a former employee at Elon Musk’s X and SpaceX companies named Marko Elez, had been tasked with combing through the Treasury’s payments system, but resigned in early February over racist social media posts that were linked to him. DOGE has since rehired him to work at the Social Security Administration.
Reread that last sentence. DOGE “rehired” him to work at the SSA? As in he is working for DOGE at the SSA, meaning on making cuts there? That means DOGE colorably is responsible for further actions on the expense reduction front, and it having made a stink about dead people getting benefits makes any new or not quickly resolved cases on this front look highly suspect. Or worse, did DOGE force the SSA to hire him? If so, where else has DOGE planted operatives that it can try to depict as “not DOGE” when for all practical purposes, they are?
Even if DOGE over-zealousness was not responsible for the original mishap, the admin staff reduction has resulted in a delay in getting the 82-year-old’s benefits and improper clawbacks reversed, so DOGE still has its pawprints on this case.
Citizen Anger Boils Over
As noted, GOP leaders have advised Congresscritters to stop conducting town halls because they are apparently being faced with realities on the ground that they have no inclination to handle. This event happened after that warning went out. One assumes a staffer mistakenly assumed the Deep South was safe:
"I'm a veteran and you don't give a fuck about me!"
Anger at DOGE and the GOP is boiling over. Rep. Chuck Edwards just got scorched at his own town hall over his support for massive cuts. pic.twitter.com/HCcV7qCBKZ
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) March 14, 2025
Other sightings of sentiment:
Ouch. Republican Representative Tom Barrett held a tele-town hall with his constituents in his swing district in Michigan on Monday and ran a survey asking if they support DOGE.
70% of the participants said they do not. pic.twitter.com/oDR6ZxDRPi
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) March 12, 2025
DOGE is basically not touching the US military, where there actually is rampant fraud.
Because DOGE is just a scheme to gut social spending.
What is the biggest Pentagon contractor by market valuation? Elon Musk's SpaceX, with $5.6 billion in contracts.https://t.co/li0m3CaBnu pic.twitter.com/4Y8CyiqlHf
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) March 13, 2025
Congrats DOGE, you cut the deficit by .0001%, at the price of millions of lives. pic.twitter.com/wVt70BG4Xv
— Micah Erfan (@micah_erfan) March 16, 2025
Even though the souring public mood isn’t due just to DOGE, it’s not hard to argue it is the biggest driver:
This is really completely insane pic.twitter.com/BS3fVwpb9x
— Mike Bird (@Birdyword) March 16, 2025
Voters are starting to sour on the state of the US economy even as the start Donald Trump’s second term has boosted positivity about the nation as a whole, an NBC News poll shows https://t.co/iOyTnzesoj
— Bloomberg Economics (@economics) March 16, 2025
As much as business are feeling whipsawed by Trump tariff threats, commercial life is a “shit happens” enterprise. By contrast, threats to the perceived-as-bedrock safety of Federal jobs, where the deal is lower pay for more security, and the once-sacrosanct Social Security and Medicare, on which tens of millions depend, are creating huge amounts of unease across the population. For instance, a middle-50s friend here who I am pretty sure was not expecting to depend on Social Security in her later years is getting stress symptoms over the Trump rampage. Readers no doubt have examples who are either currently or expect soon to be in the line of fire who are having trouble coping practically and emotionally.
Sadly we are seeing way too little of this sort of official reaction:
The only energy I want to see from Democrats for the rest of my life is what I’m seeing from Congressman Larson going after DOGE pic.twitter.com/0K6wEFTKnv
— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) March 15, 2025
The tweet lead-in is confirmed by a NBC poll finding, of the Democrats hitting an all-time low in polling. The subhead confirms that their flaccidity is the big reason why:
Unlike in Trump’s first term, Democratic voters say 2-to-1 they want party leaders to fight rather than compromise, even at the risk of not getting things done.
Voters are trying new-old tactics.
Protesters are at a “die-in” in New York City against Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and DOGE’s cuts.
This is an awesome protest idea.pic.twitter.com/rXVbCO8uKp
— Art Candee
(@ArtCandee) March 16, 2025
The die-ins under Black Lives Matter (which regularly had at least as many white participants as people of color) were so effective that I am convinced they were the reason the Democratic party raced in to capture its leadership (by virtue of offering the buy-able ones cushy gigs at NGO-level pay). The die-ins halted quickly after that.
Admittedly, so far this seems to be taking place just in New York City, which is such a deep blue bastion that anything that happens only there or in other big blue cities will be ignored. And it may be that the US has become so coarsened and cruel that any peaceful demonstration, even if taken up in a purple or red area with Republican voters taking part, will be ignored or worse suppressed violently, as was Occupy Wall Street in a 17-city Federally-coordinated para-military crackdown.
So on the one hand, activists are learning to flex long-atrophied muscles. But they are certain to be met with brutal force if they actually get traction. What happens then?
____
1 Since many squillionaires are eugenicists, they would probably be all on board with making the often-hard lives of the handicapped even more difficult.
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> DOGE’s secretiveness
Secret State Policy.
>That may reflect that DOGE is having to look harder at its preferred targets to make more amputations cuts, while pointedly avoiding the Mother of All Federal Waste, our arms spending.
Except for the seriousness of the damage done to the truly needy, for a simpleton like me, that’s all you need to know about how unserious this whole BS PR DOGE business is.
This is already blowing up in Red Senator and Congressional districts out there, with angry constituents and the reps having no balls to face them by canceling town hall meetings.
Yes, but Congress crooks don’t need to face the “voters”, as they have no choice. It they supported the R candidate: Whadda they gonna do? Vote D? Ha ha ha… It’s a cruel joke.
(and the reverse for those who voted D)
It might not be lack of cojones, but a realistic gesture of contempt (or likely a bit of both)
No matter what, the oligarchy always wins,
Not doubting that the Oligarchy always “wins”, but in many districts the voters that swing from D to R and back can make a difference. At least those swing votes certainly helped Trump. I do recognize that that being a Presidential election is different from Senate and House elections.
I do also think that some of these pricks are more than happy to thumb their nose at their constituents by avoiding town hall type events.
George Carlin to military veteran, “I tried to tell you.”
The Musk billionaires are in such a rush to get back to 1890 that nobody has cared to do the math and actually think through the consequences. They seem to assume that if they make all of these changes very quickly the economy will magically make adjustments to the desired state… tariffs will offset government revenue losses and induce businesses to move production to the US; workers will have jobs but no new power and no new rises in income.
I’m pretty sure the reality will be far more ugly and look more like the recession of 1937 when under pressure FDR tried to undo the New Deal employment programs as the elite were certain the Great Depression was behind them.
If things do go poorly, I suspect the next few election cycles will be very interesting as the GOP could end up destroying their new found working class base and I’m not expecting any real rescue that will be promised by the Dems in 2026 and 2028. Maybe by 2030 or 32 we’ll have some real worker supporting politicians pushing back on the elite. If not, we might need to build more prisons to hold more Mangiones.
Besides the incredibly stupid hit to govt. agencies. No thought has gone into the tariffs as far as I can see. What happens when people need a new refrigerator and can’t get one. I am beginning to wonder about the products made in Korea like LG an and Samsung. There isn’t an American company that hasn’t been hollowed out. We do not have factories and trained people to produce these items here. I don’t think these expensive items will be kept in inventory. A person would be dependent on shattered supply lines and ordering these appliances. The same would be happening with cars. No parts for repairs. No new cars. Just how is all this supposed to work. None of this has been thought out. Disaster also when it comes to building new homes. I know of places in California, where empty streets become filled with cars after dark….with all the people living in their cars, parking for the night. Just add all the unemployed and social security dependent people and this will be another trip to the 1800s where people fled every ten years or so due to the latest financial crash. These people traveling west on the Oregon trail were NOT adventurous pioneers, but people that had lost everything to the bank and had no other choice but to load up what possessions they had in a wagon and head for the west in the hope of a new start and maybe find some gold.
All sorts of people had all sorts if reasons for moving, I think. My great grandfather wrote a book, Old Times in West Tennessee, about their family trek west. His father spent three years accumulating the anvil, plowshare, bellows, etc and headed out of North Caroline in the early 1820s for no obvious reason, other than that’s what he wanted to do.
How could they have f**ked up such a simple thing so badly? Where is the grownup in the room? Has there ever been a grownup in the room? I’ve never seen such a sensible idea, tracing the movement of funds moving flowing through an institution, go so badly so quickly.
They never intended to trace the movement of funds. The aim is to destroy entire programs and institutions.
These wealthy schoolyard bullies have never had to rely on government services, or interact with them – they have staff to do that for them. As a result they started this adventure with no idea of the scope of the services these agencies provide to the majority of the population. Neither did they have any idea of what the public response would be if those services were removed.
They’re about to find out.
If you think that DOGE is uniquely American problem, think again. Technototalitarianism is spreading to Europe as well. Yes, Varoufakis has the catchy “techno-feudalism,” but I don’t think feudalism quite captures the mindset, pathologies, mode of operation and the sought-after end state of these fine folks.
Maybe technototalitarianism today, technofeudalism tomorrow? And how many tomorrows do we have? Lol, “What have we learned, Palmer?”, besides dumpster fires scale.
I use “Techno-Totalitarian Neo Feudalism” (combining the concepts of Wolin and Varoufakis) and of course, even that messy label can not describe the current state of our society. It’s “in the ballpark” at least
“Feudalism” does have the virtue of succinctly capturing one grand arc of history, even though it now comes dressed in Darwinism.
The super genius minds of DOGE are able to assess federal programs and “audit” at blinding speed. Surely their own super genius analysis, process, and actions to date can be rolled out in detail on demand, perhaps using AI, without a blip in their important work.
Or, they’ll bundle up some of the truly unhinged DOGE-bot nonsense from Nitter and pretend that answers questions.
A textbook example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Absolutely no idea of the profound depth of their ignorance and incompetence.
I keep saying (elsewhere) that DOGE does not have professional auditors assessing anything. Musk and his teenage minions are not qualified, trained or experienced in conducting any kind of audit.
Training for Smash and Grab is minimal; it’s the appetites and aggression that really matter.
That’s a feature, not a bug. Getting inexperienced people to do things completely our of their depth to box-check-legitimize corruption is right out of Bill Black’s description of a criminogenic environment.
DOGE is the very embodiment of corruption and corrupt self-interest, eviscerating those functions of government that actually benefit ordinary people. And it is happening right before our eyes.
Per the above introduction it really is all about power as well as Trump’s kick down/suck up personality. In his latest column Patrick Lawrence expresses his abhorrence of Trump’s just announced war on free anti-genocide speech, but then recalls all the stretching and pulling at the Law performed by the other party with their many impeachments and kangaroo court attempts to put Trump in jail for fear he might actually win an election. Which is to say Trump tolerates Musk because a) he admires and relates to wealthy and successful authoritarians and b) he wants revenge on all those PMC supporters of his enemies, the Dems, and Federal government workers are largely Dem voters. Trump bullies the people he thinks he can get away with bullying be they govt workers or Palestinians.
Clearly this almost childish side of Trump needs a parental rebuke and perhaps the Supreme Court can help with this. But IMO we shouldn’t kid ourselves that his is the only threat on the horizon. The Dems have their own secretive love of authoritarianism as we saw under Biden or Obama with his many foreign policy missteps. Power corrupts. Welcome to the latest edition.
The “childish side” of trump is quite a turn of phrase. The recent bombing of Yemen, with more certainly to follow, killed mostly men, women, and children; and perhaps that bombing of a cancer treatment center was merely a rather painful expression of childish petulance. The U.S. military is mimicking the zionist air force in its zeal to murder non-white Muslim people throughout the region. Not a concern to its commander-in-chief, though. Trump is not some three-year child, but a genuine psychopathic 79-years old man consumed by greed, and wild delusions of grandeur, a threat to peace, as well as a threat to those programs, like Social Security, which provides some assistance to large swathes of Americans trapped in a cruel and sadistic economic system known as capitalism.
I did say childish “side.” IMO you are getting a bit carried away. Don’t forget the thousands killed in the ME under “return to normal” Biden who liked ice cream and naps. The truth is our entire leisure class has a childish side including the Dem opposition who describe themselves as “the Resistance” after watching Star Wars. All that privileged immaturity is very much like the 1890s.
In my view it’s still way too early to say what will come out of all this.
The genocide perpetrated by the zionist entity in Gaza, only made possible by american complicity, remains, in my mind, the gravest and most heinous crime in my lifetime. And this is not to discount the other barbarities I’ve witnessed in my 73 years. But the sheer savagery of the genocide, accompanied by the glee and intoxication of jewish israelis, and the indifference and hatefulness of my american neighbors, has changed everything for me. Excuse me for this. Bit when I read that trump’s childish side is responsible for anything, say, his reposting a video of a resort Gaza, with him and netanyahu gliding along in a poolside raft, I cannot stand it. It must be some strange quirk of mine. Again, excuse me.
Yeah, mass murdering women and children is pretty bad, don’t forget our friends in the UK who are every bit as complicit . Nothing “childish” about genocide, supported by both parties, of course.
And Yemen continues to get bombed. Same as the previous regime.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-yemen-houthis-rebels-attack-airstrike-11b0e080b3982542dd621338a7b18afd
Supporters of the DT will make excuses no matter what the facts are. That’s politics
Stop the both siderism and focus on the man in power and his behavior as well as his actions. He is someone who has a host of preconceived notions that he makes no attempt to analyze or discuss. He looks for agreement and dismisses all those who disagree.
Not to mention that he he is bereft of humanity.
My brother pushes this same line as though hypocrisy is not an issue. Whereas of course it is the issue. Which is to say no Biden then no Trump2. It’s the system that must be changed and that’s the very thing our so called opposition party fights against.
And so indeed some of us do hope that Trump will be less horrible than Biden. Good odds.
Are you saying that Trump will change the system for the better? Please explain what that looks like. It looks to me like he, and definitely Elon, want to smash govt and privatize. They’re obviously anti-union. Is that a good outcome? Is slashing Medicaid and SNAP (unless you believe that there’s $1T of “waste” in those programs) and giving tax breaks to the wealthy a good outcome? Looks to me like increasing income inequality and hurting the less well off even more. That’s changing the system but for the worse. And Trump’s just getting started. Oh, and he’s going to get rid of corruption? As Yves said a while back: “Trump launching his own coin, an immediate personal monetization of his coming back into office, was nevertheless a stunning new low in conduct. And it’s not often enough noted that the coin would allow for direct payment of bribes.” I’ll agree that Trump could be somewhat better on foreign policy (it would be pretty hard to be worse), esp Ukraine, but I’m not seeing it re Gaza since he’s letting the genocide continue.
A million young men in Ukraine are dead who probably wouldn’t be if not for Biden and his Atlanticists.
And of course there’s no telling what may happen domestically but the very premise of the above post is that the Trump voters are not onboard with what he is doing with DOGE or even Gaza (see Michigan). Chomsky said even dictators need the consent of the governed and I think that’s right. The only “movement” Trump spearheaded was to get rid of Biden.
Of course I’m making assumptions myself but as a mere commenter have little agency here in Republican SC. If people object to Trump’s actions they should certainly object as loudly as possible. But if they are objecting on behalf of the Democratic party then I object.
You mean like the kind of humanity shown by his predecessor?!!!?? I don’t know about you, but I found it rather difficult to keep seeing the pictures of Gazan parents holding up their headless children. The article Carolinian refers to is an excellent one – https://scheerpost.com/2025/03/15/patrick-lawrence-season-of-the-sophists/
None of this started in 2024, or 2016, or even 2000. The dismantling of our government is happening like Hemingway’s bankruptcy – gradually at first, then suddenly.
There is plenty of blame to go around while humanity is in short supply.
A tomato is a tomato, pronounce it as you wish. consumed by greed, and wild delusions of grandeur,, sounds childish and psychopathic to me. How’s this for childish? From yesterday, Donald Trump makes surprising announcement after claiming to have won another club championship, Palm Beach Post. Quote,
“Two years ago, he declared he won a club championship when he didn’t play the first round. According to reports, Trump told tournament organizers he played a strong round two days before the tournament started and decided that would count as his Saturday score for the club championship.”
As you say, delusions of grandeur.
I keep wondering what the end game is to wrecking the National Park Service and therein the 63 National Parks.
Does DOGE run roughshod over the 1964 Wilderness Act after axing NPS?
How will Trump act once the brickbats really start coming his way, as the architect of not just the dismantling of the NPS and NP’s, but also quite the wrecking ball to New Deal and Nixon advancements, how much longer before we go back to conditions before Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, 120 years ago?
Trump has a unique ability to the turn the discussion on its head. If people start complaining he mentions women and minorities and then all of the sudden the conversation turns to arguing about the parks being closed due to Biden’s DEI initiatives.
While my brother the psychology major is the expert on syndromes–or thinks he is–I do wonder whether Don may have a touch of schizophrenia. From one day to the next will we get Jekyll of mild mannered Hyde?
At any rate I wouldn’t worry too much about the NPS. When they start building condos among the Sequoias start worrying.
Park workers on the other hand may be in for a bumpy ride.
«how much longer before we go back to conditions before Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, 120 years ago?»
We’ve been there a long time, at least sicnce Obama’s Great Fleecing and arguably since my brother-in-law was evading the Vietnam War in Vista, castrating pigs in a pilot CAFO operation. By the time I was sentenced to Iowa in the early 1980s, that job had been given to Mexicans.
Technototalitarianism. Perfect capture. As far as I can see the aim is to make everything governmental look so bad that the public will welcome privatization. They want the income stream from the post office. They want the income stream from the National Parks. They want the income stream from everything governmental.
FYI; with two stores in different suburbs I can say sales were down 40% last week.
My prediction has been that Trump will fire Musk eventually, since we are still playing “Apprentice” here, after all. That “More Perfect Union” post does not bode well for Musk’s future – it’s not a good idea to tick off the guys who know how to handle guns, and I bet Trump is tired of being shot at. Meanwhile the Democrat party, after going after Trump on made up nonsense for a decade, has been content to sit back and let it all happen when he’s now actually dong something that needs opposing. As the link above notes, that is now an historically unpopular stance.
If the Democrats do nothing and Trump cans Musk, he will be the one who gets the credit for reining in DOGE’s crazy excess, and the Democrat party will continue to be known as the do-nothing, feckless hacks that they are. Truly amazing that they still can’t figure out how to convince the public that they are better than the carnival of charlatans and mountebanks currently calling the shots.
I wonder if “Elmo Twitler”, a self-admitted Ketamine user, is on any other drugs? His appearance and behavior seem quite strange at times and the things he says often contradictory, and irrational.
Although not advanced as Genocide Joe, The DT shows signs of cognitive decline as well. Some of the things he says is also contradictory and irrational. Rumors have it that the DT is on Adderall, but who knows what can explain the wacky statements and behavior.
Psychopats/sociopaths do not need drugs to say things that are contradictory and irrational. Substances are just an excuse (e.g. “I was drunk”).
https://archive.ph/2Lwr7
An interesting take on the looting plans
“The only energy I want to see from Democrats for the rest of my life is what I’m seeing from Congressman Larson going after DOGE”
I called Larson’s office and thanked him for his “energy”. I told the staffer that I wasn’t from his district, but I can’t get my representatives to do anything, so I have to thank the ones who are speaking up.
I told the staffer we need more of this.
SIDENOTE: We took Lambert’s advice and renewed our passports. They said it would take 4-6 weeks. One of them came within 15 days.