Dodgy DOGE: The McCarthy Era on Steroids!

 

by Pa Rock

Taxpayer

When one of your big campaign promises is to cut the cost and size of the government, what is the best way for a wily politician to proceed?  Why, I know!  How about creating an entire new government department and give the job to them?  Establish another top-heavy government bureaucracy within the executive branch to weed out the top-heavy bureaucracies along with their legions of bureaucrats and replace them with your own.  Erase their deep state and install one more in sync with the incoming cult.

The President-elect seems to be doing just that.  He has announced an all-new "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE) whose mission is to cut waste in government and make it run better, and he has appointed a pair of rich men to run the effort.  Elon Musk, the world's wealthiest human and  the man who has appeared to be physically attached to the next President ever since Election Day, has indicated that he can cut national expenditures by a third, from $6 trillion a year down to $4 trillion - or a savings of $2 trillion per annum.

Of course to do that, Elon has also indicated that regular Americans are going to have to tighten their belts.  Not the hogs, like Elon, who have been at the government trough for years, but regular Americans, the ones who pay taxes and the ones whose very lives depend on government programs like Social Security, Medicare, and having hospitals and emergency care available in their communities.

Elon's co-director of the new DOGE is Vivek Ramaswamy, a GOP politician and pharmaceutical magnate who is worth somewhere close to a billion dollars, clearly enough to live on while he dedicates his time to screwing with our lives.

As both of these clowns are busy cutting things that make our lives more bearable, they will also be looking to enhance their own positions in line at the government cash machines with more and better subsidies, product orders, and general corporate welfare, of that you can be certain.  The only "waste" in government is money that benefits those who really need it.

It is still unclear at this point how the new "Department" itself will be funded.  Elon put out the word on X (one of his possessions) that they were seeking resumes from "revolutionaries" with high IQ's who will work 80 hours a week with no pay.  Clearly those among us who could not afford to work without pay need not apply, but that was the intent all along.  They are to be the managers, and we are to be managed.

The fact that only Congress can create or fund a government "department" has been roundly ignored by all parties involved.

But Congress, or at least the House of Representatives, is playing along with the dodgy new DOGE.  House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer has announced the creation of a DOGE subcommittee for Oversight, and committee member Marjorie Taylor Greene has announced that she will be the chair of that subcommittee.  Rep. Greene, a Republican from rural Georgia, recently made news when she wasted the government's time by publicly commenting on the "fake eyelashes" of a fellow member of the Oversight Committee, demonstrating that Marge falls somewhere short of being all business all the time.  Greene had this to say about her new assignment:

"Our committee will work to expose people who need to be FIRED.  The bureaucrats who don't do their job, fail audits like in the Pentagon, and don't know where BILLIONS of dollars are going. will be getting a pink slip."

(Marge, when you're rooting around looking for those missing billions, be sure to check in the Space X an TESLA accounts.)

Even if Elon does manage to find a battalion of neo-fascists who can afford to put in 80 hours a week at no pay, the new "Department" will need office supplies, equipment, staff, and space - and none of that is likely to be free, and the new congressional subcommittee will also require space, staffing, equipment, and supplies - and a gavel, Marge will damn sure need a gavel!

Musk, and Ramaswamy, and Greene - oh my!    It sounds like the McCarthy Era on steroids!