So Elon decided to share a little tidbit of his thinkng the other day.
So the “Real” reason that we want people to have their Social Security and Medicaid (which is MediCal in California) is because we just want to offer them a Bribe to vote for Democrats?
Oh, and it’s even better when we give those paid for and earned benefits to undocumented migrants (who can’t get those benefits) so that we can make them loyal voters (even though they can’t vote).
Hmph.
This is why Elon doesn’t care how badly his cuts hurt the American people. He doesn’t care about the Farmers, he doesn’t care about the parents who are losing their daycare, he doesn’t care about the risk of losing people at FAA, he doesn’t care about firing the member of USDA who detect disease in animals — while we’re having a bird flu epidemic — he doesnt care about cuts the firefighters while we’re having a massive fire storm in California and he doesn’t care about the people who keep our nuclear weapons safe.
Because none of that matters. It’s all a gift, a benefit, a bribe that people just don’t deserve.
Yeah.
First off, the entire DOGE thing doesn't make any sense legally or Constitutionally as Jasmine Crockett stated on The View.
Musk is a believer in the Great Replacement Theory — which posits that undocumented migrants are being deliberately brought into the US so that they will vote for Democrats. Except that the undocumented can’t vote. And unless you happen to have requested Asylum as you came into the US — which is perfectly legal — you’re likelihood of going from undocumented to documented, to becoming a legal resident and gaining a green card, to becoming a citizen is somewhere between Nil and Non-existent. There is practically no pathway to make that transition without leaving the country, waiting several years and starting over from scratch.
But Musk also believes a secondary theory, that having undocumented migrants in the nation gives an electoral advantage to Democrats due to the Census which counts every person in the U.S., not just everyone who is a citizen. He believes that “Sanctuary Cities” house many migrants and Democratic states gain electoral votes and congressional seats because of the presence of migrants.
And it is true that the state with the most migrants is California.
Except that the state has such a large populace, California doesn’t have the highest percentage of migrants present in the state — Texas does.
Texas 1.6 Million Undocumented 5.16% of population
California 1.9 Million Undocumented 4.87% of population
New Jersey 450k Undocumented. 4.73% of population
Maryland 275k Undocumented 4.43% of population
Massachusetts 300k Undocumented. 4.28% of population
Florida 900k Undocumented 3.91% of population
Washington 300k Undocumented 3.79% of population
Illinois 400k Undocumented 3.33% of population
Georgia 350k Undocumented 3.18% of population
New York 600k Undocumented 3.15% of population
Virginia 275k Undocumented 3.12% of population
N. Carolina 325k Undocumented 2.95% of population
What you see here is that there isn’t a direct correlation between the number of undocumented and their total percentage of the state’s population. This also indicates that generally the percentage of change that the undocumented make on the electoral count is largely the same between both Red and Blue states. They don’t exactly give a clear advantage of electoral votes and congressional seats to Democrats.
This theory is bunk.
Then this gets really hilarious when you see that DOGE is proclaiming they are “improving efficiency” is completely overblown and bogus.
The Trump administration's insistence that it's avoiding cutting certain healthcare workers — including those involved with disease response and Medicare — appears to be false, according to a report.
An anonymous official in the administration told Politico last week they were trying to be "thoughtful about critical functions that the government needs to perform."
But not so, laid-off workers told HuffPost.
Even those "keeping dangerous chemicals out of the food supply, and those on a project to reduce America’s notoriously high maternal mortality rate" are now gone, reported Jonathan Cohn.
Two HHS employees who work on Medicare were given dismissal notices. The sources told HuffPost "plenty more" were cut, including those hired to renegotiate drug prices for Medicare.
"But the idea that this effort is 'thoughtful' seems pretty dubious, given the broad, chaotic way firings have taken place ― and the fact that, as employees told HuffPost, many of the people who lost jobs were working on projects to reduce costs, to guard against fraud or to promote better health outcomes," wrote Cohen.
Trump claimed DOGE's goal was to reduce "waste, fraud, and abuse," but one worker told HuffPost that the cuts are not being made efficiently and will not help save taxpayer dollars.
“If you want to talk about saving money for taxpayers, we were the ones that were ensuring that it actually was budget neutral for the federal government,” that worker said.
And the money they said they’ve “Saved” — is also bogus.
According to independent congressional reporter Jamie Dupree, "The DOGE team is finally posting examples of where they have cut spending. This one claims $8 billion in savings (bottom figure) — but if you look at the fine print upper right, it's a contract that's instead valued at $8 million."
The $8 million contract in question was to provide tech support for the Office of Diversity and Civil Rights.
DOGE has faced criticism for weeks now, as it purges or suspends thousands of government workers across a sweeping range of federal agencies and departments, and has gained access to sensitive taxpayer information through payments systems at the Treasury Department, all while utilizing an unvetted team of young software engineers with a history of working for enterprises run by Musk and some of his political allies.
The task force has yet to uncover any meaningful new example of fraud, as most of the contracts and programs they have moved to eliminate were passed lawfully through a public and transparent process, and simply happen to be programs Musk doesn't agree with.
So they were only off base by a factor of 1,000? Sure, that’s close enough.
x
I've read most of the analyses of the DOGE 2025 "receipts" site. This, from NPR, is the best I've read so far. Some of what they claim to have cut haven't been cut, other "cuts" will incur costs down the road.
NPR says DOGE has made $2B of cuts, not $55B.
www.npr.org/2025/02/19/n...
— emptywheel (@emptywheel.bsky.social) 2025-02-20T05:25:27.881Z
Well, I’ve already talked about how many of the people fired were actually in the process of investigating Musk — but this becomes even more clear when Rep. Casar lays it out point by point.
Five of the Inspector Generals who were fired by Trump at the start of his administration were literally in the process of investigating a Musk company. From Space X to Neuraink.
Oh, but the last thing you want to do is criticize what Musk is doing or you’ll have Stephen Miller blow a gasket on you.
White House aide Stephen Miller launched into a barrage of shouting aimed at CNN's Brianna Keilar Tuesday as she grilled him on cuts being made by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency and the sensitive information the billionaire's team might be accessing.
An animated Miller proclaimed, "You may assert there is no waste in the Pentagon. You may assert there is no waste in Treasury. You may assert there's no wasted in HHS."
Keilar tried to interrupt, "Stephen. Stephen, I don't think anyone — "
"Then why are you not celebrating these cuts?" Miller exploded, raising his voice to shouting level. "If you agree there is waste, if you agree there is abuse, if you agree there is corruption, why are you not celebrating the cuts, the reforms that are being instituted. Every day that no action is taken, the entire salaries of American workers that are taxed disappear forever!"
And he's not the only one. Meet Rep. Tim Burchett.
"What information do you actually have on what DOGE is doing with that data?" Brown asked. "What are your questions? What do you want to know? Certainly as a member of the oversight, you have some questions."
But Burchett replied by talking about how the "IRS is a nightmare."
Brown interrupted him, saying, "Look, I'm not saying there's no problems with government agencies or the IRS —"
"Hold on! You asked me a question," Burchett interrupted.
"But you're not answering it!" exclaimed a clearly frustrated Brown.
Burchett went on about the IRS, and the two argued over each other until Burchett said, "Where were they fussing the last 3 or 4 years? I mean, we've had these different groups have had access, hundreds of different people have access to this that that are nowhere in the scope of what needs to be. And, yet, no one raised one peep about it. Now Elon Musk gets ahold of it and he's going to make some changes that need to be made, and you all are pitching a fit!"
"It's the same old line, man. You attack the message carrier."
"To be clear, we are not pitching a fit," Brown said. "As you said, a lot of people think it's a good thing to weed out waste, but these are fair questions to be asking, congressman, about these unelected people going in and having access to private information from Americans. How can you not be asking those questions? Those are very fair questions."
The back and forth about the "bloated government" continued, with Burchett asking, "Well, then why are y'all not exposing it?" Have y'all even talked about, hey, Mozambique. We sent them $10 million for circumcisions? I mean, goodness gracious, ma'am."
It was condoms to help prevent the spread of AIDS, he can’t even get that shit right.
"OK, we've been covering at length where the money is going," Brown offered, before Burchett interrupted, "No you haven't! All y'all do is run down Elon Musk and Donald Trump, and you continuously do this, and that's why your ratings are in the tank!"
You mean they don’t deliberately lie to their audience?
Brown finally had enough.
"All right, we're going to leave it there," she said, cutting Burchett off.
Why exactly would they do this? What’s the point? What’s the goal? Is it merely performative? Just do a lot of stuff and claim that it’s “Good” and you should “appreciate” it?
Let’s also recall that Musk is hard core believer in the Deep State Conspiracy — that there are Evil members of the government who are out to destroy Donald Trump for some reason. They don’t know who these Deep Staters are — they don’t know where they are — but they believe they exist and they need to up rooted and yanked out like a spreading weed.
The goal here isn’t “efficiency” — it’s fealty.
By indiscriminately decimating the Federal workforce, Musk and Trump are instilling fear into their ranks. How would anyone dare to pull any “Deep State Schenanigans” when it’s clear they’ll be out the door in a heartbeat?
But it appears they’ve already gone too far, even members of the GOP are starting to complain.
States are starting to feel the impact of President Donald Trump's budget cuts and funding freezes, which has reportedly forced GOP members of Congress to beg Trump for money.
While Republicans have publicly professed their support of Trump and his slashing of government, behind the scenes, they're calling his Cabinet officials to ask for help, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.
Federal employees are losing jobs even outside the Washington, D.C., area, and the funding freeze means that government contracts are being broken.
So, U.S. senators are calling Cabinet secretaries and other Trump White House officials to ask for their money back.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) even went so far as to say that begging might be the new normal, the report said.
He suggested "lawmakers could lobby [Elon] Musk to save spending they’ve allocated for their states as he slashes and cancels contracts at agencies."
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) has been speaking directly to the departments trying to get her state's money. The Post reported that Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) are working with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to stop cuts to the NIH that hurt their states.
While Trump talked about eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency, Sen. Shelly Moore Capito (R-W.V.) wants the grants her state was given from EPA for green school buses, the report said.
The Post continued that Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) has been fighting tooth and nail since USAID was cut. The cuts left millions of dollars in food aid from Kansas farmers sitting in ports. The Food for Peace program buys crops from American farmers and sends them abroad to help end starvation. Those farmers may not get their money now.
The era of begging means those who are friends with Trump would have a leg up, while putting Democrats and blue states at a disadvantage, the report suggested.
But the Post recalled that the idea of canceling funding is part of what Trump campaigned on in 2024. Trump claimed he could use a tactic called "impoundment."
Republicans in Congress have been "laying the groundwork for challenging restrictions on that power in court and have aggressively flouted Congress’s power with early freezes on spending," the report said.
Giving money to his friends over his foes is why impoundment "is so dangerous," Matt Glassman, a former Capitol Hill staffer who worked for the Congressional Research Service, told the Post.
“It creates a sort of favor-factory atmosphere where you’ve got to beg the president for your funding," he added.
Even Pro-Trump Actor and Deep State Conspiracist Zachary Levi has come out to complain that some “Good People” have been losing their jobs in the government.
Zachary Levi, who had the lead role in the acclaimed superhero film "Shazam!" and was the voice of Flynn Rider in Disney's "Tangled," made the comments this week in an interview with Fox News' Jesse Watters, saying that Musk's Department of Government Efficiency initiative is "complicated" and causing a lot of uncertainty for people who don't deserve it.
“Like there are a lot of people that are very afraid right now because there are truly good working people that work for the government, that are getting lost in the cracks,” said Levi. “And we have got to do something about that.”
“Please — Elon and all of your team and whatever needs to happen — please don’t let everybody fall through the cracks as we are doing what is necessary, which is to get in there and to like cut a cancer out, man,” he continued. “You know, sometimes they go in for cancer surgeries, doctors, and you lose some good healthy tissue along in that. They don’t want to do that, but it’s a part of like extracting that darkness out of there. And right now that’s what’s happening. But there are good people, people that voted for Donald Trump who are losing their job. And we got to make sure that we don’t leave those folks behind.”
Levi faced immediate criticism for the insinuation that only Trump voters deserve to be protected from the purge, and later walked this back in a social media post, saying, “I wasn’t pleading exclusively for Trump voters to keep their jobs. I was making a case for all Americans being lost in the shuffle, which you would understand if you listened to my earlier responses. I’m not fighting just for conservatives or MAGA or any other group of people, other than Americans. All of them.”
Yeah, the issue isn’t saving the jobs of Trump supporters. Musk has made it very clear that he doesn’t care if the workers have high-performance ratings — he’ll fire them anyway.
This is what I had to say back to Levi:
Zachary your point is irrelevant. The goal of DOGE isn't to remove the "bad actors" in government. It's clear they aren't taking time to make that distinction. It's to disable and dismantle competent government in total.
It's not about "efficiency" it's about fealty. There is no actual "Deep State" - that is a delusional fallacy. But this indiscriminate firing of needed workers is intended to strike *fear* into the heart of Federal Employees.It's intended to force compliance, not competence
If they really wanted to stop "Waste, Fraud and Abuse" they would have bolstered the staff of the Inspector Generals, not fired them. They saved us $183 Billion - DOGE - at best - has only achieved a fraction of that at the cost of effectiveness and capability.
Decades ago, VP Gore implemented better efficiency with the "Reinventing Government" project. That effort used subject matter expertise to make incremental process improvements. It reduced the Fed workforce by 10% - through attrition - and helped balance the budget.
Are we the American people going to gain a dividend — a cash payout — from all this so-called “Savings?” Are we each going to get a check for $5000? Is it making eggs cheaper, is it making gas cheaper?
Well, supposedly Trump is claiming that he will provide 20% of DOGE savings to the public — but I seriously doubt the math is sound.
It would probably only produce a check worth several pennies.
MAGA-aligned investment manager James Fishback first promoted that idea of a "DOGE dividend," which he says came to him in a dream, and it gained traction online Tuesday after Elon Musk posted on his X platform that he would "check" with the president about the possibility, which Trump acknowledged the next day by saying he would consider giving 20 percent of those savings back to Americans.
"His policies upcoming, in the view of economists, are inflationary," said CNN host Jim Sciutto. "A tax cut is inflationary and tariffs are inflationary, so how does he square that circle?"
[...]
"You know, numerically, that wasn't true in the sense that, you know, the amounts that we're spending, you know, the amounts that Elon Musk is getting out of this DOGE, they are pennies compared to the federal budget," Ball added. "They're not enough to send thousands of dollars to every American, and what I think people are seeing now is that the idea that by tearing down this foreign aid structure or by taking away the money we were sending from Ukraine, the idea that that would make everybody's lives better doesn't seem to be happening, doesn't seem to be bearing fruit."
This is not about “Making the Government Better” — it’s literally about making the government non-functional.
That’s the goal.
However, with all this in mind, indications are that the lawsuit by 14 States against the authority of Musk and DOGE seems to be moving in the right direction.
Judge Chutkan did not grant a TRO (Temporary Restraining Order) blocking DOGE from impacting Federal Agencies and staffing, but she notes in her response that A) it appears that the DOJ lied to her about the Executive Orders which have authorized DOGE and B) that authorization seems to run counter to any power granted the agency by Congress or any confirmation by the Senate.
She didn’t grant the TRO because the States did not demonstrate that they have received irreparable harm, but she does seem likely to enact a preliminary injunction against DOGE in the near future. That would stop Musk and DOGE cold in their tracks.
Stay tuned.
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