Last Wednesday Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette testifed at a Congressional hearing. He happens to be blind. His job is to reduce waste and fraud in government. You would think that he would get right along with Musk and DOGE. Well, you thought wrong.
Hedtler-Gaudette pointed out in his opening statement that the federal government already had a team of Inspectors General focused on rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in executive branch agencies. Trump fired 17 of them days into his second term.
"In fiscal year 2023 alone, Inspectors General identified over $93 billion worth of potential savings to taxpayers. It seems to me that if an administration were serious about wanting to root out waste, fraud, and abuse, they would support and resource Inspectors General and whistleblowers. They would not demonize them and they would certainly not fire them en masse in an unlawful midnight purge," Dylan testified.
He testified in front of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Delivering Government Efficiency, chaired by Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Afterwards, Dylan said that he thought that the subcommittee members were more interested in their own statements and generating video clips that they could use on social media rather than actually doing some investigating that would lead to positive results. Exactly what all of us have been saying about the chuckleheads running the show these days.
Most of the time in the hearing was used by Democrats attacking Musk and DOGE, and the Republicans in defending Musk and Trump.
Marjorie put in her own two cents, "In this subcommittee, we will fight the war on waste shoulder-to-shoulder with President Trump, Elon Musk and the DOGE team."
Hedtler-Gaudette is the Director of government affairs at Project On Government Oversight, or POGO. No relation to the cartoon strip. POGO is a nonpartisan watchdog that investigates government waste, corruption, abuses of power and tries to protect whistleblowers.
POGO Credit: Walt Kelly
Dylan has a sense of humor about his blindness. When Marjorie interrupted him saying that his time was up he apologized saying "I can't see the flashing light," while smiling.
You just got to like this guy.
Musk started with retweeting another X user's post that said, "blind director of watchdog group funded by George Soros testifies that he does not see widespread evidence of government waste," followed by 😂😂. Musk's post quickly got 21 million views and add-on comments.
"He couldn't see s***.. perfect excuse for being unable to perform your job." "The DEI blind guy can't see fraud. U can't make up this garbage." One poster even suggested hacking into Dylan's bank account.
Obviously, Dylan got a lot of hateful comments on his own X account. But he's taking it in stride.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Hedtler-Gaudette said about Musk, "He's a fundamentally small person. There is a power to what happens on the internet. As much as I like to dismiss it sometimes and laugh at it, it does have a real consequences sometimes."
Currently there are 3,688 comments on the Washington Post story. Many sound exactly like ones by Kos members about Musk. The AI generated summary is interesting.
If you remember, the Washington Post said it was putting in a both-sideism AI bot to generate the opposite of stories and editorials. The language in the real comments are laced with swear words, derision of Musk's manliness, Musk and Trump getting it on in a man-date, and more that Musk deserves.
Their bot also made determinations for selecting sample posts for being thoughtful, new to me, and clarifying.
New to me.
And clarifying.
Dylan's complete testimony is available as a PDF put out by POGO. They found the $435 hammer purchased by the Pentagon in the 1980s. POGO found improper payments in the Covid-era Paycheck Protection Program. A lot of Republicans were found to be on the take as I remember. There are tons of source links to back up Dylan's testimony. It's so concise that it must be his prepared statement, because it has no questions and answers section, and it's 10 pages long.
This isn't the first time Musk has gone off on a disabled person. He left a guy with muscular dystrophy hanging about whether he had a job or not.
Musk was made to realize his mistake with the backlash.
Here's Dylan's testimony to the House committee starting at 36 minutes in.
Let's just say that Musk is very much like Trump. Insensitive, unworthy, misogynistic, inhuman, puffed up like a blowfish and just as poisonous.
