Archives for 2024

I had to go to the gym and run errands this morning, so haven’t even finished reading comments on my earlier post.  Still, I want to make two points.

First, I can always tell folks who haven’t worked for a Congressperson or attended a MoC’s town hall because they insist that a given example of government inefficiency shouldn’t count, because it’s state or local.  A lot of people, including those motivated enough to attend a town hall, consider “government” as an amorphous mass.  I cannot count the number of times I’ve given, or heard given, an explanation of why the DMV or some other local/state agency has nothing to do with the US Government.

Second, government is inefficient and we should be loud and proud about our efforts to make it better.  I hate to keep harping on my Obamacare, but my renewal, as usual, was handled poorly by the State of NY.  First, they sent me a notice saying I needed to renew, but when I went to the website, they said I had been auto-renewed in the same plan that hasn’t paid me a fucking penny yet will now cost me $1,300 a month.  Then, a few weeks later, I get an email saying I need to renew.  In between, my insurance carrier notified me that they would be withdrawing over $2,000 in January because that’s what they think my monthly auto-pay is for 2025.  I went on the website and renewed (for the same policy that was supposedly auto-renewed) and now we’ll see if the State of NY and the insurance company will figure things out.

I guess my gratitude about Obamacare is, shall we say, tempered by that experience.  I’m a well-informed politics knower working part-time with time on my hands to mess with this bullshit.  I also have plenty of money. Others with fewer resources and less time might just get a little more heated about it.

Finally, my brother sent me a story from Fox News (not linking, I’m sure you’re disappointed to hear).  Headline and subhead:

Watch Trump reverse Biden’s dumpster-fire economy, and then watch Dems try to take credit for the success

When Trump brings the economy back from the brink, Biden and his Democrat allies will deserve no credit

I mention this because there are two things that need to be distinguished:  people’s genuine, personal experience of government inefficiency and the economy, and their secondhand “knowledge” of these things via Fox propaganda.  Our goal is to push back on the latter without invalidating the lived experience of the former.  It’s a tough needle to thread.

A Few Notes on Efficiency and Getting CreditPost + Comments (80)

Krugman is out with his first piece since he quit the Times, and it’s about DOGE.  It’s free so you can read it all, but he runs through all the facts that Elon and Vivek don’t know / don’t care about, and he finishes with this:

Now, in the end none of this may matter. The real purpose of DOGE is, arguably, to give Elon Musk an opportunity to strut around, feeling important. And while it’s a clown show, these clowns — unlike some of the other people Trump may put in office — won’t be in a position to inflict major damage on national security, public health and more.

But it is a clown show, and everyone should treat it as such.

This, to me, is the important point. DOGE is not a department.  It’s a glorified commission and the only way it will gain traction is if Congress starts listening to these two dipshits.

Krugman makes the point that the US government is essentially an insurance company with a big army.  Any meaningful cuts will have to be to public insurance programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, or we need to cut the defense budget.  Republicans will never do the latter, and they’ve been chomping at the bit forever to cut social programs, no matter the almost-certain political cost for doing so.

That’s why it’s dumb for Bernie and Ro Khanna to tweet about Musk having a point, even if their strategy is to agree on cutting defense spending then show a shocked face when it doesn’t happen.  But even dumber is for Democrats to join the DOGE caucus in the House and Senate, which Jared Moskowitz has already done.   A group supporting Social Security has already started putting up billboards in Moskowitz’ district.  I hope that discourages any more of this nonsense.

Anyway, back to the whole DOGE thing, Josh Marshall thinks that Democrats need to be on board with more government efficiency, but DOGE ain’t it:

This post isn’t meant to flesh out all those policy questions [about efficiency]. I bring it up because there are a bunch of ways government more broadly could and really needs to work better. If you’re the party of government, you actually have the biggest interest in getting it to work well. Because in a lot of ways that’s your product.

But the point is that you can’t cede the efficiency and reform brand to people whose real aim in cutting people’s Medicaid and Social Security. Because that’s pretty much where we are at the end of 2024. You’ve got a couple guys who are mostly ignoramuses about what government does, what it’s supposed to do, who relies on it and more and they’re just coming in with what’s mostly the libertarian bullshit they heard from their pals in Silicon Valley. It’s not even like handing the keys over to the Heritage Foundation. Those guys have been thinking about how to do this for decades.

There’s no big takeaway here other than the fact that there are things government should be organized to do better, quicker and more efficiently. (My big thing is standing up transportation infrastructure. But there are other examples.) Every right-minded person should be at war with the DOGE clown show while keeping that fact in mind, front and center.

I think Musk has reached his public expiration date and he’s been showing his ass an awful lot lately.  Walz was right to brand him as a dipshit.  Cozying up to him is stupid for a lot of reasons, including the fact that people will tire of him pretty quickly.

The D in DOGE is for DipshitPost + Comments (248)