This is DOGE already at work. They are taking letters out of words to make them more efficient.
— davidrlurie (@davidrlurie.bsky.social) January 14, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Fox News has a ‘scoop’ — “The DOGE Caucus is holding its second meeting on Wednesday”:
FIRST ON FOX: The Congressional Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Caucus is holding its second-ever meeting on Wednesday, where its leaders are expected to unveil a set of “principles” to guide the group in its mission to cut government waste.
They outlined eight goals, some practical while others more symbolic, in a bid to ensure the caucus is in sync with the DOGE advisory panel set up by President-elect Donald Trump.
“The federal government must serve the interests of taxpayers, and taxpayers are best served by a lean, efficient, transparent, and accountable bureaucracy,” the first principle read, according to a draft memo obtained by Fox News Digital.
The document also suggested both lofty and smaller-scale goals. “No amount of waste, fraud, abuse, duplication, or administrative bloat is too small or too large to fix.” DOGE Caucus leaders had previously put an emphasis on “low-hanging fruit” to start their mission with, like unused federal office space held by agencies with remote work policies…
Rep. Aaron Bean, R-Fla., who co-founded the caucus, told Fox News Digital, “We’ve articulated our vision in a transparent manner that is both concise and consumable for every American.”
Co-founder Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, said, “The mandate is clear: every dollar spent in Washington must deliver a direct benefit to the people it serves, while prioritizing transparency, accountability, and efficiency.”…
Any Congressional office that didn’t already have these threadbare phrases as shortkeys on their office laptops just… isn’t very efficient.
I'm beginning to think this congressman doesn't understand what a "conflict of interest" is
— Judd Legum (@juddlegum.bsky.social) January 14, 2025 at 6:29 PM
The NYTimes brings out the cheerleader pompoms, as Musk happily considers whether this might be his biggest grift yet!
Billionaires and Silicon Valley tech executives are preparing to take up unofficial positions in the U.S. government in the name of cost-cutting as part of President-elect Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency. nyti.ms/3C14l25
— The New York Times (@nytimes.com) January 12, 2025 at 12:18 PM
Working 80 hours a week *for free* to help the richest guy in the world fire a bunch of people making like $70k/yr is a more antisocial behavioral trait than most of what you would see in the average American prison.
— Nude Gingrich (@jarjarfan69.bsky.social) January 12, 2025 at 12:20 PM
"After some consideration by top officials, DOGE itself is now unlikely to incorporate as an organized outside entity or nonprofit. Instead, it is likely to exist as more of a brand for an interlinked group of aspirational leaders who are on joint group chats" So, like a fantasy football league
— Joe Wolf 🌈🐻📷 (@jwolf.bsky.social) January 12, 2025 at 9:33 AM
Best case scenario is that this turns out to be “the three idiots trying to run the VA from the Mar-a-lago dining room and who are mostly being ignored by people with actual power.”
— Clean Observer (@hammbear2024.bsky.social) January 12, 2025 at 9:18 AM
Hahahah yeah no shit…you MAGA morons were played by the billionaires….they don’t care about government spending, they don’t care about you and more importantly they don’t care about your egg and gas prices….all they care about is their moneyhttps://t.co/nZajB7zfTr pic.twitter.com/FBOZ89UHvR
— Wu Tang is for the Children (@WUTangKids) January 9, 2025
Elon Musk is lowering expectations for DOGE
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) January 10, 2025 at 10:50 AM
War for Ukraine Day 1,056: Strike Hard!
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
As Paul Krugman recently pointed out (again), the Federal Government is (in terms of spending), basically an insurance company with an army. Outside of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the Pentagon, apparently all the rest of government spending doesn’t add up to 2 trillion dollars. For example, people seem to think we spend a lot of money on foreign aid. In reality, we don’t spend hardly anything (in terms of percentage of the budget), and much of it is used to buy American arms, so really it’s just the government giving money to U.S. arms manufacturers
ETA: Frist!
Lapassionara
It’s going to exist as more of a brand. Not sure how a “brand” exists apart from a product, so when someone figures out what the product is, let me know.
As for the 80 hour weeks, let me know when they start accounting for their time on task.
Baud
This literally happened during Trump 1.0.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): I’m still fond of the old meme saying “Paul Krugman is tired of trying to reason with you people“, although K-Thug’s only comment on the meme was that he couldn’t see the resemblance between George Clooney (in the picture) and himself.
Baud
After what happened yesterday, I’d imagine DOGE’s first spending cuts will be to the SEC’s litigation staff.
Baud
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
In fairness, people tend to conflate annual spending with 10 year fiscal projections, which is the usual time horizon used in the federal budget process. Whenever you see dollars thrown about, you have to ask what time horizon they’re talking about.
Betty Cracker
Anyone who is impressed with a gazillionaire’s willingness to forgo a paycheck in a “public service” job is really too goddamn dumb to leave the house without their address pinned to their coat. And yet such people walk among us. I’ve even talked to a few.
Another under-examined aspect of the con: these indispensable tycoons can devote 80 hours a week to “volunteer work,” and yet the companies they ostensibly run don’t collapse in their absence. Why, it’s almost like they’re a bunch of useless rent seekers!
Barney
Sounds like a bunch of ideological commissars who will poke their noses into departments for which they have no experience, and try to get some people they don’t like fired in them, to get others to be worried and fall in line with the orders from Miller and other hardliners. They’ll do it for the sheer pleasure of ruining Those People’s lives, and for the kudos of being “tough”.
NotMax
Drastic cuts. “All robes for federal judges shall henceforth be worn no lower that one inch above the knee.”
//
sukabi
@Betty Cracker: They’re exceptionally good at wrecking their own companies, or those they acquire… that’s what Musk is trying to do to the government… strip it bare and pocket the rest.
Baud
This is hilarious.
I hope they tackle the problem of excessive paper clip use next. The American people are tired of the waste.
Shalimar
@Betty Cracker: Elon also devotes 80 hours a week to running Twitter, 80 hours a week to running Tesla, 80 hours a week to running SpaceX, 80 hours a week to running his new AI company, and 80 hours a week to being one of the world’s best Path of Exile 2 players. While also being on Twitter 24/7 trolling people. I think maybe the only one he actually does with his time is the last one.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
This is consistent with my view that most folks would rather serve the rich than eat the rich.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: I love that meme 🤣 ❤️
Shalimar
@Baud: That sounds more like a plan to buy federal property at fire sale prices than one to save money. This is not a video game. You don’t just mark a property as unnecessary and immediately have cash you can use to buy something else.
edit: Brookley Field (WWII air base) in Mobile, Alabama closed in 1969. Most of it went unused for decades. It is only now, 55 years later, that they are finally turning most it into an international airport.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Baud: Good point! My eyes tend to glaze over when talking big numbers, so I easily lose track of relative size of the numbers being thrown around, let alone what the time frame is.
Baud
@Shalimar:
A lot of federal office space now is leased, not owned. But you’re not necessarily wrong. As they learn the most of the federal government is relatively lean, they’re going to become more desperate to find something to show for their efforts, and that’ll force them to have even crazier ideas.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: I don’t think it’s a conscious decision to serve the rich or a delusional belief that they (the deluded) are gazillionaires themselves who are temporarily short of funds. IMO, they’re slow, dumb marks who’ve fallen for a con.
To be fair, it took an enormous amount of hype to sell greedy chucklefucks like Musk and Trump as champions of the common clay. I believe rebranding them to reflect reality is possible too — and that no one will be more useful in that endeavor than the conmen themselves.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Conscious or not, I think that’s where most people are. Not with us.
Is rebranding possible? I’m not going to say it’s not. But we’ve been at it for a while, and we don’t seem to be making headway IMHO. Most people didn’t even stay mad at Wall Street for very long after the economic collapse., except for a vocal minority. I’m not sure what would turn folks against Trump and Musk, especially given how much mileage they get punching down on marginalized people.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Maybe it’s hopeless. I really don’t know. But I don’t think it’s accurate to say people didn’t stay mad — I think there’s been an inchoate rage bubbling for a long time.
The problem is too many low-info voters and non-voters are dumb and easily distracted. They are directing their anger at the wrong targets or embracing apathy, with lots of help from right-wing propaganda sources.
Perhaps the right wing kleptocracy will become permanently entrenched and Americans will accept serfdom while the Musks and Trumps of the world extract ever larger shares of dwindling resources forever. I’m not making any predictions, but I think other possibilities exist.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I’m not making a prediction about how things will play out. My view is simply that most people have been and are currently in a different place than us with respect to the oligarchy. The future is yet unwritten.
Baud
Betty Cracker
@Baud: There we agree — I’m not convinced even as small and relatively homogeneous a cohort as the folks who read this liberal-ass blog are fully on the same page vis-à-vis the oligarchy. I do think the next four years could be clarifying in that regard.
Glory b
@Baud: Coincidentally, I have a relative who works there.
Baud
@Glory b:
DOGE or SEC?
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: I can imagine an alternative Atlas Shrugged, where John Galt and some of his plutocrat buddies hand off management their companies to subordinates and join the flashy government efficiency initiative they foisted on a very stupid President.
A year in, their companies are doing better than ever thought possible despite the bear market caused by a paralysed federal government. But the President’s approval rating is at a record low 11% and the Senate is about to begin his impeachment trial.
The novel ends with the President slamming his his head on the Resolute desk and muttering, “Who the fu*k is John Galt?”
Shalimar
@Baud: Does anyone really “work” at DOGE yet? Will it really be work if it is strictly volunteer for a company that doesn’t even incorporate?
Baud
Baud
@Shalimar:
Who knows? It’s not like the public has a right to know what’s going on with its government.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Geminid:
David_C
80 hour weeks? Who do they expect to be observing for that long? My 12-hour day features 3 1/2 hours of commuting time. Can they drive me back and forth? Will they count keystrokes on my telework days? What protections do we have that they wouldn’t disclose confide information to help their cronies? How much time will I need to take to teach them about FDA regulations and federal contracting? Most of us are busy enough.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … NoetbookCheck.net:
Practically, given the investment and construction lags, it might not be anything new, but maybe it is. Either way, it’s good to get this out before January 20 to remind people who made it possible.
More at the link.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Princess
If DOGE is going to be a completely volunteer efforts run by unpaid true believers who give 80 hours of their time every week, it’s going to have to be completely staffed by women because they’re the ones who have historically done that nonsense, cf. every major volunteer organization anywhere.
Professor Bigfoot
The shade of William of Ockham stands and applauds.
Betty
@Shalimar: That’s my question. Who is employing them and what is the basis of their authority?
Starfish (she/her)
@Baud: Is this in response to Musk going after Wikipedia, or is this why Musk went after Wikipedia? I haven’t really kept up with this story line to understand it.
Baud
In the media’s eyes, Dems break promises, Republicans adjust to reality.
Baud
@Starfish (she/her):
Maybe. Don’t know the specific motivation.
Starfish (she/her)
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: That book would be awfully short unless we stretch out the part about putting them onto ice floes or we follow them across the sea on the ice floes. Maybe they can meet a man with a homemade submarine. I hear that works out well.
Starfish (she/her)
@Princess: Does the 80 hours include the time involved in doing the cocaine that helps them stay awake, or do they have to do the cocaine on their own time? Also, are they exempt from government drug screening?
TBone
Random comment seen in the wild
Glory b
@Baud: SEC attorney lol.
By the way, have none of Trump’s “brilliant” people heard of collective bargaining agreements, civil service or the Merit Systems Protection Board?
They will be mired in litigation.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
So long as they serve the rich up on platters to those of us sitting at table with our knives and forks at the ready, waiting to eat them, I’m good with that. Gravy boats and some side dishes would be welcome too. :D
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: Your alternative version sounds a lot more interesting than Rand’s interminable master race bodice ripper!
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Another ending that is far superior to the stultifying rubbish penned by welfare queen Rand.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
The questions being:
1) Why were the Republicans so far from reality to begin with, and
2) how come the media didn’t notice and make a big deal of this?
I’m sure the answers will be <crickets>
Geminid
Six weeks ago, an Istanbul International Relations professor was wondering why a grad student hadn’t been attending his seminars lately.
The student finally returned to Turkiye today. He’s Syria’s new Foreign Minister, Assad Hassan al-Shibani, who announced the visit yesterday:
Assad Hassan al-Shibani was born in 1987, in Northeast Syria. He studied at Damascus University and earned a BA in English Language and Literature in 2007. So don’t let anyone tell you can’t get a good job with an English degree!
When the Syrian civil war broke out, Al-Shibani joined the opposition. He ended up in the northwestern city of Idlib, where rebels carved out a ministate of 4 million Syrians under Turkish protection.
That’s where al-Shibani and his current boss, interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, learned lessons in practical civil administration while at the same time, the rebel forces fended off attacks from Assad’s forces and his Russian, Iranian and Hezbollah allies.
At some point, al-Shibani decided to pursue a PhD in International Relations, because everybody knows you can’t get good job with an English degree.
Starfish (she/her)
@Betty Cracker: You are amazing, and we appreciate you so much. You made this day where the low-battery alarm on the home security system was going off at 3:00 a.m. so much better.
EarthWindFire
Hilarious is right. They’re working with a “successful” real estate developer who has no hesitation about getting rich off federal money. You’d think they’d propose making the buildings hotels or something more revenue generating.
Kay
Didn’t the NYTimes employees just assure us that there was some real news coming on the Trump Administration? The stuff they didn’t cover prior to the election when they were working on electing him? When does that start? All I’ve seen are fawning pieces on the billionaires he’s stacked his administration with.
Every time I read for profit media now I think “well, this is the less important stuff they’re not saving for the book they’ll release 3 years after it happened”
The NYTimes will release the bombshells on DOGE only after they’ve finished campaigning for JD Vance in 2028.
NotMax
@EarthWindFire
“There’s always money in the banana stand.”
:)
Baud
@Geminid:
I tried that excuse for cutting class. It didn’t work.
Dave
@David_C: Musk fetishizes long hours for the sake of long hours. Ignoring that it’s not the same when you are the boss and paying to level your video game characters for you.
Even then he fundamentally misses that a stable bureaucracy isn’t and shouldn’t be run like a start up, people simply can’t maintain that level of investment with making sure form 227b is filled out correctly, even if you take him as a well intentioned schmuck and not a bag of malignant neuroses sharing a skin suit with a con artist.
TBone
@Kay: screenshot at link
https://bsky.app/profile/schooley.bsky.social/post/3lfqrkdg5cc27
I mean, he did dress for the job he wants…
EarthWindFire
@NotMax: LOL. I miss that show so much. Too bad so many Americans would see it as an instruction manual instead of satire.
Edited to add that the black woman who ran to be Commander in Chief would never have misspelled military in a million years. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was right about defining deviancy down. He just got the people wrong.
TBone
@Dave: I just caught up on that story
It has a happy ending/s
Starfish (she/her)
@TBone: Has Trump appointed Neil Gaiman to a government position already?
TBone
@Starfish (she/her): Dept. of I Didn’t Even Know Who That Fucking Guy Was and Learned About Him Against My Will.
lowtechcyclist
I’m looking forward to the prospect of these executives stationing themselves inside of government agencies. They’ll see the usual random conversations between workers, but mostly they’ll see people at desks, doing their jobs. It’ll be boring as shit.
And if they try to liven things up for themselves by asking Federal workers questions that reveal the depths of the executives’ ignorance about the agencies they’re supposedly going to find the ‘waste, fraud, and abuse’ in, after ten or fifteen minutes, the worker will get ticked off and say, “look, I’ve got work to do, this data I’m working on gets released on a fixed schedule,” the exec will ask, “well, who sets the schedule?” and the worker will reply, “it’s legally mandated, you know, laws, passed by Congress. We didn’t just make this shit up, Congress passes laws requiring work to be done, and someone needs to do it, and that’s us. Now shaddup and let me get this shit done.”
Hopefully at some point that part will sink into the execs’ dim brains, that this “unelected bureaucracy” is doing the work that the elected members of Congress required the Executive Branch to do. If “the bureaucracy” is doing things they don’t like, then maybe they need to look at the laws governing that particular part of the bureaucracy.
If the bureaucrats are clearly exceeding their legally mandated authority, then that’s on the bureaucrats – but good luck in finding instances of that. Otherwise, their beef is with the laws that previous Congresses have passed, in which case they’re free to propose legislation amending or repealing those laws.
Someone like Russ Vought or his minions at OMB would have to write the legislation, since most Republicans in Congress see their job as making a lot of noise to get on TV, and don’t give a damn about learning about legislation.
TBone
@lowtechcyclist: they have A.L.E.C. for that gruntwork.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/04/03/alec-american-legislative-exchange-council-model-bills-republican-conservative-devos-gingrich/3162357002/
catclub
It is also now part of the game that every time they tell you an amount ( like in a tax bill, or spending bill) it is actually calculated over ten years.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
They’re probably the political appointees.
BlueGuitarist
@lowtechcyclist:
“A lot of people don’t have much food on their table
But they got a lot of forks and knives
And they gotta cut somethin’”
Bob Dylan, Talkin’ New York, from his first album.
TBone
@TBone: 2024 update
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/alec-51st-annual-meeting
Baud
Via ABL on Blue sky
Baud
NotMax
@Bauid
Who’da thunk it?
//
Another Scott
@Baud: Especially when you don’t have enough staff in the store to help customers.
Duh.
But it is about time for them to start Teh Great Shoplifting Panic Machine up again, isn’t it??
Maybe they can have all the 8 year old Junior ICE Agents they plan to “hire” (actually ‘work-study’ to pay for their public education costs) to patrol Walgreens stores also help out with unlocking the display cases. Multitasking efficiency!!1
:-/
Best wishes,
Scott.
Starfish (she/her)
@Another Scott: It’s like when you understaff the store to put more money in the CEOs paycheck, people will quit going to your store. The ONLY things that stores can offer over online retailers are 1) instant gratification and 2) helpful staff. But they are trying to cut 2 anyway.
NotMax
Just looked up the weather forecast for D.C. on Monday.
High of 20° F.
Baud
@NotMax:
No storm though.
Kay
@TBone:
OMG. Like a parody.
Manly-men authoritarians. The New York Times swoons.
Sexual assault has now been retroactively legalized – if you want the Top Job in the US, lock a woman in your hotel room and rape her!
Of course he’s a Fox News hire. That place is a fucking sewer of a workplace – no wonder Right wing women are so bitter and mean spirited – they’re in a culture that supports beating up women.
glory b
@Another Scott: I’ve gone to the drug store during my lunch hour to pick up a couple things. Sadly, most of the things under lock and key are laundry detergents, but I digress.
I don’t have enough time to ring the signal and wait for a cashier to come to open the case, so I leave and get it on the way home instead.
Repeat a million times.
“If Books Could Kill” podcast has a good episode on this, “The ‘Organized Retail Crime’ Panic.”
“In a shocking twist, it turns out that their story s mostly made up.”
Do you have on your shocked face?
Starfish (she/her)
@NotMax: I hope Trump forgets his coat, gives a lengthy speech, and succumbs to pneumonia a week later. I hear all the cool presidents do that.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … (Warning!) TheHill.com:
The monsters aren’t going to win everywhere on everything. Even in Texas. We can make a positive difference to the future by being thoughtful and working with non-insane GQPers when appropriate.
(via BlueVirginia.US)
Best wishes,
Scott.
Another Scott
@glory b: I do!
:-)
Best wishes,
Scott.
TBone
@Kay: remember
“Your body, MY choice.”
It’s why I’m ready to throw hands IRL if any of these chucklefucks think they’re going to harass any females in my vicinity. I’m so old I’m finally invisible to them, so that works to my advantage. Element of surprise!
LAC
This entire DOGEY bull crap enterprise reminds me of this great line from Malcolm Tucker of “The Thick of It”, a hilarious send up of the British government machinations (the precurser to VEEP).
“Jesus, it’s like the break-up of the Beatles, right? During the fall of the Roman Empire, while fucking Jordan‘s getting divorced from that bloke. All happening at the same time in a tiny fucking terraced house, yeah?”
I foresee great big ice cream headaches when this crap is fully up.
Betty Cracker
@Starfish (she/her): Aww, that’s nice of you to say. ;-)
TBone
@Starfish (she/her): I share your hope!
RevRick
@Baud:
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
The appeal of DOGE, such as it is, for many in the general public is that it deals with a bloodless abstraction: the number $5.3 trillion, or $2trillion, or whatever the number de jour is. It’s like the GOP’s perpetual campaign against fraud, waste, and abuse. They’re designed to evoke horror and to play upon the general public’s general ignorance.
Krugman broadly describes the federal government as an insurance company with an army. That gives short shrift to the rest of the government. I prefer to explain it this way: every dollar the government spends is somebody’s income.
Social Security? A retiree’s income.
Medicare/Medicaid/ ACA/VA? A doctor’s, hospital’s, nursing home’s and their staff’s income.
Food Stamps? A grocery store’s income.
The FAA? An air traffic controller’s income.
Payments on the debt? A bond holder’s income.
And what do these people do with this income?
They spend it.
Cutting federal spending means cutting the incomes of millions of Americans which means cutting the incomes of millions of other people who make furniture or sell cars or wait on tables.
Josie
@Another Scott: This was kind of a big deal for Texas. It showed that the great triumvirate of Abbott, Paxton, and Patrick do not have the clout they thought. The traditional Republicans, with the help of Democrats, defeated the far right MAGA loons for a change.
JaneE
I thought Trump wanted to end remote workers, or was that just his corporate donors? Typical DOGE move – sell the federally owned office space, require all workers to be in the office, then rent/lease office space from some connected or related real estate mogul.
Now if he could get some volunteer workers to actually do some of the work the agencies do, that would be good. DOGE move, get volunteers to interfere and prevent the paid workers from doing their jobs then criticize them and fire them for not doing their jobs.
Xavier
As a retired Federal employee, I can only imagine the useless hoops this is going to make everyone jump through. Retirement is good.
mvr
Their principles push one of my buttons. It can be very wasteful and inefficient to try to root out the last n% of waste in any large system. The effort to find it and the side effects of getting rid of it can expend more time, energy and money that are gained by eliminating whatever existing waste they try to eliminate. No system operates outside of a friction filled environment and that friction just means that there will be energy and money expended that does no real good. But worrying about that is the wrong way to assess things. You should just look at the system as a whole and aim for the most good done for the overall resource expenditure.
Citizen Alan
@Baud: this is so true. I can recall probably half a dozen times when I put off buying a bottle of cough syrup because I would have needed to get a store worker to unlock the case and then I would have needed to stand in line at checkout because you can’t do self check out with it. Too much hassle. I’d rather just suffer through a sore throat.
Roberto el oso
I don’t wish to eat the rich but I’m perfectly happy to assist in carving them up into bite-size portions.
When these insufferable pricks start showing up at government agencies will they be bringing platoons of bodyguards? Because they might need them.
Matt
The single best thing anyone who’s on-board with volunteering for DOGE could do to help the country is simple: they could kill themselves. Extra credit if they take Elmo with them.
rikyrah
@Geminid:
That is a great story🤗👏🏾