Yves here. Not surprisingly, the crowd-pleasing bits of DOGE agency-wrecking, like the claim that the USAID, particularly its regime change operating, were being shuttered, proved to be abjectly false. As Brian Berletic pointed out, Secretary of State reassured both the House and Senate early on that those operations would be moved into the Department of State. Further corroboration came via the restoration of nearly all National Endowment for Democracy funding.
But the whackage that harms the lives of ordinary Americans continues apace, and with unseemly enthusiasm. Cruelty towards the poors and destruction of the pillars of American leadership in the sciences and academia is the order of the day. This is Pol Pottery without the killing fields.
By Brett Wilkins, staff writer at Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams
Critics of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency cautioned Friday against undue elation or complacency over Elon Musk stepping down as de facto DOGE chief, warning that officials at the contentious agency are pressing ahead with U.S. President Donald Trump’s mission of eviscerating key agencies and the ability of the federal government to properly function.
With Musk’s official departure from DOGE this week—returning to the private sector to run his beleaguered business empire—most of the agency’s leadership and rank-and-file staff remain in place. As the Revolving Door Project (RDP) noted Friday, key DOGE officials “maintain extensive ties to Musk’s corporate empire, with many of them having come to DOGE directly from one of Musk’s companies.”
According to RDP research, “at least 46 former or current DOGE members have substantial and direct ties to Elon Musk.”
“DOGE isn’t going anywhere, according to the Trump administration’s own officials,” RDP said. The watchdog group warned specifically about Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought, who they said “seems to be the new boss in town.”
The visions of the two men, said RDP, “have been aligned from the start. Musk endorsed Vought’s view of the unconstitutionality of the Impoundment Control Act and said that DOGE would work ‘closely with [OMB].'”
Vought co-authored the policy portion of Project 2025, a far-right blueprint for gutting the government and expanding executive power.
“There is no daylight between Elon Musk and Russ Vought on the aim of greenlighting corporate abuse, as anyone can see from their joint destruction of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” RDP executive director Jeff Hauser said Friday. “DOGE’s Musk-tied staffers have already burrowed into the government, and having a new boss who has coordinated extensively with Musk isn’t likely to change their actual actions much at all.”
“Musk’s departure obscures but does not actually change the continuity of DOGE’s staff and mission to destroy everything that protects the public from the depredations of the most rapacious oligarchs,” Hauser added.
Another watchdog, Accountable.US, noted Friday that Vought “has a nearly 20-year record working on Republican efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare—including overseeing numerous Trump budget proposals.”
“It’s proof that DOGE’s extreme agenda, which is causing ordinary families to fall behind, is full steam ahead as Trump and his allies in Congress push forward deep cuts to Americans’ essential benefits,” the group continued. “Last week, congressional Republicans advanced the largest cuts to Medicaid and [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] in history, which would result in 14 million Americans losing health coverage, 3 million households without food assistance, and an increased burden for millions with higher education and energy costs. All while adding over $4 trillion to the deficit.”
“Americans deserve real government reforms to cut red tape, eliminate waste, and ensure taxpayers are able to access the services they pay for,” Accountable.US added. “That was never DOGE’s goal. Instead Trump and Musk tried to gutMedicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, to line their own pockets and those of their billionaire friends with tax cuts, and the administration is only just getting started.”
As one staffer at the DOGE-beset National Institutes of Health told Politico, “DOGE is still hungry. We’ve still got to feed the fucking dog.”
Trump and Musk are on an unconstitutional rampage, aiming for virtually every corner of the federal government. These two right-wing billionaires are targeting nurses, scientists, teachers, daycare providers, judges, veterans, air traffic controllers, and nuclear safety inspectors. No one is safe. The food stamps program, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are next.
It’s an unprecedented disaster and a five-alarm fire, but there will be a reckoning. The people did not vote for this. The American people do not want this dystopian hellscape that hides behind claims of “efficiency.” Still, in reality, it is all a giveaway to corporate interests and the libertarian dreams of far-right oligarchs like Musk.
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>“It’s proof that DOGE’s extreme agenda, which is causing ordinary families to fall behind, is full steam ahead as Trump and his allies in Congress push forward deep cuts to Americans’ essential benefits,” the group continued. “Last week, congressional Republicans advanced the largest cuts to Medicaid and [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] in history, which would result in 14 million Americans losing health coverage, 3 million households without food assistance, and an increased burden for millions with higher education and energy costs. All while adding over $4 trillion to the deficit.”
This DOGE thing is total B*****IT until I see them walk through the front doors of the Pentagon. They might find a dollar or two of waste and fraud there.
The first stop for DOGE would have been the pentagon had the mandate been efficiency. To produce DOGE would have had to be better run than the 50 odd years of reforms to the pentagon.
MIC rice bowls are sacred despite the fact they produce exorbitantly costly and shoddy materiel not suited for war against the rising powers or the Houthi.
It appears the mandate is defund the New Deal.
But … but…but… the stock market may go down.
All of this is so that they can pour money into the border patrol and homeland security, and Trump can threaten China and Iran. That golden dome bullshit will be extremely expensive. Along with the hunt for illegals that he is pushing. Looks like all the years of Fox News fear mongering has come to a head. The democrats offer ZERO hope that everyone won’t be stripped of their Medicaid, Medicare and social security. They are the garbage that caused all this destruction. Whether democrats like Obama and his ilk
Putting a dead man in office so that the identity politics and worthless wallstreet grift could continue or
Handing our healthcare to insurance companies like United health or selling all our homes to Airbnb, we
Are not going to get them to lift a finger. Now the China tariff game has taken off. We are in deep trouble..
‘As Brian Berletic pointed out, Secretary of State Rubio reassured both the House and Senate early on that (USAID) operations would be moved into the Department of State.’
Quite true that. It is my understanding, however, that being folded into the US State Department also means that what they do will be under much more scrutiny and a bit more accountable than having the old USAID still in place at arms length – which was cover for a lot of dodgy stuff. And this also means that any foreign government will be even more wary about accepting any programs from the US State Department.
Pol Pottery with the killing fields abroad.
The comment is only with respect to DOGE, unless you mean killing fields via cutting humanitarian programs abroad (such as for food and medical assistance). I do recall (forgive me for not looking it up) that Musk claimed no one died due to DOGE and someone quickly found an example due to foreign aid cuts.
It’s passive aggressive Pol Pottery.
Turbo charging MAHA soft eugenics through a cruelly classist institutional rug pull.
Biden got away with ending all the Pandemic supports and Trump doesn’t have the reelection worry the collective Biden botched.
Vultures always start circling when they sense collapse. DOGE is creating rent-seeking private company opportunities by eliminating governmental services. However, these private company products often depend on NOT paying for the same governmental services. Think of Commercial Weather Products that all depend on NOAA and NWS numerical models and data, whose future is being DOGE-destroyed.
Of course, when the vultures eat the seed corn….
How long until we see actual slums in the US? 10, 15 years?
Trump may succeed in his attempt to reduce illegal immigration but not because of efficient border control but because there won’t be a reason to move from a slum in your country to a slum in the US. Maybe I am being overdramatic.
Huh? You must not get out. I saw them in Birmingham, Alabama and I hardly go anywhere. But we instead see homeless encampments, that’s more the US approximation.
Musk was allegedly “gone” a LONG time ago…. those of us with professional or personal insights saw it. My 2nd PhD student was adept at spotting “tells” and is now an accomplished psychologist. I was the “math/modelling” supervisor but learnt a lot from the clinical cosupervisor.
Yep. On days I have to go early (like 8am) into Nottingham city centre to change buses to get to where I need to, a regular thing is seeing a homeless person in doorway of major store getting “moved on” by the police.
To be fair, the most empathetic experience I ever experienced was ALSO by the Nottinghamshire Constabulary. A very much drunk/drugged up family member was in custody having claimed he killed someone. This was NOT obviously a lie based on evidence (though turned out to be). The Chief Constable was woken up at midnight to deal with this. The entire force was activated but they could not interview the suspect without a responsible adult in addition to lawyer cause he was too drunk and off his head. I was that adult, being a close family member. I saw nothing but compassion and a desire to do things properly by the police. OK I was annoyed to be in a police station from midnight til 5am but it gave me some hope for the future. Plus I learnt anecdotes of just how horrid so much of our society is, with a Detective Constable at risk of not getting promotion because of a back problem brought on by a suspect who thought it hilarious to kick her there.
Nottingham was in the 1980s/1990s called “Shottingham” (largely due to a Mafia family). Eventually the family got banged up after a particularly gruesome double murder that is all over YouTube should you wish to peruse the true crime stuff (but are rumoured to still run certain things even from behind bars). They even had to run the trial in neighbouring West Midlands due to rumours of witness intimidation and police compromised. An internet wag said “So can we upgrade Shottingham merely to Stabbingham?” I LOLLed even though this is distressingly appropriate.
Rival Cultures explained. Civilization and Its Discontents is a book by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. It was written in 1929 and first published in German in 1930 as Das Unbehagen in der Kultur. Exploring what Freud saw as a clash between the desire for individuality and the expectations of society, the book is considered one of Freud’s most important and widely read works, and was described in 1989 by historian Peter Gay as one of the most influential and studied books in the field of modern psychology.
So Freud begins the fifth section of this work, which explores the reasons why love cannot be the answer, and concludes that there exists a genuine and irreducible aggressive drive within all human beings. And while the love instinct (eros) can be commandeered by society to bind its members together, the aggressive instinct runs counter to this tendency and must either be repressed or be directed against a rival culture.
Thus – Monsters of the ID are released.
I wonder if Musk is entirely “gone” or merely keeping an ongoing involvement quiet. Of course, he picked his DOGEbags with care and briefed them well, so they can do the Musk thing with or without his direct oversight.
By the way, here is an interesting little video called ” Elon Musk appears high at recent press conference, fueling drug use allegations “. Here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/popculturechat/comments/1l0lizv/elon_musk_appears_high_at_recent_press_conference/
It would be good if the boycott of Tesla became so effective as to become a successful extermicott, leading to his loss of Xitter and then some other businesses. Coupled with a revulsion-fueled boycott here and there of Starlink. Plus a boycott of every advertiser who is detected as advertising on Xitter and Starlink.
Wouldn’t it be sad if such an outcome made Musk so unhappy that he killed himself with drugs in pursuit of some feelgood relief?