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Update on the continuing dramatic saga of DOGE: apparently the Department of Education no longer exists.
Now this could be a sensationalist media headline, but if not I am shocked that the DOGE team and Trump's cadre et al are going this hard, this fast. They must basically be saying they're going to get a ton of legal challenges anyway, so they might as well do as much as possible and keep up the momentum, destroying everything before the dust clears. It's a bold strategy, and frankly as a spectator it's incredibly exciting, I must admit!
Curious for people's thoughts on the Dept of Education getting shut down? Personally I think it's a good thing - our education system has had terrible outcomes with no accountability for far too long.
In other related news, FEMA send $59 Million dollars to house immigrants in luxury hotels in NYC last week, and Social Security has been sending money to dozens of people over 150 years old, among other issues like the system for SSNs not being re-duplicated.
So many people have been saying "we can never fix the deficit because Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid are its primary drivers and can't be touched".
And yet, every time we look under the hood of a government program we see waste and fraud. Why should those programs be any different?
Another thing that I've thought of but which nobody has mentioned: the tendency of multiple of illegal immigrants to work under the same social security number. Are people who fraudulently lent out their identity now becoming the recipients of Social Security because of this?
If what Musk says is true, than it might be very easy to realize tens or hundreds of billions in savings simply by "fixing the glitch" and removing fraudulent payments.
I agree! And yes I know @2rafa has been beating that drum. I also think we should easily be able to save tens of billions by addressing the waste in these programs, or making things more efficient.
I've lately become attuned to a harmful pattern of thinking which I might call the "just so fallacy".
Anytime someone talks about ways in which things can be improved, there are others who chime in with the equivalent of "No, that's impossible. You see, all problems are intractable. We're doing the best we can. The exact way things are right now is the best they can possibly be, or at best, it will be extremely complicated and time-consuming to change them". And then they come up with elaborate rationalizations to explain why the current system is exactly the way it is.
And yet China can build an entire metro systems in less time than it takes New York City to add 1 station.
I think that the existence of Musk is proof that things can change a lot more than anyone anticipates. A huge percentage of what the government does is waste. What if we just stopped doing that?
As a society, we are not guaranteed to decline and fall. We can fix it.
That isn’t even remotely my argument. The change I want is far more radical than anything imagined by Trump/Musk.
But the public demand their bennies, and if you want to significantly cut spending you have to cut them. It’s that simple. Nothing DOGE has uncovered even somewhat challenges that thesis.
What is the change you want?
I agree with this, and frankly it seems like most people in my generation (early 30s) tacitly accept we are never going to get social security because of this issue.
Repeal birthright citizenship (through congress, or at least fight for it there, given its central importance to the entire future of the country), repeal CRA (certain limited provisions of which can be replaced by much more limited, targeted laws), begin preparations to hand Taiwan to China after domestic chip production scales up and use intimidation and force to relocate as much of what remains to the US, end all federal student loans and tuition support, force Ukraine into the most realistic peace deal (threaten to unilaterally revoke sanctions on Russia if they drag their heels), begin realistic preparations to deport ALL 13+ million illegal migrants in the US (investing tens of billions in holding facilities, hire 300+ thousand temporary ICE staff, checkpoints in every city, raid every blue collar contracting business in any major city, mandatory nationwide E-verify enhanced with biometric security to get around existing loopholes as part of a national ID program - as discussed above the feds probably already have your biometrics), abolish all postal voting (Americans abroad can vote at embassies), end the carried interest loophole, tax childlessness heavily, jack up interest rates to unfathomable levels to force an asset price crash, abolish NASA (fold some defense programs into DOD, Elon can explore space on his own dime or for commercial interests), breakup Google and Amazon, allow and encourage hospitals to refuse to treat homeless drug addicts, hand out free lethal dose fentanyl in certain urban centers and ban narcan for first responders in overdose hotspots, execute roughly 20-40x the number of criminals per year the US does now, mandate all office-based male federal government employees and their peers at all institutions that receive federal funding wear a suit, tie and black oxford shoes to work every day, NO exceptions, hand Ozempic out for free to every fat American at taxpayer expense, destroy much of the HFCS industry, grant unlimited 5 year work visas with pathway to citizenship to citizens of all western european nations (call it the ‘ellis island program’) if they have ‘distant family’ matches ithw Americans in popular DNA databases, adopt a foreign policy built around getting European countries to change immigration policy with the stick if necessary, implement a mandatory ‘national college admissions test’ that must be the sole criterion for admission at any federally funded college, but also reserve 5% of places at elite colleges for the highest performing URM, and fire loud, midwit racists from DOGE and wider government since that kind of thing is just vulgar and racial hatred is cruel and wrong.
No exceptions? What if the gentleman is missing both legs?
Irrelevant joke, but putting "NO exceptions" quite so emphatically just begged for some smart-aleck to find a loophole, and I'm that guy. Besides it adds a bit of levity to my more substantial reply which is to observe that "cruel and wrong", in my book, describes a great deal - though not all! - of your proposed suggestions; and also that trying to implement most of them, particularly the '300,000 temporary ICE agents' thing, would result in an actual literal civil war.
Didn't say where he has to wear them.
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