In a post dripping with contempt and sarcasm, eminent and (of topics other than Donald Trump) astute defense lawyer-blogger Scott Greenfield writes, “It’s Trump’s White House now. But rather than fix what’s “broken” (nothing is broken), just say “screw it” and ask Elon for a list of the wayward youth doing his bidding. Who are they? Who knows? Who cares? Elon says they’re his people and Elon’s rich, so he can’t be wrong.” In a nice coincidence, another mainstream media hit job on Musk in the New York Times, a report aimed at discrediting Musk, DOGE, and of course Trump, we learn that the “federal deficit for 2024 was $1.8 trillion. The Government Accountability Office estimated in a report that the government made $236 billion in improper payments — three-quarters of which were overpayments — across 71 federal programs during the 2023 fiscal year.”
That astounding statistic is employed, 43 paragraphs into the article, to argue that DOGE concentrating on waste, fraud and abuse is silly, because $236 billion is just a drop in the bucket. (“A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money,” said legendary GOP Senator Everett Dirkson.) A better illustration of why DOGE is necessary could hardly be imagined. The system is completely broken when the government wastes money like that and it is shrugged off by statist allies like the Times. . In such situations a scythe, not a scalpel, is the tool to use. The controversy over USAID is in the same category. The agency has been unaccountable, profligate and idiotic. It spent $15 million to distribute ‘contraceptives and condoms’ in Afghanistan. USAID food support went to syrian Al-Qaeda. Heck, USAID sent me to Mongolia for a week to assist the judiciary in drawing up legal ethics rules, and when I got there, I found out that they “weren’t ready.” It’s an Executive Branch agency that serves as a spigot for funds to go overseas with little or no oversight.
In a New York Post report that defends Musk’s mission while revealing more revolting uses of taxpayer money abroad, the DOGE head is quoted as saying about USAID, “It became apparent that it’s not an apple with a worm. What we have is just a ball of worms. You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair.”
Nothing is broken? Right. USAID is broken, the U.S. government bureaucracy, and the journalism that is supposed to let citizens know when their government is corrupt and wasting their money is broken. And the once perceptive experts, pundits and analysts who have allowed Trump Derangement to break their perspective, objectivity and critical thinking skills are now just part of the problem.
Ethics Alarms 
The sudden about-face (obviously, new talking points have been formulated and distributed to the NPCs) from Democrats concerned about government overspending who now think that NOTHING can be cut from the budget is mind blowing.
Trump trying to cut the budget of the DOE is akin to him wanting children working in coal mines for monocle-wearing robber barons. Think the NSF wastes money? Why do you want Grandma to die from cancer you Nazi?
Maybe DOGE will be completely ineffective. It most likely will be. But at the very least, it has exposed the truth that Democrats like that for every dollar of value generated in the United States, the government is spending $0.20 of it. That is sickening, but it’s where we are. And their clear demonstrations that government spending is a rachet, only going in one direction, means things can only get worse until something significant breaks.
A simple “deficit increases unsustainable” search will provide a plethora of links from all manner of sources, including the GAO, making the case. How can anyone take the position that “Everything is fine” on this? (insert this is fine dog meme here) Again, who ARE these people?
Margaret Brennan (she of the beautiful face and evidently no brain) scolded J.D. Vance for being concerned about USAID’s idiocy when “Their budget is just one percent of the federal budget!” Does she even know that a billion is a thousand million?
The Treasury scandal is a lot bigger, but the USAID issue is getting more press. I think that is because all the people you hear from are getting paid from USAID. Bill Kristol went so far as to post that Deep State rule is far preferable to a Donald Trump Presidency after it was revealed that he has been paid $millions from USAID. Lindsey Graham is now voting yes on Trump’s nominees after it was revealed that he has been paid from USAID for years. USAID has paid almost every major mainstream news outlet to run anti-Trump stories. Of course, they don’t pay them directly. USAID pays an NGO that then pays the media, etc. Just like the government censoring people through corporations, the government has been enriching their friends from USAID. Look at the people freaking out over the incredibly sensible relocation of USAID to the State Department. Does anyone think that DOESN’T make sense? The only reason you would freak out about it (Ilhan Omar, etc) is if you were getting paid illegitimately from USAID.
The Treasury scandal is worse. I have seen estimates as high as $1 trillion/year may have been misappropriated from the Treasury, meaning that easily 1/3 of our national debt is from stolen money. We don’t have a law to fit the crime that the Treasury people committed. So, if I had submitted an invoice to the Treasury Dept last summer for $250,000 in ‘consultation fees’, it would have just been paid, no questions asked. I wonder how many friends and family of Treasury employees took advantage of that.
The FBI has hinted that the same thing is likely to come to light there. The FBI employee subreddit has people openly calling for the assassination of Elon Musk. Elon Musk’s location was also posted.
This post is confusing. The “nothing is broken” was referring to the security clearance process, which is not broken.
I don’t read it that way, but it’s a legitimate claim if you want to make it. Scott’s a lawyer, and if he means “the security clearance process isn’t broken” I expect him to write that. He was making a sweeping indictment of Musk’s activities, and they don’t involve security clearance at all. In his Trump Derangement mode, Greenfield is essentially in denial that Trump’s complaints about the government have any validity. Saying “nothing is broken” is also nonsense even if we just limit the topic to security clearance.
But I take your point.
Scott’s a lawyer, and if he means “the security clearance process isn’t broken” I expect him to write that.
Why do you need that clarification when “what’s broken” was clearly defined in the previous sentence?
I’m a writer and reclaryfing what’s broken would be unnecessary and repetitive there.
As said, I’ll accept the point, I just don’t agree with it. The use of parenthesis tells me that the comment “nothing is broken” was meant to lie in a broader context. That’s what I would mean if I had written that.
That’s what I would mean if I had written that.
Then you would be confusing your readers and not writing clearly.
That’s a funny response, given that you think the way Scott wrote it means something that I doubt it does.
I’ve accepted your opinion. I don’t agree with it. End of discussion. Move on.
And, of course, the point of the post is 100% clear. Whether you agree with the inspiration for it or not, the Greenfield post is incidental to the EA post. I wrote what I could have written from dozens of different angles. You’re not disagreeing with the post, or arguing that what I wrote was obviously broken isn’t. That makes this entire discussion trivial.
Irrespective of either meaning who does the background checks? The FBI. What did the Napolitan survey reveal about managers respecting lawful orders from the president. It found that more than half would actively resist an order if they thought it was bad policy. I submit that managers in the FBI would purposely slow walk checks to stymie Trump. Therefore, the fact that government officials by their own admission will sabotage Trump indicates that while the systems are not operating as designed and thus are “broken”. Greenfield offers no evidence that the clearance process will NOT be broken by unscrupulous management at the FBI
Uh, Travis? In case you haven’t noticed, and to put it mildly, our host is an extraordinarily talented, accomplished and voluminous writer. What’s your point?
Travis, the text in question reads as follows:
The first sentence mentions the “broken security process”, that is true. But it also mentions “blaming President Biden,” which implies that some larger entity is somehow at fault as well (or “broken). The next sentence reads “It’s Trump’s White House now.” This also implies something larger than just a “Trump security process”. So when someone reads the parenthetical statement “nothing is broken”, what is actually being referenced as not broken? Biden? The security process during Biden’s tenure? The Trump White House? The security process under Trump?
That paragraph is poorly-worded and nebulous. I would contend it is written to give the typical reader the impression that “nothing is broken” with either Biden (and by an implied extension, his Administration) AND whatever security process it had in place.
Greenfield is lazy in these sentences, and falling back to a more specific interpretation of the writing (only the security process is being referenced as unbroken) when a more general interpretation (the one our host highlighted) can easily be inferred means additional wordsmithing is needed.
A more understandable (and in my opinion, a far more honest rendition) could be:
Great analysis.
It’s indeed very sloppy writing to have three subjects and a parenthetical that’s plausibly linked to all of them.
Another attempt to analyze this would be to flip the logic. If you swap “nothing” for “everything” and “is broken” to “is operating correctly” you get a pure argument from ignorance fallacy, and still no reference to security clearance.
He’s literally burying his head in the sand and yelling “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”
The FBI revealed that 5,000 of their 13,000 agents where focused on January 6th protesters. This indicates to me that a substance reduction of the FBI workforce is in place, starting from the top.
So this is how our taxes are spent, on woke hobbies (USAID), and persecuting the administration’s political enemies, but not on protecting the country, and actual law enforcement.
According to Hakeem Jeffries: “They are raiding the government, attempting to steal taxpayer money. That’s what the situation at the Treasury Department is all about.” No Sir, The IRS is stealing the taxpayer’s money, to spent it in a way detrimental to the interest of the country and the people residing in the USA, and to line the pockets of political allies and interests, who will then pay back the Democrats via campaign contributions. The Treasury Department has devolved in one big money laundering operation, out of the tax payers pockets into the pockets of the Democrat party’s political interest.
Now DOGE is busy, will it train its eyes on the DOE? This department was created by Jimmy Carter, as a pay back to the teacher’s unions who so richly pay into the Democrats campaign coffers. It is time to abolish the DOE.
And during the previous administration 80,000 new auditors were hire, to audit tax payers, while they do not audit the Treasury Department, which spent a trillion dollars per year without verifying the invoices.
I know you meant Department of Ed not DOE which is Department of Energy
Technically (and believe me I hate defending the FBI this way) 5000 agents touched the J6 investigation at some point over the last 4 years. That’s NOT the same as saying they had 5000 agents actively working that investigation. If they identified a trespasser’s home town or state, and asked a remote office there to look into them and found nothing, those remote agents would be part of the 5000.
If, as some of our most hysterical Democrat members of Congress are out loudly telling their cult that Trump is acting illegally by pausing government payments through U.S. A.I.D. then why are they not seeking judicial relief. Call me old fashioned but I thought the whole concept of checks and balance was why we have three branches of government so that judicial review was the avenue to take in these cases.
In my estimation they know the courts will rule against them.
Think of DOGE as the desperately needed independent auditors of the U.S. Treasury.
GAO claims to be fill that role, but if the SOP is to pay any invoice, even to known terrorists or fraudsters, we are in even worse trouble than I imagined. Democrats are disgracing themselves in opposition to a common sense strategy.
Elon Musk may well have saved this country when he purchased Twitter and reestablished freedom of speech. I hope he and the President can stay the course to complete the spending purge so sorely needed.
The more I learn about the USAID the more disgusted I get. The lack of morality or ethics in the US overall is very disturbing. Aside from the illicit spending, there is another side which doesn’t get much press coverage.
I spent the last 4 years of my career working for a government agency (Not the IRS or FBI) chasing down people who defrauded the government on the Payroll Protection Program (PPP) and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program (EIDL) which were instituted during the pandemic. There were absolutely NO checks or investigations made when the trillions of dollars were made available – all one had to do was fill out a form online, make up some social security numbers and FEINs, and submit. And from the first day, the amount of fraud was staggering. You may have seen a few stories relating to this on episodes of the “American Greed” tv program.
The sad thing is, the IRS has admitted that they do not have the resources and will not go after anyone who took less than $80k.
I hate to stick up for the IRS, but they do definitely need those additional agents to handle this type of investigation and ascertain that as much legitimate tax revenue as possible is collected (how it is spent is a whole other issue obviously).
It has been estimated that at least $250 Billion was given out to fraudulent applications.
It seems like any area of the government you look at is totally out of control. Perhaps FUBAR is an appropriate term to describe it.
If we need to claw back money given through PPP and EIDL, is the IRS the agency who needs to do that? Earlier it was said there were 5000 FBI agents investigating Jan 6. Maybe take a thousand or two of them and have them do the investigating on this scandal. I am pretty sure the FBI has a goodly number of financial investigators in their ranks and I don’t know that you need to be training revenue agents just to go after this type of fraud.
My skepticism about hiring thousands of new revenue agents is that I just don’t believe it will end up being worthwhile. My recollection of when IRS has tried similar things in the past is that they ended up struggling to collect enough tax revenue to pay for the extra expenses.
I do believe that the tales Treasury spins about hundreds of billions and trillions of tax revenue going uncollected each and every year — is basically a fantasy to increase their budget. Yes, there’s a lot of underground money in the economy but I just don’t believe there is nearly as much as they would like us to believe. And any major new infusion of revenue agents and auditors is sooner or later going to go after middle class taxpayers — because as Willie Sutton so eloquently stated, that’s where the money is.
It means exactly what I told you it means because of the context, the previous sentence, and because Scott even said so in his own comments.
Again, if you want to confuse your readers and not write clearly, you’re free to do so.
Maybe the DNC is back in action hiring and deploying social media monitors!
Drink!
https://old.bitchute.com/video/2YVxiAN6E1zG/
the number of times I had to tweak my search terms to NOT find comedians hired to do bits at DNC functions makes me believe there’s still a hard bias driving Internet search results.
My experience as well…