The rich gomers who are in charge of the “department of government efficiency” have floated some of their plans to save money, which mainly seem to involve the wholesale destruction of various government agencies, throwing thousands of people out of work and also gutting important government funded programs, like science. They want to just shut down NIH? Jesus.
Who wants to tell all the veterans who sacrificed so much for their country that we’re going to simply end Veteran’s Administration health care? I imagine they think we can just privatize all the prisons, and that will somehow save money.
There’s more. Let’s dismantle the department of education, starve Planned Parenthood and the IRS, and let’s stop the Federal Trade Commission, Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission from meddling in rich people’s money. They also want to make massive cuts in NASA funding, specifically to end all those “bureaucrats and contractors unearned bonuses”. Yeah, too many outside contractors are leeching off NASA’s budget…like SpaceX, maybe?
You know, killing established programs within the federal government does not reduce expenses or improve services — it just opens the door to private parasites moving in and taking over to increase their profits.
Well, duh. That’s the whole freaking point! For these guys, “waste” means “government spending that doesn’t make me richer”. It’s going to be straight up kleptocracy.
[datum]
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/062215/business-model-private-prisons.asp
the way things are shaping up there is going to be a very large and messy clean up when this coming administration is gone. Lets hope that those responsible and those who contributed have the full effects attributed appropriately
LOL. They’re not even honest with themselves.
Privatizing prisons doesn’t actually save money, even though they’re claiming here that they can save $8B by closing federal prisons when the entire budget is $8.67B. Since overhead for prisoner transfers and transport and record keeping to ensure compliance with the 8th Amendment is going to cost some significant amount, probably exceeding 0.5B, they’re essentially saying that prisons owned and run by private capital for profit will not only cost less than federal prisons (which they never do) but that they’ll actually take prisoners in and feed them and guard them … for free.
Nice try, dinguses, but you’re complete idiots.
Ramasuckey wants to eliminate Federal loans given to… one of Elmo’s competitors: https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/05/politics/ramaswamy-claw-back-rivian-musk-conflict/index.html
How much could we save by “trimming” all (except maybe anti-missile) military & military-related aid to Israel?
As I noted on the Infinite Thread here :
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2024/10/04/infinite-thread-xxxiii/comment-page-6/#comment-2245017
Trump’s nomination for NASA boss is billionaire and SpaceX pribvate astronaut Jared Isaacman. On the good isd e he has space exploration experience flying two spaceflights including the Polaris Dawn EVA. Not sur ewhat willhappen with his Poalris program a s noted there ^ On the downside, seems to be Musk’s man so..
^ Plus of course the stuff about massive cuts to an organisation that actually does wonders with relatively little (it was something like one tenth of 1% of the USA’s budget according to Phil Plait the bad Astronomy blogger memory serving and google-fu so far failing to find..) is horrendous. That has huge implications for astronomy and even international relations given partnerships with ESA and other space agencies as well as just good scientists losing jobs and puts a big cloud over all space missions which… arrrgh!
[StevoR, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA ]
I think the lexicographers are probably hard at work coining a new term that combines kleptocracy and kakistocracy.
Nobody can be considered serious about costs or budgets in the USA if they don’t even mention military expenditures.
I don’t think anything in this proposal is serious. They aren’t touching hardly any of that.
First, they have to get themselves approved by Congress. Then they have to chat up that Congress and convince them to do every single one of these things individually. Yeah, no. Not happening.
The real goal? Shock people so that scaling back and doing cuts to the SEC and a few other things as camouflage sounds reasonable by comparison. Watch for that. These bozos want to rip off everybody including other rich people.
Marcus has the right of it.
Pretty sure the USA profits from its military, overall.
Updated version of gunboat diplomacy.
Plus, leverage.
Look at us here in Oz. We need their nuclear umbrella.
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_industry#World's_largest_arms_exporters
(Perun has a good video on that)
I’m wondering how the orange dipshidiot & associated felons, rapists and morons plan on keeping the lights on.
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57444#:~:text=The%20IRS's%20ROIs%20ramp%20up,to%20%249%20of%20increased%20revenues.
The IRS’s ROIs ramp up over three years as staff become trained and fully productive, arrive at the peak level, and then stay there. In recent years, peak ROIs have ranged from 5 to 9. That is, a $1 increase in spending on the IRS’s enforcement activities results in $5 to $9 of increased revenues.
Also wondering how the Muskrat and other associated grifters plan on grifting the US government if there’s no money to be had. In order for SpaceX and DoD contractors to continue to get US grants and contracts, there has to be actual money coming in.
I’d like to point out that the SEC was rather blasé about cracking down on the rich people’s money, which is how we got the mortgage backed securities and derivatives stock market crash… did everyone really forget about “too big to fail” already?
SEC laxity enabled Bernie Madoff to run the biggest Ponzi scheme in history… and he mostly ripped off rich people.
On the plus side, after the orange dipshidiot axes the FBI, no one will be around to hunt down criminals and get at least some of the victims’ money back! /s So it’s entirely possible that the rich will be less rich.
Also wondering who will be manning/staffing the US military if you get rid of all veteran benefits. As it is, military pay is so low that some members of the armed forces qualify for food stamps and other social welfare programs. Presumably those will be cut too.
Lots of the enlisted sign up on the basis of “three hots and a cot”, meaning that they are enlisting just so they have a job, food and housing, which is damning enough but even those people will probably balk at “and if you get injured or permanently disabled, you’re on your own”. All military branches are struggling with recruitment and retention as it is and have been for years. I don’t think that slashing benefits will turn that trend around.
I am personally hoping Cheetolini dies slowly and agonizingly from eating a O157:H7 E. coli hamburger after the Supreme Court rules that the FDA and USDA don’t have any actual enforcement abilities.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/inside-the-fast-food-scandal-that-changed-how-beef-is-regulated/
Mind you, lack of government oversight and regulation isn’t great for companies either. Oops!
https://marlerclark.com/news_events/jack-in-the-box-e-coli-outbreak-western-states
NOTE: sponsored link below
https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2013/02/jack-in-the-box-and-the-decline-of-e-coli/
But that pesky compliance with food safety regulations cuts into the bottom line of mega corporations! Can’t have that! /s
Australia was going to get a French nuclear umbrella just fine before the United States muscled in.
Nope. Subs. Not the same thing, seachange.
cf. ANZUS
They do not. To run with this metaphor, they plan on crashing the grid and then renting you an emergency generator from one of their commercial operations at an eye-watering price. Can’t afford it? No worries, one of their other commercial operations will loan you the money. Just be sure to read the fine print in the loan agreement!
That’s just wrong.
It should be nor, not or.
I hope Muskie and Ramme achieve all their goals. It seems to me that is the only way Americans can learn. They are too lazy to read, research and use qualified sources to obtain their information. I especially hope they eviscerate the Veterans Administration. I worked for the VA for 16 years as a nurse. Most of the veterans in my area love Trump and his henchmen. I remember in 2016 after Trump was sworn in, they wanted Obama’s portrait taken down and Trump’s hung. We had to explain it takes several months to get a portrait of the new president, have it mass produced and distributed. They wanted none of that, many of them would egregiously complain to the Administrator on a daily basis. The administrator had to cave, she took down Obama’s portrait and left an empty wall at the front entrance.
Also, I worked with an ex-Marine, I was also a Marine, so we bonded over the many stories about our experiences. However, he turned on me when I said I was for Biden. Now every time he sees me, he harasses me, and it became worse after Trump won. When I asked him what he liked about Trump he stated, ‘I want those Mexicans shot.” When I asked him what made him feel that way he told me he saw a video on you tube showing a Mexican on the other side of the border giving the finger to some National Guard Troops. I told him he needs to find a more reliable source to get his information from. OH, he drives his big pickup truck with a giant Trump flag riding in the bed.
I realize this isn’t fair to honest compassionate veterans, but based on my experiences I can’t help but feel this way.
As with anyone associated with Trump or Musk, it’s impossible to know what they truly think. We just know that they and the people that support them are liars.
I don’t know what will actually happen with this, but terrorizing government workers fits in with the Republican strategy of finding some unfairly maligned group of people and blame them for all the problems. Americans are too stupid to see it. It doesn’t matter if they end up destroying all the things, Americans are too stupid to realize what has happened. These fools couldn’t even remember the nightmare that was Trumps first term.
The government is another enemy/villian Trump can point to with what Musk and Ramaswamy are doing. There’s lots of uses to move attention around.
<tongue-in-cheek>
There’s actually a path to doing away with the VA medical system. (There are other parts that are more difficult.)
The reason for the VA medical system is to ensure that eligible veterans get medical care for (at less than full retirement) their service-related conditions or (at full retirement) everything. That leads to an obvious two-step solution:
Get rid of the “service-connected” requirement. Approximately $2.8B of the VA’s budget is devoted solely to determining benefit eligibility; it’s mixed in with disability determinations — purposely, to make it hard to comment upon — but there are Savings to Be Had.
Get rid of the military service component. Make medical care of right, directed by medical professionals (who will be motivated to be efficient by the sheer scope of the job). No more for-profit insurers (who, by the way, are extremely tax-advantaged); no more claims systems and coding; no more denial of benefits; no more “pre-existing condition” nonsense; no more insurance companies spending their hard-earned dollars that are supposed to go for, like, actual care on things like naming sports stadiums and sponsoring sports teams. (One suspects that Brian Thompson’s family is not going to be buying New England Revolution replica jerseys any time soon.) As a bonus, no more big personal injury verdicts caused by medical costs.
Unfortunately, part of that might depress handgun sales and bicycle rentals in NYC. I couldn’t care less about the handgun sales, but bicycle dealers have to eat, too.
The interesting thing about this is that Elon and Ramaswamy don’t remember the Matter of the Curious Employment of Chris Christie.
Way back in 2016, after Trump’s election and before his inauguration, Chris Christie was put in charge of the Presidential Transition Committee. He and his team put in long unpaid hours coming up with a transition plan, which Trump promptly tossed into the garbage. The whole thing had been a cruel joke at Christie’s expense. He’d put Charlie Kushner (Trump’s son-in-law’s father) in jail, so there was never going to be a place for him in the administration.
There’s likewise no place for people who try to steal attention from Trump (like Musk) or for fair-weather friends (like Ramaswamy). Trump will do a lot of horrible things, but they won’t be the horrible things on the DOGE list except by coincidence.
@bravus #10:
I think we need to roll theocracy in there too. How’s about: theokakikleptocracy?