There’s a target on your back, people
Last night notices went out here in NC-11 that Congressman Chuck Edwards (R) has planned a town hall for next week in his R+8 district. Good on him and good luck. The last one I attended did not go as he’d hoped. After the rowdy affairs going on around the country, he’s likely had time to set this up more as a lecture than a Q&A.
Nevertheless, Edwards will hear plenty about Musk and his DOGE post-teens treating the government — your government and mine — like a stolen car in a chop shop. Musk grew up in South Africa and barely knows how our government works. Oh, but his techies are going to go into computer software that fell out of general use before they were born and eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse — the free-energy device of conservative politics. Entire cities might be powered by waste fraud, and abuse if only it could be captured. But Big Energy doesn’t want you to know how. (I saw it in a YouTube ad.)
No Republican in Congress with any of that vaunted, private-sector business experience would let a 20-something, no matter how computer savvy, with no management, life, or business experience muck around in the software that serves their customers. But that’s what Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s DOGE are doing with government agencies that serve you. Republicans are hell at breaking things others built.
On my first congressional race, I expected to do no more than stuff envelopes or make phone calls. Then the campaign manager emerged from the back office and asked the room if anyone knew how to do a mail merge. The 20-somethings who grew up with computers didn’t budge. I raised my hand. Later, a similar question about manipulating a database. Same silence and my raised hand. I soon had my own desk and computer. The kids knew far more about computers and networks than I did, but they didn’t have 20 years’ experience operating business software. Neither do Musk’s DOGEes. The results you’ve read about and soon will feel.
You’ll recall how Texas Gov. Rick Perry ran for president on eliminating several government agencies, then in debate couldn’t name the one he later ended up running under Donald Trump: the Department of Energy. As a Texan, Perry likely thought Energy interfered with free-market wildcatters by regulating the oil and gas industry. It monitors fissile materials and the U.S. nuclear stockpile. When Musk’s young coders fired key Energy officials last month, then scrambled to rehire them, they demonstrated that they knew even less about what the agency does and how vital it is to national security.
Rex Huppke writes:
When unelected President Elon Musk isn’t busy firing federal workers and wildly overstating how much money he’s saving the government, the billionaire is finding time to falsely claim Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme.”
Why would he say that about a beloved program more than 70 million older Americans rely on as major source of income?
Probably because he’s too rich to have an inkling of an idea how vital Social Security is to regular Americans and resents the idea of wealthy people like himself having to pay into a government program that helps the non-billionaire class. Musk is nothing if not myopic.
He’s already announced plans to cut Social Security staff by 7,000 and close six of 10 regional offices. Former Social Security commissioner and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley warned last week:
“Ultimately, you’re going to see the system collapse and an interruption of benefits,” O’Malley said. “I believe you will see that within the next 30 to 90 days.”
Ahead of any interruption in benefits, “people should start saving now,” O’Malley said.
Edwards will hear volumes about that.
The Alliance for Retired Americans issued a statement in response to Musk:
Social Security is a social insurance program. Workers and employers pay in, money goes to the Social Security Trust Fund and is paid out when due. Social Security has a Board of Trustees and professional actuaries who report annually on the health of the
Trust Fund.It’s solvent and the benefits are guaranteed (unlike the stock market or a private equity fund). In 89 years, Social Security has never missed a payment.
Now inexperienced DOGE coders are in its personnel files and its software finding millions of “dead” people. Start saving now.
Musk either doesn’t know what he’s doing or, worse, he does and it’s malicious (New York Times):
When DOGE first published its list of canceled contracts, there were about 1,100 examples.
The five largest were wrong.
In one case, DOGE listed a contract worth $8 million as actually being worth $8 billion. In another, it mistakenly counted the same $655 million contract three times. In yet another, it erroneously said that a huge contract at the Social Security Administration had been fully canceled, saving $232 million. In reality, only a small project within that contract had been canceled. Actual savings: $560,000.
Sen. Bernie Sanders votes for malicious. Huppke again:
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., posted on social media that “Social Security keeps 18 million seniors out of poverty every year. Trump and Musk are lying about it for one reason: so they can cut, privatize & dismantle it.”
There’s no reason to doubt that at this point. Musk’s sloppy axing of federal workers and contracts has demonstrated little concern or understanding of government work and how it might actually benefit Americans who don’t have the money to build rocket ships.
The constitutional crisis is here. Musk-Trump is engaged in a rolling coup. Trump is centralizing power in himself and usurping Congress’. He’s delegated control of the federal government to the kind of people who would sell you the air you breathe if they could control how it gets to your nose. And if you cannot afford to buy their air, well, you should have worked harder, planned better, and saved more.
Chuck Edwards will hear a lot about that next week … if he doesn’t cancel or switch venues at the last minute.
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