Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

And welcome to our annual victory celebration of the Great War on Christmas

Yes, it’s that time of year again and the holidays have never been more welcome. If we ever needed a break it’s now.

And here at Hullabaloo it’s the time of year I ask you, my loyal readers, to put a little something into the old stocking to keep us going for yet another year.

This is a tough one, I know. Anyone can be forgiven for tuning out politics and spending their time doing something that doesn’t make them want to put their foot through the TV. Many people have cancelled their subscriptions to this site telling me that they just can’t stand to read about politics anymore and I totally understand it. For the first week after the election I pretty much only watched Netflix and Animal Planet. This is a grim time and we have to do whatever we can to keep our sanity.

But it you are reading this it means that you are still engaging, at least with us, and I want you to know how grateful I am that you are. For me, it’s not possible to stop paying attention for long. It’s just who I am. I can’t look away.

Back in 2002 when I first started this blog, it was also a very grim time. It was just a little bit more than a year after 9/11 and we were about to launch a ridiculous war against a country that hadn’t attacked us. It felt as if the world was on fire. I said at the time that it didn’t look as if there was much we could do to stop it but we had a responsibility to document the atrocities and speak the truth. That was the mission then and it remains so today, even if political culture is as surreal and bizarre as it is today.

Those were heady days for bloggers. It was a new thing and people were intrigued by the idea of citizen journalism on the internet. But it was also a scary time. We all took pseudonyms for a reason — we didn’t trust that this new thing wouldn’t get us into trouble, whether it was with our bosses or the government. Remember, there was a whole lot of spying on Americans going on back then and the White House itself was telling people to “watch what they say.” (The guy who said that was Ari Fleischer, the presidential press secretary.)

I’m not worried as I was back then. I doubt anyone in the government cares about what I write. Trump has bigger fish to fry. But I do have a strong feeling of deja vu about our current circumstances. The capitulation from the media and many of the Democrats to the new Trump regime is less febrile and more resigned but it’s happening nonetheless. Today’s propaganda and disinformation environment is much more sophisticated but it’s also more fragmented and the rise of the tech-bro oligarchy is a much more obvious threat than it was back then. But still, it amazes me that just 22 years later we’re basically facing a similar folding of any institutional resistance in the face of a right wing assault on American values.

I know that’s depressing and I really don’t mean to be. The Trump assault is different and far less competent. We already know that. So this particular Idiocracy version of the right wing assault may not last longer than the first two years. But even if they can’t accomplish the worst of their agenda, it’s going to be a very difficult time.

I appreciate your sticking with us all this time and especially now. I think that once we’ve licked our wounds and recovered from the staggering disappointment of the last election requiring us to deal with that Orange Monster and his cult for another four years, we’ll all be ready to re-engage with the same commitment we’ve had in the past. What choice do we have?

I’m not going anywhere. Deja vu or not, I feel as I did 22 years ago when I started this thing. The perspective of people who are observing all this from outside the DC bubble matters. If you value the work that I do every day, that Tom Sullivan does every day or even if you just want to pop in on Friday to read the Soother or Saturday to see what Dennis Hartley has been watching and listening to, I hope you’ll throw a little something in the old stocking to keep this going through this tumultuous time. We’re all in this together whether we like it or not!

cheers,

digby

And Happy Hollandaise everyone. We’ll get through this!

*Keep scrolling for new stuff. 🙂

Remember this? Probably not if you don’t watch Fox and I assume most of you do not.

About that weaponization …

If you spend much time watching Fox News, or if you look to social media sites such as X for information about American politics and the U.S. government, you have probably heard two specific claims over the past four years. First, that the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was fomented at least in part by government actors, including from the FBI. Second, that President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden took millions of dollars in bribes from a Ukrainian businessman.

You’ve probably heard those claims because each offers a different lens into the purported corruption of the Biden administration and/or the governmental Deep State — and because right-wing media organizations such as Fox spent months amplifying them. That claim about the bribes, for example, was hyped by Fox host Maria Bartiromo alone hundreds of times. The agent provocateur allegations about the Capitol riot, meanwhile, were a staple of Tucker Carlson’s former Fox News show.

Guess what? The DOJ inspector general released a report today showing it was all a lie. Shocker, no?

Here’s the lowdown on the Capitol “undercover” FBI story:

“We found no evidence in the materials we reviewed or the testimony we received showing or suggesting that the FBI had undercover employees in the various protest crowds, or at the Capitol, on January 6,” the report reads. There were informants at the Capitol that day, it continued, but those were people who, like Smirnov, gave information to the FBI rather than working for it directly. But even considering that distance from the government, the inspector general’s office found no evidence the informants were involved in the day’s violence.

And about that alleged Biden bribe?

A former FBI informant charged with fabricating corruption allegations about President Joe Biden and his son has agreed to plead guilty to four felony charges to resolve two pending federal criminal cases against him, according to a court filing.

Alexander Smirnov, 44, admitted to lying when he told the FBI that he took part in meetings with executives from Ukrainian energy company Burisma in 2015 or 2016 about a scheme to pay $10 million to Joe and Hunter Biden. Joe Biden was the vice president at the time of the fabricated meetings, and Smirnov claimed the purported payments were bribes to “protect us … from all kinds of problems,” according to a plea agreement filed Thursday in federal court in Los Angeles.

Smirnov also admitted falsely claiming to have had a conversation with an official at Burisma, where Hunter Biden served on the board. Smirnov falsely alleged that the Burisma official said it would take 10 years for investigators to find records of the purported payments to Joe Biden, the plea agreement said.

Smirnov agreed to plead guilty to one count of obstruction of justice and three tax evasion charges. He reached the deal with special counsel David Weiss, who began investigating allegations against Hunter Biden during President Donald Trump’s first term and was allowed to continue the probe after Joe Biden came into office.

This doesn’t make any difference as far as our Orange dilemma, of course. But there has to be some satisfaction in knowing that every once in a while these liars do get caught lying. It’s not much but right now it’s the best we’ve got.

NY Times reporter Mike Schmidt was on MSNBC today and made an interesting point. Trump will be the first president since Nixon who will not have to worry about the Justice Department naming a Special Prosecutor to investigate some scandal he’s involved in. Trump was made crazy during his first term by the Mueller Investigation and others. He went crazy when Jeff Sessions recused himself. But he’ll be free of it this time. No way will they dare to investigate anything that might touch Trump — family, friends, foreign countries, no one.

Until the Democrats can take back control of Congress (if they take back control) the only check on Trump is going to be the media and public opinion. How nice for him.

The other day I just happened to watch one of the Bulwark podcasts and as it happened Sarah Longwell had just returned from participating in an event sponsored by the NY Times in which a number of media and political luminaries discussed the recent election. She seemed a little bit stunned as she explained that she couldn’t make herself sit there and take their nonsense so she aggressively confronted them, in particular Kevin McCarthy.

I was hoping we’d get to see it because it sounded amazing. Here’s that moment:

"Trump lied about an election being stolen and then sicked a mob on the Capitol. It's funny that you roll your eyes at this, Kevin, because you're the one who went down and resurrected him.” pic.twitter.com/o02iQydpbN

— Sarah Longwell (@SarahLongwell25) December 11, 2024

I would really love to see more people have the guts to do this. At the moment there’s not a whole lot of evidence that very many do.

The Times article about the event said this:

The 2024 presidential election isn’t over.

While the vote count is official and President-elect Donald J. Trump will be the next occupant of the Oval Office, just about everything else, including how much of a mandate he has, why the Democrats lost and what the future of the two political parties — and the country — will look like, is still the subject of fierce debate.

That came through strongly during a discussion on Dec. 4 at the DealBook Summit in New York City about the election and its aftermath. The 10-member election task force, one of four held away from the main stage, included those involved in politics, the media and advocacy.

Early on, the lines were set: Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Mr. Trump, thanked other task force members for joining him in “celebrating President Trump’s victory.” Shortly afterward, Sarah Longwell, an outspoken Republican against Mr. Trump and publisher of the website The Bulwark, described Mr. Trump as “the most dangerous criminal human being that America has ever elected.”

And, she said, gesturing at Kevin McCarthy, former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and another task force member, “you’re the one who went down and resurrected him,” referring to Mr. McCarthy’s visit to Mar-a-Lago shortly after the Jan. 6 insurrection.

To which Mr. McCarthy replied, “You’re welcome.”

Not all exchanges were testy, but that did not mean there was a meeting of minds. Democrats on the panel rejected Republicans’ assertion that the victory was a sweep.

Good to see that exchange mentioned right up front. They all agreed that Democrats are out of touch, of course. But there was some acknowledgement that the GOP might have a problem too:

Mr. McCarthy acknowledged that, “Republicans have problems too. We didn’t win; Donald Trump won.”

That’s the most astute thing I’ve ever heard him say.

The podcast is really good too as she talks about the rest of those miscreants at the table like KellyAnne Conway and Jason Miller:

Here’s the whole NY Times Deal Book video.

The only exchange from this event that I’ve seen on cable so far is the one in which former Biden adviser Anita Dunn criticizes Biden’s pardon. Natch.

Run ads right now, every day

On Meet the Press last weekend, Trump made this inane comment:

Trump: I won on groceries. Very simple word, groceries. Like almost, you know, who uses the word. I started using the word. The groceries. When you buy apples, when you buy bacon, when you buy eggs, they would double and triple the price over a short period of time. pic.twitter.com/4hDzdJFrTz

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 8, 2024

He didn’t invent the word groceries. I don’t know what was rattling around his head when he said that. But he did use the word. A lot. And he promised that he was going to lower their cost over and over again. Yet in today’s TIME Magazine interview he said:

If the prices of groceries don’t come down, will your presidency be a failure?

I don’t think so. Look, they got them up. I’d like to bring them down. It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard.

A quick reminder of his campaign promises:

Trump before the election: vote for me, and I’ll lower the cost of groceries.

Trump today, to Time magazine: actually, it's not that simple: “It's hard to bring things down once they're up. You know, it's very hard." pic.twitter.com/nU36fg8y35

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) December 12, 2024

Donald Trump, Nov. 4, 2024: “A vote for Trump means your groceries will be cheaper.” https://t.co/ZKnbJkVT17 pic.twitter.com/wmHn2f84J8

— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) December 12, 2024

Trump in Asheville in August: "From the day I take the oath of office, we will rapidly drive prices down, and make America affordable again"

"Prices will come down. You just watch. They’ll come down and they’ll come down fast. Not only with insurance, with everything."

🤷‍♂️ https://t.co/ohABiWTl9B

— Adam Cancryn (@adamcancryn) December 12, 2024

Trump on Sept. 23:

"Vote Trump, and your incomes will soar. Your net worth will skyrocket. Your energy costs and grocery prices will come tumbling down." https://t.co/zprGs2tevV

— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) December 12, 2024

For the full Trump “weave” on the above of how he planned to lower the price of groceries, Philip Bump published the whole thing here. It makes you want to throw up to think that anyone voted for that moron.

CNN reported on his groceries lies but I don’t think it got any circulation:

Americans crave pre-Covid prices. Former President Donald Trump is promising to make them a reality.

“Prices will come down,” Trump told voters during a speech last week laying out his vision for a return to the White House. “You just watch: They’ll come down, and they’ll come down fast, not only with insurance, with everything.”

There’s no doubt the federal government can help influence the price of certain goods and services. However, broad-based price declines are not only improbable, they would bring about a doom loop difficult to escape from.

“Prices will come down and come down dramatically and come down fast,” he said.

Trump vowed to slash not just the price of gasoline, cooling bills and electricity, but predicted this would happen across the economy.

“Unquestionably, this is what people want to hear. And unquestionably, this is unrealistic,” Justin Wolfers, an economist at the University of Michigan, told CNN in a phone interview.

It’s one thing to try to slow the rate of inflation, making prices go up at a more gradual pace. That’s exactly what the Federal Reserve has been working to do the past two years, with a surprising amount of success.

But what Trump appeared to be describing is deflation: widespread price drops. And that’s something that scares economists because of what it portends.

“The way to bring about deflation would be to create a massive recession. That would cause businesses to start cutting prices,” Wolfers said.

But falling prices are problematic because they would stall the economy in its tracks.

It would have fallen on deaf ears in any case. Most of Trump’s voters don’t care what he said they just love him and the swing voters who went with him were so uninformed they probably thought he was promising to pay for their groceries personally.

In the TIME interview he went on to vamp about “energy” and “supply chains” possibly bringing prices down which is nonsense. Here’s what he said about that. If you can understand this gibberish you’re a lot smarter than I am:

You know, the supply chain is still broken. It’s broken. You see it. You go out to the docks and you see all these containers. And I own property in California, in Palos Verdes. They’re very nice. And I passed the docks, and I’ve been doing it for 20 years. I’ve never seen anything like it. You know, for 17 years, I saw containers and, you know, they’d come off and they’d be taken away—big areas, you know, you know, in that area, you know, where they have the big, the big ships coming in—big, the port. And I’d see this for years as I was out there inspecting property and things, because they own a lot in California. And I look down and I see containers that are, that are 12, 13, 14 containers. You wouldn’t believe they can hold each other. It’s like crazy. No, the supply chain is is broken. I think a very bad thing is this, what they’re doing with the cars. I think they lost also because of cars. You know, there are a lot of reasons, but the car mandate is a disaster. The electric, the EV mandate.

Hookay…

By the way, the other day on Meet the Press he also admitted that his tariffs may cause prices to actually go up.

KRISTEN WELKER: I want to delve into one of your signature promises on the campaign trail, which was to end inflation, to lower prices. You are now proposing tariffs against the United States’ three biggest trading partners. Economists of all stripes say that ultimately consumers pay the price of tariffs.

PRESIDENT-ELECT DONALD TRUMP:

I don’t believe that.

KRISTEN WELKER:

Can you guarantee American families won’t pay more?

PRESIDENT-ELECT DONALD TRUMP:

I can’t guarantee anything. I can’t guarantee tomorrow.

So, his promises to lower the price of groceries, which he admits were key to his success, was bullshit which those of us who have a basic junior high level knowledge of economics knew was bullshit at the time. And he admits that his further promise that Americans wouldn’t pay the cost of his tariffs is also bullshit. And we knew that too. But he put on the better show I guess and that was all that mattered.

If the Democrats don’t make a huge deal out of this right now before the country can buy into his lies that the economy is miraculously recovered and everything’s coming up roses just because he’s in the White House, they will be committing the worst malpractice they’ve ever committed and that’s saying something.

These billionaires are the worst people on earth:

Meta Platforms has donated $1 million to president-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, the latest step by CEO Mark Zuckerberg to bolster his once-fraught relationship with the incoming president.

The donation, confirmed by the company, is a departure from past practice by Zuckerberg and his company, and comes after an election campaign in which Trump threatened to punish the tech tycoon if he tried to influence the election against him. 

The contribution and efforts to court the incoming administration are emblematic of the balancing act for technology CEOs whose companies have often been the target of ire from Trump and other Republicans and whose workforces tend to lean strongly to the left.

Now, with Republicans set to take control of the White House and both houses of Congress and calling for new regulation of tech, some executives are adopting a new posture toward Trump.

They have more money than God, as masters of the universe they are safe and secure and yet they feel the need to kiss Donald Trump’s ass in the most obsequious way possible. What pethetic little men they are.

Following up on my earlier post

Journalism is not how I describe to people what we do here at ye olde blog. At best, it’s advocacy journalism.

Somehow (with your help and indulgence) we’ve managed to hang on since the aughts, post-Facebook and post-Twitter, while traditional journalism has lost ground to propaganda-inflected social media and cultural influencers. I wince at “influencers,” but suppose they get traction the same way Digby explained bloggers did in our heyday (2007):

If you have something to say you can say it–and if it touches a chord, people will return time and again to read what you’ve written and discuss the issues of the day with others who are reading the same things.

[…]

Each of us finds their niche. I’m a blogger pundit, a role for which I am eminently qualified, since, exactly like pundits on television and in newspapers, I have opinions, I write them down, and a lot of people read them.

(Yes, that’s all there is to it. Sorry Mr. Broder.).

But with fascism American-style on the rise and newspapers going the way of the dodo, traditional journalists need to ply their trade in the world as it is, not as they’d prefer it to be. Same with Democrats.

Gideon Lichfield at Nieman Labs argues that “It’s time for American journalism to rewrite its own job description” in an age where drawing eyeballs means eating.

Accountability journalism has faltered in this political environment, warped the way “a black hole distorts spacetime.” It’s been supplanted by access journalism and, worse, stenography without context, facts without underlying meaning. “Something more is required,” Lichfield insists.

“Reporting on threats to democracy does not empower the public unless you also give them ideas about how to counter those threats. What would it look like to provide those ideas, and inspire them to act?”

It might look like an older model of newspaper that championed public issues 100 years ago. Was it biased? Yes, but people knew where this or that outlet stood. Isn’t that what MAGA likes about Donald Trump? The congenital liar “tells it like it is”?

“If some of this looks to you like crossing the line from journalism into activism, you’re right,” Lichfield argues. “We cannot be neutral about this, by definition. A free press that doesn’t agitate for democracy is an oxymoron.”

This is as much about saving the country as it is about saving the fourth estate:

But activism is different from partisanship. Partisanship is defining democracy as that which Democrats want and Republicans don’t. That would be a mistake. Rather, we should use this as an opportunity for a big conversation about what democracy really is, or could be.

And I’m not saying we should stop doing accountability journalism either. If nothing else, future generations will need our first draft of history to understand what went wrong. But it’s no longer enough on its own.

Adapt or die.

That’s as true for journalism as it is for Democrats.

No defense except offense

A call for a lefty demagogue has popped up for the second time in a week. This time from Jonathan Last at The Bulwark. Trumpism represents a break from the old politics for which America has few defenses. Trump has “extrapolated existing dynamics while also transforming the public’s attitudes toward violence, democracy, and the rule of law,” he writes. So now what?

Setting aside his ‘druthers (and morality, for the moment), how do we win elections in this environment?

Joe Biden’s (and Democrats’) theory of the case was, as I’ve complained, same-old, same-old. Govern and run on kitchen tables issues, insists Nancy Pelosi’s generation. Democrats did, and delivered for red, rural areas in particular where Democrats have bled support. Who noticed?

And Trump?

The 2024 Trump campaign was not posited on ideas about growth, prosperity, or progress. It was posited on the infliction of pain.

• Deporting immigrants who “poison the blood” of the nation.
• Retribution against Trump’s domestic political enemies.
• Inflicting tariffs on disfavored countries.

Trump did not promise to improve the lives of his voters. He promised to punish the people his voters wanted to hurt. That was the entirety of his electoral proposition and it was not subtext. It was the explicit, bold-face, ALL CAPS text.

Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty are museum pieces, not guideposts, these days. A plurality of Americans is now more interested in pulling up the ladder behind them, Last suggests. (I’m reading between his lines.) They’d rather kick down than lift up latecomers to the threadbare American Dream. Making the pie higher is out. Zero-sum is in. Even undocumented immigrants are in on the game. YOU! Keep out!

Remember the Biden COVID stimulus? People were unhappy with it because they thought money was going to those who didn’t need it.

Remember Biden’s Child Tax Credit? People didn’t like that it was helping “other” families.

Remember Biden’s student loan forgiveness program? ’Nuff said.

You can go further back: Democrats and Barack Obama had to drag voters kicking and screaming to the ACA because people were furious that this new program might help some other group.

There’s always been xenophobia and a kind of national hazing of the last wave of immigrants (my maternal grandmother never forgot discrimination against the Irish). But the trending negative mood for the last generation, say, post-Sept. 11 is something new. “[T]he cumulative effect of this unhappiness has been to reorient people away from a desire for progress for themselves and toward a desire for retribution against others.”

Again, what now?

Last offers a thought experiment. What’s more likely to get more traction in 2028, offering improved access to better healthcare or promising to bring the hammer down on “health insurance companies, their CEOs, and oligarchs”?

It’s not that Last wants to see that kind of demagoguery from the left, but “it is not clear to me that Democrats can succeed in 2028 with a positive, forward-looking vision in which they propose to improve the lives of voters.”

Ho-kay. It strikes me that what Last thinks will win votes in this environment is something akin to what Bernie Sanders has been selling for years with his “millionaires and billionaires” rants. He got quite a lot of traction with that in Appalachia in 2016, but Democratic Party primary voters were not ready for it. He won the presidential primary in my WNC district that sent Mark Meadows back to Congress that fall.

I’m not sure how much stomach Democrats have for the kind of feistiness Last is suggesting, but they need some. Sanders’s pitches resonated with younger voters but felt a little one-trick-pony to me. But it’s fer damn-sure that same-old (and I mean old) won’t cut it. And thank God there is at least some movement among “younger” Democrats on the Hill to challenge the party’s gerontocracy.

Chris Smith at Vanity Fair suggested days ago that New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the kind of Democrat to bring the heat and perhaps a new, Bernie-friendlier, working-class narrative, and more social media savvy to their sales pitch. I just don’t know. There’s still the extant media environment hostile to the left. But same-old ain’t cutting it.

As it turns out most Americans don’t care all thatm uch about abortion rights after all. And that means they don’t care all that much aboutwhether some women lose their health or their lives for lack of ability to obtain one. I wish I could say that shocks me, but it doesn’t. When the price of eggs is higher than it was four years ago nothing else really matters.

Here’s how it’s going in the courts:

The case now before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, centers on whether federal emergency room mandates — enshrined in EMTALA, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act — preempt state abortion bans when they conflict. EMTALA requires that emergency rooms stabilize patients in crisis. Idaho maintains that they don’t overlap, that the ban’s exception for preventing the woman’s death covers all emergencies. The Biden administration and the hospital system counter that pregnant women can experience a range of medical emergencies that put them on the path to permanent injury or illness, if not death. 

Look at the way one of the judges frames his question:

“Your argument is: If the mother wants to kill the baby even though it’s not necessary to prevent [her death] — then they have to be airlifted,” Judge Lawrence VanDyke, a Trump appointee and former solicitor general of Nevada and Montana, asked the lawyer for an Idaho hospital system after she explained that patients had been airlifted out of the state because they might need what Idaho classifies as a criminal abortion. 

Gee, I wonder what his position is?

Where’s this going? Well, the Supremes teed it up beautifully for Sam Alito:

VanDyke and the other Trump appointees painted the case as federal government overreach by the Biden administration, which is seeking to enforce the commonly held interpretation of EMTALA. “How is this not regulation of the practice of medicine?” Judge Daniel Bress asked. VanDyke mused about whether “ethics” have a place in medicine, and why it shouldn’t be left to the states to decide what they are.

Judge Consuelo Callahan, a George W. Bush appointee, cut through the attempts to accurately depict an anti-abortion regime to ask: “Is this an exercise in futility?” 

She pointed out that a new administration is coming in, and asked whether the judges should just send the case back down to the district court. 

The Supreme Court’s delay — incurred by preemptively taking the case from the 9th Circuit, getting fully briefed and hearing arguments, then deciding that it intervened too early and sending it right back — has made it near-certain that the case will still be percolating when Joe Biden’s Department of Justice becomes Donald Trump’s. It’s very unlikely that Trump’s DOJ will share the Biden one’s interest in preserving abortion rights in emergency rooms, likely ending the case at least in its current posture. 

Don’t kid yourself. If the Court felt slightly singed by the criticism around the reversal of Roe, you can bet that this last election soothed them. If they had worried at all about the poular backlash it proved to be a paper tiger in terms of partisan politics and that’s uppermost in their minds these days. They’re likely to open the door to criminalizing this, in fact any kind of travel for the pupose of obtaining an abortion. Why wouldn’t they?

Instead of making Trump fire him, Christopher Wray let Trump off the hook and has politely bowed out and resigned today. This is not how this is supposed to work. The whole idea of the year term was to keep the FBI director out of partisan politics while not allowing him to create a J. Edgar Hoover-style fiefdom of its own. As with so much else, Trump cares nothing about intentions, traditions or norms and the fact is that he has the power to fire him so there was never any doubt that he would do it. Everyone in America exists to serve him.

Here’s the usual classy response from Trump:

Paul Krugman’s quit his NY Times column and although he hasn’t said it in so many words, it’s most likely because he felt constrained from saying what he wants to say the way he wants to say it. He does have a newsletter and he’s already bringing the fire:

Once upon a time a Republican president, sure that large parts of federal spending were worthless, appointed a commission led by a wealthy businessman to bring a business sensibility to the budget, going through it line by line to identify inefficiency and waste. The commission initially made a big splash, and there were desperate attempts to spin its work as a success. But in the end few people were fooled. Ronald Reagan’s venture, the President’s Private Sector Survey on Cost Control — the so-called “Grace commission,” headed by J. Peter Grace — was a flop, making no visible dent in spending.

Why was it a flop? There is, of course, inefficiency and waste in the federal government, as there is in any large organization. But most government spending happens because it delivers something people want, and you can’t make significant cuts without hard choices.

Furthermore, the notion that businessmen have skills that readily translate into managing the government is all wrong. Business and government serve different purposes and require different mindsets.

In any case, the Grace commission’s failure taught everyone serious about the budget, liberal or conservative, an important lesson: Anyone who proposes saving lots of taxpayer money by eliminating “waste, fraud and abuse” should be ignored, because the very use of the phrase shows that they have no idea what they’re talking about.

OK, you know where this is going. There’s an obvious parallel between the Grace commission and Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. (The picture above is Leonardo Loredan, doge of Venice from 1501 to 1521, painted by Bellini.) But there are differences too: Muskaswamy bring a level of arrogant ignorance and clownish amateurishness that Grace never came close to emulating.

Grace, after all, assembled a staff of nearly 2,000 business executives divided into 36 task forces, who spent 18 months on the job, although they mostly came up empty. So far, at least, Muskaswamy don’t seem to be doing anything besides credulously scooping up random posts from social media.

Oh, and putting supervision in the hands of Marjorie Taylor Greene won’t help.

That said, there’s a pattern in their pronouncements so far, which I’d describe as Willie Sutton (the man who robbed banks because “that’s where the money is”) in reverse: going where the money isn’t.

He goes on to list some of the half-baked blather we’ve heard from Musk and Ramaswamy and it’s even dumber when you see it all together. Here’s just one of their bright ideas:

Moving on: In what I guess we should consider their opening manifesto, published in the Wall Street Journal, Muskaswamy call for “mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy.” This suggests that they believe that bloated payrolls are a major budget issue. But how big a factor is employee compensation in federal spending? This big:

Again, going where the money isn’t.

But wait: aren’t there tens of millions of Americans employed by the government? Yes, there are — but they overwhelmingly work for state and especially local governments, not the federal government DOGE is supposed to be tackling. In fact, federal employment is about the same now as it was in the 1950s:

What are all those state and local workers doing? The Census offers a very useful chart:

The lion’s share of state and local employment is in education. Much of the rest is either in hospitals and other health care or in law enforcement. So when someone says “government worker” you shouldn’t imagine a paper-pusher in a cubicle — I mean, the government, like the private sector, does have lots of guys in cubicles, but they aren’t the typical employee. You should instead picture a schoolteacher, or maybe a nurse or a police officer.

He goes on to explain that the US is basically an insurance company with an army. In other words, the military and the safety net. As he points out there are inefficiencies in some things but certainly not in Social Security which is an extremely efficient program.

Health care is a more complicated story; there are some real inefficiencies in our system. But Musk seems to have the nature of these inefficiencies completely backwards:

Yes, American health care has uniquely high administrative costs. But Musk pretty clearly imagines that these costs reflect government inefficiency, when the real reason health care in America involves so much bureaucracy is the exceptional degree to which we rely on private insurance companies. Comparing administrative expenses for public and private insurance is tricky, but there’s no question that they’re much higher in the private sector.

This comes back to the point that running the government isn’t at all the same as running a business. The purpose of Medicare and Medicaid is to pay for peoples’ health care. The purpose of health insurance companies is to collect premiums; paying for care is a cost — the industry actually calls the share of premiums that end up paying medical bills the “medical loss ratio” — and they devote considerable resources to finding ways to avoid covering medical expenses.

Obligatory disclaimer given recent events: No, I’m not offering a justification for killing health-industry executives. Murder is evil, and in this case it’s also stupid. The problem with the U.S. health insurance industry isn’t that it’s run by bad people, it’s the antisocial incentives created by the system.

Read on for much more accessible wonkery, which is his specialty and why I’m glad he’s still going to be writing about this stuff. The NY Times is poorer for the loss.

His conclusion:

Now, in the end none of this may matter. The real purpose of DOGE is, arguably, to give Elon Musk an opportunity to strut around, feeling important. And while it’s a clown show, these clowns — unlike some of the other people Trump may put in office — won’t be in a position to inflict major damage on national security, public health and more.

But it is a clown show, and everyone should treat it as such.

I suspect that’s true but I will admit that I’ve lost faith in my ability to see beyond the next week when it comes to politics. This weird billionaire populism has me off-balance and I honestly can’t predict what they are going to do. Perhaps it will become more clear as time goes on.