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Fox News’ Bret Baier interviewed the DOGE team last week. I found the reporting both reassuring (we’ve got some smart and careful people in
DOGE) and scary (the federal government is fraught with fraud and fraud potential.)
Elon Musk begins with this: “The sheer amount of waste and fraud in the government, it is astonishing. It’s mind-boggling. We routinely encounter wastes of $1 billion or more, casually.”
As the interview proceeds you find out that a whopping 40% of calls to
Social Security are fraudsters. “Fraudsters call in and claim to be a
retiree. And then they convince the operator to change where the money is flowing.”
If you get half a chance, dig up that interview. You can find the entire interview on YouTube. It will, I think, dissuade you from buying into the attack line that DOGE is a bunch of reckless teens mucking up efficient government workers.
DOGE is also a lot more than uncovering the weird expenditure here and
there.
Yes, they’ve blown the whistle on a $300,000 contract educating queer and transgender farmers in San Francisco on the merits of “food justice.”
And, yes, they stopped a contract of $600,000 to study the menstrual
cycles of transgender “men” in Louisiana.
But it’s the huge redundancies of government offices that will pay the
biggest dividends.
I came away from that interview convinced we all must root for DOGE
instead of trying to pick it apart. Its success will accrue to all
Americans.
GAVIN’S RIGHT
Imagine if you had a roommate in college who demanded the beds be arranged
with his on the east wall and yours on the west. You wanted it
differently.
You suggest going to the dining hall to talk about it, and your roommate refuses because to be seen talking about it would be to legitimize your position.
While it may sound like a stretch of a silly analogy, this is how it is
living with the whackos in the Democratic Party these days.
Ask Gavin Newsom.
The California governor wants to talk about the state of the party. The Democratic Party wants none of it.
In an environment in which the popularity of the Democratic Party is the
lowest it has been in at least a generation, Gov. Newsom is doing nothing
more than questioning the layout of the Democratic Party dorm room.
And he minces no words. In an appearance on “Real Time With Bill Maher,”
Gov. Newsom, above, called the Democratic brand “toxic.”
“We talk down to people.”
He’s started a re-branding campaign with a podcast, “This Is Gavin
Newsom,” which talks to ideological foes.
Democrats say he’s legitimizing the GOP point of view, to which he says
the idea that “we can’t even have a conversation with the other side”
provides a glimpse into the abhorrent “cancel culture” that permeates the Democratic Party. Calling the majority of Americans Nazis (and actually believing it) is a ritualized political suicide.
You don’t have to be a Gavin Newsom fan to know he’s right. But so far,
the Democratic Party isn’t listening. If it keeps on keeping on like this,
Dems will become a permanent minority on the national stage.
That’s how it is.
https://sparkstrib.com/2025/04/03/root-for-doge-not-pick-it-apart/
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