Story 24 of 52

By M. Snarky

I’m an unabashed Libertarian and have bones to pick with both the Democrats and the Republicans for all sorts of anti-freedom and anti-liberty policies. See my Politically Homeless post for some background on this.

Unless you have been living under a rock or are perhaps in solitary confinement in a foreign prison somewhere outside of the United States, you’ve heard of DOGE: The Department of Government Efficiency, which I’ll summarize thusly:

• DOGE was created by an executive order from Donald Trump, a polarizing figure.
• DOGE is managed by Elon Musk, a controversial super-genius level billionaire.
• DOGE is acting as a consultancy to the Trump administration.
• DOGE is reviled by many pundits, politicos, and media types.

Meme coin and Shiba Inu references aside, DOGE has become a lightning rod of controversy right out of the gate. Elon Musk is notable for his pragmatic approach to solving problems and distilling them down to their essential components, and stripping away any unnecessary elements. He’s very good at it. So, why not take this same practical approach to government spending to uncover any potential corruption, wasteful spending, fraud, overspending, ineptitude, redundancy, etc.? So what if he’s an outsider without any political experience? DOGE is about efficiency, not glad-handing or bashing the opposing political party and their policies and supporters at every opportunity.

Granted, Musk’s approach may seem as if the tool of choice is a machete instead of a scalpel, but I would argue that there is room for both and maybe a chainsaw too. For example, maybe use a scalpel for entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and welfare, and the Department of Defense, but use a machete (or a chainsaw!) for everything else.

Have you ever looked at how many US government programs and agencies that there are? According to usa.gov, which, inconveniently, does not summarize how many there are on the landing page, so you have to count through them manually from A-Z, there are approximately 607 of them. SIX HUNDRED AND SEVEN! I’m no expert here, but that seems like a lot and is probably too many. Do we really need the National Gallery of Art whose statement is, “The National Gallery of Art collects, preserves and exhibits art works, and works to promote the understanding of art through research and educational programs.” Seems like museums, universities, or the private sector can handle that, you know, the super wealthy people that collect and sell art. Or perhaps Sotheby’s.

How about the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA), whose statement is, “The United States Fire Administration (USFA), part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, works to prepare for, prevent, respond to all hazards.” Respond to all hazards seems like a stretch. Do we actually need federal fire fighters? I’m thinking absolutely not because firefighting is a very local state, county, and city service, some of which are voluntary, and so the feds should not be involved at all unless they want to donate a firetruck.

For the sake of argument, out of those 607 federal departments and agencies that spend nearly $7 trillion tax dollars per year, can’t we all agree that they should at least be audited like what Deloitte or PricewaterhouseCoopers do for Fortune 500 companies to ensure that the books are on the up and up and nothing fishy is going on? Oh, that’s right, best practice accounting is anathema to government. But it does seem that Mr. Musk is highly likely to find all kinds of efficiencies to be had across the board. But maybe the politicians really don’t care about efficiency at all and categorically do not want him to be checking the books or poking around for fraud, corruption, and waste (the evil trinity of the federal government) because the truth might slip out. Truth like the American taxpayers have been fooled into trusting the politicians with their hard-earned money, and the politicians have known about the fraud, corruption, and waste the entire time. “Nothing to see here!” Wink-wink, nudge-nudge.

My intuition tells me that the nervous pants-on-fire politicians who aren’t positive that they’ll survive the scrutiny of an audit and their big media sycophants will portray Musk as evil and will stonewall him at every turn and clog up the judicial system with lawsuits challenging everything that Musk wants to do which will grind DOGE to a halt. Unfortunately, it’s all part of the dog-eared political playbook.

If the collective belief of the American taxpayer is that we’re all getting ripped off by the government all of the time and at all levels and it is absolutely corrupt (which should be the default attitude anyway), and the government provides sub-par services to the people they, ah, serve, doesn’t the government have the obligation to prove otherwise in the spirit of transparency? Well, I think so…but they won’t do it voluntarily, so someone needs to force their hand. That’s why we need DOGE.

I also want to see DOGE applied to the state, county, and city government levels too. I’m pretty sure taxpayers are getting ripped off left-and-right there too, especially here in Los Angeles where city hall is a cesspool of corruption and contempt.

I’m going to take the opportunity here to float out my six-step idea called FERRET:

I say we FERRET governments everywhere all of the time.

I also strongly recommend that we put governments on the blockchain so anyone can see all of the transactions at any time. Yeah, I know – wishful thinking – but it would be the closest thing to a truth machine that we can get without it being science fiction.

Instagram: @m.snarky

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