We are supposed to be grateful that Elon Musk’s Whiz Kids have discovered so much “government waste” – as for example at USAID. But what does it matter? More finely, does it matter – to the average taxpayer – whether the money extracted from him is “wasted”?
Or does it matter more that it was taken?
“Wasted” implies there are legitimate things government spends our money on. That we ought not to mind being robbed (or extorted or whatever word you prefer to describe the theft that is taxation) so long as the money taken from us without our consent, via implicit threats of brutal consequences if we do not meekly hand it over, is not “wasted.”
Stalin’s chicken, phone home.
The Department of Government Efficiency – another new federal apparat – is there to do just that. Make government efficient. This is like – but worse than – “mending” rather than ending Obamacare in that efficient government means more vicious, all-encompassing government. Imagine the EyeRess run by tireless AI rather than by a few thousand bored and not-so-efficient bureaucrats. Imagine every penny you ever earn noticed as soon as you earn it, so as to assure you pay every penny you “owe” – as our abusers (and those who favor such abuse) like to style it. It will be extremely efficient.
And we are supposed to be thankful – to Musk – for it.
Has DOGE made what is styled the “defense” budget more “efficient”? Well, even more of our money has been sluiced to the “defense” cartels that provide munitions to what are styled “our allies” in Israel and Keeeeeeeeeeeeeev (just two of many). This is our complicity, but what choice do we have? We can become outlaws or live out-of-doors. These are the two options open to us if we do not wish to pay what we “owe” to Boeing and Raytheon, et al.
And to Musk, too.
The EV Grift is yesterday’s grift. Space Grift is the new grift. But – some will cry – our money is not wasted financing Elon’s rockets! It is important to finance such things! This gets into the question of to whom? It is obviously important to Elon. He thinks it is existentially important to get boots on the ground – on Mars. There are certainly many people who agree. But that is not really the question – or the issue.
The guy struggling to come up with money for his rent – or his food – may consider that his money would be better spent on such things as those. From his point of view, the money taken from him is by definition wasted since it has been taken from him to be spent on things he would never have spent it on himself.
In other words, the whole debate about “waste” is a misdirection.
They – and here we speak of the people who either take our money or support the taking of our money – say it is ok to take it provided it is not “wasted,” as they define this. In other words, so long as it is spent on the things they consider to be worth spending other people’s money on. Your typical Republican, for instance, thinks it is worth spending other people’s money on “defense,” while the typical “democrat” thinks that’s “wasteful” – but thinks it’s very important to spend other people’s money on “education.”
Neither have any problem, in other words, with wasting other people’s money.
Republicans – more finely, Republicans who support DOGE – do differ as regards their newfound interest in efficiently wasting other people’s money. Democrats have never much cared about that, so long as they are getting (and spending) other people’s money. This “efficiency” thing is a strangely Republican thing. A species of dissonance that can be hard to grasp much less articulate.
Aren’t Republicans (especially the “conservative” ones) for less rather than “efficient” government? Isn’t it fascinating – as Mr. Spock might say – how the former has replaced the latter, insofar as Republicans are concerned?
But at least it’s honest – in the sense that Republicans have abandoned their prior pretenses about desiring less (rather than “efficient”) government. And it looks like they are are going to get it, for once.
Unfortunately, so will we.
. . .
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Blow it out your ass with you’re depiction of the NPC meme. DOGE isn’t a new anything. It’s a rename for an agency that was supposed to make sure government computers worked no matter what agency.
Why do libertarians get hung up on Israel? Just call for AIPAC to register as FARA and call it a day. The worlds smallest violin plays, we’re all stuck on the boat together.
Thought of your article when I read this bit:
“It’s not about loyalty to Trump as President, or loyalty to the Office of the Presidency, or even the Constitution. Loyalty to a person fades, faith in a corrupted office in an old building is misplaced. Fealty to a document – when those whose one and only job is to uphold it in their legislation have no idea what it says, or what it means – is useless. […]
The people always end up holding the bag,…”
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2025/04/karen-kwiatkowski/does-america-lead-or-follow-in-this-dance/
The rest of the article was kind of a let down, as if, oblivious, to the obvious? I.e., “And yet, Trump faces a coterie of Israel-firsters […] So far, Trump has established a delicate and uncertain executive “balance” between those who put America First, and those who put it last.”
Ah-yeah. Sure.
Fogward!
[…] The end—the stated goal of some government program—doesn’t justify the means—theft and fraud—that are used to pay for it. From Eric Peters at autopetersautos.com: […]
There is a slight difference in the Red and Blue teams.
Democrats actively create policies & laws to make the lives of everyone (who isn’t tied directly to the government teat) completely miserable and make everything you buy cost more and have you end up in a gulag – should you dissent.
Whereas, the Republicans typically create policies and laws to solely enrich their friends. If you go broke (or somehow get rich), it’s merely an unanticipated byproduct of their efforts.
Plus they do the always nauseating “solder sniffing/cop loving” shtick.
Either way, working people (government employees don’t truly work) get it good and hard.
There’s absolutely no difference between Red & Blue teams, fellow Goyims….
Demo(n)cracy wants YOU DEAD!!!!
PERIOD…the only question is what will you choose to do about it???
Die on your feet resisting, or on your knees, supplicating????
The choice is yours….
I always imagined during my military service, I would die in a foreign land, slumped over a melted down machine gun, surrounded by piles of hot empty brass cartridges, overwhelmed by superior enemy forces….
It appears that may happen after all, only that scenario will happen in the land now known as America, and the traitorous (((FEDGOV))) has been revealed as the superior enemy forces….
The ironic truth burns…..
Your death won’t even be that glorious.
You’ll be droned by a Tesla Reaper Robot Drone.
It’ll be fraudulently claimed as autonomous in order to keep the Tesla stock price artificially high.
But the secret behind them will actually be an army of H1B Jeets operating the flying killer robots.
It needed to be the department of government elimination. A government cannot be efficient, it just can’t be. It doesn’t matter who is “running” it. It just won’t be.
Agreed. How does one make a theft operation efficient (i.e. preventing the wasteful use of a particular resource). The whole point is to plunder, which is by definition wasteful of that individual’s resource.
And will always grow
Serious meltdown set for 2025.. 😀
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjmiaAphhTo
Trump is a putz. A clueless idiot, a whirling dervish.
What does he really do except pontificate and then makes matters worse? Nothing is the answer and Trump expects everybody to buy into the shtick.
200 billion more for the Pentagon is just nuts, another crazed loon out there wandering around in the mist in the midst of it all.
¿Dónde está el dinero?
If I had bought gold at 700 dollars per Troy ounce in ca. 2005, I’d be selling at 3400 today.
You have to find buyers, suckers, really. Not a gold bug, you end up with some junk gold, maybe can be sold, dumped. You have to buy US minted gold coins to have a value for gold, can be in the hundreds of thousands if it is a numismatic mint state gold coin.
Electronics use plenty of gold, aqua regia and one hundred thousand old dumped computers will yield some gold. Me thinks the buyers are using gold in electronics to make a lot of money.
The price works for them, the gold eventually gets discarded.
Of the gold ordered back to the US Treasury from the general population, it is believed that 22 percent of the total in circulation was returned. My grandfather kept a five dollar US minted gold coin. Must be that 78 percent of those who held some US minted gold coin didn’t return their gold to the US Mint. A 10,000 fine was a fear factor, if you want my gold, you come and get it.
It was theirs, nobody else’s. If I remember correctly, I read about how zee gold was kept in private hands at Gold123. Been years ago now.
Trump should declare Sicily the 51st state. Should work out okay.
Just to jog my memory, most of the double-eagles were in banks in 1932. Have to back those gold certificates in circulation, better have the gold when a gold certificate is redeemed.
You had better know how many are in circulation, you run the bank, it’s your job.
Of the gold coins in circulation, some were shipped to Europe to avoid confiscation.
Just a few more recollections.
“Trump is a putz. A clueless idiot, a whirling dervish.”
Chump’s not stupid. He knows EXACTLY what he’s doing.
“If I had bought gold at 700 dollars per Troy ounce in ca. 2005, I’d be selling at 3400 today.”
That’s the measure of the REAL inflation rate over that time, not ‘profit’ as such.
As one of the age-old pieces of financial wisdom says:
“Gold is an inflation hedge and a form of insurance, not an investment.”
Mind you, given gold’s ‘risk profile’ in comparison to the other assets out there, that’s not a bad proposition at all.
To make a raw comparison, eggs to gold price, eggs at five dollars and gold at 3400 USD, one dollar for a dozen eggs in 2005 and gold at 700 USD, 5×700=3500 USD for a Troy oz of gold makes sense.
700 dozen eggs is equal to one Troy of pure gold.
What stupid egg man is going to do that?
The egg man wants the 3500 dollars, not an ancient relic some dumb Jew thinks is worth a mint.
One Troy ounce is not worth anywhere near 700 dozen eggs, feed them to the hogs first, you’ll make some money.
The chickens will lay a lot more eggs, then become stew hens.
An oz of gold won’t do anything like that.
Let Michael Bloomberg go hungry.
I don’t have the URL handy, I think it was a Gary North bit. He wrote about a woman in the mountains out your way, back in the gold rush days, she was trading fresh eggs to the gold miners. Eggs were quite rare, out that way, back then.
I think, and my recollection may be faulty, she was trading one egg for one ounce of gold.
Later, she traded the gold for land.
…Anyway, $700 gold was expensive & overpriced. I thought it was crazy when people were paying $450. …Imagine that.
Or, what was the Gordon Brown bottom? $250? It was like the downward price chart wasn’t going to ever stop. Central bank selling left & right.
“Down,… down,…”
‘The B-52’s – Rock Lobster (Official Music Video)’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4QSYx4wVQg
[And, dang, I just noticed, ’cause I never saw the video ’til now, needs more CowBell! Ha! Crack. Me. Up! Looks like they had A Blast making it. My kinda peeps.]
And only 3 months into the new term! Wasn’t any of those on the ballot last Nov. worth two shits. Think things are bad now……wait. Maybe get your loved ones out of the country,,, I’m thinking a couple of wars, a possible depression, and a very probable dollar default are visiting soon.
Te right circumstances and the right people are leading the nation straight to the shithole.
The only winning move is not to play 🤘
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2025/04/no_author/the-only-winning-move-is-not-to-play/
“Once the federal, state and local governments mandated the injection of a bioweapon vaccine, you were freed from their demands forever.
They directly, openly tried to kill you.
They directly, openly killed your friends and family members.
Self-defense is a God-given right that no one can take away.
Last Rights: The Death… Bovard, James Best Price: $11.70 Buy New $19.99 (as of 01:46 UTC – Details)
Yet the normalcy bias is so strong, most of the population is aggressively DEFENDING the people who tried to kill them.
In a sane world, the criminal leaders would be arrested, tried and if found guilty of genocide, executed.”
I think one has to separate the taking of our money aspect (theft) from using that stolen money to do harmful things, like USAID funding domestic and international coups. DOGE has been good in that it has highlighted and stopped some of the latter. DOGE will not stop the theft though.
If I had a choice of my stolen money being used to send a rocket to Mars or to fund removal of adolescents’ genitals, I would choose Mars for sure. If I had a choice to keep my stolen money, I would certainly chose that. Sometimes the best that can be achieved is not letting perfection become the enemy of the good (or perhaps the better than before).
Amen. Well said. Yes, the space program wasted a lot of money stolen and inflated from the peasants. Better than spending it on recruiting welfare clients and importing third world savages. And a Mars program will bend that spending back towards working Americans, rather than promoting communism via foreign aid and military sporting outings.
I’d rather keep what is mine. But that option isnt on the table.
Trump’s Job is to CRASH the World Economy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzA5rRKTe9o
Henry Makow’s recent piece says Trump’s job is to destroy the MAGA movement. The idea is that the owner’s want to crush patriotism and any hope the little man has for the future.
Trump is brought in, he raises up hope of a bright future, he wrecks the world economy with his tariff program, everything goes to shit, MAGA movement is destroyed, world economy is wrecked, the global elite re-order the planet in their image, an even more Satanic society, total surveillance on the ground (cctv and cars that spy) and in the sky (drones and spy satellites), all run by Ai. Total control, by the year 2100 most organic humans have been phased out just as Ray Kurzweil predicts (he says by 2045 robots will be indistinguisable from humans).
https://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=307200
April 20 – Trump’s Role is to Discredit MAGA
Trumps Role is to Discredit MAGA and all that it represents – family, religion, nation and race.
LOL! Take another booster while you’re at it to make your TDS feel better.
Wrong place to Hasbara Sayanim.
Trumpenstein will save us!
https://i.imgur.com/dwuKNZ1.jpeg
Congress will restrain Trumpenstein!
https://i.imgur.com/gKWinBi.jpeg
What, no column on Kristi’s horrific choice in handbags and her inability to protect her own purse?
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/deficient-handbag-security-dhs-secy-noems-purse-3k-badge-stolen-dc-eatery
Two SS agents, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and an entire table of people didn’t realize that someone walks off with her purse? Only an idiot travels into DC carrying a bag. This is not South Dakota. My husband accused me of victim blaming. I told him I felt bad for her bag being stolen, but read the room. She ought to be thankful it was just a purse and someone didn’t actually harm her. Why would you let your guard down? And why Noem, the SS, or the restaurant allow someone to get that close to approach her? This is a bad look for Noem and the Trump Administration.
Morning, RG!
I find myself disliking Noem bigly. Her She-Wolf of the SS routine and pushing of REAL ID tell us a lot about who she is. I ought to have known better…
I don’t dislike her. I am disappointed. These people are presented as intelligent, thoughtful, and instilled with common sense. It is becoming obvious that these traits have been exaggerated on the very persons they are being attributed to.
Exactly.
Noem seems to really groove on authoritarianism. She’s either not especially bright or she is something far worse. I suppose we’ll soon see which it is!
But, for years she was presented as borderline “libertarian”. She had very few restrictions in SD during COVID.
When she is selected as head of Homeland Security I am expecting one person and then get something else entirely. I just don’t like being advertised one thing and then the package arrives and it looks nothing like the picture.
Hi RG,
Yup. My take is she’s an opportunist – like any other politician. She wants to move up the ladder and that is her primary motivating principle. Not principles. I also think she thinks she’s “hot” – and that it will sell. So far, it has.
Being opportunistic is the key character trait for professional politicians. There’s a few who seem OK, hard to know what really motivates a person however one things that should automatically disqualify you from political office is actually wanting to do it. Only a sociopath or narcissist or otherwise unbalanced would do this. But I think the nearest we see are Ron Paul or Massey. These guys don’t *need* this crap, having successful private careers but were/are motivated to do something about it. I would argue that trying to fight Leviathan from the inside is one approach, probably ultimately fruitless, but not without merit. In a way I think Trump and maybe Elon might have some personal reasons. Maybe misguided, maybe malevolent, we can’t know. But one thing’s for sure is those guys don’t need the job. They have money, they have power. Maybe it’s a matter of being controlled and their very lives are on the line. But that’s a motivation even for us. I don’t like cops 99% of the time but my submission during an interaction is serf preservation. The cop doesn’t want to hear my logical argument and pissing him off isn’t going end well for me.
Well-said, Gerry –
I have never thought Musk trustworthy given his history as a grifter on a grand scale. Trump I hoped might be something like Taft or even just Reagan. But he’s turning out to be more like Wendell Wilkie.
Trump surrounds himself with hot women to glorify himself – like any drug lord.
Morning, Jack –
I think that’s accurate. Noem and Bondi are “hot” – and that is their main qualification. Their second qualification is they are servile – willing to do whatever Trump commands. The men in his orbit are like that, too.
It is possible, possible, that they are trying to pull an Alinsky here, by enforcing the law to the letter until it is repealed. Possible.
I want to believe this is true. But I have many doubts.
They got rid of BOI requirements so they do have my eternal thanks on that.
“I just don’t like being advertised one thing and then the package arrives and it looks nothing like the picture.”
Ah – but this is what voting is all about
Better luck next time – vote harder.
You know, BID, in real life I can always return it to the store and request an exchange or get my money refunded.
“She’s either not especially bright or she is something far worse.” – Eric
More simply: stupid or evil, pick one. (they always pick stupid as a defense, btw)
Be wary attributing to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.
Don’t most of these people love authoritarianism when it’s their version?
Hi Dan,
Yup – they do. It’s why it’s difficult for me to get out of bed some days.
I was suspicious when she vetoed a bill banning trans in girls sports, she went weak in fear of the NCAA and ACLU. Then flipped back and signed another bill doing this, later. ??? Doggone it, which is it “gunner” Noem?
I completely agree with that, Eric. Early on, I was cautiously optimistic about Noem, in that she seemed to buck the trend with the COVID response. But no. Just another Orange Shutzstaffel Frau.
Bragging about shooting her dog was all I needed to see that she us evil.
When I saw this photo of ICE Barbie posing in front of a cell full of tatted, bare-chested degenerates, my jaw hit the floor.
https://postimg.cc/QKqmKdNy
You don’t need to be a cinematographer to grok that this obviously is the opening scene of a messy gang bang video.
I got stopped by a lady cop in my automobile
She said get out and spread your legs
And then she tried to cop a feel
That cop she was all dressed in blue
Was she pretty? Boy I’m tellin’ you
I swatted her like no swat team can
Turned a cherry pie right into j-a-a-a-a-m
— Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sir Psycho Sexy
RG
Apparently this is what “efficient” government looks like.
RG,
Not to mention she was carrying $3k in cash, stolen from the populace as is the subject of this article. Who the hell carries thousands in cash around DC?
$3k of cash not a big deal to DC kleptocrats. There is more where they came from.
There is more where THAT came from
Unfortunately there are also always more kleptocrats too. You could fire all members of congress, the judiciary, and all the other parasites that constitute Goverment.
A new fresh batch of them would be in office by year end.
There is no lack of psychopaths and immoral people in Merikanistan’.
George Carlin had it right paraphrasing; the public sucks. These scumbags come from American schools, American business, American churches. This is the best we have to offer.
The public does suck, Burn It.
But you can be sure, if you or I were ‘caught’ with $3k on our person, the ‘authorities’ might just ‘confiscate’ that using civil asset forfeiture laws.
Also, many Americans don’t even have $3k in their bank account, let alone in their fucking purse. Just shows you how different these people truly are.
This whole thing at the burger place is really really odd. Two SS agents didn’t key in on a guy walking thru with head and face covered, heading for the Noem table? And no one in the Noem family crew seemed alarmed over this stranger getting close? Husband? Other adult males?
Why would you dine out in D.C. where 99% hate you and your family? She could have been killed in an instant once this dude got past the two SS agents.
‘Has DOGE made what is styled the “defense” budget more “efficient”?’ — eric
No. And that’s the tell. About eighty percent of the fedgov budget is on autopilot, spent on entitlements and interest. So-called ‘defense’ [800 overseas bases, yo] is by far the largest chunk of the discretionary budget. But in advance — and regardless of the outcome of various peace negotiations — the R-party has reflexively cranked the defense budget to over $1 trillion for the first time.
This tells us plain as day that the fedgov is going to keep spending like a drunken sailor — and that fiscal conservatives’ fantasies of saving $2 trillion somewhere, somehow, someday, are lemon meringue pie in a star-spangled sky.
Who you gonna call? Muh barbaric relic don’t lie: it’s ‘up’ (or more accurately, the US counterfeit greenback is down) another $44 an ounce as I type, after exceeding $3,500 around 2 a.m. and eliciting a headline in the New York Slimes. Which prolly means it needs a pause to refresh …
She’s one of a kind, she’s just mine, all mine
Wanted no applause, just another course
Made a meal outta me, and came back for more
Had to cool me down to take another round
— AC/DC, You Shook Me All Night Long
Just bought another tenth of an ounce yesterday. Cost me more FRNs than one ounce Kruggerrands and Leaf’s did when I first started buying. Silver is creeping higher, mostly sideways, so it probably is soon time for gold to retrench.
You are correct, Eric. We don’t need more efficient psychopaths running and ruining our lives. However, it seems that those traits are what rise to the top in any multi-tiered organization.
https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/2bsvudkf0kpf5r4kkaosg/portfolio/the-psychopath-in-the-corner-office
Indeed Mark, the very last thing we need is more efficient government. I much prefer them stumbling all over themselves, falling down, and breaking things.
That’s the whole concept of Real ID, a more “efficient” means of tracking us.
Eric: But at least it’s honest – in the sense that Republicans have abandoned their prior pretenses about desiring less (rather than “efficient”) government. And it looks like they are are going to get it, for once.
And as H.L. Mencken would have said “Good and hard” to boot.
My solution to these problems are simple.
1- Aid- The supplicants must crawl on their hands and knees and beg for the aid in public. Why? If you have to demean yourself to get assistance it is more likely to be a real crisis that you are facing rather than business as usual. That said you probably shouldn’t receive it anyhow.
2- Senators/ Congressmen must wear clothing listing all their sponsors, oops I meant donors. That way we know what we are dealing with when we see them. If they push for legislation they must indicate who paid them to ask for it and who would benefit from it. That’s because legislation seldom benefits “We The People”.
3- Term limit Senators/ Congressmen and for that matter GovCo employees. People work the hardest starting out; after 20 years their just putting time in.
4- If all else fails remembering these simple rules might avoid a lot of bad decisions and actions:
“Don’t go to stupid places;
don’t associate with stupid people;
don’t do stupid things.”
— John Farnam
Sadly our glorious leaders will do none of the above and that’s why where we are today.
Landru, I’ve said for years that “term limits” on elected office mean nothing without term limits on the bureaucracy. Ten years “serving the public” is long enough. Give someone else the opportunity to “serve”. One year’s pay, tax-free, is your severance. Nothing else. Period.
When I’ve told people this their reaction is always, “Why, if you did that no one would want to work for GovCo.”
AHA!!!
Now you get the picture.
This includes the MICIMATT* Complex.
*Thanks, Ray McGovern
Quite some time, that is the way it used to be.
When an administration changed hands, the bureaucrats were dismissed, to be replaced by those in the current administration.
We need to get back to that. Eliminate civil service protections. All bureaucrats must serve at the pleasure of their administration. When an administration changes hands, there is no job security.
‘Senators/ Congressmen must wear clothing listing all their sponsors’ — Landru
Rep Elise Stefanik (R-NY) models the garb that every Congress Clown will be obliged to wear under Landru’s sensible proposal:
https://tinyurl.com/463cvyhn
There is only one sponsor.
There is only one sponsor:
israel…
What really needs to take place is to prohibit any American who either holds a foreign passport or lends support to a foreign country from holding any federal, state, or local government position.
It was laughable for democRATS and some republicans to worry about “Russian influence” in government to overlook the REAL influence in the American government–israel.
In fact, I would require ALL JEW$ within the USA to register as “agents of a foreign government”. You see, judaism is as much (if not more) a political system as it is a “religion”.
All jewish lobbying organizations, synagogues, holohoax (oops, I mean “holocaust™”) museums and the like lose their tax-exempt status and are also required to register as “agents of a foreign government”.
These moves would finally help to eliminate the stranglehold that JEW$ have over our political process.
Any JEW who opposes the above changes is free to leave the country. JEW$ have done enough damage to the American body politic.