The First 30 days of 47 (Additional)

Trump is continuing to try to overturn the 14th amendment.  Claiming that it only applied to freed slaves.

He is showing off images of himself with a crown, declaring "Long live the king!"

Fired 3,000 park rangers.  Just because...

Is trying to kill windmills, because he doesn't understand the science, and he just doesn't like them.

He pardoned thousands of the insurrection on Jan 6, 2021.  Many have been arrested for various crimes already.

Trump has floated the idea of sending $5,000  to all tax payers paid for with DOGE savings.  This would amount to $765 billion.  (check my math here.  153 million federal tax payers, times 5,000 is... The number still holds) So far, DOGE is claiming $55 billion as of 2/21/2025.   2/3rds of which are not specified, and 8 million of that was improperly logged in as 8 billion.  So the number is really at 9 billion.

Lets add in the savings from firing of 275,000 government employees, and assume $100,000 yearly for each.  That is $27.5 billion dollars per annum.  Lets just double that number for infrastructure and corruption costs.  That would be 55 billion per year, 210 billion total by the time Trump is irrelevant.  Where is the $765 billion coming from?  I am sure that Elon Trump doesn't know.  They have people to do the math.  And they are not very good at it...

No surprise, they are lying again!  Why are they believed?  Because Faux does a really good job of lying to its watchers.

Trump is floating the idea of starting up phase IV of the Keystone Pipe line again.   There is little interest.  Why?  Because Oil has been hovering around $72 a barrel for several years.  Canadian shale is the most expensive oil to extract, estimates range from $55 to $75 a barrel.  The only time the oil companies care is when oil is over $100/barrel.  See A Tale of Two Pipelines

Trump went on a total rampage against Zelenskyy because the President of Ukraine dared to say he was living in a delusional bubble.  Then Trump proved Zelenskyy's point by going on a twitter storm repeating Moscow's propaganda.  

Trump's vindictiveness is on full display here.  He hates Zelenskyy because the man dared to reject a quid pro quo of $400 million to investigate Hunter Biden.

The US has dropped the prosecution of war crimes, including genocide and the use of gas weapons, against Putin.

Trump lied that Ukraine started the current war.  Somehow arraigning for several Russian armies to attack on multiple fronts.   

Trump lied that Ukraine lost half the $350 billion dollars the US sent due to corruption.  When the US sent about only $125 billion.  

Trump lied that the US sent $200 billion to Ukraine more than Europe.  Europe has sent $258 billion so far, about $128 billion more than the US.

Like any tyrant that has had someone stand up to him, Trump fled to a different battleground and decided to set up a "Gotcha" moment with the Governor of Maine, Janet Mills.  He threatened to withhold from the state education dollars because Maine is still permitting transgender athletes participating in girls and women's sports.  He insists this is a FEDERAL law and all must bow to submit.  On the other hand, all other women's health rights are state rights.  Hypocrisy at it's best.  She looked him in the eye and replied, "See you in court."  Proving that Governor Mills and Liz Cheny have more balls than the rest of congress combined.

But that case will be irrelevant, as DOGE will, and with Congresses hearty approval, dismantle the Department of Education.  That will mean there will be no money for him to withhold.

Googling "how many high school transgender athletes are there?"  Gets an estimate of between 10 and 30 nationwide.  So why is this such a hot button issue?  Because Fox news pummels it way out of proportion.  Think Anti-Trans Tuesday on FOX!.  (I made that up, don't repeat it)

Trump caved on his tariff threats on Mexico and Canada after about 24 hours.   Achieving nothing but was agreed to by the previous administration except, Canada promised to do better to control the flow of Fentanyl.  Currently, and estimated point2 percent comes from Canada.  About one briefcase's worth.  While many tons from Mexico, but made in China.

But Tariffs are being threatened again.  This time the markets believe him and plunged 1,300 points in two days. 

Our dear leader in charge of Free Speech, seems to have a problem with free speech.   AP news is no longer allowed in the White House, and the newly weaponized Department of Justice is investigating a member of Congress, Robert Garcia, because he called Elon a dick. 

While President Elon Musk garners most of the headlines, lets drill down to the mini-Musks. 

The chief conspiracy nutter in charge of the  Health and Human Services insists that vaccines are unnecessary or should be delayed for black people.  Why?  He stated that there were, but didn't name them, a series of studies that show that.  Possibly referring to the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793.  Where it was believed that blacks suffered less than whites.  But far more likely they just were not counted.  

Now any rational person would see this is just raciest rhetoric in its meanest form.  But here we are.  51 senators heard this and said, "Sounds good to me!"

Pete Hegseth negotiated a peace settlement for the Ukraine v Russia war where Ukraine gives back the Kursk region, while Russia keeps the Ukrainian land it has taken, and pays no reparations.  This is called, Surrender.

+1. In a classic scam tactic, the US is giving Ukraine only 1 hour to surrender control of its rare earth deposits in a deal that , as described by the mini musk, Scott Pissant, would defray some of the costs of the US aid sent to Ukraine.

Again. Ukraine Surrenders. Putin then gets to sell oil at market prices.

+2. Staff at the U.S. farm, environment and interior agencies have been instructed by the Trump administration not to speak with the U.S. Congress, Representative Chellie Pingree said in a letter sent to the agency administrators on Thursday.

And let’s not forget that due to an executive order, Doge is not subject to the Freedom of information requests till 2036.

This is called “Transparency.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DOGE Lies

Feb 17, 2025.  The Department of Government Efficiency continues to hack into and away at our governmental structures. Our Republican controlled Congress looks on effetely.  It is really obvious that my previous party of 40 years, has taken to heart the axiom of "party before country."

DOGE to show relevance, has made claim after claim of discovery of waste and fraud.   Clearly implying, where there is smoke, there is fire."  It is a con man's trick, to inundate people with information, so they don't have time to think.

Early on, I was checking into some of the items.  And the first 3 I looked into were all deceptive.  Not just cherry picked to trigger the Maga-hats.  But also misrepresented, exaggerated, or just out and out lies.

A LGBTQ concert, funded by USAID,  put on in Ireland. First reported as $20,000, but later read into the congressional record at over $60,000. And as it turns out, wasn't funded by USAID.  

$50,000,000 for condoms to Gaza.  Later a Republican congressman read this line item as $100 million.  There is no evidence this is true.  The USAID budget for condoms for the entire world was $8 million.  When question on this, Elon Musk replied, "Not Everything I Say Is True."

Millions of Americans in the Social Security that are over 150 years old.   Initially, no facts.  When he did present actual data, it was everyone in the social security system where their "isDead" flag was not set.  About 20 million were listed over the age of 100, out of an estimated true number of 100,000.  Problem is, in 2023, the Inspector General also ran that query, but included the filter "and also not receiving benefits for over 50 years."  And the count went down by 18.9 million.  The remaining million certainly has some fraud in it.  But probably most of them would filter out as well if we add to the query, "and not receiving benefits for over 20 years."  We could ask the Inspector General, but he was fired by DOGE.

The official number of centenarians collecting Social Security in 2023 is 73,815.  The number of centenarians living in the US is 101,000.  https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/supplement/2024/highlights.html

“USAID spent $6 million on tourism in Egypt.”  This funding was for education and economic development in North Sinai, aka Gaza, and about not Tourism.  And it was funded in 2019, so Trump.  Oddly, I don't see any Republican uproar over his proposed rebuilding of Gaza now.  At a significantly larger, 200B to 2 trillion dollar, price point.

 “USAID spent $47,000 on a transgender opera in Colombia.”  But later read into the congressional record at over $74,000. And as it turns out, wasn't funded by USAID (either).

 What happened to his claim of 150 billion spent on radical groups? Zero specifics offered.

 Military spending $9 million payment to Reuters for a “large scale social deception” project. Implying the news service.  But actually spent to Thomson Reuters Special Services, a research group on  research for “automated defense against social engineering attacks.”  R&D is something that the Military does. 

  $23 million to the USAID chief Samantha Power.  Truth is her salary was 183,000 for 4 years.

 $84 million to Chelsea Clinton from USAID?  No, but there was 7.5 million sent to Clinton Health Access Initiative, to fund health services in Zambia, in 2019.  So 10 times the exaggeration, and for a charity.  Again, under Trump.

 Reports of payouts for trips by celebrities to Ukraine.  No evidence offered.   

 Claims that the Politico was paid millions to write good stories for Democrats.  The total was actually $44,000, for the paid subscriptions.  

In their weekend raid on the Treasury, which resulted in the Treasury official David Lebryk resigning rather than give the keys of the Treasury to Musk's "Landing Team." We were first told they would have "read only" access.  While it was reported that they were plugging in and downloading everything they could.  And inserting code.  Then it was reported they did have write access, but only for a little while.  They have been order to give back what was stolen, but haven't as of yet.

Meanwhile DOGE has fired the people in charge of securing our nuclear weapons, ALL the Inspector Generals,  over 1,000 staff from the VA, park rangers,  10% of the CDC, while proposing to shutter the weather service, and demoralizing the FAA. 

 DOGE made a claim that they have found over a billion dollars in fraudulent spending.   But one item, a new embassy at 750 million was most of the line item.

So when the Maga-hats are thinking, "Where there is smoke, there is fire."  We Agree!