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!
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