The Department of Grifting Everyone

Put those words on a hat.

Let’s talk a little about oligarchy. Oligarchy happens when power is used by those in control to benefit those in control.

It often begins with a gradual shift where the wealthy gain power over a bit of government, regulation or policy and over time build a system where wealth leads to more power, which leads to more wealth and so on.

To stay in power oligarchs aim to control the power and information centers of an economy. They control how laws are written and how they are interpreted, how regulations are written and enforced. They control the tax system, and the enforcement of the tax system, so that they are taxed at lower rates, often meaning that society at large has less tax revenue to pay for social goods. They control the media so that information is controlled. They control education as much as they can so that the system they have built is taught as a virtuous one.

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

The Department of Grifting Everyone.

Elon Musk was not elected by anyone. But he plowed about a quarter of a billion dollars into the Presidential campaign so that his guy would get elected, and then let him form a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The stated mission of DOGE is to root out waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government.

DOGE is out there shutting down government agencies and crowing that they were saving the taxpayers money and draining the swamp of Washington DC. There are two main problems with this story. DOGE has the same authority to shut down government agencies that I do. What they are doing is illegal. But the Department of Justice will sit on its hands, because they approve of what Musk and his team are doing. Congressional Republicans have the true authority to shut these agencies down, since they are the majority in the House, Senate and White House, but these agencies are relatively popular and serve a lot of the American people, so Congress doesn’t want the responsibility for shutting them down when they have to face voters in less than two years. If Elon and DOGE can do the dirty work, congressional Republicans feel that they don’t have to take responsibility. I don’t think that logic really works, they will still get the blame, but they are afraid of Musk because he will spend his vast fortune to primary any Republicans who cross him. They didn’t really think through this Citizen’s United thing did they?

The second thing going on here is that Elon is running the largest con in the history of mankind.

The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, which Musk bragged of shutting down has actually been wildly successful. The total budget of that agency is under $1 billion, and it has returned $20 billion to consumers in recent years by cracking down on the fraud and abuse of companies looking to scam consumers. That’s actually a model of government efficiency. X has announced partnership with Visa which will payments through X’s upcoming Money service. Visa will enable X users to move funds between their bank accounts and their X digital wallet. Guess who would be regulating Musk’s company (X) in case he wanted to, oh I don’t know, defraud people through X’s new Money service. If you say the CFPB, you get a gold star.

Musk also shut down USAID, which helps people around the world in need, and has been a major part of the “soft power” dividend the US gets from helping people. USAID buys about $2 billion a year in commodities, mainly small grains and pulse crops, from U.S. farmers. That money is now gone. Oh, and USAID was investigating Musk’s company Starlink. I’m sure that has nothing to do with this.

USAID and the CFPB have tiny pudgets next to the Pentagon, which has a number of large contracts with multiple Musk companies. There is no audit of the Pentagon planned by DOGE.

I’ve seen some celebratory stories from right leaning news sites praising DOGE getting rooting out waste, fraud and abuse. But details are scant in these stories, or they highlight a non-story, as when Musk announced that a mine was being used to store government paperwork. The only problem was that "that mine was actually exposed 11 years ago by The Washington Post, in a story called, 'Sinkhole of bureaucracy.'"

What Musk is doing is a grift plain and simple. He is already the richest man in the world, but he is using his power and influence to shut down worthwhile government programs that stand in the way of him expanding his wealth, and he can tell people on “X” that he is doing it all for them.

But they might not believe him for long.

Congressional Republicans are receiving record calls from their constituents that are being economically harmed by the actions of DOGE. For example, those farmers that receive in total $2 billion from USAID, which will now be gone.

These congressional Republicans are also realizing that the more Musk and DOGE get away with their illegal actions, the more Congressional Republicans are irrelevant. If Elon Musk decides who gets money and who doesn’t when that is the job of … Congress, why should we even have a Congress. Maybe in the near future, we won’t. There is an inverse relationship between Elon’s approval ratings and the strength of the spines of congressional Republicans. The lower his approval ratings get, the braver they will get.

For example, in Alabama, the National Institute of Health, whose funding Musk shut down. A not insignificant chunk of change from the NIH went to the University of Alabama, which is the largest employer in the state of Alabama (whoops). A rate cut at the National Institutes of Health could cost the University of Alabama at Birmingham about $70 million a year. NIH grants in Alabama in 2023 supported 4,769 jobs with an economic impact of $909 million

When the world is running down, you make the best of what’s still around.

Like it or not, we are likely in late stage capitalism. Growth rates are slower, environmental breakdown is starting to rear its ugly head, and us commoners are starting to see this. The powerful aren’t dumb. They see it too. But instead of leading and doing something to help, they are getting theirs while they still can.

That is all Musk is doing with DOGE. There isn’t much waste, fraud and abuse, he is simply exploiting the system to get richer when he is already the richest man in the world.

But wait, what if we lived in a culture and a system that didn’t value conspicuous wealth, and lionize billionaires just because they were rich. What if we didn’t live in a culture and system that tells us we have to grow forever even if it destroys us.

We could. Degrowth is the answer to a system that is currently exploiting us just so the obscenely rich can get richer at the expense of the rest of us. We could appoint our representatives through sortition, base our economy on well-being not growth, and step back from the economic and ecological cliff we are currently spreading toward. Anyone think that might be a good alternative to this DOGE circus?

I’ll leave you with this.

The budget for the CFPB was $823 million for the current fiscal year. Elon Musk’s net worth is about $379 billion (when I looked it up today). Elon Musk, all by himself, could fund the CFPB for 460 years. But it needs to be shut down, so he can have more.

Sounds about right.