Jackie Sue was right

 

We're fucked. 

I've been watching Cheeto Mussolini and his minions in action since the inauguration. Every time I think they've done the dumbest thing ever they manage to do something even dumber. Planes are falling out of the sky? Not a problem. Just blame it on a nonissue (committing the sin of hiring people who aren't white or male) and say it's all Biden's or Obama's or maybe even Carter's fault. Claiming you're going to eliminate waste in government spending? Solution: fire every low level employee unlucky enough to still be on probation and ignore all the GS-15 dead weight, the various managers and supervisors who have been Retired on Active Duty (ROAD) or Retired in Place (RIP) for years. 

Anyone who's ever had a government job knows about the RIPs.  I think most agencies have slots where the people who fill them are the codgers (geezettes?) who are already eligible for retirement but want to keep getting a full paycheck for a few more years. When I worked for the National Park Service I swear there were a couple parks where the superintendents were already mentally on their bass boat. They were useless as managers. They'd found a geographic location they liked, they had the government move them (the higher in the food chain a position is, the more generous Transfer of Station funds become), help with the purchase of a house (their retirement cabin on the river or on a hillside with a great mountain view), and be bitched about by park staff for the next two, three, or four years. I doubt if any of that dead weight got noticed by the Musk's DOGE tech bros. 

But talking about RIP personnel is a bit of a digression. I'm more intrigued by Musk deciding he needed to re-invent the wheel, and do a piss poor job in the process. Some of us geezers still remember the 1990s and Clinton-Gore. Clinton et al. decided the Vice President should have more to do than attend funerals in foreign countries. Al Gore got tasked with reducing waste and redundancies in government. Spoiler alert: he actually did it. The task force cut the federal government's payroll by a significant amount, duplicate offices and agencies were eliminated. The one I always remember most clearly was in regulating coal mining. The Bureau of Mines vanished. My faith in the tRump administration to always fuck stuff up is so strong that I firmly believe the government will emerge from the DOGE purge with zero funds saved, gazillions being doled out to private contractors, and several new offices, task forces, agencies, etc., created to provide jobs to loyal suck-ups. They may even bring the Bureau of Mines back from the dead. No reason to, of course, but it could make some good sound bites for the orange cockwomble to brag about helping America's coal industry.

The way the Clinton administration's task force succeeded in shrinking government was, of course, to do it carefully. No blanket across the board reductions in force, just a meticulous examination of who was doing what and where. Had Musk possessed more brain cells than a gerbil (or had a shit ton less ego) he'd have followed similar methods. Less trauma, more good press, and for sure no internet memes speculating about the Muskrat's micro penis and/or botched dick enlargement surgery. (Those memes must be comforting to all the broke-ass dudes out there. If the richest man in the world can't buy himself a macro member then maybe being poor isn't so horrible after all.)