Guillotine
It's never what you think it will be.
Someone from McKinsey once explained to me what their job was.
Factory owner in the Czech Republic wants to fire one third of his workforce. He knows that he must. So, he hires McKinsey to come in and do a study. They know what the deal is before they arrive at the factory. They write a pretty report explaining why he needs to fire one third of his workforce.
He announces the layoff and pays McKinsey a few million dollars. They leave town.
This is what DOGE is accused of being: air cover for agency heads.
‘The reality was setting in: DOGE was more like having McKinsey volunteers embedded in agencies rather than the revolutionary force I’d imagined. It was Elon (in the White House), Steven Davis (coordinating), and everyone else scattered across agencies.
‘Meanwhile, the public was seeing news reports of mass firings that seemed cruel and heartless, many assuming DOGE was directly responsible.
‘In reality, DOGE had no direct authority. The real decisions came from the agency heads appointed by President Trump, who were wise to let DOGE act as the ‘fall guy’ for unpopular decisions.’
Musk confirms exit from Trump administration amid image rehab tour
How is this different from any other person who left a high profile position in Washington?
Dog bites man. Story at 11.
‘Musk's media blitz has functioned as part exit interview, part image rehab — an attempt to reassert his identity as an engineering visionary after a year mired in political scrutiny.’
Founder Sahil Lavingia says he was booted from DOGE after just 55 days
This project required significant management. Ironically, it sounds like it could have benefited from the MBAs Musk loves to mock. Or anyone trying to manage the project.
‘He also made observations about the lack of organization in DOGE itself. “I wondered why there wasn’t a centralized DOGE software engineering playbook with all of our learnings; overall, I was surprised by the lack of knowledge-sharing within DOGE. It seemed like every engineer started from scratch.”’
VA-based DOGE associate gets ‘the boot’ after publicly discussing his work
Idealism is painful, at any age.
‘Lavingia worked for DOGE as a software engineer at the VA for just over 50 days, he wrote, but “was never able to get approval to ship anything to production that would actually improve American lives,” despite building several prototypes.
‘“In the end, I learned a lot, and got to write some code for the federal government. For that, I'm grateful,” he said in his blog post. “But I'm also disappointed. I didn't make any progress on improving the UX of veterans' filing disability claims or automating/speeding up claims processing, like I had hoped to when I started.”’
Someone will write a non-tendentious history of DOGE one day. Maybe. We shall see.
‘While Musk is gone, he is leaving behind dozens of DOGE staffers that he helped install at federal agencies across the bureaucracy to cut the waste, fraud, and abuse that Musk said was rampant. They have backgrounds in software engineering, human resources, law, finance, and real estate. Many are young and had no prior government experience.
‘Most importantly, many of these staffers have begun to accumulate power and influence that they believe will help them keep the mission of DOGE alive. “DOGE as a construct has now gone from this specialized task force that shocked the system into something else, with most of the key policy people embedded at the agencies,” a senior DOGE official said.
‘While early on DOGE was mostly working across agencies as “landing teams,” it soon became clear that some of the people on Musk’s team should convert to political appointees to have broader authority, the DOGE official added. For example, lawyer Jeremy Lewin, who reported to Musk and was assigned to various agencies, now reports to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Lewin, 28, also is acting director of the agency’s Office of Foreign Assistance and is helping dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development as its acting deputy administrator for policy and programs.’
Judge blocks Trump DOGE plans for mass firing of federal workers
Judge imposes a preliminary injunction preventing the head of the executive branch from reorganizing the executive branch. She says that the reorganization would have the effect of eliminating the agency’s ability to fulfill their Congressional mandates. Therefore, Congress has an effective veto over what he can or cannot do.
How about, instead, she waits to see if the reorganization neuters these agencies below this performance threshold before asserting what is essentially an unproven hypothesis?
Also, shouldn’t Congress be asserting this?
‘A federal judge further blocked the Trump administration from sharply cutting jobs and reorganizing the structure of many major federal agencies as part of its so-called Department of Government Efficiency effort under billionaire Elon Musk.
‘The order issued late Thursday granted a preliminary injunction that pauses further reductions in force and "reorganization of the executive branch for the duration of the lawsuit."’
Musk Says Bureaucracy Is Worse Than He Thought
Some wag asked Musk, what’s harder? Getting to Mars or trying to reform the federal government?
Cue the laugh track.
But, no seriously.
‘Said Musk: “The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized. I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in D.C., to say the least.”’
'Bureaucratic and wasteful': DOGE sniffs out eye-popping spending on Biden DEI efforts in key agency
The allegation of fraud in unemployment claims shouldn’t be too hard to believe after the fraud-a-palooza in Covid benefits. Lucky criminals look forward to the statute of limitations kicking in to cement their ill-gotten gains soon.
‘"America’s unemployment benefits system is facing an infrastructure crisis, riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse," Labor Department spokesperson Courtney Parella told Fox News Digital. "The Biden administration was given a historic opportunity by Congress to fix it but instead squandered it on bureaucratic and wasteful projects that focused on equitable access rather than advancing access for all Americans in need."
‘Parella added that the department will continue working with state workforce agencies nationwide to focus on ways to improve the UI system to better "meet the needs of the American worker" and cut down on fraud, which has been prevalent in recent years, according to several news reports. ‘
A Disillusioned Musk, Distanced From Trump, Says He’s Exiting Washington
New York Times takes its victory lap on Musk’s departure from Washington.
Maybe, though, their celebration is premature.
Here’s the conspiracy theory:
· Musk isn’t stupid
· Musk put himself out there with the same kind of ridiculous self-promotion that worked for him on Wall Street with Tesla
· Musk got tattooed by the press
· Musk inserted his nerds inside all the agencies
· Musk walks away, drawing fire away from the ghosts in the machine
· His team proceeds with deregulation without deep reporting, even as the press focuses on disappointing cost cutting performance
I’m not saying that is what is happening. I’m not denying it either.
‘The billionaire’s imprint is still firmly felt in official Washington through that effort, an initiative to drastically cut spending that has deployed staff across the government. But Mr. Musk has said in recent days that he spent too much time focused on politics and has lamented the reputational damage he and his companies have suffered because of his work in the Trump administration.’
The Entirely Predictable Tragedy of DOGE
Musk should have been Seal Team 6. Instead his DOGE was a self-aggrandizing Charge of the Light Brigade. Into the Valley of Death rode the six hundred.
‘“Musk,” Luther writes, “a man who knows only the supremacy of an owner’s ability to slash whole corporate departments in a day, was ill-prepared for the finicky, exasperating work of prying apart the many knots that protect federal employees and their reporting agencies from censure, let alone termination.”
‘Yes, indeed. But it’s critical to understand that DOGE and Musk have been undone not by the sometimes good work that they undertook and the prudent cuts they identified. They haven’t been undone by their mistakes and missteps, of which there were more than a few. They haven’t even been undone by the resistance they encountered within the broader Trump administration, in the courts, and in civil society.
‘They have been undone by their sky-high promises, and their hubris.’
Commentary: Trump set Musk up for failure
Trump used Musk, by this argument. Maybe.
The Leviathan may be too big to tame.
‘Musk does concede that whether DOGE continues its work is “up to the president.” That answers the question. Trump only wanted DOGE as long as Musk was willing to be the pain sponge. Musk got tired of that, and if Musk can't do it, nobody can. Thank goodness.’
Goldwater Backs Proposal to Rein in Federal Bureaucracy
Employees who cannot be fired are employees who are unaccountable.
‘That’s why last week, the Goldwater Institute submitted a formal public comment to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in support of a Trump Administration proposal to reclassify thousands of federal employees with policy-influencing roles to at-will employment status. The Institute’s comment makes clear that this is an encouraging step forward to ensure accountability in government, and when necessary, rein in abuses in the federal bureaucracy.
‘States like Arizona, Georgia, Kansas, Texas, Utah, and Florida have classified state workers as at-will employees for years. As the Institute noted in its letter, “oversight and accountability are central features of efficient management practices for government employees,” both at the state and federal levels.’
How Trump’s Regulatory Rollbacks Are Increasing Costs on Americans
The New York Times argues that undoing regulations will lead to higher costs for Americans. For example, undoing regulations that slashed credit card late fees, we are told, would save “millions of customers an average of $220 per year.” Of course, that assumed they would still have the same access to credit in the absence of late fees. Which they wouldn’t, of course.
The Times is cherry picking. Man, they doth protest too much.
‘But many of those regulatory reversals will actually pile more costs on to individual Americans in the form of higher bank fees, electric and water bills, and health insurance payments, according to experts and government analyses. The New York Times examined 10 of the largest claims on the leaderboard and concluded that several did not show evidence of savings to households.’