Misguided Anger

The truth is making people mad and not always for the right reasons

When the rampant misuse of public money is exposed—with receipts—watching some taxpayers get angry at those who called out the fraud is counterintuitive. But we live in hyper-politicized times where the normal has no place and where the what often pales in comparison to the who. There is not only Donald Trump to hate but also Elon Musk, which has led even people who get the gist of what DOGE is to question if it can work.

Multiple members of Musk’s team have been doxed and threatened, activist judges believe they have the authority to tell the executive how to manage executive branch functions, and the people who should feel just a tad of shame are instead desperately fighting to keep their slice of the govt cheese. The hyperventilating that was initially glorious to witness is now pathetic and bordering on the pathological.

TDS-2 is proving far more toxic than the original version of this mind virus. Its symptoms include openly defending corruption, wilfully overlooking graft, and carrying water for the govt dysfunction that made Donald Trump possible in the first place. A rational society would see the rot being revealed within USAID and start asking hard questions about the larger agencies where the real money is, places like Defense, HHS, and Education. We’ll look at the failures of the third shortly.

Instead, nits are being picked about the occasional misstep that is virtually guaranteed in such an unprecedented exercise. The strangest argument I have seen against DOGE is that the initiative is not radical enough. Of course, USAID is smallball in the overall framework of Fedzilla but it serves to demonstrate proof of concept before the work can expand. And it does need to expand. To every federal agency and department. It is time to make burgers out of some of DC’s sacred cows.

I mentioned education earlier. The federal Department of Ed has been in the crosshairs for some time and with good reason. There is an inverse relationship between the money DoE has spent through the years and student performance in that time. As it is, federal money is a minor part of local school system budgets, ranging from 5% to 16% depending on the district. The claim that more money translates into better results is simply false. That’s why there has long talk of eliminating the DoE for years. Whether that talk becomes action is an open question but the case for survival is weak.

The strongest argument against keeping it may well be the Covid period, when the DoE budget went off the rails, jumping from $200 billion to more than $600 billion with nothing to show for it but failure. Where did all that money go? Not toward educating young people, who are “graduating” high school while being functionally illiterate.

Are there consequences for this? Of course, not; this is DC, where poor performance is often a ticket to promotion, cushy slots on corporate boards, and ‘expert’ status on cable television. DoE is the 6^th-best funded federal agency, with the payroll to prove it. The average salary clocks in at a cool $112,000. For that kind of money, the taxpayer might expect an agency that works overtime to justify its existence. Instead, there are requests for more money. The FY2025 plan, for example, sought a $715 million increase in pay over the previous year.

Govt is supposed to work for us, not the other way around. Not a single private enterprise would continue paying those sums for that level of performance, and no one would be expecting a raise in the following year. The hostility that arises when inconvenient facts about outcomes are pointed out or when alternative methods of educating children are raised makes you wonder if the status quo is the goal rather than a problem.

Just listen to this collection of people who work for an NGO funded by the DoE. They recognize part of the problem - that public schools are at their worst when preparing those who need education the most – but ignore their complicity in it. They insist on treating minority kids as mascots and pets – even the minority educators do it. They refuse to see black and brown children as capable of achieving subject matter competence if not mastery, and they will not brook any suggestion that the current system is broken.

Fixating on nonsense like anti-racism or defunding police is not going to help one child learn to read or do math at grade level. The whole federal enterprise has become nothing more than a jobs machine and money-laundering exercise for people who are otherwise marginally employable. And, why in the world is a single NGO getting your money and mine to teach any child anything?

I’m old enough to remember a public system that prepared young folks for their next step, whether that meant college, a program in the trades, a job, or military service. No one made excuses for children based on their levels of melanin and it is grossly insulting to listen to people like those in the video linked above. Their aim seems to be perpetuating the existing problem because that means a new generation of dependent if not entitled people who are well-trained in seeing themselves as victims.

I do not know what the ultimate disposition of DoE will be. I do know that USAID is not going away; it’s going to be rolled into the State Department, though presumably in a less obscene fashion. To the consternation of Politico, which is hardly a disinterested party where USAID is concerned, this means a “smaller, weaker agency focused mostly on food aid and AIDS clinics. Well, good. That’s what an agency with “aid” in its name should focus on instead of working as a CIA front specializing in overseas regime change, propaganda, and doing a lot of nasty things that most Americans did not even know about until now.

The people complaining about Musk not being elected may want to remember that Trump was chosen. He also talked about DOGE and Elon being part of it. The attack of the vapors within the old guard clinging to the old ways is not surprising. But seeing taxpayers echo that distress is unexpected. Just what does it take for even the most devoted acolyte of big govt to ask where our money is going?